The Department of Lost Minutes
ALI Hasnain
At 8:47 every morning, Mara lost eleven minutes.
Not misplaced, not wasted. Lost. She would be standing at the sink, or tying a shoe, or waiting for the kettle to click, and then the microwave clock would read 8:58. The missing interval left no dizziness, no memory, no sign that anything had happened. It was simply gone.
For six months she blamed sleep, then stress, then the microwave. She replaced the microwave. The new clock was equally accusatory.
One Tuesday, a cream envelope appeared beneath her apartment door. It contained a numbered ticket and an address three subway stops away. No letter. No logo. The ticket said: DEPARTMENT OF LOST MINUTES, WINDOW 4.
The address belonged to a narrow municipal building wedged between a dental office and a store that sold only lampshades. Inside, fluorescent lights flickered above rows of plastic chairs. A sign read: TAKE A NUMBER. Mara already had one.
Window 4 was staffed by an elderly man in a green cardigan. He examined her ticket, then her face.
“Eleven minutes,” he said.
“Every day.”
“Since February ninth.”
Mara gripped the counter. “You know about this?”
“We know where they go.”
He disappeared into a back room and returned with a gray file box. On the lid, in black marker, was her full name. Inside were hundreds of index cards, one for each missing interval.
He handed her the top card.
FEBRUARY 9. 8:47–8:58. SAT ON KITCHEN FLOOR. DID NOTHING.
The next card read:
FEBRUARY 10. WATCHED LIGHT MOVE ACROSS WALL.
Then:
FEBRUARY 11. REMEMBERED GRANDMOTHER’S LAUGH.
Mara looked up. “I don’t remember any of these.”
“That’s why they were removed.”
“Removed by who?”
The man adjusted his glasses. “You submitted the request.”
He found a form clipped to the bottom of the box. Her signature curved across the page. The date was February eighth. REQUEST FOR TEMPORARY RELIEF FROM NONPRODUCTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS.
Mara remembered February eighth. A performance review. A supervisor telling her she needed to optimize her mornings, protect her focus, eliminate dead time. She had gone home and searched for something—an app, a method, a planner. She did not remember this form.
“I thought it would make me more efficient,” she said.
“It did.”
“Can I have the minutes back?”
The clerk sighed and pointed toward a second sign: RESTORATIONS MAY CAUSE DELAY.
“How much delay?”
“For eleven minutes a day? Considerable.”
“Do it.”
He stamped three forms. Somewhere behind the wall, machinery started with the soft mechanical cough of an old elevator.
“Tomorrow morning,” he said, “stay somewhere safe.”
At 8:47 the next day, Mara sat at her kitchen table.
Nothing happened.
At first she panicked. Then she realized that nothing happening was the thing itself. The refrigerator hummed. A truck reversed outside. Sunlight touched the rim of her glass. She thought about her grandmother and could not remember the exact laugh, only the way everyone else had laughed after hearing it.
At 8:53 she looked at the clock. Six whole minutes remained.
They felt enormous.
She did not fill them.