SHUTEYE FOR THE TIMEBROKER

Three AM in the middle of May, six bells in the midwatch, and Cedric Swann, timebroker, was just sitting down to nocturne at his favorite café, the Glialto. He had found an empty table toward the back, where he would be left alone to watch the game.

The game on which his whole future depended.

He took a rolled-up Palimpsest flatscreen from his pocket, snapped it open, and the baby freethinker within the screen, knowing Cedric’s preferences, tuned to a live feed from Pac Bell Park. Shots of the stands showed that the brilliantly illuminated park was full, and that was good news, since Cedric had brokered the event. A timebroker was nothing if he couldn’t deliver warm bodies. But the box score displayed in a corner of the screen held less happy tidings.

The Giants were losing 4-6 against Oakland, with only one more inning to go.

Cedric winced and crumpled, as if pitchforked from within. He had fifty thousand dollars riding on the Giants.

The bet had been a sure thing, intended to offset some of his debts from a recent string of gambling losses. But the fucking Giants had been forced to bench their best pitcher with injuries, just prior to the game. The lanky Afghani newbie had been moved up from the Kabul farm team to boost the fortunes of the San Francisco team after their disastrous ’36 season, and he had indeed done so. But now his absence was killing Cedric. And the club’s remaining players were stumbling around like a bunch of fucking sleepers!

The failure of his home team was most disappointing.

Especially since Cedric didn’t have the fifty thousand dollars he had wagered.

A window opened in Cedric’s Palimpsest, showing the facial of the Glialto’s resident freethinker. As usual, the restaurant’s freethinker wore the likeness of Jack Kerouac. On the occasion of the one-hundredth anniversary of Kerouac’s birth, there had been a big Beat revival nationwide—but nowhere more fervently than in San Francisco—and the Glialto freethinker had adopted its avatar then, although the café’s personality was decidedly less bohemian than old Jack.

“Happy six bells, Cedric. What’ll you have this hour?”

“Uh, I don’t know. Jesus, I’m not even hungry—”

“C’mon now, you know what your mom would say. ‘Skip caloric nocturne, risk metabolic downturn.’”

“Yeah, right, if my Mom was the fucking NIH or FDA. Oh, all right, then, make it something simple. Give me a plate of fish tacos. And an Anchor Steam.”

“Coming right up, Cedric.”

The little window closed just in time to afford Cedric a complete panoramic view of an A’s player slamming a homerun out of the park.

“Christ! I am so drowsily boned!”

Bobo Spampinato was not going to be happy when he or his tetraploid muscle came to collect his fifty thousand. Cedric’s boss, Tom Fintzy, of Fintzy Beech and Bunshaft, Timebrokers, was not going to be receptive to another loan request, and in fact would quail at Cedric’s firm-tainting misbehavior, if he should learn of it. Cedric already owed a couple of year’s projected commissions to FB&B, loans taken out ostensibly to take advantage of some hot IPOs, and the boy-wonder timebroker had been indulged thus far only because of his past exceptional performance.

And Caresse. Caresse was going to be extremely disappointed in Cedric, to say the least, especially after financing her boyfriend’s most recent expensive course of therapy.

Cedric moaned loud enough for nearby patrons to hear him and gaze sympathetically or disapprovingly. He buried his head in his hands to escape their stares. The café in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood was not as packed as it would’ve been at midnight, when many people ate nocturne. But there was still a good-sized crowd of witnesses to Cedric’s despair and shame.

Noise from the happy, busy throngs on Columbus Avenue pulsed in as the café’s door opened and closed. People going to work, to clubs, to parks, to movies, to happy homes. Why couldn’t Cedric be one of them, moving easily through the brightly lit city at six bells in the midwatch? But he was isolated, because of his stupid gambling addiction.

The rumble of a small kibe’s wheels approaching caused Cedric to look up. Here came his meal. The kibe deposited the dish and drink before Cedric, then rolled off. The smell of the fish tacos made Cedric nauseous, and he pushed the plate away. But he downed the beer in one long swallow and ordered another.

Going back to work drunk would hardly complicate his life any further, and might blunt the pain.

* * * *

The fourth generation of anti-somnolence drugs after Provigil, released in 2022, completely eliminated the need to sleep.

With the simple ingestion of a single daily pill, humanity was forever freed from the immemorial shackles of nightly unconsciousness.

As easily as that, people increased their effective lifespans by a third.

Dreaming and whatever function it fulfilled were pushed way down below liminal awareness. Scientists were not quite sure if such drugs as Eternalert, ZeroBlink, Carpenoct, and Sunshine Superman even permitted dreaming at any stratum of the mind’s operation. But in any case, no one seemed to suffer from the banishment of these ancient nightly hallucinations.

The issue of physical tiredness, the cyclical build-up of somatic fatigue poisons, was remedied by dietary nutraceuticals, intervals of sedentary activities and bouts of physical therapy.

In a few short years after the introduction of these drugs, enormous changes in global society were already institutionalized.

Developed countries who could afford the pricey proprietary drugs now operated on 24/7 time. (The poorer nations remained zones of sleep infiltrated by rich elites of the perpetually wakeful.) The vast majority of the citizens of America, for instance, made no distinction among any of the hours in any given 24-hour period. Work and play, study and travel, might occur at any time of the day. The old Navy system of watches and bells, suited for perpetual alertness, was commonly adopted. All the old distinctions between hours when the sun was up and the hours when it was down disappeared. Before too long, hyper-flextime reigned, with duties and pleasures being dynamically apportioned among the available hours.

Strange synergies of R&D began to accumulate, as single-minded researchers were able to doggedly follow paths of experimentation without downtime, and could coordinate their efforts globally without the impediments of operating in incompatible timezones. New products flooded forth at unprecedented rates.

But most importantly, time became fungible, a commodity to be traded.

And whenever there was something to be traded, brokers arose.

A timebroker mediated between individuals and institutions, citizens and the government. Individuals registered their shifting schedules hour by hour with a timebroker of their choice. During such and such hours, they would be willing to work; during other hours, they were interested in attending a concert, a ballgame, a university class, a gym. Contrarily, institutions registered their needs. The symphony wants a thousand listeners at 4 AM on Sunday. Can you provide them?

Institutions paid the timebrokers large fees for delivering guaranteed numbers of people—customers or workers or jury pools. Citizens received discounts on the face-value of tickets or tuition, or bonuses from employers, or tax-breaks from the state and federal governments, for being willing to commit blocks of time via their timebroker. Timebrokers lured institutional customers away from their competitors by exhibiting superior reliability and offering sliding fees. Individual citizens jumped from broker to broker based on whoever offered better incentives. Brokers could refuse to service individuals based on a record of non-compliance with promises.

Timebrokers operated globally, facilitating trade among all the hyperactive countries no longer in thrall to sleep.

In America, fifteen years after the release of fourth-generation a-som drugs and on the verge of seventh-generation versions, unemployment had effectively disappeared as the economy expanded by a third. Everyone who wanted a job had one. Timebrokers were especially in demand.

Except those unlucky enough to fall afoul of their own bad habits.

Like Cedric Swann.

* * * *

Bobo Spampinato and his goons came for Cedric during the dogwatch after the game. Cedric would have prefered, of course, to deal with the bookie at his home, a luxurious condo in the Presidio with killer views of the Golden Gate Bridge. In the privacy of his quarters, Cedric could have kept his indiscretions quiet, begged for mercy without shame, and generally made a pitiful spectacle of himself, thus possibly earning leniency. But perhaps knowing this, and being a man of no mercy, Bobo accosted Cedric at work.

“Mr. Swann, there are some, uh, people here to see you. They claim it’s about a debt of yours.” The voice of Cedric’s executive assistant, Delma Spicer, normally firm and assured, emerged from Cedric’s Palimpsest in quavering tones. Her pixie face, maculated with active tribal tags, gleamed with a sudden exudation of flopsweat.

Cedric looked frantically about his office for a miraculous exit he knew wasn’t there. Behind the framed Todd Schorr print? No such luck. At last he caved in. What else could he do? Time to take his medicine. How bad, after all, could it be?

“Send them in, Delma.”

Rising to his feet, Cedric managed to come around to the front of his work-surface just as Bobo and friends entered.

Bobo Spampinato was a scrawny, short Laotian man of boyish appearance. He had been adopted as an infant by a childless Italian couple. Bobo’s new father chanced to be responsible for half of the illegal gambling in California. Upon the old man’s death, Bobo took over the family business. He was normally quite busy directing matters at a high level, and a field call such as today’s was something of a perverse honor.

As usual, Bobo wore ErgoActive sandals, a pair of linen dress shorts and a tie-dye T-shirt whose living swirls reconfigured themselves stochastically based on a continuous feed of the Vegas line. His bowl-cut black hair fringed a pair of hard dark eyes. His unsmiling lips betokened the seriousness of the occasion. Despite the stylishness of his own fashionable suit, Cedric felt like a child next to Bobo’s informal, grim cool.

Bobo was flanked by his muscle: two enormous humans wearing only leather chest-harnesses and thongs, whose genome, judging by the browlines, hirsuteness and musculature on display, plainly included gorrilla snippets.

Cedric gulped. “Um, hello, Bobo. Good to see you. I was just going to call—”

“You owe me close to two hundred grand now, Swann. What are you going to do about it?”

“Well—pay it back, of course. Little by little—”

The larger of the gorilla-men grunted discontentedly, and Cedric wondered if they could even speak.

“Not good enough, Swann. I’m not a bank that makes loans. I need that money now. All of it.”

“But, Bobo, please, that’s impossible. I don’t have that kind of liquidity. My condo’s mortgaged to the hilt. Even if I sold everything I own, I couldn’t raise two hundred Gs.”

“That’s not quite true. I understand that your loving parents were quite generous when you graduated from college a few years ago. You have a forty-year a-som rider on your health insurance, all paid up.”

When fourth-generation anti-somnolence pills hit the marketplace, most health insurers refused to cover them, deeming them lifestyle drugs, choices, not necessary to combat any disease. But as the drugs became ubiquitous and essential for any full-fledged citizen to serve as a fully functioning member of society, the insurers relented to the extent of writing riders to their policies that would allow people to buy the drugs at a discount. A discount that still allowed immense profits for the pharmaceutical firms. Such clauses made the difference between being able to afford a-som and devoting half of one’s income just to maintaining wakefulness parity with the Joneses.

Cedric almost could not comprehend what Bobo was demanding. In hock already to his employer, there was no way Cedric could afford a-som payments out of his weekly salary without his insurance policy.

And without a-som, one might as well not exist.

Stuttering, Cedric said, “It—you—that’s unthinkable.”

“But obviously I am thinking about it, Swann. And you have about ten seconds to do the same.”

The smaller of the gorilla-men snorted through gaping nostrils while the other cracked knuckles the size of walnuts. Cedric blanched.

“Time’s up. What’ll it be, Swann?”

With shaking hands, Cedric used his Palimpsest to transfer his prepaid a-som coverage to Bobo.

Rolling up his own flatscreen with a satisfied grin, Bobo said, “That squares us, Swann. You know how to reach me for your next bet. But I’ll have to get any money up front from now on.”

Bobo and company departed. Cedric collapsed against his work-surface. But he was not permitted any time to collect his wits or assess his future.

Tom Fintzy, head of FB&B, offered a stern patrician mien to the world at the best of times. White-haired yet virile—his hair color a disarming cosmetic shuck, his virility the result of regular telomere maintenance and resveratrol patches—the chief timebroker had held many lucrative, high-status jobs prior to the a-som era: CEO of this and President of that. Cedric had heard all the boring tales endlessly. But upon coming out of early retirement, Fintzy had truly carved his niche in the timebroking field, showing a superior talent for collating huge masses of individuals with the needs of corporations, NGOs and government agencies. Now, standing in Cedric’s office, Fintzy looked even more unforgiving and decisive than ever.

“Please pay attention, Cedric. I believe you know that according to your employment contract, our firm’s freethinker is allowed to monitor your office space and all media traffic in and out of same.”

Cedric’s Palimpsest, still unrolled, now displayed the facial of FB&B’s freethinker, an image of a smiling, grandmotherly matron.

“Hello, Mr. Swann,” said the freethinker. “I’m afraid you’ve been a bit naughty.”

“During the time you were entertaining your latest guests,” Fintzy continued, “our freethinker deduced the illegal nature of your past activities, assembled proof of all your illicit transactions, including the records of the loans from FB&B you obtained under false pretenses, wrote a report on your case, synopsized it, outlined the range of recommended disciplinary actions and subsequent cost-benefit analysis, and submitted the whole to me. I have tried to act in a similar timely fashion. Mr. Swann, you will not be turned over to any law-enforcement agency by us, due to the embarrassing nature of your crimes and the way it would reflect poorly on the character of FB&B. However, your contract with us is hereby terminated and any future salary you might earn will be garnished by us until your loans are repaid. Moreover, you will have a black flag attached to your Universal CV. You have ten minutes to clear the building before security arrives.”

Cedric, of course, could make no palliating reply to such a comprehensive and clearly stated case of malfeasance. Nor could he find it in himself to rage or bluster or revile. So he simply gathered the personal contents of his office—everything fit in a small trash basket—and left.

* * * *

Dressed in the living jelly slippers known as Gooey Gumshoes, her denim daisydukes revealing generous crescents of butt cheek, and a bandeau top straining across her ample chest, the attractive black woman carried what appeared to be a small shallow suitcase. She stepped into the living room of Cedric’s condo and said, “Just a minute, honey, and I’ll make you feel all better.” She set the suitcase down in the middle of the open floorspace, stepped back and sent a command via her Palimpsest.

Cedric watched grimly from his seat on the couch. He doubted that anything could make him feel better.

Unfolding its cleverly hinged sections, extruding carbon-fiber struts, cantilevering, snicking together in lego-block fashion, tapping compressed air cylinders and flexing plastic muscles, the suitcase bloomed like a newborn foal struggling to its legs. In under thirty seconds, a padded massage table—fairy-like, but capable of supporting the heaviest client—stood waist-high where the suitcase had rested.

“Oh, no, Caresse, I’m not in any mood for a massage—”

Caresse Gadbois advanced toward the professional stage where she relieved the daily somatic tensions of her eternally on-the-go clientele—in a resolutely non-sexual manner. Licensed and bonded, Caresse had attended school for two years and apprenticed for an equal period before establishing her own practice. She was one of tens of thousands of traveling masseuses who helped the a-som society function.

“The hell with that shit, boyfriend! That’s your toxins talking. I don’t know what’s bothering you, but whatever it is, it won’t seem quite so bad after a massage. Strip, pal, and get on the table. What’s the point of having a masseuse for a girlfriend if you can’t get a nice backrub for free anytime you need one?”

Caresse’s mildly accented voice—her family hailed from Haiti, having legally emigrated to America during Caresse’s youth, when their island nation became a USA protectorate—worked its usual voodoo magic on Cedric. He undressed down to his boxers as Caresse removed various lotions and balms from her large professional satchel.

On the table, Cedric relaxed under Caresse’s expert touch. His consciousness descended a notch, into that slightly hypnagogic microsleep which scientists theorized helped to permit continuous awareness. Still able to maintain an undemanding conversation, Cedric listened to an account of Caresse’s day, the various people she had helped, interjecting suitable affirmatory comments at regular intervals.

Admittedly, Caresse’s ministrations did help to relieve some of the tension in Cedric’s frame. When she had finished, he arose from the table feeling that perhaps he was not totally doomed after all. As he dressed, while Caresse convinced her massage table to resume its suitcase disguise, he said, “Caresse, honey, I have something to tell you. Unfortunately, it’s pretty bad news.”

Caresse’s typically cheerful attitude dissolved in a sober frown. “What is it, Cedric? You’re not sick, are you?”

Cedric winced at Caresse’s genuine concern. Her first thought had been for his health. What a selfish jerk he had been—still was! Telling her the truth would not be easy. Might as well just plow painfully ahead.

Sitting on the couch with Caresse, Cedric revealed everything, from his final unwise wager on the Giants—damn their shitty playing!—through the surrender of his a-som coverage to Bobo, down to his firing and black-flagging.

When he had finished, Caresse said nothing for an excruciating time. Then she said, “The therapy didn’t take then. I just threw my money away on quacks. I’m lodging a complaint—!”

Cedric hung his head. “No, Caresse, don’t. I was on trope-agonists the whole time I was at the clinic. I smuggled them in. Caresse—I just couldn’t bring myself to give up gambling! But I’ve hit bottom now. Really, I have! I’m lower than coffee futures. Honest!”

Silence. Cedric focused on his palms folded in his lap, waiting for Caresse to render judgment on him, experiencing each second as a hellish eternity. He stole a glance at her face, and saw that she was silently crying. He felt like shit.

At last she said, “I was right. You were sick. Really sick. Your addiction was totally stronger than you could deal with. But if you think you’ve changed now—”

“I am, I am! Totally changed!”

“Well, then, I guess I can forgive you.”

Now they were both crying. Through the tears, they kissed, and the kissing soon passed into more frenetic activity, utilizing the substantial couch as platform. There was no bedroom to retreat to. People didn’t have bedrooms any longer. They had a variety of couches and recliners used for relaxing. This furniture supported sex as well. If someone was a real hedonist, they might have a room devoted just to screwing, but such an excess was generally thought declasse. Most people happily used their ex-bedrooms for media centers or home offices or rec rooms, gaining extra functional apartment space at no additional cost.

At one point early on in the lovemaking, Caresse kicked off her Gooey Gumshoes and the footware obediently humped themselves across the floor and out of the way beneath the couch, moving like certain ambulatory mycotic ancestors.

The makeup sex was spectacular. But Cedric emerged depressed anyhow. The full consequences of his fall now weighed heavily on him. Cuddling Caresse, he generously shared his anxiety with her.

“I’m going to have to give up this place. I’ll lose all my equity. Not that it’s much. And I’ve only got a little more than a week’s worth of a-som on hand. I would have to get fired right near the end of the month! So I’ll have to find a job right away. But I can’t work as a timebroker. Fintzy’s fucking black flag sees to that! But I don’t have any experience that would bag me a job that pays as much. And with the garnish on any future salary, how am I going to make ends meet? It looks like I’m going to have to choose between becoming homeless, or becoming a—a sleeper!”

Cedric waited for Caresse to offer him an invitation to live with her. But he waited in vain. Had he pushed her affection and charity too far? When she finally spoke, her comment was noncommital and only vaguely comforting.

“Don’t worry, Cedric, it’ll all work out.”

Cedric tried to be macho about his plight. But his fear leaked out.

“Right, sure, it all will. But I’m just a little scared, is all.”

* * * *

Like most of the developed, a-som world, the United States of America now boasted a birth-rate which fell well below replacement levels, the culmination of longterm historical trends that had begun a century ago, and which a-som tech had only accelerated. Had immigration not kept the melting pot full, the country would have become radically depopulated in a few generations.

Children could not take anti-somnolence drugs until puberty, a condition which nowadays statistically occured on the average around age twelve. Their juvenile neurological development required sleep, periods in which the maturing brain bootstrapped itself into its final state. This process had proven to be one of the few vital, irreplaceable functions of sleep. (And even if infants and toddlers had been able to take a-som drugs, no sane parent would have wanted them awake 24/7.)

Consequently, parenting had acquired another massive disincentive. The hours when children had to sleep had formerly been shared by their parents in the same unconscious state. No particular sacrifice had been required on the part of the adults. But now, staying home with archaically dormant children constituted cruel and unusual punishment, robbing adults of all the possibilities that a-som opened up. More than ever, adults concerned with careers or intent on socializing and indulging their interests regarded child-raising as a jail term.

The child-care industry had adapted and boomed in response. Battalions of nannies specializing in the guardianship of sleeping children now circulated throughout the country, supporting the flexible lifestyles of absent mothers and fathers. Amateur babysitters had gone the way of paperboys. But the job, while essential, was still regarded as unskilled labor. The low pay for babysitting reflected this classification.

Sinking down through the vocation-sphere, the black flag on his UCV denying him employment everywhere he turned, Cedric Swann had finally found employment as one of these rugrat guardians.

Ironically, the intermediary between Cedric and his employer, TotWatch, Inc., were the timebrokers Fintzy Beech and Bunshaft. Cedric had reluctantly continued his registration with his ex-employer, acknowledging that FB&B did offer the best deals. And apparently, the firm’s ire at Cedric did not impede its greed for another warm body to meet the quotas of its clients—if any client would have him.

Desperate for money, Cedric had specified an open-ended availability as a nanny. Children were asleep at all bells of all watches. Their schooling was just as freeform as their parents’ lives. Class time—a small fraction of total learning hours disbursed across various modalities of instruction—was brokered out to public and private schools that operated around the clock.

Today, Cedric had a gig over in his old neighborhood. The contrast with his own new residence couldn’t have been greater, and the irony was not lost on him.

After selling his condo and most of his furniture and possessions, Cedric had found a cheap apartment in Chinatown, above a dank, smelly business that biocultured shark fins for the restaurant trade. Now all his clothes smelled of brine and exotic nutrient feedstuffs, and his view was not of the Golden Gate Bridge, but rather the facade of a martial-arts academy, where a giant hardlight sign endlessly illustrated deadly drunken-master moves.

As for his a-som doses, Cedric had managed to stay supplied. But only by abandoning the brand-name sixth-generation pills he had been taking and switching to a generic fifth-generation prescription. The lesser drugs maintained his awareness fairly well. At least he couldn’t detect any changes in his diurnal/nocturnal consciousness; but then again, that was like trying to measure a potentially warped ruler with itself. Although occasionally his limbs did feel as if they were wrapped in cotton batting, and his tongue would stick to the roof of his mouth.

Leaving his apartment at first bell of the first watch, Cedric used his Palimpsest to find the location of the nearest Yellow Car. One of the ubiquitous miniature rental buggies was parked just a block away, and Cedric was grateful for small miracles. He could have taken a crosstown bus, or even have walked to save money, but he felt that his spirits would benefit from a small indulgence.

Cedric missed so many things that had vanished from his life. Naturally he missed his luxurious home and lifestyle. The sensations engendered by those material losses had been expected. But more surprisingly, Cedric missed being a timebroker, the buzz he had gotten from collating supply and demand, from filling a San Diego trope-fab with eager workers or making the San Jose Burning Man a success. Now he felt powerless, isolated, unproductive. Watching sleeping larvae! How had he fallen so far?

But if not for Caresse’s continued affection and support, Cedric would’ve have felt a lot worse. Having her as his girlfriend had been his mainstay. Caresse continually reminded him that the black flag on his UCV would expire at the end of five years or at the repayment of all his debts, whichever came first, and that all he had to do was stick it out that long. Her optimistic outlook was invaluable. And the free bodyrubs and sex didn’t hurt either. They were supposed to hook up after Cedric’s gig later, in fact, and Cedric was counting the minutes till then.

Climbing into the Yellow Car, Cedric started it with his Palimpsest. He noticed with irritation the low-fuel reading on the car’s tank, due to an inconsiderate prior driver, and swore at the necessity for stopping at a refueling station. But then again, he could top off his Palimpsest with butane as well.

The dusk-tinged streets of San Francisco on this lovely late-spring evening were moderately thronged with busy citizens. There were no such phenomena as “rush hours” or “off-hours” any longer. The unsynchronized mass impulses of the citizenry, mediated by the timebrokers, resulted in a statistically even distribution of activity across all watches. No longer did one find long queues at restaurants at “dinner time” or lines at the DMV. With every hour interchangeable, and everything functioning continuously, humanity had finally been freed from the tyranny of the clock.

After hitting the pumps, Cedric made good time to his destination. The large glass-walled house where Cedric was to babysit commanded a fine view of the Bay, and Cedric felt a flare of jealousy and regret.

Alex and Brian Holland-Nancarrow greeted Cedric pleasantly. Both of the slim, moddishly accoutred men shared an expensively groomed appearance that bespoke plenty of surplus cash—as if the house weren’t proof enough of that.

“We’re in a bit of a hurry, Cedric. But let us show you a few things you’ll need while you’re here. As you know from TotWatch, we have two children, Xiomara and Tupac. They’re both asleep already. Here’s their bedroom.”

Reverently, the fathers opened the bedroom door a crack to allow Cedric to peer within. The unnaturally darkened chamber, the smell of children’s breath and farts, the sound of coma-like breathing —these all induced in Cedric a faint but distinct nausea. It was like looking into a morgue or zombie nest, or a monkey cage at the midnight zoo. He could barely recall his own youthful sleeping habits, and the prospect of ever sleeping himself again made him want to vomit.

“We have a security kibe, and you’ll have to give it a cell sample. Just put your finger there—perfect! We’re heading up to a wine-tasting in Sonoma, and we should be back by four bells of the midwatch. Feel free to have nocturne with whatever you find in the fridge. There’s some really superior pesto we just whipped up, and baby red potatoes already boiled.”

“Fine, thanks, have a great time.”

The Holland-Nancarrows departed in a crimson Wuhan Peony, and Cedric thumbed his nose at them once they were safely out of sight.

Back inside, he looked for ways to amuse himself. He watched a few minutes of a Giants game on his Palimpsest, but the experience was boring when he didn’t have any money riding on the contest. He prolonged the meditative drinking of a single boutique beer from the house’s copious stock, but eventually the bottle gurgled its last. He made a dutiful trip to the bedroom and witnessed the children—shadowy lumps—sleeping as monotonously as before. Cedric shuddered.

Eventually, Cedric found himself poking around the family flatscreen. The display device occupied a whole wall, and somehow even vapid entertainment was more entrancing at that size.

And that’s when he found that the Holland-Nancarrows had departed so hurriedly that they had left their system wide open. They had never logged off.

After hesitating a moment, Cedric decided to go exploring. He paged through their mail, but discovered only bland trivia about people he didn’t know. He discovered what Alex and Brian did for a living: they designed facials for freethinkers. In effect, they were cyber-beauticians.

Then Cedric stumbled across a bookmark for a Cuban casino. Apparently, his hosts had recently placed a few amateur bets.

Cedric hesitated. In the pit of his stomach and down to his loins, a familiar beast was awaking and growling and stretching its limbs.

Just a small visit, to taste the excitement. He could lurk without playing.

Yeah. And the Mars colony would find life someday.

Under Cedric’s touch, the screen filled with a first-person-shooter image of the casino floor. Cedric was telefactoring a kibe, whose manipulators would emerge into his field of vision when he reached for something. Cedric wheeled the kibe toward the blackjack tables, his favorite game.

Cedric started betting small at first. The wagers came, of course, from the cyber-purse of the Holland-Nancarrows. If he drained the purse of too much money, they’d spot the loss and track down the bets to a time when they weren’t home. But if he won, he’d leave the purse at its original value and transfer the excess to his own pockets. They’d never have occasion to check.

And of course, he would win. And win big!

The hours sped by as Cedric played with feverish intensity. His skills had not left him, and he was really in the zone. The cards favored him as well. Lady Luck had her hands down his pants. Pretty soon, he had racked up ten thousand dollars of the casino’s money. Only a drop toward lifting his debts, but certainly the best-paying babysitting gig he had ever had.

Cedric left the casino and squirted the funds to his account. No one would ever be the wiser.

He was opening a second celebratory beer when the police arrived.

“Cedric Swann, we have a warrant for your arrest. Please come with us.”

“But—but I didn’t do anything—”

“The Holland-Nancarrow freethinker swears otherwise.”

On the big wallscreen appeared the facial of the house’s freethinker: an image of ex-President Streisand. “That’s the man, officers.”

The house’s freethinker! But who would set a freethinker to monitor legitimate transactions originating in-house?

Paranoid parents, obviously.

Who the hell could think as deviously as a breeder?

* * * *

Cedric’s possessions now amounted to a single scuffed biomer suitcase of clothing and his Palimpsest. Cedric and his suitcase called a single room in a flophouse in the Mission District their home. The flophouse was a rhizome-diatom hybrid, taking form as a soil-rooted silicaceous warren of chambers, threaded with arteries and nerves that served in place of utilities, all grown in place on a large lot where several older structures had stood until a terrorist attack demolished them. The site had been officially decontaminated, but Cedric wasn’t sure he believed that. Why had no one snapped up the valuable midtown real estate, leaving the lot for such a low-rent usage? In any case, Cedric felt like a bacteria living inside a sponge.

He supposed that such a lowly status was merely consonant with society’s regard for him, after his latest fuckup.

Instead of meeting Caresse at a restaurant as they had planned, Cedric met her on the night of his arrest at the jailhouse where he had been taken by the cops. She came to bail him out, and he accepted her charity wordlessly, realizing there was nothing he could say to exculpate himself. He had been caught red-handed while submitting to his implacable vice.

Caresse had been silent also, except for formalities with the police. Cedric fully expected her to explode with anger and recriminations when he got into her car. But the calm disdain she unloaded on him was even more painful.

“You obviously have no regard for yourself, and none for me. I’ve tried to be understanding, Cedric, really, I have. I don’t think any woman could have cut you more slack, or tried harder to help you reform. But this is the absolute end. I’ve put up your bail money so that you could be free to plan your defense—as if you have any—and so that you wouldn’t have to be humiliated by being in prison. But that’s the end of the road for you and me. I can’t have anything else to do with you in the future. Whatever existed between us is gone, thanks to your weak-willed selfishness.”

Cedric looked imploringly at Caresse’s beautiful profile with its gracefully sculpted jawline. She did not turn to spare him a glance, but kept her eyes resolutely on the busy midnight city street. He knew then that he had truly lost her forever, realized he had never fully appreciated her love. But he had neither the energy nor hope to contest her death sentence on their relationship.

“I’m sorry, Caresse. I never meant to hurt you. Can you drop me off at my place?”

“Of course. I’ve got just enough time before my yoga class.”

The Holland-Nancarrows declined to press for any jail-time for Cedric, considering that they had not actually lost any money, nor had their precious children been harmed by the bad man. (The casino took back Cedric’s winnings on the basis of identity misrepresentation by the player.) But that did not stop the judge hearing Cedric’s case from imposing on Cedric a huge fine and five years’ probation. Cedric’s own court-appointed freethinker lawyer had not been receptive to the notion of an appeal.

Worst of all the repercussions of his crime, however, was that Cedric was double black-flagged, denied employment even as a nanny.

He had no choice but to go on welfare.

The welfare rolls of the sleeplessly booming USA economy had been pared to historic lows. Only the most vocationally intransigent or helpless indigents lived off the government dole.

And now Cedric was one of this caste. Unclean. Unseen.

And a sleeper as well. A living atavism.

The dole didn’t cover a-som drugs. Not even the fourth-generation, expired-shelf-date stuff shipped to Third World countries.

Being a sleeper was hell. It wasn’t that sleepers were persecuted against, legally or in a covert manner. Nor were they held in contempt. No, sleepers were just simply ignored by the unsleeping. They were deemed irrelevant because they couldn’t keep up. They were living their lives a third slower than the general populace. After a night’s unconsciousness, a sleeper would awake to discover that he had a new congressional representative, or that the clothes he had worn yesterday were outmoded. New buzzwords were minted while he slept, new celebrities crowned, new political crises defused. The changes were not always so radical, but even on a slow Tuesday night they were incremental. Day by day, sleepers fell further and further behind the wavefront of the culture, until at last they were living fossils.

Cedric could hardly believe that such was now his fate.

After his sentencing and his removal to the flophouse, once he had consumed the last of his a-som scrip, Cedric had managed to stay desperately awake for a little over forty-eight hours, thanks to massive coffee intake, some Mexican amphetamines purchased on a street corner, and a cheap kibe massage that left him reeking of machine lubricant from a leaky gasket on the kibe.

The ancient sensations flooding his mind and body exerted at first a kind of grim and perverse fascination. The whole experience was like watching the tide reclaim a sand castle. Sitting in his tiny room, on an actual bed, he monitored his helpless degeneration. His concentration wavered and faded, his limbs grew unwieldy, his speech confused. Despite raging against his loss, Cedric ultimately had no choice but to succumb.

And then he dreamed.

He had forgotten dreaming, the nightly activity of his childhood.

Forgotten that some dreams were nightmares.

He awoke from that initial sleep shaking and drenched with sweat, the night terrors mercifully fading from memory. He retained only vague images of teeth and crushing weights, falling through space and scrabbling for handholds.

Cedric got up from bed, dressed and went out into the streets.

Kibes running errands or patrolling for lawbreakers mingled with the many humans. The Mission District was not populated entirely by charity-case sleepers. Many of the people on the street were citizens in fine standing. Here was a colorful clique of tawny Polynesian immigrants, adapting to life away from their sea-swamped island homes. Their happy, bright-eyed faces seemed to mock him. From Cedric’s new vantage point down in the underbelly of the a-som society, everyone looked wired and jazzed up, restlessly active, spinning their wheels in a perpetual drag race toward an ever-receding finish line.

But having this vision didn’t mean he still wouldn’t rejoin his ex-peers in a second.

Cedric was convinced that everyone could smell the sleep-stench rising from him, spot his saggy eyelids from a block away. Eating in a cheap diner that allowed him to stretch his monthly money as far as possible, Cedric resolved to kill himself rather than go on like this.

But he didn’t. In a week, a month, he re-learned how to function with a third of his life stolen by sleep, and became resigned to an indefinitely prolonged future of this vapid existence.

As role models for his new lifestyle, Cedric had the other inhabitants of his flophouse. He had expected his fellow sleepers to be vicious father-rapers or congenitally brain-damaged droolers or polycaine addicts. But to Cedric’s surprise, his fellow sleepers represented a wide range of intelligence and character, as extensive a spectrum of personalities as could be found anywhere else. In the short and desultory conversations Cedric allowed himself with them, he learned that some were deliberate holdouts against the a-som culture, while some were ex-members of the majority, like Cedric himself, professionals who had somehow lost their hold on the a-som pinnacle.

And then you had Doug Clearmountain.

Doug was the happiest person Cedric had ever met. Short, rugged, bald-crowned but with a fringe of long hair, Doug resembled a time-battered troll of indeterminate years.

The first time Doug made contact with Cedric, in the grotto-like lobby of the flophouse, the older man introduced himself by saying, “Hey there, chum, I’m Morpheus. You want the red pill or the blue?”

“Huh?”

“Not a film buff, I see. Doug Clearmountain. And you are?”

“Cedric Swann.”

“Cedric, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Let’s grab a coffee.”

“Uh, sure.”

Over coffee Cedric learned that, before settling in San Francisco, Doug had been an elder of a religious community that featured, among other tenets of its creed, the renunciation of a-som drugs. The community—a syncretic mix of Sufism, Theravada Buddhism and TM—had struggled in the wilds of Oregon for approximately fifteen years before bleeding away all its members to the siren call of 24/7 wakefulness. Doug had been the last adherent to remain. Then one day, when he finally admitted no one was coming back, he just walked away from the empty community.

“Decided it was time to do a little preaching amidst the unconverted.”

Cedric took a swig of coffee, desperate to wake up, to dispel the funk engendered by his nightly bad dreams. “Uh, yeah, how’s that working for you? You convinced many people to nod out?”

Undaunted by Cedric’s evident disinterest, Doug radiated a serene confidence. “Not at all. Haven’t made one convert yet. But I’ve found something even more important to keep me busy.”

The coffee was giving Cedric a headache. A tic was tugging at the corner of his right eye. He had no patience for any messianic guff from this loony. “Sure, right, I bet you’re really busy working to engineer a rebellion that nobody in their right mind wants. Down with the timebrokers, right?”

“Hardly, Cedric, hardly. I’m actually doing essential work helping to prop our incessant society up. It can’t survive much longer on its own, you know. It’s like a spinning flywheel without a brake. But this is the course that the bulk of our species has chosen, so me and some others are just trying to shepherd them through it. But I can see that you have no interest in hearing about my mission at the moment. You’re too busy adjusting to your new life. We’ll talk more when you’re ready.”

Doug Clearmountain left then, having paid for both their coffees.

At least the nut wasn’t a cheapskate.

For the most part, Cedric resisted the impulse to reconnect with his old life, the glamorous satisfying round of timebrokering, gambling and leisure pursuits. He spent his time giving mandatory Palimpsest interviews to his freethinker probation officer (whose federally approved facial was that of a sweater-wearing kiddie-show host who had retired before Cedric was born). He roamed the hilly streets of the city, seeking to exhaust his body and hopefully gain a solid night’s sleep. (Useless. The nightmares persisted.) He watched sports. He tried to calculate how long it would be before all his debts were paid off with the court-mandated pittance being deducted from his welfare stipend. (Approximately eleven hundred years.)

Once he tried to get in touch with Caresse. She couldn’t talk because she was in the middle of a massage, but she promised to call back.

She actually did.

But Cedric was asleep.

He took that as a sign not to try again.

Six months passed, and Cedric resembled a haunted, scarecrow model of his old self.

That’s when Doug Clearmountain approached him again, jovial and optimistic as ever.

“Congratulations on the fine job you’re doing, Cedric.”

Cedric had taken to hanging out at Fisherman’s Wharf, cadging spare change from the tourists via Palimpsest transactions. He was surprised to see Doug here when he raised his dirty bearded face up from contemplating the ground.

“Go fuck yourself.”

Doug remained unfazed. “I’m not being sarcastic, son. I was just congratulating you on half a year as a sleeper. Do you realize how much of our planet’s finite resources you’ve saved?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re using a third less energy, a third less food than your erstwhile compatriots. I’m sure Gaia appreciates your sacrifice. When the a-som society came fully online globally, it was like adding another America to the planetary eco-burden. Ouch! Despite all the fancy new inventions, our planet is heading toward catastrophe faster than ever. All we’re doing lately is staving off the inevitable.”

“Big whoop. So I’m a tiny positive line-item in the carbon budget.”

“Well, yes, your sacrifice is negligible, regarded in that light. But there’s another way you can be of more help. And that’s by dreaming.”

Cedric shuddered. “Dreams! Don’t say that word to me. I haven’t had a pleasant dream since I went cold turkey.”

Doug’s perpetual grin gave way to a look of sober concern. “I know that, Cedric. That’s because you’re not doing it right. You’re trying to go it alone. Would you like some help with your dreams?”

“What’ve you got? A-som? How much?”

“No, not a-som. Something better. Why not come with me and see for yourself?”

What did Cedric have to lose? He let Doug lead him away.

The authorities had marked the small waterfront building for eventual demolition, as they continually enhanced the system of dikes protecting the city’s shoreline from rising sea levels. For now, though, the structure was still high and dry. Doug pried back a suspiciously hinged panel of plywood covering a doorframe and conducted Cedric inside.

The place smelled like chocolate. Perhaps the Ghiaradelli company had once stored product here. But now the the large open twilit room was full of sleepers. Arrayed on obsolete military cots, two dozen men and women, covered by blankets, snored peacefully while wired cranially to a central machine the size of a dorm fridge.

“What—what the hell is this? What’s going on?”

“This is a little project I and my friends like to call ‘Manhole 69.’ Ring any bells? No? Ah, a shame, the lack of classical education you youngsters receive. Well, no matter. The apparatus you see is a REM-sleep modulator. Invented shortly before the introduction of a-som tech, and then abandoned. Ironically unusable by the very people who needed it the most. Basically, this device provides guided dream experiences within broad parameters. The individual’s creativity is shaped into desired forms. Non-surgical neuronal magnetic induction, and all that. Everyone you see here, Cedric, is dreaming of a better world. Here, take a look.”

Doug borrowed Cedric’s Palimpest and called up a control channel to the dream machine. A host of windows filled the flatscreen. Cedric witnessed pastoral landscapes populated by shining godlings, super-science metropoli, alien worlds receiving human visitors, and other fanciful scenes.

“Are you totally demented, man? So you can give people pretty dreams. So what? Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take a few hours under your brain probe, just to get some relief. But as far as helping the world become a better place, you’re only kidding yourself.”

“Oh, really? Would you care to discuss this over some coffee?”

“Coffee? What’re you talking about?”

Doug didn’t answer. He was too busy sending instructions to the dream machine. All the flatscreen windows formerly revealing the variegated dreams of the sleepers changed at once to the same realtime image: the interior of the very building Cedric and Doug stood in, captured by Palimpsest cam. But the screen-views held a difference from reality: a steaming paper cup stood atop the dream machine cabinet.

“This should only take a second or two.”

“What should take—”

Cedric smelled the coffee before he saw it. There it rested, just where the dreamers had envisioned it.

Cedric walked in a daze to the cabinet, picked the coffee up. The cup and its contents warmed his fingers.

Doug’s manner altered to the serious affect of an expert in his field with something to sell.

“Two dozen people programmed to dream the same thing can instantiate objects massing up to ten ounces. I expect that the phenomenon scales up predictably. Something to do with altering probabilities and shifting our quantum selves onto alternate timelines, rather than producing matter ex nihilo. Or so certain sleeper scientists among us theorize. But we’re not interested in such parlor tricks. Instead, we want to shallowly engrave a variety of desirable futures into our local brane, thereby increasing the likelihood that one of them will become real. We’re shifting the rails that society is following. And as Thoreau once ironically observed, rails rest on sleepers. There are places like this around the globe, Cedric. And the more sleepers we enlist, the greater our chances of success. Are you onboard, son?”

Cedric regarded Doug dubiously. Had the manifestation of the coffee been a trick? Maybe that cabinet was hollow, with a false top, the coffee concealed inside. Should he ask for another demonstration, or take the old man on faith? Why would anyone bother to try to hoax him into simply going to sleep? And what else was he going to do with his life?

“Here,” said Cedric, offering the coffee to Doug. “You take this.

“I guess I’m finally ready for a little shuteye.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Editor Lou Anders, who commissioned this piece, has a knack for bringing out the best in me, it seems. His various original anthologies are conceptualized so clearly, and feature such intriguing conceits, that I’m inspired to go all out, creating universes that are a little more complex than I might normally strive to create at this short-story level.

Anyone who’s ever tried to keep up with our hectic 24/7/365 culture should be able to relate to this story—which also draws inspirations from R. A. Lafferty’s classic “Slow Tuesday Night.”