Shuteye
Sleep. 1,250 words, 3 minute read. With Gemini.
The stale air in the 24-hour study lounge was thick enough to spread on toast, a potent cocktail of old coffee, desperation, and the faint, zesty aroma of industrial floor cleaner. It was 2:00 AM. Elizabeth traced a Lagrange multiplier on her scratchpad, the symbol swimming before her eyes. Professor Maxwell’s Theoretical Electrodynamics was less a class and more a gauntlet; his exams were finely tuned instruments of intellectual torture, designed to separate the truly fluent from those merely parroting equations. She’d just untangled a particularly vicious field problem for a frantic classmate moments before, the solution clicking into place with a familiar, satisfying snap that usually buoyed her spirits. Tonight, however, the victory felt hollow, overshadowed by the mountain of material still unconquered.
A light, almost crisp scent of bergamot wafted past. Sarah slid into the opposite chair, not with the usual slumped shoulders of a fellow pre-dawn scholar, but with an unnerving, quiet alertness. Her tablet screen glowed, notes scrolling smoothly under a tapping stylus.
“Still wrestling with Maxwell’s demons, Liz?” Sarah’s voice was even, almost serene. “You look like you’re about to flux out.”
Elizabeth managed a weak smile, rubbing her temples. “Just trying to keep my head above the wave equation. You, on the other hand, look like you’ve had a full night’s sleep and a spa day. Secret caffeine drip I don’t know about?”
Sarah chuckled, a low, easy sound. “Something like that. You know how everyone’s been talking about the new chrono-regulators? I finally caved and got on ReVerve.” She gestured vaguely. “Figured I needed to find a new potential if I was going to survive this semester. Two hours kip, and I’m… well, like this.”
Elizabeth’s pen stilled. ReVerve. One of a dozen trendy "somni-suppressants" whispered about in dorms and study groups, promising the moon – or at least, more waking hours to reach for it. She’d always dismissed them as a crutch, a shortcut around the genuine toil she believed was essential. “So, you’re overclocking your circadian rhythm now? Is that even…sustainable?”
“More sustainable than becoming a permanent fixture in this lounge,” Sarah countered gently, already highlighting a passage on her screen. “It’s just leveling the playing field, Liz. Or maybe, changing the game. Think of the energy saved.”
The following weeks carved a stark ravine between their experiences. Elizabeth’s world shrank to the dimensions of her textbooks, her alarm clock a tyrannical master. She fueled herself with lukewarm coffee that left a bitter, metallic film on her tongue, and the greasy comfort of late-night pizza. Her notes, usually impeccable, began to fray at the edges, mirroring her own mental state. She’d see posters for campus events, for visiting lecturers she’d normally leap to attend, and a dull ache of missed opportunity would settle in. One afternoon, staring at an ad for ReVerve that promised ‘Unlock Your 22-Hour Day!’, a wave of sheer, bone-deep exhaustion made her finger hover over the ‘learn more’ link, before she clicked away with a sigh of grim resolve.
Sarah, in contrast, seemed to expand. She was not just present in Maxwell’s notoriously difficult morning tutorials, but actively dissecting his arguments, her questions sharp, her grasp of the material unnervingly fluid. Elizabeth once saw her notes for the class – they were elegant, concise, with insightful annotations that made Elizabeth’s own sprawling, desperate scribbles feel clumsy. Sarah had even, improbably, taken up rock climbing at the campus gym. "Great for clearing the head," she'd said, her eyes bright. "Gives me a new angle on problem-solving."
“How are you not feeling… a drag from it all?” Elizabeth asked one evening, her voice rough with fatigue, as Sarah calmly packed her bag after an efficient two-hour study block.
Sarah paused, a thoughtful expression on her face. “Honestly? I feel like I’ve finally got the bandwidth to process everything. It’s not about less sleep, Liz. It’s about more… clarity. More me-time, even with this workload.”
The morning of the final exam dawned cold and grey, the sky pressing down like a damp cloth. Elizabeth felt it in her bones, a deep, resonant thrum of anxiety. Her reflection was a stranger with hollow eyes and skin like old parchment. Her mind, usually a well-ordered library of concepts, felt like a whirlwind of loose pages, the vital connections between them lost in the storm of too little sleep.
At the entrance to the vast, tiered lecture hall, the air crackled with nervous energy. Sarah stood slightly apart from the huddled, murmuring groups, looking out a window at the campus green. She was wearing a light blue sweater that emphasized the surprising color in her cheeks. She turned as Elizabeth approached, offering a small, composed smile.
"Ready to show Maxwell the charge of the light brigade?" Sarah asked, her tone light.
Elizabeth could only manage a stiff nod, clutching her worn copy of Griffiths’ "Introduction to Electrodynamics" like a talisman. The leather was soft and frayed from countless hours of her hands poring over it.
The exam paper felt like a physical manifestation of Professor Maxwell’s intellect: dense, unforgiving, and fiendishly complex. Each question was a labyrinth. Elizabeth plunged in, her pen scratching, her mind racing to summon theorems and derivations from the foggy depths of her memory. Time warped, stretching and contracting. She could hear the frantic rustle of papers, the occasional stifled groan. A few rows ahead, Sarah wrote with a calm, steady rhythm, her posture relaxed, occasionally pausing to tap her pen against her lips, a slight frown of concentration the only outward sign of effort.
The digital clock on the wall bled red numbers: 0:05… 0:04…
A week later, Elizabeth sat hunched over her laptop, the glow of the screen illuminating her pale face. The student portal page loaded with agonizing slowness. Finally, the list of grades appeared.
PHY481: Theoretical Electrodynamics – B-
A wave of heat washed over her, followed by a profound, chilling emptiness. B-minus. Not a failure, but a dull, throbbing monument to her limits, or perhaps, to the limits of her methods. It felt like a betrayal of every sacrificed hour of sleep, every social invitation declined.
A soft, almost musical sigh came from Sarah’s side of the room. Elizabeth glanced over. Sarah was leaning back in her chair, a genuinely peaceful smile on her lips as she gazed at her own screen.
“Phew, A-minus. Solid,” Sarah murmured, more to herself than to Elizabeth. She closed her laptop with a quiet click. “That aerospace internship info session is tonight. Professor Armitage is giving a talk there, might be good to connect.” She was already pulling up a different window on her tablet, her focus shifting seamlessly. "Plenty of time to make it if I head out soon."
Elizabeth stared at the dark screen of her own laptop, the ghost of the B-minus still imprinted on her retinas. She looked at Sarah, who was now checking her reflection in her tablet’s screen, smoothing her hair. Sarah caught her eye and offered a sympathetic, if slightly distant, smile.
"You'll get 'em next time, Liz. Maybe it's time to explore some new… circuits for your study routine?"
Elizabeth didn’t answer. The late afternoon sun, slanting through their window, caught the dust motes dancing in the air between them, illuminating a space that suddenly felt wider than just the few feet separating their desks.