15 minutes to eternity
“Give me 15 minutes, I’ll ring you… but do answer.”
“OK,” was her reply. “Fifteen minutes? That’ll fly by,” she thought. “No time to get bored, no time to potter about, no time to cook, no time to have a bath, no time to ring a friend, no time for dinner, no time to watch a film (or even an episode of a TV series), no time to read, no time to go for a walk, no time…’ So she settled down comfortably to give him the 15 minutes he’d asked for.
At first, the minutes passed relatively quickly, then they slowed down and stretched out…
After a few days, her friends began to worry as she was still waiting:
— “Forget about it! Move on!”
— “15 minutes – I might as well give him 15 minutes; he asked me for them.”
After a few weeks, her friends, growing concerned, began to talk about it amongst themselves. Friends of friends paid her a visit. They couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary – just a woman sitting there, who seemed to be waiting for a phone call and turned down every suggestion to go out, have dinner or play games… repeating, ‘15 minutes, just 15 minutes…’
After a few months, her friends consulted various specialists: first a psychiatrist, to see if there was something wrong with her; then a philosopher, to grasp the notion of the passing of time; a physicist, a proponent of the theory of relativity, to try to understand the concept of space-time… Nothing helped.
After a few years, her friends had got used to it, but were still astonished to realise that time had no hold over her: not a single wrinkle, not a single grey hair – she was the same, exactly the same. As for her, she looked at her friends, unable to understand them: “Why should I have wrinkles? Grey hairs? Can a person really change that much in 15 minutes?”
After 15 years, her friends, their friends and their friends’ friends all wanted to uncover the secret behind her eternal youth and serenity.
— “What does she do? What does she eat? What does she drink? How does she live?”
She led a quiet and peaceful life in Djerba, where she welcomed a few tourists seeking an authentic experience into her family home, which she had converted into a guesthouse; then everyone began to slow down; new demands began to emerge: ‘Work less to live better’.
She ate eggs from her own poultry and fruit and vegetables from her garden; she refused to eat any processed industrial products and followed a sugar-free ketogenic diet; so everyone started eating natural, locally sourced produce, tending their own gardens and rearing poultry; the manufacturers of sugary products went bankrupt one after the other…
After a few decades, the world had become a better place… The agri-food industry had given way to small, local organic farms; greenhouse gas emissions had fallen considerably; nature had reclaimed its rightful place; working hours had been reduced; and the capitalist economy had been replaced by a humanistic and equitable economy…
A committee comprising journalists, scientists, philosophers and others was tasked with investigating what might have opened people’s minds to bring about such an unexpected shift in society. Their investigations led them to her. They travelled to the small island of Djerba, in Tunisia, to meet her and find out more. When they discovered her story, they realised that the real hero was, in fact, the author of the text message. She had simply given him the 15 minutes he’d asked for; nothing more.
They wanted to find out more about him – this man who had asked her for 15 minutes, this hero who, without even realising it, had changed the course of society with a text message… They asked her his name… She’d forgotten it!
And so it was that the man who had changed the course of human history, who had made this a better world, who had succeeded where environmental activists all over the world had failed – all thanks to a simple text message – remained anonymous for all eternity.