Q and A: Life as a Spinner
What are spinners?
All the main characters in Rewind are spinners, which are people who are born with the ability to manipulate time. Spinners are feared by most of the general population.
How many spinners are there?
Teacher Julie tells the kids that there are 280 spinners in the US, which equals .0017% of the population. Here’s how that math works: In 2016, the US Population was about 323 million, but only about 22 million were under the age of 20 (the lifespan of a typical spinner). Multiply 22 million by .0017% and you end up with 384 people born as spinners. The infant mortality rate for spinners, however, is close to 25%, which is how the actual number ends up at about 280. Worldwide, the number of spinners is about 33,000. The spinner gene is a random mutation and is evenly distributed across gender, race, and ethnicity. It is not passed on because spinners are unable to have children.
How are spinners identified?
Every child is tested at birth for the presence of the enzyme chronotin in their bloodstream, which is the marker for the condition. Hospitals are required to test for it, as are midwives who oversee home births. In most places in the world, including the US, you cannot receive a birth certificate without evidence that you have been tested and do not carry the marker. Certainly spinners occasionally slip through the cracks, especially in less developed parts of the world. The stigma of the condition (as well as the perceived threat of a non-medicated spinner child) is pretty severe, however, and people rarely try and cheat. Many parents who have a spinner baby tell people it was a stillborn rather than confess the condition. The lie feels true; spinner babies are immediately removed from their parents and sent to live with others of their kind in state run orphanages called Children’s Homes.
Can spinners stop time from birth?
No. Time skills emerge as children age. Most kids start to be able to sense time by about age five but are not able to actively manipulate it until age nine or ten. At the point when they can consciously and consistently stop time, somewhere between ages ten and twelve, they are transferred from a Children’s Home to a Center. Once at the Center, their formal time training begins. Youngers work with fully qualified spinners to practice holding time for longer and longer periods of time and also on managing smoothly controlled rewinds. Additionally, they work on bringing one or more other people into a freeze with them. The longer a spinner holds time, and the more people they bring with them, the more draining it is for the spinner. Like any skill, the more kids practice the better they get. The amount of chronotin in kid’s systems also effects their capabilities. Those with higher chronotin levels tend to start being able to manipulate time earlier and can hold time for longer. Alex, who is both naturally gifted and works hard to hone her skills, is one of the strongest spinners in the Center. She left her Home just after she turned eleven and, as she tells Ross, she has held a freeze for up to two hours and has rewound two-and-a half days.
What are Children’s Homes like?
About what you would expect: not great. There are four of them in the US, one each in smaller towns in Washington, Vermont, Texas, and Illinois (the exact locations are not widely known). Each houses about forty kids, from infants up to age twelve. The children sleep in dorms, separated by age and gender, and spend their days in scheduled activities: they go to school six days a week, participate in sports/physical play time, and are offered some variety of other recreational/enrichment activities. The types of opportunities available to them vary by location, weather, involvement of staff, and current funding.
Where are the Centers located?
There are five Crime Investigation Centers in the US. They are located in: Portland (OR), San Jose, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Dallas. Each houses 25-30 kids.
What’s the difference between a Younger and a Qualified Spinner?
When spinners first move to Center they are called Youngers. Their day-to-day lives aren’t that different than it was when they lived at a Children’s Home, except that time skill training is added to their schooling. Spinner skills grow stronger around puberty and by age fifteen most spinners have developed enough that they can begin to work with a police agent. Once that happens they are considered qualified. Qualified spinners work with their assigned agent to help solve crimes.
What is the daily life like at a Center?
The Portland Center is in an old building, originally a nice hotel that over time became a short-stay single room occupancy residence. To convert it to a Center it was extensively remodeled and the top two floors now hold dorms. The upper (third) floor sleeps the qualified spinners and the second floor houses the Youngers. Most kids share a room with a roommate, though some end up with singles, especially as they get older and their peers start dying. Youngers get assigned a roommate when they first come to a Center, but they can request a change at any time. Needless to say, roommate selection, while not part of the story in Rewind, creates a lot of drama.
The kids are woken every morning by one of the security guards, after which they have half an hour to dress and get down to the cafeteria, where they are served all their meals. Youngers spend six days a week in school. They are divided between two classrooms, upper and lower, based on age and ability. Academics are not particularly stressed at Centers – given the kids’ short life spans there isn’t much point – it’s more a way to keep them occupied than anything else. Per state law, they follow the same curriculum as local public schools, but they are exempted from state testing and there isn’t a lot of oversight or attention to quality. The most important part of their education at the Center involves practicing their freezing skills.
After age sixteen, spinners are no longer required by law to be in school and virtually none elect to continue their formal education. A few will work to gain a GED, however, and many do sign up for on-line classes. In Portland, on-line Community College classes are free for spinners. KJ took a couple computer classes, Alex took one on criminal psychology, Calvin took lots of history and political science classes, and Yuki has taken a few classes on fashion and interior design.
In addition to academics, all the spinners – even the Youngers – help to maintain the Center. There are rotating lists of jobs such as washing dishes, managing recycling, doing laundry, maintaining the courtyard garden, and cleaning the common areas, as well as special projects like holiday decorating or sorting donations. Jobs rotate among spinners, though they are allowed to swap shifts/jobs if both parties agree. Yolly manages the schedule which is published every month. Once a spinner completes their formal education, they are given larger jobs as well. Many of these jobs involve working with the Youngers either as a teacher’s aide (Shannon), time skills coach (Alex), or recreation supervisor (Aidan). Other spinners work as staff assistants. Shannon works with Amy, the school nurse, Jack is Dr. Barnard’s assistant, Yuki is one of the assistant cooks. KJ created his own job as the Center’s IT specialist and sometimes handyman, simply by building an appropriate skill set. The jobs all have relatively flexible hours since qualified spinners can be called out on a mission with their agent at any time and missions always take priority.
Medical care is another cornerstone of life at a Center. Spinners take Aclisote, a drug designed to offset the worst of the side effects of time manipulation, with dinner and breakfast every day. Additionally, each spinner’s chronotin levels are tested every month.
Spinners do have limited free time every afternoon and evening. During those hours they can spend time in their rooms, the basement basketball court or small gym, or in the common areas. The main common room is for qualified spinners and has a TV, some games, books, and two computers (for gaming, not internet access). The Youngers use one of the classrooms as their common room. It has similar amenities, except their TV shows are restricted to age appropriate shows, and the room offers a larger selection of board games and crafts. Both spaces have lots of movies for viewing. In general, staff encourage habits like TV watching and computer games since these activities are absorbing and prevent the kids from getting bored. Keeping the spinners occupied is the main focus of life in the Center. Too much free time leads to squabbles or, worse, time to brood about the shortcomings of their situation.
How does the spinner/agent relationship work?
Most spinners are assigned to a single police agent, though it’s not uncommon for newly qualified spinners to be in a pool of “availables” who get called in for periodic assignments or fill in if another spinner is overtired from a recent mission. A spinner-agent pairing can last an entire spinner’s life or spinners can get moved around. A spinner can request a new agent after a year’s partnership, an agent can request a new spinner at any time. Spinners might also get moved around because an agent needs a particular skill set - someone who can hold freezes especially long or who has an expertise in rewinds. Spinner-agent pairings and assignments are decided by Dr. Barnard in consultation with the police department.
While the ability to rewind a crime is an obvious asset to police detective work, there are not enough spinners to have someone on every case. Added to that, many officers find freezes uncomfortable and don’t want to work with spinners. Some cops think the physical sensation of a freeze is unnerving, others have an ingrown prejudice against spinners and refuse to partner with them, and some dislike relying on a teenager to accomplish their work, either because of their own ego or because they don’t think children should be involved in what can sometimes be quite graphic or violent situations. Because of this, the Portland Police Department set up a Time Department and recruited officers to become Time Agents. These cops only use spinners on special cases where it’s decided regular police work alone will not be enough to solve a case. Occasionally initiatives are passed that involve spinners. Alex’s time in the Vice Squad, for example, was due to a short term crackdown meant to reduce crime in a particularly high-risk neighborhood.
Even though many crimes take place at night, it should be noted that because all spinners have the ability to rewind at least twelve hours, they are rarely called out on a mission outside of regular day time hours. This concession is attributed to advocacy work done by the Society for Spinner Rights.
How does the rest of the world see spinners?
Spinners are such a small percentage of the population and they keep such a low profile that most people, especially those who don’t live in a city that hosts a Center, do not have particularly strong feelings about them. The Centers’ administrators, which start at the federal level, work very hard to both restrict news about spinners and to keep up steady low level propaganda about the risks and dangers of these “genetic aberrations”, citing the fact that an untreated spinner is typically violent and prone to insanity. An average citizen, when asked how they feel about spinners, will express some mix of pity and discomfort – similar to the way lepers were considered back when they were shunted off to leper colonies.
There are groups that have very strong feelings about spinners. Anti-spinners see them as threatening mutants who should not be allowed to mingle with normal people. Anti-spinner groups stage protests and spread untrue accounts of people who were somehow injured by a spinner – either physically because the spinner “went crazy” and attacked them, or claims that personal information was stolen after a spinner spied on someone in frozen time. These extremists cast doubt on police investigations that rely on spinners, pointing out the (true) fact that the police in a freeze have no actual hard evidence about what they and their spinner partner observed during a rewind. (To combat this, in particularly sensitive cases, a spinner might bring two officers into the freeze.) Anti-spinner groups also frequently complain about tax payer dollars being spent on “luxuries” and other “extras” to support the spinners, much as people complain about programming brought in for convicts in high security prisons.
There are also pro-spinner groups, the most prominent of which is the Society for Spinner Rights. The Society, and similar groups, focus on the fact that spinners are children with tragically short life spans. The Society lobbies to allow spinners as much comfort as one can while living in an institution. Some of their successes have included: improved nutrition, mandatory education, giving each child ethnic/racially appropriate first and last names, offering older teens off-site day passes plus nominal cash allowances, organizing clothing/toy/holiday donations, and pushing for better oversight to prevent abuse.
Have other questions about spinners? Send me an email!
All the main characters in Rewind are spinners, which are people who are born with the ability to manipulate time. Spinners are feared by most of the general population.
How many spinners are there?
Teacher Julie tells the kids that there are 280 spinners in the US, which equals .0017% of the population. Here’s how that math works: In 2016, the US Population was about 323 million, but only about 22 million were under the age of 20 (the lifespan of a typical spinner). Multiply 22 million by .0017% and you end up with 384 people born as spinners. The infant mortality rate for spinners, however, is close to 25%, which is how the actual number ends up at about 280. Worldwide, the number of spinners is about 33,000. The spinner gene is a random mutation and is evenly distributed across gender, race, and ethnicity. It is not passed on because spinners are unable to have children.
How are spinners identified?
Every child is tested at birth for the presence of the enzyme chronotin in their bloodstream, which is the marker for the condition. Hospitals are required to test for it, as are midwives who oversee home births. In most places in the world, including the US, you cannot receive a birth certificate without evidence that you have been tested and do not carry the marker. Certainly spinners occasionally slip through the cracks, especially in less developed parts of the world. The stigma of the condition (as well as the perceived threat of a non-medicated spinner child) is pretty severe, however, and people rarely try and cheat. Many parents who have a spinner baby tell people it was a stillborn rather than confess the condition. The lie feels true; spinner babies are immediately removed from their parents and sent to live with others of their kind in state run orphanages called Children’s Homes.
Can spinners stop time from birth?
No. Time skills emerge as children age. Most kids start to be able to sense time by about age five but are not able to actively manipulate it until age nine or ten. At the point when they can consciously and consistently stop time, somewhere between ages ten and twelve, they are transferred from a Children’s Home to a Center. Once at the Center, their formal time training begins. Youngers work with fully qualified spinners to practice holding time for longer and longer periods of time and also on managing smoothly controlled rewinds. Additionally, they work on bringing one or more other people into a freeze with them. The longer a spinner holds time, and the more people they bring with them, the more draining it is for the spinner. Like any skill, the more kids practice the better they get. The amount of chronotin in kid’s systems also effects their capabilities. Those with higher chronotin levels tend to start being able to manipulate time earlier and can hold time for longer. Alex, who is both naturally gifted and works hard to hone her skills, is one of the strongest spinners in the Center. She left her Home just after she turned eleven and, as she tells Ross, she has held a freeze for up to two hours and has rewound two-and-a half days.
What are Children’s Homes like?
About what you would expect: not great. There are four of them in the US, one each in smaller towns in Washington, Vermont, Texas, and Illinois (the exact locations are not widely known). Each houses about forty kids, from infants up to age twelve. The children sleep in dorms, separated by age and gender, and spend their days in scheduled activities: they go to school six days a week, participate in sports/physical play time, and are offered some variety of other recreational/enrichment activities. The types of opportunities available to them vary by location, weather, involvement of staff, and current funding.
Where are the Centers located?
There are five Crime Investigation Centers in the US. They are located in: Portland (OR), San Jose, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Dallas. Each houses 25-30 kids.
What’s the difference between a Younger and a Qualified Spinner?
When spinners first move to Center they are called Youngers. Their day-to-day lives aren’t that different than it was when they lived at a Children’s Home, except that time skill training is added to their schooling. Spinner skills grow stronger around puberty and by age fifteen most spinners have developed enough that they can begin to work with a police agent. Once that happens they are considered qualified. Qualified spinners work with their assigned agent to help solve crimes.
What is the daily life like at a Center?
The Portland Center is in an old building, originally a nice hotel that over time became a short-stay single room occupancy residence. To convert it to a Center it was extensively remodeled and the top two floors now hold dorms. The upper (third) floor sleeps the qualified spinners and the second floor houses the Youngers. Most kids share a room with a roommate, though some end up with singles, especially as they get older and their peers start dying. Youngers get assigned a roommate when they first come to a Center, but they can request a change at any time. Needless to say, roommate selection, while not part of the story in Rewind, creates a lot of drama.
The kids are woken every morning by one of the security guards, after which they have half an hour to dress and get down to the cafeteria, where they are served all their meals. Youngers spend six days a week in school. They are divided between two classrooms, upper and lower, based on age and ability. Academics are not particularly stressed at Centers – given the kids’ short life spans there isn’t much point – it’s more a way to keep them occupied than anything else. Per state law, they follow the same curriculum as local public schools, but they are exempted from state testing and there isn’t a lot of oversight or attention to quality. The most important part of their education at the Center involves practicing their freezing skills.
After age sixteen, spinners are no longer required by law to be in school and virtually none elect to continue their formal education. A few will work to gain a GED, however, and many do sign up for on-line classes. In Portland, on-line Community College classes are free for spinners. KJ took a couple computer classes, Alex took one on criminal psychology, Calvin took lots of history and political science classes, and Yuki has taken a few classes on fashion and interior design.
In addition to academics, all the spinners – even the Youngers – help to maintain the Center. There are rotating lists of jobs such as washing dishes, managing recycling, doing laundry, maintaining the courtyard garden, and cleaning the common areas, as well as special projects like holiday decorating or sorting donations. Jobs rotate among spinners, though they are allowed to swap shifts/jobs if both parties agree. Yolly manages the schedule which is published every month. Once a spinner completes their formal education, they are given larger jobs as well. Many of these jobs involve working with the Youngers either as a teacher’s aide (Shannon), time skills coach (Alex), or recreation supervisor (Aidan). Other spinners work as staff assistants. Shannon works with Amy, the school nurse, Jack is Dr. Barnard’s assistant, Yuki is one of the assistant cooks. KJ created his own job as the Center’s IT specialist and sometimes handyman, simply by building an appropriate skill set. The jobs all have relatively flexible hours since qualified spinners can be called out on a mission with their agent at any time and missions always take priority.
Medical care is another cornerstone of life at a Center. Spinners take Aclisote, a drug designed to offset the worst of the side effects of time manipulation, with dinner and breakfast every day. Additionally, each spinner’s chronotin levels are tested every month.
Spinners do have limited free time every afternoon and evening. During those hours they can spend time in their rooms, the basement basketball court or small gym, or in the common areas. The main common room is for qualified spinners and has a TV, some games, books, and two computers (for gaming, not internet access). The Youngers use one of the classrooms as their common room. It has similar amenities, except their TV shows are restricted to age appropriate shows, and the room offers a larger selection of board games and crafts. Both spaces have lots of movies for viewing. In general, staff encourage habits like TV watching and computer games since these activities are absorbing and prevent the kids from getting bored. Keeping the spinners occupied is the main focus of life in the Center. Too much free time leads to squabbles or, worse, time to brood about the shortcomings of their situation.
How does the spinner/agent relationship work?
Most spinners are assigned to a single police agent, though it’s not uncommon for newly qualified spinners to be in a pool of “availables” who get called in for periodic assignments or fill in if another spinner is overtired from a recent mission. A spinner-agent pairing can last an entire spinner’s life or spinners can get moved around. A spinner can request a new agent after a year’s partnership, an agent can request a new spinner at any time. Spinners might also get moved around because an agent needs a particular skill set - someone who can hold freezes especially long or who has an expertise in rewinds. Spinner-agent pairings and assignments are decided by Dr. Barnard in consultation with the police department.
While the ability to rewind a crime is an obvious asset to police detective work, there are not enough spinners to have someone on every case. Added to that, many officers find freezes uncomfortable and don’t want to work with spinners. Some cops think the physical sensation of a freeze is unnerving, others have an ingrown prejudice against spinners and refuse to partner with them, and some dislike relying on a teenager to accomplish their work, either because of their own ego or because they don’t think children should be involved in what can sometimes be quite graphic or violent situations. Because of this, the Portland Police Department set up a Time Department and recruited officers to become Time Agents. These cops only use spinners on special cases where it’s decided regular police work alone will not be enough to solve a case. Occasionally initiatives are passed that involve spinners. Alex’s time in the Vice Squad, for example, was due to a short term crackdown meant to reduce crime in a particularly high-risk neighborhood.
Even though many crimes take place at night, it should be noted that because all spinners have the ability to rewind at least twelve hours, they are rarely called out on a mission outside of regular day time hours. This concession is attributed to advocacy work done by the Society for Spinner Rights.
How does the rest of the world see spinners?
Spinners are such a small percentage of the population and they keep such a low profile that most people, especially those who don’t live in a city that hosts a Center, do not have particularly strong feelings about them. The Centers’ administrators, which start at the federal level, work very hard to both restrict news about spinners and to keep up steady low level propaganda about the risks and dangers of these “genetic aberrations”, citing the fact that an untreated spinner is typically violent and prone to insanity. An average citizen, when asked how they feel about spinners, will express some mix of pity and discomfort – similar to the way lepers were considered back when they were shunted off to leper colonies.
There are groups that have very strong feelings about spinners. Anti-spinners see them as threatening mutants who should not be allowed to mingle with normal people. Anti-spinner groups stage protests and spread untrue accounts of people who were somehow injured by a spinner – either physically because the spinner “went crazy” and attacked them, or claims that personal information was stolen after a spinner spied on someone in frozen time. These extremists cast doubt on police investigations that rely on spinners, pointing out the (true) fact that the police in a freeze have no actual hard evidence about what they and their spinner partner observed during a rewind. (To combat this, in particularly sensitive cases, a spinner might bring two officers into the freeze.) Anti-spinner groups also frequently complain about tax payer dollars being spent on “luxuries” and other “extras” to support the spinners, much as people complain about programming brought in for convicts in high security prisons.
There are also pro-spinner groups, the most prominent of which is the Society for Spinner Rights. The Society, and similar groups, focus on the fact that spinners are children with tragically short life spans. The Society lobbies to allow spinners as much comfort as one can while living in an institution. Some of their successes have included: improved nutrition, mandatory education, giving each child ethnic/racially appropriate first and last names, offering older teens off-site day passes plus nominal cash allowances, organizing clothing/toy/holiday donations, and pushing for better oversight to prevent abuse.
Have other questions about spinners? Send me an email!