by Lucy Adler
Sleeper
The Waking Sleep - Book 1
Lucy Adler
This is a work of fiction and the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, either living or dead, is wholly coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by West on Twenty
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
Dedicated to the real Daria, and those like her.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Afterword
Prologue
Excerpt from the Progress Guidelines,
Paragraph 17:
In order that humanity might not forget their greatest gift, or the Former Days from which they have been set free, the calendar shall be reset, beginning with the year following the invention of Sendrax.
Thus, January 1, 2037 shall henceforth be known as Month 1, Day 1, Year 1.
“What hath night to do with sleep?”
Milton, Comus I. 30
1
Month: 3 | Day: 4-5 | Year: 60
THE GREAT CITY OF PROGRESS
“She snorted! She actually snorted this time!”
Laughter rippled through the room like mice through the walls of an old house.
One of them even imitated her with a loud ‘hrrrumpf’.”
“Ok, that’s enough,” the woman at the front of the room said. Of course, she had laughed too. In fact, she was still trying to hold back a smile as she disciplined the drowsy girl.
“That’s the third time in two weeks, Daria. Are you forgetting to take your pills?”
Embarrassment - no, humiliation - coupled with exhaustion made her stumble over her words.
“I - uh - I don’t think so...”
“You don’t think...” one of the boys two rows back and two seats over from her repeated. “We already knew that.”
Another skittering wave of mousey laughter passed by.
“Ok, I said that’s enough,” their teacher repeated. “Get down to the Dispensary, Daria. Now.”
The girl shuffled in her seat as she disconnected her tablet from the socket on the desk and put it in her grey satchel. The bag had a brightly coloured patch on the flap, embroidered with a gold building rising high above a few low roof-tops. Around the outside were the words: ex nihilo nihil fit.
She stood up and walked to the door of the room.
So awkward.
When she had shut it behind her, she heard one more round of laughter. She leaned against the wall in the hallway for a second, closing her eyes.
Why...?
_______________________
“Oh, Daria. I really shouldn’t know you this well!”
“I know.”
“And you really need to take your pills regularly. No excuses. Ok?”
“I do.”
The man in the white coat, white gloves, and white hat reached up and grabbed a glass bottle from a glass shelf. It had about forty or fifty pills in it. He popped the lid off, tipped out two pills into his hand, then closed it again and set it on the counter in front of him.
“Here,” he said, handing them to Daria.
“Two?”
“Well, when you skip your morning dose, you need an extra one.”
“But I’m not skipping. Really.”
The man nodded and smiled but Daria could tell he didn’t believe her. She walked over to the fountain in the corner of the room and put the first of the two pills into her mouth. She leaned over and pressed the silver button on the side. A stream of water arched out of the tap, hitting her in the nose.
Why do schools always have the oldest tech?
She repeated the process for the second pill, without the wet nose this time, and then turned around and gave the Dispenser a wide but insincere smile.
“Thank you, I feel better already!” she said with as much fake enthusiasm as she could muster.
“That’s a good girl,” he said with a smile, “now get back to class and keep that mind awake and thinking!”
“You know it!”
When she had turned around and was facing away from him, Daria rolled her eyes and sighed.
_______________________
“Three more laps! Don’t stop running! Run! Run! Run!”
The field was a perfect square, surrounded on three sides by the school itself and flanked by a twenty-storey building on the fourth side. Daria glanced up at it as she ran, catching glimpses of dozens of different people scurrying this way and that on every floor. Different people, but all of them wearing the same grey clothes - grey pants, grey jackets, even a few grey hats here and there. She could only imagine they all had the same grey shoes, just like hers.
“Pick it up, Dasher!” the coach yelled. “You gotta live up to that name!”
And there it was again. Laughter. At least there were only two students lagging behind with her, so she couldn’t hear everyone enjoying the joke this time. Once the coach had found out that her grandmother called her Dasha as a cute nickname, he loved pointing out how she never ‘dashed’ anywhere.
Ugh. I hate this part.
Daria was, of course, the last one to finish her laps. The students who had been close to her during the run had sped up near the end. They weren’t actually as slow as she was. No one was. Which also meant that she usually had the joy of jogging across the finish line with everyone watching her.
“Ah, so you decided to finish today, Dasher!” the coach said as she joined the group. She was sure she heard another mocking ‘snort’ from one of the boys.
“Alright, everybody get changed and get out of here. No practice tomorrow but same time the next day.”
Daria started to walk off to the locker room but the coach stopped her.
“You know you’re only here because of your dad, right? This is a personal favour to him. Don’t screw it up.”
“I know. Thank you.”
She rolled her eyes again as she walked away.
Thanks, dad.
_______________________
The white bus glided softly over the magnetic streets. It had been more than thirty years since the last traditional cars had been driven through Progress on their grungy old tires. The roads were cleaner now. The air was, too. Daria knew she was supposed to understand how the Road Network functioned but she really didn’t. Not fully, at least. But it was quiet and comfortable on the white busses that ferried her and her classmates back and forth to school seven days a week, 364 days a year. Too comfortable, actually.
Daria could feel her eyes drooping.
No, no, no. Please, not now.
She held back a yawn. Then she tried a trick that usually worked. First, she glanced around to make sure no one was watching her. She was at
the front and the next closest person was about three rows back. She rolled up her left sleeve and with the thumb and index finger of her right hand, she grabbed a small bit of skin on her arm. And she pinched it. Really hard.
She winced and held her breath for a few seconds.
Then she let go and breathed. She rubbed her forearm to settle the pain, even though it was the pain that she needed to help her stay awake. She watched the red spot settle on her skin.
What is that now... eight?
She rubbed the other spots on her arm.
And this is Day 3 this week. Not too bad.
_______________________
“How was your day today?”
“So good. So productive!”
“What did you do?”
“We had a history test. It was about World War II.”
“They’re still teaching you about that?” the man at the head of the table asked. “It was 150 years ago. What’s there to know?”
“156 years, 6 months, and 4 days since it started. 150 years, 9 months, and 26 days since it ended in Europe. But don’t worry,” the boy answered, shaking his head, “history class is only fifteen minutes, twice a week. The tests are about two minutes. We just cover the important stuff, like the dates and who won.”
The man nodded in approval. The woman sitting at the other end of the table, who had started the conversation in the first place, looked at Daria next. She was sitting opposite the boy, the four of them having dinner together at their square dining table.
“What about your day?” her mother asked.
“Daria fell asleep again!” the boy quickly interrupted.
“Shut up!”
“Daria, calm down,” her dad barked. Her brother just gave her a mocking smile.
“Is that true?” her mother asked.
“I guess so. But it was only for like a second, really.”
Her mother tried to be gentle but her mouth twisted up a little and Daria could tell she was disappointed. Her dad let out a huff, just as she expected.
“Do we see about upping her dose?” he said to her mom.
“It doesn’t help,” Daria replied, looking down at her noodles and flicking them around with her fork.
“Then what’s the problem?” he grunted.
“I don’t know. I’m just...” She didn’t want to finish the sentence. She didn’t want to hear herself say it out loud. Especially not in front of her dad.
“You’re just what?”
“Probably not trying hard enough. I’m sorry. I’ll do better.”
_______________________
She pulled back the grey sheet and sat on the edge of her bed for a minute. She took in a long, deep breath, and then let it out slowly. She looked around at her bare walls. Well, mostly bare. Her yearly calendar hung just over her desk, alongside a poster of the Progress Guidelines. Every family in the city had the same poster somewhere in their home. Daria’s father had insisted that each of them have their own copy in their bedroom.
The second line was the same motto from the patch on her school-issued satchel: ex nihilo nihil fit - Nothing comes from nothing.
Daria read it and yawned.
Of course, the poster was just a sort of summary or cheat-sheet. The actual Guidelines were a thousand-page document drawn up by Felix Caxton and Adrian Meyers, the original founders of Progress. Your Final Year at school consisted of studying it in its entirety, before you graduated into the Workforce. Daria was only sixteen though, so she still had another year before The Reading began.
Maybe they’ll phase it out as a requirement before then. I can hope, right?
She stared at it a few seconds longer, and yawned again. She shook her head and rubbed her eyes.
Just then, her mom popped her head into the doorway.
“You better get to sleep. You need your 45 minutes a night if you’re going to be sharp!”
“Thanks, mom,” Daria smiled.
The door closed softly and Daria tried breathing in and out again. Then she flopped down on her side and tried to get comfortable.
_______________________
Her alarm went off with a jarring squeal.
Arrggh!
She wanted to smash it into a million pieces. But she held back and just turned it off instead.
“You’re still in bed?!” her brother called from the hall.
“Shut up! Seriously, I’m going to make you cry.”
“That would take energy, and you don’t have any. So I guess I’m safe!” She could hear him laughing as he walked away.
Daria yawned and then forced herself up. She got dressed as quickly as she could, putting on her grey school uniform. It was a thin, breathable material, that managed to keep you warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Another gift of Progress. She knew she wasn’t supposed to think this but Daria couldn’t help feeling that it was too plain. One long, unbroken, unadorned piece of material that stretched from the turtleneck at the top all the way down to the end of the skirt, which sat just at the middle of her knees. It had long sleeves as well, and was close-fitting, but not uncomfortably so.
She pulled up her long brown hair into a simple pony tail, then grabbed her white scarf from the top of her dresser. It was the only bit of ‘colour’ that was approved for clothing. In addition to a basic ski cap for colder weather, scarves were the only accessory available to ‘spice up’ your outfit. Daria was always amazed at the clever ways girls invented for wearing them. She, on the other hand, rarely had the energy to imagine doing much more than wrapping it around her neck in a loosely hanging loop. Her brother was right.
She looked at herself in the full-length mirror that hung on the back of her bedroom door, turning around once or twice and peering over her shoulder to check the back of the dress. Then she sighed.
Whatever. Another day.
_______________________
“Dasha! Dasha!”
Aah, that’s what I needed.
The voice called out again. It was coming from behind her as she walked from the bus into the school.
“Dasha!”
She turned around with a smile on her face. A genuine smile.
“Jake!”
“Hey, how are you doing today? I heard about the... incident yesterday.” His eyes were sympathetic and his mouth looked sad for her.
Now just kiss me with those lips and I’ll forget all about snorting myself awake in class.
“Yeah, it kinda sucked. But I guess I’m getting used to it.” She rolled her eyes like it was no big deal.
“You’re pretty tough!” he laughed, giving her shoulder a squeeze.
“You know it.”
Jake was the same age and in the same year at school. In fact, he and Daria shared a birthday. Month 12, Day 16. That was how they had met. Two years earlier, during a mandatory medical examination for the entire school, they had ended up next to each other in the queue. They had over an hour together while they waited to see the Doctors. From the moment she first laid eyes on him, Daria had thought he was the cutest thing she had ever seen.
Back then, she had a lot more confidence. She wasn’t always dozing off at the wrong time. Or any time, really. So she hadn’t been nervous at all when he started talking to her.
Of course, things had changed. And now that she was the school’s running joke (figuratively and literally), she found it hard to interact with him the way she used to. But, thankfully, Jake was the same kind, sensitive guy he was back then. He hadn’t changed at all. Well, except for getting even cuter.
Is that possible?
“I’m kind of in a rush right now but if you need help with any of your work...” He gave her a caring look with those rich brown eyes, and a wink that said, ‘You can count on me, ok?’
“Thanks, Jake,” she said, giving him a silly wink back.
As he walked away, another girl called out from further down the hall.
“Jakey boy!”
It was Justine. Perfect, flawless
, obnoxious Justine.
Bleh.
Daria shuddered, like she had just tasted something bitter. She looked away before they kissed each other.
_______________________
English went long that morning, for a total of eighteen gruelling minutes instead of the normal fifteen.
“Don’t we all speak English already?” one of the boys said to another as the class was dismissed.
“Most of us!” his friend answered, following it up with a couple of ‘snorts’ in Daria’s direction.
“You’re so clever!” she replied with sarcastic admiration. The shoulder squeeze that morning from Jake might have boosted her confidence a little.
“We all are, Daria,” he responded coldly, “except you.”
_______________________
They were halfway through Math when the teacher announced a pop quiz.
You’ve got to be kidding?
Everyone started readying their tablets, waiting for the questions to appear.
“Nope, no tablets,” the teacher said, waving his hand.
Now you’ve really got to be kidding me?!
There were two kinds of pop quizzes. The old-fashioned kind, where you filled in boxes and solved problems on your screen. Those were hard enough, but at least you had some space to think for a few minutes. Then there were Performance quizzes. No time, no space. Just the teacher and the rest of the class staring at you while you stood at the front of the room and showed your work in real time on the big screen for everyone to see. And comment on, of course.