The evolved man didn’t sleep.
‘Believe me when I tell you every human used to waste 8 hours a day to that crazy act’. Timothy was leaned forward over his desk resting his chin on his 2 palms, propped up like a praying mantis. It was the last class of the cycle and he was struggling to pay attention.
‘Up until the year 2035 nobody understood it. The body froze, the mind went blank. Everything stopped. A whole 1/3 of their time, locked away and lost’. It was 4:51am, 9 minutes to go until the end of class. Timothy was entirely distracted now. Imagining the soccer game the team had coming up at 6. Daydreaming as some still called it. Not that Timothy had any idea what that really meant.
‘Of course, the AI revolution had some swings and misses. For example, the great Name Drop of 2031. The admissions AI rolled out to universities across the country to eliminate bias turned out to have a love for short names. There were nearly 200 Max Lis in the Harvard incoming class. Yes there were misses’ the professor trailed off, his mind running room to room through the memories of countless AI mishaps.
Just as quickly he snapped back to the classroom, to 4:53am, to the students who were half looking at him half consumed with their own entirely different thoughts ‘But finding the cure for sleeping, now that was an enormous moment’.
Timothy wondered if his dad would make it to the game today. He had not seen him since he left for the office 2 days ago. He was entirely unremarkable in his ambition, and yet still liked to believe he was more productive than others. ‘If you can’t run with the big dogs you stay on the front porch’ had been his favorite line since Timothy could remember.
‘Not just to avoid those terrifying things they called nightmares of course’ the teacher continued – rudely snapping Timothy back to his desk and to reality. ‘But to grow our economy. Growth tripled the economists’ expectations the first year after we solved sleep and has remained at least 2x the ‘sleep-period’ average ever since’. Timothy was annoyed. His images of scoring a goal had already morphed to images of the sidelines, with a few scattered parents watching. But on top of that, he was pulled back to reality by the talk of sleep of all things! The idea made him uncomfortable just to imagine. Dead bodies and dead cities. Empty streets, dark windows, everything silent. Only to then suddenly stumble back to life.
‘What a sad life they used to live’ commented the girl to Timothy’s left. Her name was Emily, and Timothy knew it. Still, it made him feel better to imagine he was too busy to know her name. Her comment was meant for no one, but escaped her lips louder than she had anticipated and found its way to the attentive ears of the professor. ‘Sad indeed’ said the professor. ‘But don’t feel too bad for them. They didn’t know what they lacked, how slow their lives were’.
With that the bell rang. ‘We’ll continue on from here next time’ said the teacher to an already half empty classroom as the students flooded out the door to get to their next destination.
Timothy took a left down the hallway, filing into the stream of students marching at two-step to get to their next activity. The sun was starting to rise as Timothy opened the door to the parking lot that lied between the classrooms and athletic fields. ‘The sun is waking up’. The thought startled Timothy. He had seen a thousand sunrises and had never thought a thought like this. He did not like the feel of it in his head. Then another thought entered Timothy’s head, a warmer rounder thought that he liked much better. ‘Of course it doesn’t sleep. The sun is always working, always producing light, it just focuses on other parts of the earth’.