"Daytime," by Alex Menning

I was young, but I still remember the night. The cool darkness that crept in slowly with its orange glow. Changing slowly to pink, then purple, and finally…black. The quiet that came when people still slept. So many things were different then, some would say so many things were better. But those who remember the days of night and darkness grow few…and soon it will be forgotten. Yes…I was young, but I still remember the night. -Walter Cutler, Poet (2011-2092)

“Although at first scientists said it was impossible, today it has been confirmed that the Earth has in fact ceased its rotation. Still no information has been found for a possible cause, but we think it’s safe to assume there is a definite link between the stopped rotation and the massive earthquake that spanned the globe three days ago. There still has been no contact with any nations on the other side of the world. The U.S. military plans to send aircraft over several designated locations starting tomorrow on a mission to find answers. We’ll keep you updated with any new information that turns up. Thanks, and good…night.” -Ron Winters, CNL (nightly) News Broadcast, April 9, 2016

When the Earth stopped rotating, all the leaders of the countries now known as the Bright Lands came together at a massive conference. Within days they had formed an alliance and began working towards what they called “Total Unification”. Everything had come together so quickly and perfectly that a lot of people started rumors that it was all planned. It wasn’t that hard to believe. Tensions between the U.S. and China were at the breaking point during the last three months leading up to the rotation stop, and countries had been lining up behind the two world powers. Then, in an instant, all of the eastern countries that opposed the U.S. and its allies were literally taken off the map. Gone. Frozen in tundra…or at least that’s what everyone assumed. The B.L.A. had tight security all the way around the globe at the line where communication stopped, and the closer you got to the line, the colder it got. Anyone who tried to cross was apprehended. Yet another interesting piece of information that made pointing fingers at the Alliance even easier. Brightlands History Volume 1: 2016-2026, Charles Lambrey’s Essay on the B.L.A. Conspiracy.

The first formula for Daytime was so close. When they tested it on the chimps it seemed immaculate. It wasn’t until the first human tests that they started running into problems. Everything was set up like a classic experiment. They pitted the subjects taking Daytime against control subjects (who slept for eight to ten hours) in every kind of aptitude test imaginable, mental and physical. The Daytimers won almost eighty one percent of the physical competitions. They also performed significantly better when given written tests. But when they did experiments to see how long the controls could stay awake compared to someone on Daytime, the pill began to show disturbing side effects. The average human can stay awake for around sixty hours before becoming delusional. The daytime users seemed completely normal until the seventy hour mark, but somewhere between seventy and eighty hours, the test subjects began to show signs of behavior comparable to schizophrenia, only more unexplainable. They would scream, cry, talk to people who weren’t there about things that weren’t happening, laugh hysterically, urinate involuntarily, and try to do things any normal person would know to be impossible.

The pill was designed to be taken once and only once, so the effects were permanent for the first few trials. The fourth formula was given to ten people. After being awake for thirty cycles with absolutely no sign of adverse effects, the miracle pill was considered “perfect”. Dr. James Crat, the leading scientist on the development team, issued a statement saying Daytime would “leave you feeling like you’ve just slept for an entire cycle…permanently! but without the baggies under your eyes and the feeling of being the laziest brightlander on the planet.” The package read: Daytime—take it once and become well rested for life…

“…I told you there’s no way she’s top five...” Garadin woke up startled. Not because something had startled him, but because he had never had the sensation of waking up before. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it, but before he could make any sort of decision, he came to the realization that the look on the face of the old man standing in front of him was very inquisitive.

In a rush of fear and confusion Garadin jumped up out of his chair and bolted for the door. He knew where it was, and that it would open for him without the pass code. The old man shouted after him but Garadin pretended not to hear. He ran out into the hot sun and onto the platform that would have him at street level in seconds. The stop was abrupt but not jolting. He stepped off and into the hundreds of people walking, but he couldn’t continue his escape, if that’s even what it was. The sensation he felt as he scanned the street was strange and caused him to stand still. He at least remembered that, just minutes ago, it had all seemed normal, but now, very slowly, things began to appear out of place. Few people were dressed normally. Most wore completely random, mismatched clothing, and here and there someone walked in just their underwear. He saw a man in heavy duty boots running in place. Or at least almost in place; at second glance Garadin realized the man was actually inching forward slowly. An occasional car flew by at a ridiculous speed, swerving to avoid something Garadin couldn’t see, while others sat idle or crawled slowly forward. It would have been totally chaotic, but it wasn’t. Maybe because he seemed to be the only one who thought so.

He started to walk again because he couldn’t think of what else to do. The buildings blocked the sun but his shirt was still damp with sweat. He was afraid to look down at what he was wearing, but when he finally mustered the courage, he was pleasantly surprised to find that he looked pretty normal, at least according to what his mind’s eye told him was “normal.” He couldn’t help thinking maybe everyone else knew what was going on and he was the weird one, but no one was staring at him. In fact, no one was interacting with anyone else. People were talking but not to each other. Running away from the old man was looking more and more like it had been the wrong choice. He knew he could find his way back because it was familiar to him. A lot things about this strange place were. They just seemed different now.

For the first time since he had woken up he felt fear. He’d been too preoccupied with the insanity of this world to be afraid until now. He started to turn back, and something hit him hard across the side of his head. There were two blows to his abdomen and one more to his face before the car struck his attacker. From the loud crunching sound, Garadin knew the man was finished. He heard a door open and shut. Rough hands pulled him up. It was the old man. As things began to blur he could hear the raspy, gargled voice of the old man.

“Try to relax. Everything will be made clear in time.”

When he woke, for the second time in his life, he was on a brown leather couch with a thick, soft blanket over him. He turned his neck slowly and a pounding sensation in his head made him gasp.

“It’s called a headache. It’ll hurt like a bitch for a while, but I can give you something to get rid of it.” The old man was sitting in a chair across from the couch.

“What cycle is it?” Garadin managed to mumble.

“Thirteen. You’ve been asleep for a cycle and a half. I think it’s a combination of your body adjusting to the counteraction of Daytime and that beating you took in the street yesterday. Sorry I didn’t find you before they did. You jumped out on me so quick…”

Garadin felt like there were a million questions he needed to ask but didn’t know what they were. And it was hard to think with this pulsing in his head.

“I know, son. I can’t imagine how confused you must be. I’ll explain everything once you’re feeling better. Try not to think about it right now. Just sleep. You’ve got a lifetime of deprivation to make up for.” The old man’s voice was soothing in an unexplainable way. Recognizable. Garadin felt himself slip into this new found state of relaxation.

Awake again, the throbbing gone from his head, Garadin sat up. He was still sore but he felt good, rested in a way he never had before. It seemed like such a waste of time, but maybe he could get used to this sleeping business. The old man wasn’t in the room, but he walked in now with the smallest of grins on his wrinkled face.

“Feeling better?” he asked.

“Yeah, way.” Garadin realized his voice sounded different to his ears.

“Well I’m not even exactly sure what you’re experiencing right now, but let’s start with any questions you want to ask me.”

“Who are you?”

“You know. I’m guessing it just seems like anything you think you know is likely to be wrong, but the memories you have are real, or at least most of them are. People you know, places you’ve been. These things exist, just not exactly the way you remember them.”

“You’re my grandfather?”

“Bingo.”

“Well then I guess the other most obvious question is…what’s going on? I remember my mom and dad. There names are Susan and Henry, but I know I haven’t seen them in a long time. I also know that it’s never bothered me till now. I have memories of school. Facts and knowledge. But it all starts to blur at some point, and everything I can remember after that seems obscure, random, distorted.”

“Interesting…” he paused, deep in thought for a few moments. “Well you were fourteen at the time when your memories change. That was almost three years ago now. It wasn’t long after that that your parents ran off. I get random calls from them every now and then. As far as I know they’re still alive and together…but I’m not explaining anything at all, am I? You remember a drug called Daytime?”

“Yeah. Parents are required to give it to their kids when they turn five. It’s an alliance issued order isn’t it? Started with the U.S.” he remembered hearing people talking about it and one particular lesson in school about its invention and implementation into society.

“That’s right. In 2016 something hit the Earth causing a massive worldwide earthquake. Within hours the Earth stopped rotating. Much is still unknown about what hit the planet. Some say a meteor. Others are sure its aliens,” he smiled. “All we know is that there hasn’t been contact with anyone or anything on the other side of the globe since that day. And for one reason or another no one can go over there to figure things out. But you know all this crap.”

“True, but it’s nice to hear it. It feels more real now.”

“I’m sure. Anyway, a couple of years after the quake, a team of scientist came together under a man named Dr. Crat. His goal was to create a pill that someone could take and never have to sleep again. The thought was that, since it was light all the time, so much more could be accomplished without having to sleep. So Daytime was invented and sold on the web from Crat’s company, Awaketech. Once it hit the market, people went nuts trying to get there hands on it. Crat couldn’t spit out pills fast enough. It started small scale with companies requiring there employees to take it. The ones that did increased productivity by so much that the competition was forced to follow suit. Before long there was talk of the U.S. making it a law that everyone had to take Daytime in order for the economy to remain stable.

“And they did right? Followed by Canada and Brazil?” Grandpa nodded.

“Eventually the B.L.A. issued an order that every brightlander had to give their children Daytime at the age of five and take it themselves by month 9 of 2018. It worked miracles. Productivity and balance increased everywhere, inventions doubled and technology sped forward. But then the unthinkable happened.”

“The point where my memories trip out?”

“Yes. Nine years after the order, strange things started happening. The first noticeable change was in the suicide rate. It had been way down since the invention of Daytime, but it spiked rather suddenly. People were killing themselves, but not in any of the traditional ways. The majority were jumpers, which isn’t all that strange I suppose. Except witness accounts often told of people who had been acting strange suddenly running off the edge of rooftops when it was time for them to go back down to ground level. Many others died trying to do unusual things or accomplish impossible tasks.”

“I think I remember hearing about that on the news. That one is clear, but I also remember certain times when I would see someone hit the ground while walking down the street and thinking nothing of it.”

“I’m not surprised. It happens many times a cycle now.”

“But why? What went wrong? I don’t get it.” Garadin was starting to formulate ideas in his head, but none of them added up.

“There was a flaw in Daytime’s formula. It was impossible to foresee. You see…Daytime is a multipurpose drug. It had to accomplish a lot of things at once because our bodies were designed to rely on sleep. Not just our brains but many parts. Your eyes for example. Without sleep they dry out and lose focus. Your muscles get sore and stiff. Daytime had to fix all of these things. But Crat missed something. When you sleep your brain continues to think. It takes you to places and makes you see things. We call these thoughts dreams. They allowed us to do the impossible. When a person dreams, their brain releases certain endorphins, chemicals that stimulate sensations that correspond to the dreams. Crat knew of their existence but figured they would be turned off by Daytime without any special means. They were turned off but their production didn’t stop. For years these endorphins built up in the brains of every person who had taken Daytime. Eventually they started to sort of leak out. They slowly began to cause random mood swings and dazes. This didn’t alert anyone, but it didn’t stop there. More and more overflow occurred and…”

“People started dreaming while they were awake.” It was starting to make sense.

“Daydreaming, yes. Sleepwalking. Most of the world’s people all experiencing partial hallucination simultaneously. It was scary at first, so strange seeing people act like animals or talk to someone who wasn’t there, try to fly or run through a wall.”

“Grandpa…you said most people. That must mean that there are others who aren’t dreaming?”

“That’s right. There are two groups of people unaffected by Daytime, the daysleepers and the waiters. For the most part they hate each other and many members of one faction are trying to kill members of the other.”

“Why do they hate each other? In a crisis this big I would think working together would by far be the smartest thing to do.”

“It’s quite simple, really. The waiters are the people who have taken Daytime but haven’t started sleepwalking yet, and the daysleepers are the people who never took it.”

“But why do they want to kill each other?”

“The waiters are desperately trying to find a way to cure what they now call dreamdep. The daysleepers are led by a man called Riser, who wants to find a way to harness the sleepwalkers for his benefit and rule over them. So…naturally he wants to stop the waiters. Both groups consist of mostly young people, but there are some of us old cats left that never took the Godforsaken pill. Most of us are trying to help the waiters find a cure.”

“Is that how you woke me up? You’ve finally found it?” The story he had just heard was absolutely crazy. Like something straight out of a movie, and he found himself getting excited, almost passionate.

“I think so, yes. I’ve been working in secret on a way to wake people up, away from the rest of the waiters so that Riser won’t find me. But they’ve been getting close, close enough to see you today and almost take you from me.”

“Well that’s awesome right? We need to get to the other waiters and start waking people up!” Garadin couldn’t contain his excitement anymore. He was beginning to realize the responsibility they now had—to help people. He wanted to find his parents and wake them up so that they could be a family again. It felt so good to be conscious after all those years of dreaming, and he wanted them to know this feeling.

“I’m afraid it’s not quite that easy, son.”

“What do you mean? Because the daysleepers will come after us?”

“To be honest, they’re the least of my worries right now.”

“Then what’s stopping you?”

“It’s the serum I created to wake you up. It works…but not without a price. A price I’m afraid might be too great for the product to be worth it.”

“Grandpa, what do you mean?”

“The serum works backwards against Daytime, undoing everything that it has changed, but it doesn’t stop. Daytime works to keep you from being tired by reversing the processes in the parts of your body affected by sleep so that they very slowly become younger, in a sense, or at least constantly energized. I knew there was a chance the serum would revert these processes and then force them too far in the original direction. I decided to take a chance on you, in hopes that this wouldn’t happen, but I ran some tests on you while you were sleeping and it seems my fears were not without good reason.”

“You mean the serum didn’t stop once it undid what Daytime started? But what does that mean…what will happen to me?”

“I’m not entirely sure how far it will go, but it looks like it will cause your brain, eyes, and muscles to age twice as fast, cutting your lifespan almost in half.” Garadin sat silent for the first time since he had woken up. The news his grandfather had just delivered him had momentarily stopped his breathing. He stared blankly at the gray wall behind his grandfather. He found himself suddenly contemplating what was worse—a life lived in dreams that was only as real as his brain made it, or a life in reality where he died in his forties. The choice seemed easy enough, but it wasn’t his to make for himself. His Grandfather had already made it for him. The shock of hearing it without a choice made a shorter life seem like the worse option. And now the choice was theirs to make for the rest of the world. The weight of their responsibility shifted from a proud feeling to a feeling of confusion and impossibility.

Who were they to decide the fate of all those people? Who were they to have to choose? He knew what choice he would have made, but that didn’t mean anything from one person to the next. He started thinking out loud.

“How can we choose? It’s impossible. Is there even a right choice?”

“I know it’s hard,” grandpa’s voice was soft, quiet, “but you’re the one who has to choose now. You’re the only one who’s been there, experienced the never ending dream and awoken from it.” Garadin was frozen in contemplation. So many questions raced through his brain.

Have I really been living these past three years? I have memories but they’re incomplete and sporadic, nonsensical. They serve no purpose, have no meaning. I haven’t learned anything in so long. If I had never woken up I might have died without ever really having lived. Can a life lived in dreams even have purpose? This life is built on relationships. Relationships that are real and intimate. Sleepwalkers only know superficial and self serving interaction that may or may not even be with another conscious human being.

As he sat and thought, the answer became clearer and began to make sense.

“We have to wake them Grandpa. A shortened life of purpose is still at least worth living. Dreams are meant to be had lying down.”

“Hearing you say that makes me feel like I made the right choice in waking you up. I wasn’t sure until now.”

“You did make the right choice Grandpa.”

“This was the first step. There’s still much to do, my son. We must get moving.” Grandpa began to stand, but as he did there was a crashing sound as the window broke followed by a thud and a splash of red. Grandpa fell to the floor in slow motion. A second bullet came through the window moving slow enough for Garadin to see it. He tried to move but he had forgotten how. He sat poised, frozen in place and watched as the bullet inched towards the center of his forehead. It was so close now. He could feel the hot metal against his skin. The pressure built and his skull began to crack. He cried out in his mind but no sound escaped his lips.

He was standing at the end of a crowded street. The breeze off the water was cool and his body shivered as bumps formed on his skin. Garadin looked around as all eyes focused on him. It must have been the scream that made them look. They were all to busy to notice for any other reason. He didn’t have to look down, but he did, slowly. His bare skin was pale. His underwear was a weird teal color with gray designs on it. Mother had bought a few of these really cheap pairs so he would have extra. He looked back up and to the west. Across the water the pink sun was setting.

*****

Disclaimer: I started writing this story with one idea, got over have done and realized it wasn’t anything like what I wanted. I started over and this time it went more in the right direction.

I think dreams are weird and often wonder why we have them. I wanted this story to make the reader think about how and why we dream and what life would be like if we couldn’t wake up. I also wanted to pose the question of what was more important between quantity of time and quality of time.

The last paragraph is sort of like an optional/alternative ending but not exactly. I couldn’t decide whether or not to include it even though I had it in mind the whole time. I don’t know whether or not it was predictable, but if it was then pretend it’s not there…