Is anyone else tired? I know I am after losing an hour of sleep this last weekend. As much as I love sleeping in an hour when we fall back in the autumn, I would be happy to give up that change if it meant daylight savings would stop causing problems for my sleep schedule in spring.
While I was sitting at work, filling out spreadsheets and fighting my sleep loss, I thought to myself: who else has it really rough right now with the time change? And the thought came to me: students. And that’s how we stumbled upon the ideas for this week’s short story. I hope you all get plenty of sleep these next few days, and I now present to you:
Time Conservation Day:
The door to the undergrad office was already unlocked when Amelia arrived. She stepped into the room, breathing in deeply of the familiar scent. Old coffee, Selia ink, and the bubbly, almost itchy scent she associated with Affia flowers and magic. A quick check of the room showed that she wasn’t the first one in this morning, both Elsa and Jarvis hunched over their desks. Jarvis at least seemed to be doing something productive, his pen moving furiously over his research notebook. Elsa was just hunched over her coffee, either sleeping sitting up, or trying to summon strength from her coffee cup.
Amelia moved quietly to her own corner of the room, dropping her travel mug and bag full of supplies on the desk. She’d partially unloaded her bag, digging for her wallet, which had managed to end up at the very bottom of the bag, when her ears picked up the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps.
A moment later the door banged open, revealing Telinda looking bewildered and annoyed. “What time is it?!?”
Amelia blinked, stilling with both hands in her bag. “Time?”
“Yes!” Telinda stomped over to her own desk and dropped her bag, waving her tele-com around. “My com says it’s 9. My time piece says it’s 8. My school tag,” she held up the school issued ID, alarm, and tracker all rolled into one obnoxious orange circle. “Is displaying this.”
She pressed the center of the ID and the usual display screen came up. It showed Telinda’s school ID photo and then a number of symbols that was likely meant to show her name and the time. It was completely illegible.
“Did you put your ID through the wash again?” Elsa’s exhausted voice drifted over to them, apparently having worked up enough willpower to stay awake.
The guilty shift of Telinda’s eyes told Amelia everything, and she held her hand out with a sigh. Amelia couldn’t read any of the symbols but she remembered the settings well enough that she could maneuver through the screens off memory. With the ID issue out of the way she handed it back and considered Telinda’s first question. “Is this your first time going through Time Conservation?”
“Time what?” Telinda accepted the ID back, looking confused.
“Time Conservation. It’s when the Capital Time Management automatically sets back all the clocks an hour. Your timepiece is analog, right? It wouldn’t have updated automatically like all the other clocks.”
“Why would you do that?” Telinda looked flabergasted. “Who thought that was a good idea?”
“Caross Narium, third grand mage of the Terreria,” Elsa called over to them as she shuffled towards the coffee pot, mug clutched in her hands. “He was concerned that the winter was too dark for completing necessary tasks, and suggested storing time from summer in a magic timepiece so that it could be used during the winter. But the rest of the Terreria threatened to excommunicate him since it would disrupt the flow of time, and lead to calamities, so he changed to just moving the clocks back an hour.”
“They’re both terrible ideas,” Telinda shook her head, dropping into her chair. “And you all live like this?”
“It’s normal,” Amelia finally pulled her wallet out of her bag. “And in six months we’ll move the clocks forward an hour. You don’t have Time Conservation in your realm of origin?”
“No, we’re always the same time no matter the season.” Telinda pulled her chair out and collapsed into it. “I don’t think anyone at home would have ever even thought of changing the clocks. Unless as a prank.”
“The more fools them,” Jarvis finally turned away from his notes, shutting the book with slightly more manic eyes than usual. “Time is a construct that can be bent to one’s will. One who bends their will to a clock has submitted to the ephemeral. Time is fluid. Time is malleable.”
“Time is a dirty rotten liar,” Elsa scowled into her cup, waiting for the new pot of coffee to brew. Whether that was an allusion to the Time Conservation or an issue in her own research was uncertain. Amelia decided to let it pass to focus more on Jarvis.
“I’m surprised you’re all here already,” Amelia considered how deep Jarvis was in his own notes, research books scattered around his desk. “Most of the time you all show up half an hour after I do.”
“I didn’t want to miss my alarm and come in an hour late,” Elsa admitted, pouring herself a new cup of coffee. “I’ve got two interviews today and I can’t miss them.”
“I have my alarm on my timepiece, but I usually use my com to check what the time is,” Telinda admitted. “When I woke up with my first alarm I panicked, found my timepiece said something different, and since I didn’t know which one was right I rushed to get here.”
“You’re all ridiculous,” Jarvis leaned back, looking smug. “I didn’t have to worry about waking up on time, I never went to sleep.”
The three of them paused, sharing a look. Amelia checked over Jarvis again. Aside from the manic look earlier there were notable dark bags under his eyes, his clothes were wrinkled, and now she was paying attention there were multiple takeout containers in the garbage bin next to his desk.
“I think you may need to go to sleep.”
Jarvis scowled at Amelia’s suggestion. “What? No, I’ve never felt better. Do you have any idea how many ideas I’ve gotten on my thesis? I could probably write three different papers right now.”
Elsa moved past all of them, carefully putting down her coffee cup in order to unfold the sleeping cot they kept stashed in the back of the office for emergency work sessions. She was even kind enough to pull out one of the blankets they kept in the overhead cupboard to toss over the old, worn out mattress.
Jarvis was still talking, now gesturing animatedly as he talked about monsters with regenerative abilities, and something to do with an ancient druid forest? Amelia hadn’t been able to fully follow his thought process. It’s why she didn’t feel too bad when Telinda gently pushed Jarvis over to the cot and then onto it. It was almost like a switch flipping, not even a minute after his head hit the cot he was snoring into the blanket.
The three looked at him, then at each other. Elsa picked up her coffee mug and then shuffled back to her desk.
“Well,” Amelia hefted her wallet, considering the odd start to her morning and her current budget. “I think today is a day for an extra pick me up. Anyone want to join me at the commissary?”
