Madeline wants more timeâfor her career as a tech startup CEO, for herself, and for her family. Lucky for her, a new procedure offers to give her just that by reducing sleep. The data is promising, and sheâs used to taking calculated risks. It seems like the right decision, even if she hides it from her husband.
While Madeline scaled the corporate ladder and spent half her nights on the road, Darwin traded in dreams of winning the Nobel Prize in neuroscience for the quiet fulfillment of raising their two daughters.
Initially Madeline excels to new heights. But after an encounter with a debonair man at the luxurious Stasis Hotel, she starts losing touch with reality and acting erratic, including filing for divorce. Others rumored to have undergone the operation begin disappearing or turning up dead.
Darwinâwith his own troubled history with the procedureâsuspects something nefarious is afoot and that heâs among the few who can help. His life and sanity crumble as he uncovers a chilling plot to harness humanityâs dreams. Darwin and Madeline must each survive bloodshot escapades through cityscapes and dreamscapes to try and awake from the nightmare before it consumes the planetâand maybe more than that.
Madeline wants more timeâfor her career as a tech startup CEO, for herself, and for her family. Lucky for her, a new procedure offers to give her just that by reducing sleep. The data is promising, and sheâs used to taking calculated risks. It seems like the right decision, even if she hides it from her husband.
While Madeline scaled the corporate ladder and spent half her nights on the road, Darwin traded in dreams of winning the Nobel Prize in neuroscience for the quiet fulfillment of raising their two daughters.
Initially Madeline excels to new heights. But after an encounter with a debonair man at the luxurious Stasis Hotel, she starts losing touch with reality and acting erratic, including filing for divorce. Others rumored to have undergone the operation begin disappearing or turning up dead.
Darwinâwith his own troubled history with the procedureâsuspects something nefarious is afoot and that heâs among the few who can help. His life and sanity crumble as he uncovers a chilling plot to harness humanityâs dreams. Darwin and Madeline must each survive bloodshot escapades through cityscapes and dreamscapes to try and awake from the nightmare before it consumes the planetâand maybe more than that.
At four oâclock on Christmas morning, Darwin Johnston briefly forgot the imminent threat to his life and marveled at the rivers of red and white lights. Who were all these people? Where were they going at this hour on this day?
He could partially answer those questions about himself. He had been a neuroscientist, and a damn promising one at that. Recently he was a stay-at-home dad. And nowâŚhe wasnât so sure. A wanted man in more ways than one. He was going to San Francisco International Airport. The next logical questionâwhyâmade increasingly little sense.
Darwinâs understanding of the relationship between cause and effect had undergone something of a paradigm shift.
He hated driving at night. The red and white starbursts, streakier than usual in the rain, reminded him he was no longer a young man at the age of thirty-six. More alarmingly, they highlighted that he hadnât slept in over five days. At least he thought it had been that long; the many harmful effects of extreme sleep deprivation included short-term memory loss. But they were still preferable to long-term memory loss, slipping further and further away.
While surveying the myriad points of light in front of him, he did his best to ignore those behind. Paranoia and hallucinations were expected given how long heâd been awake, but he was convinced the obnoxiously bright pair of headlights following him had been there since leaving his adopted safehouse. He did not think it a coincidence. He no longer believed in such things.
âCall Madeline Johnston,â he instructed the dashboard.
âIâm sorry, I donât recognize that name,â replied the car in a voice that had almost ascended out of the uncanny valley. Oh, right.
âCall Madeline Lockhart.â The car understood this time, but her phone went straight to voicemail like it had for several days.
âHey, this is Madeline.â Her voice was bubbly like it used to be; sheâd had the same greeting for years. The sound made his throat tight. He had a creeping suspicion this was the last time he would hear it. He still loved her despite the pain theyâd caused each other and how much she had changed, an especially salient feeling under the circumstances. âSorry I missed your call. Please leave a message, or, better yet, text me.â
âMaddy, itâs Dar again. I hope to godâyes, godâthat youâre alright. I ahâŚI think I really messed up this time. Iâm on my way to Tokyo butâŚIâm not sure Iâm going to make it. Iâll find you if I do. Please tell the girls I love them, and not to believe everything they may hear or read about me. Merry Christmas.â
For several minutes Darwin drove on through the pre-dawn in silence, the only sounds those of a car speeding in rain that would be snow if the temperature dropped a few degrees. The car in front of him put on its left blinker, which was odd given it was in the left lane going eighty-five. It followed its telegraphed intention and veered into the barrier separating the two directions of traffic, launching up into the air. Darwinâs delayed reactions didnât even afford him time to brake, but when he glanced in his rearview mirror to survey the damage, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. He shook his head and blinked hard.
A plane appeared out of the clouds ahead and above, or at least thatâs what his eyes told him. It was logical given his location, so it was probably real. The planeâs blinking red lights looked something like Rudolph leading Santa and his sleigh. Maybe Madeline was right, and he should have let the girls believe, but Mister Rational just couldnât let that stand. Strange how his mind wandered even at a moment like this.
A morbid mix of curiosity and fear propelled him to spare another glance in the rearview mirror. The intermittent windshield wiper cleared the glass, fortunately not leaving behind streaks of smeared blood. The offending headlightsâ height made it look like they belonged to an SUVânot a good sign given his present worries. On the bright side, he was too terrified to be tired.
âShit shit shit,â he whispered. He was ten minutes out from SFO, where hopefully the lights, crowds, and surveillance would discourage the worst kinds of violence. That meant they would likely make their move soon.
Honking shifted his attention back to the headlights ahead of himâone pair in particular. They were conspicuous amongst the flashing red taillights on the wrong side of the freeway and seemed authentic given his fellow driversâ reactions. Someone whoâd had too much eggnog and driven up the offramp? No chance, though presumably thatâs what the media would report.
The car ahead of him began to brake and move to the left shoulder. Darwin followed suit, and the oncoming vehicle changed trajectory so that it was now heading straight for him. Unsurprising. He braked further only to have the trailing vehicle rear-end him, propelling him forward and confirming his worst fears and that it was indeed a black SUV occupied by at least two serious-looking men.
His smartwatch alerted him that his heartrate had spiked to over two hundred beats per minute, more than four times its resting rate. He was having a heart attack.
Darwin briefly thought about swerving to the right but only had time for one decisive action, and his subconscious had already made up its mind and started to put his body in motion. With his right hand he reached onto the passenger seat for the Glock 17. An actual fucking gun riding shotgun. Who had he become? It was insane how fast everything could change, especially for the worse.
But Darwin had a more pressing concern: The weapon was not there. It must have been jolted onto the floor. He took his eyes off the road and both hands off the wheel, leaned down, and frantically felt around in the dark for the black, full-sized handgun.
There.
Darwin twisted as he sat back up, his right hand gripping the Glock and pointing towards the back window. It was reckless but hey, it was better than getting smashed to pulp on the 101. However, the trailing SUV must have slammed on its brakes and was now dozens of feet back. When he twisted to face forward again, he knew why. His heart had been attempting to pound, but the sight that awaited him made it stop and drop: The onrushing vehicle was much closer than anticipated, its high beams blinding.
The gunâs lack of a traditional safety gave him enough time to get off a single, startlingly loud shot through the Volvoâs windshield and into the approaching vehicle, and also to realize it would do no good; although there was someone behind the steering wheel, which wasnât a given in this day, age, and area, they were clearly not awake. The sleeping mask was a dead giveaway.
The gunshot had been quiet compared to the crash that came next. Shattered, blood-stained glass spilling onto the asphalt joined the cacophony of the downpour, which now sounded like thousands of tiny gemstones falling from the sky.
But Darwin, his heart now stopped, no longer saw the shining diamonds and rubies of head and taillights, only darkness.
What wouldn't a person do to fit a few extra hours into the day if the only tradeoff for those hours was sleep? And especially if after what can almost be compared to a more localized lobotomy, there were relatively few health risks to giving up that sleep? It might be the cynic in me, but the fact so many people make that choice in Circadian Algorithms doesn't seem all that far-fetched. And author Tom B. Night only uses that premise to launch one of the craziest vehicles I've ridden on in a while.
Set just before the pandemic hit, the science behind the 'modified Huxley procedure' seems just plausible enough that it grounds a novel that can sometimes feel like a drug trip. I don't want to say more for risk of spoiling exactly why it feels that way, but the closest thing I think I've read is probably Catch 22. The story flips back and forth between two points of view, a married couple going through hard times. Both Madeline and Darwin have very distinct and strong character voices. And though I didn't like Madeline at first, she grew on me as the novel goes on.
There are a few reasons this novel wasn't a must-read for me though. And one is that it pulls one of my least favorite tricks at the very start. I am personally not a fan of prologues, even less so of ones that flash forward to a point further into the story. From that point to whenever we finally catch back up as readers, it's essentially one giant flashback. For this novel, that catch-up point happens roughly two-thirds of the way through. That's a huge chunk of story to read through to end up right where we are at the start. Still on the stylistic side of things, having both POV characters be unreliable narrators for such large portions and at the same time, sometimes made understanding what was going on rather hard. On the content side, I wanted to see the antagonists of the story fleshed out a bit more. Both motivations and means didn't entirely ring true which made the force Madeline and Darwin are up against feel less multi-dimensional than they could have.
I do still highly recommend Circadian Algorithms to readers who enjoy fiction about technology that can go a little haywire. Or the extraordinary lengths people will reach to achieve their goals. I also caution that there was a bit more gore described in some scenes than I had expected from a novel with only a mildly explicit warning.