[ eins ]

"Of all the available places to visit on your birthday, you had to chose a football game, didn't you? Mama und papa offered you a trip to Belgium, but you turned it down...for a football game." Her sister complained for the hundreth time as they boarded the tube that would drop them off just two blocks from Signal Iduna Park where Borussia Dortmund would be playing against Bayern München that afternoon. Annoyed, her sister added dramatically, "You're deliberately trying to ruin my life." Of the two Schmidt sisters, Grettel was the younger one, who absolutely could not stand sports, and Agueda was the elder by one year, who loved sports more than many other things.

"Oh, come on Grettel." Agueda said with optimism, nudging her lightly. "I'll only turn twenty one once. And I'm lucky the game fell right on my birthday."

"That's the only reason why I agreed to come. You should be thankful." Her sister mumbled under her breath, crossing her arms over her chest once they finally found a place to sit in the crowded tube. Agueda had begged her parents for tickets to watch the match on her birthday and they had agreed on the condition that Grettel accompanied her. It hadn't been easy, Agueda had been trying to convince them for months. They didn't want their daughter wandering around Dortmund alone at night. At least if both girls went, they could take care of each other. 

It was nearly a half hour train ride, due to all the stops it was making, before they reached the stadium and along the way the regulars got off and on got the football fans. By the time they reached the stop near Signal Iduna the tube was a mixture of Bayern and BVB fans with their painted faces and their jerseys.

Down at her side, the two girls saw a blinking green light that came from Agueda's wrist and caught their attention. It was from the genetic clock which she had been forced to get months prior, when the law was put into place. Agueda found it stupid, how scientists tried so hard to play god with everything and everyone around them. And she wanted no part in it. She had a timer, but she would in no way acknowledge it. She wanted to fall in love with someone on her own, without a clock telling her it was time to do so. "Its blinking again." Grettel pointed out, a curious gleam in her eye. Her younger sister was more keen on the idea than Agueda was. According to the tests that had been done on the clocks, there was only a 0.1% chance of failure in predicting who someone's soul mate would be. Agueda was convinced that 0.1% was her case.

The older sister looked down at her wrist with disdain. Of course, Agueda already knew it was blinking and beeping.

It had been blinking all week. First, each time a day passed, and the soulmate date approached, it would blink more frequently. On this, the day of Agueda's birthday, it was blinking and beeping after every few minutes. That meant she would be meeting her soulmate very soon, within the next few hours even.

Agueda thought it would be some stranger at the football game, someone she wouldn't have to see again. But as far as she knew from the people around her, once you were paired with your soulmate, you could never get rid of them. You were stuck with them forever. It was the reason her parents had separated, the timer told them to. As it had turned out, their mother's soul mate was a man from the United States, an American tourist who had never gotten married, but had a stable career in business administration. Their father had yet to find his soul mate, two more years. 

The two sisters got off at the last stop before the train would head back towards the inner city and walked with the crowd towards the stadium. One was excited to watch the game, the other was more interested to find out who her sister's soulmate would be.

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In the locker room of Borussia Dortmund, a beeping sound went off every few minutes, echoing within the walls of the room full of footballers. The sound came from the wrist of Marco Reus, who tried to ignore it as best he could, but the beeping had already gotten on his nerves. He was one of the many who didn't believe science could accurately predict something like a person's true love. He had only gotten the timer because of the universal law which dictated that every living human being was obligated to have one. Had he known it would be so annoying, he would have lied and said he had gotten one, and not gotten it at all. For several months it had been a quiet, barely noticeable blue glow on his wrist and suddenly in the last few days it was bothering everyone around him.

From a few feet off, Sven tossed his clete at Marco, hitting him in the arm. The twenty-five year old winced in pain, complaining, "Hey! Why the hell would you do that?" He looked at his team mate with a slight glare.

"That beeping is driving me crazy." Sven replied, "Turn it off!"

"I can't!" Marco looked down at the timer on his wrist, hitting it with the palm of his opposite hand, as though doing so would get it to turn off. There were a little over three hours before he would meet his soul mate according to the countdown on his wrist. That meant it would happen soon after their game against Bayern. He was filled with relief at the thought of the noise finally ceasing. "Don't you think that if I could, I would have done it by now? I know its annoying, but its out of my control."

"Alright." Sven sighed, apologetic. He knew in another year or two he would be the one annoying everyone with the beeping of his clock. Looking down at the floor, searching for his clete and finally spotting it, he asked his team mate, "Will you pass me my shoe?"

And Marco did just that. He knelt down to pick it up and chucked it at his team mate, making sure to hit him. The team would be going out onto the field soon, where they would warm up and have a final practice in front of their fans before the game.

Erik, who had been preparing himself not far from them finally spoke up, "I just can't understand why they won't leave matters like this up to God." His face contorted into distaste.

"What do you mean?" Marco wondered, bringing his foot up onto the bench to tie the laces on his cletes.

"I mean," Erik began, looking at the clock on his own wrist, which he had also been forced to install. According to it, he would be meeting his soul mate in nearly three weeks. "Now they want to tell us who to love and when we can love them. The science of today is too controlling. I would much rather put my trust in God. He would let me fall in love with whoever my heart desired."

His friends smirked in amusement. "You're such a loser." Marco joked.

The youngest of the three shurgged, the tattoo of the crucifix on his arm suddenly became more visible to them. "Loser or not, I'm not letting this clock run my life." Erik had been raised a strict Catholic in Pirmasens and when the timers were forced onto the population, his parents gave him a valuable piece of advice. They told him to follow his heart and not the timer on his wrist, and that was exactly what he would do.

His parents had found each other without the need of it anyway. And they had been some of the lucky ones. Over the past year, he had seen so many couples breaking up because of the clocks.

To Erik, there were some things in life that could not be determined by science.

-

chapter one. i already have the second chapter written, but i thought one update per week is pretty good, maybe two. but i hope you all like the update. it means a lot to me when you read my updates. thank you! i love youuu.

ugh. im really thirsty. but im in the second floor of the library. (my library works in a very peculiar way. the third floor is actually the ground floor, then there are two floors that go beneath that, one and two. and it has the fourth floor on top of the grounf floor. so i would have to climg a bunch of stairs, walk to the bookstore, but something to drink and come back). its way too much effort. i only have fifty minutes in between my classes for lunch and im too tired to move too much. haha. anyway, i might just go get something on my way to class. sorry for boring you all with my life. lol

-clary xx