What Keep You Up Tonight Tell Nobody

What Are You Up to Tonight?

Yesterday, Garrett deleted four hours of his life and in his defence, there wasn’t much in them.

Forty-three minutes of television, twenty-six minutes of Instagram, eleven minutes looking at gym memberships, eight minutes researching whether acne was caused by cortisol. Four minutes researching what cortisol was and then another hour and a half of television, during which he watched three episodes of a show he could no longer remember the name of.

The NoSleep app had summarised the whole thing under MemoryLock:

LOW-VALUE PERIOD DETECTED.

Garrett had pressed DELETE ALL.

Then REST NOW.

Thirty seconds later, the UnDreamer 3.0 had fired him back into consciousness with the energy of a man who had slept eight hours and the emotional stability of a hostage.

That had been yesterday, but today, Garrett was on the bus again.

The bus was twelve minutes late, smelled faintly of wet carpet, and made a noise every time it changed gears that suggested the transmission had recently learned about death.

Garrett sat near the back in his red polo and khakis, and he didn’tget out his phone like everybody else: no ring light, no affiliate link, no viewers.

He’d stopped livestreaming after yesterday’s UnDreamer demonstration peaked at seven viewers and ended at one.

Technically, it hadn’t ended at one; the one viewer had left first.

So Garrett had ended it for nobody.

He was considering whether that distinction made things better or considerably worse when a woman dropped into the seat across the aisle.

“Still selling sleep?”

Garrett looked up and, for a few seconds, struggled to remember where he saw that face, then the frown of his brows lifted: It was her.

The woman from last summer.

He remembered the bus first—the heat because of that broken air conditioner. Someone’s child screaming three rows behind them. Then he remembered her sitting beside him while he edited one of his videos and how she’d asked out of nowhere what he did. He looked at the next dude, and he realised that she was actually talking to him.

He’d told her he was building a media business, and she didn’t laugh, but she turned more and asked with a serious face- what kind.

He’d said, “Personal optimization.”

She’d said, “What does that mean?”

He’d spent the next eleven minutes discovering he didn’t know.

“Lora,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow.

“You remembered.”

“MemoryLock.”

Her eyebrow went higher.

“Kidding.”

“Good. Because that would’ve been creepy.”

She wasn’t strikingly beautiful. Garrett noticed this because five years ago he would have immediately tried to decide whether she was.

She didn’t appear to have acquired a brilliant career since last summer either. She wore supermarket sneakers, black jeans and a green jacket with a small tear beside the pocket. Her hair looked like she’d tied it up while running for the bus.

Nothing about her suggested that meeting her would change his life.

Which, Garrett was beginning to understand, was probably why he was pleased to see her.

She pointed at his polo.

“Media empire going well?”

“Extremely.”

“Good.”

“I’ve diversified into public transportation.”

“Smart. Huge growth sector.”

“I have a window seat.”

“Jesus.”

“I know.”

“Don’t forget us when you’re mighty rich.”

The bus lurched forward.

Lora grabbed the pole between them.

Garrett laughed.

It surprised him.

Not because what she’d said was especially funny. It wasn’t. If he’d clipped the conversation and uploaded it, nobody would have watched it and that made him laugh again.

“What?” Lora said.

“Nothing.”

“Okay.”

She didn’t ask again.

That was strange too.

Most people wanted explanations. Garrett’s entire online life required explanations. Why this product or this routine. Why wake at four-thirty. Why cold showers are great. Why protein to be consumed before carbohydrates. Why fifteen minutes of high-intensity exercise was superior to forty-five minutes of moderate exercise.

Lora looked out the window, and for almost three minutes neither of them spoke.

Garrett’s brain immediately began searching for something to fill the silence.

“So, what are you up to tonight?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh.”

“Why?”

“No reason. What are you doing?”

Garrett considered saying gym.

Then meal prep and maybe some content planning, but no subject came to mind …Maybe researching new revenue streams.

All four were things he’d intended to do at various points during the day.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Cool.”

The conversation stopped again, and Garrett waited, but nothing came from Lora side now that she seemed.

Lora watched a dog begging a fellow passenger for treats.

“That’s it?” he finally said.

“What?”

“You’re doing nothing tonight?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

She turned from the window.

“Garrett, it’s Tuesday.”

He didn’t know why that was funny.

But at the next stop, Lora stood, extended her hand, and gave him a piece of paper that looked like an old movie ticket.

“This is me, and you can call me any time you are doing nothing .”

“Oh.”

She moved toward the door, then turned.

“You want to do nothing?”

“What?”

“Tonight.”

“With you?”

“No, Garrett. Separately, but competitively.”

The doors opened.

She stepped off.

Garrett stayed in his seat for approximately two seconds.

Then he jumped up.

“Wait.”

The doors closed in his face.

He hit the button.

Nothing happened.

“Hey!”

The bus pulled away.

Through the window, he saw Lora standing on the pavement, laughing.

His phone buzzed.

NOSLEEP PERFORMANCE ALERT

Unscheduled emotional stimulation detected. Would you like DreamDecoder to—

Garrett turned the phone off.

Not the screen, the phone. But when he pushed his hands hard into his pockets after lifting the backpack, he felt the little piece of paper. Took out and turned it over, and there it was: Lora and her mobile number scribbled on the top.

At 7:16 p.m., he texted.

Hi, it's Garret

Three seconds later, the answer came

So what?

Three dots appeared.

What are you up to tonight?

He looked around his apartment.

The UnDreamer 3.0 was rolled against the wall.

Two loads of laundry sat on the couch: one clean, one dirty. Garrett had forgotten which was which.

His refrigerator contained mustard, half an onion and six cans of an energy drink called EXECUTE, and his laptop had seventeen tabs open.

One was titled:

10 HABITS SEPARATING MILLIONAIRES FROM EVERYBODY ELSE

Garrett closed and opened the window. Then he took his phone and typed

“Nothing.”

Lora replied:

“Perfect”

At 7:52, he met her outside a convenience store on a street doing its best to convince everybody it was an excellent Tuesday.

Bars spilled light onto the pavement. Music competed through open doors. A restaurant had a queue twenty people long, which Garrett took as evidence that it must be good.

“We could eat there.”

Lora looked at the queue.

“Why?”

“Because it’s busy.”

“That’s generally a reason not to eat somewhere.”

“It has four-point-eight stars.”

“Of course it does.”

Garrett took out his phone.

“What do you feel like?”

“I don’t know.”

“Thai?”

“Maybe.”

“Italian?”

“Maybe.”

“Korean?”

Garrett lowered the phone.

“This isn’t helping.”

“I didn’t know I was helping.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Walk.”

“Where?”

Lora looked left, then right.

“Don’t know.” She smiled and brushed a bush to the side.

Garrett waited for the rest of the plan.

There wasn’t one, so they walked.

At first they stayed on the busy street. Garrett kept noticing places they could have gone. A rooftop bar, maybe a comedy club. A restaurant where tiny plates were being delivered to beautiful people under orange lights.

Then Lora turned down a side street.

“Where are we going?”

“This way.”

“What’s this way?”

“We’ll know when we get there.”

“That is not how destinations work.”

“It’s exactly how destinations work.”

Two streets later, the noise behind them had thinned, and the city changed.

Garrett had spent years thinking cities were made of things you searched for. Restaurants, gyms, offices, apartments, places… Places with websites, opening hours, and little red pins on maps.

Apparently, another city lay between those things.

They wandered through narrow streets lined with old terraces and deep porches. Jacaranda branches leaned over fences, scattering purple flowers across the pavement.

Lora kicked through them.

“You’re destroying the ambience,” Garrett said.

“I’m interacting with it.”

“You’re kicking flowers.”

“Experiential ambience.”

“That’ll be forty dollars.”

“Plus booking fee.”

They found a shop with six clocks in the window, none showing the same time, and it didn’t seem to have been opened recently; dust settled on the handle, and Garrte wondered how time could forget this place and make all productivity disappear.

They spent five minutes deciding which clock was right. None was, and they decided maybe the owner died suddenly and the inheritance was still being debated in court.

They found a tiny bookshop that was somehow still open. Garrett picked up a book called How to Stop Wasting Your Life.

Lora took it from him and put it back.

“Hey.”

“Intervention.”

“I might need that.”

“You definitely need that. That’s why you’re not allowed to buy it.”

They left without buying anything, and farther along was a narrow passage between two buildings.

Lora stopped.

“What?”

She pointed.

“Terrace.”

Garrett couldn’t see one.

Then he noticed a string of lights at the end of the passage.

Behind an old building was a tiny courtyard with mismatched chairs, three tables and a handwritten sign promising:

COFFEE — TEA — CAKE — SOMETIMES SOUP

“Sometimes soup?” Garrett said.

“I trust them.”

“You trust a restaurant that doesn’t know whether it has soup?”

“Completely.”

They had cake.

It wasn’t particularly good, but Garrett ate all of his.

Lora ate half of hers and then started eating his.

“You said yours wasn’t good.”

“Yours is better.”

“They’re the same cake, just with different coloured cream.”

“ But yours has one cherry glaze so that you won’t mind.”

He minded, and they half-argued about it for several minutes over whether the sponge was the same.

Later, Garrett would try to remember exactly why it had been funny.

He wouldn’t be able to remember, but that bothered him less than he expected.

They walked again, and all this phone stayed in his pocket.

They passed a woman sitting behind a folding table beneath a striped awning. Tarot cards were spread in front of her. A handwritten sign said:

FUTURE — $20

The woman pointed at Garrett.

“You.”

Garrett stopped.

Lora didn’t.

“Me?”

“You’re searching.”

Garrett looked at Lora, now ten steps ahead.

“She means you,” Lora called back. “I’m not searching.”

The woman tapped the chair opposite her.

Garrett sat.

“Twenty dollars,” she said.

“I thought you knew I was coming.”

“I did. I also knew you’d have twenty dollars.”

Garrett always smiled when people believed that he got lots of money and paid her.

She shuffled the cards. He felt like an ant under a magnifying glass, shrugging his shoulders.

“What do you want to know?”

That was easy.

“When am I going to be successful?”

The woman stopped shuffling.

“No.”

“No?”

“Ask another question.”

“Why?”

“Boring.”

Garrett stared at her.

Lora returned and stood behind him.

“I like her,” she said.

“Okay. Am I going to be rich?”

The tarot reader sighed.

“Even more boring.”

“It’s my future.”

“Not yet.”

“What does that mean?”

She placed one card face down.

“Ask something you actually want to know.”

Garrett almost said that he had, when he looked at Lora.

She was examining the other cards, not looking at him.

Suddenly, Garrett didn’t know what he actually wanted to know, which made him uncomfortable. The silence stretched on.

“Can we have our twenty dollars back?” Lora asked.

“No.”

“Worth a try.”

The woman smiled and then turned over the card.

A man was lying down. Garrett leaned closer.

“Is he dead?”

“Sleeping.”

Garrett stared at her.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

The woman frowned.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

She studied him.

“Your real wish is to sleep.”

“I paid twenty dollars for that?”

“You look tired.”

“I have a neurochip that—”

Lora grabbed his shoulder.

“Come on.”

“My reading isn’t finished.”

“Yes, it is.”

As Lora pulled him away, the woman called after him.

“You asked about your future.”

Garrett turned.

The woman pointed at the card.

“Maybe try being unconscious for some of it.”

At some point, Garrett stopped asking where they were going, but after that, he stopped checking the time.

The precise moment was harder to locate, and there was no notification, and somehow they ended up in a small park.

Or maybe it wasn’t a park. Three trees, some grass and one bench facing absolutely nothing.

No harbour, fantastic skyline and absolutely no landmark.

Nothing worth photographing from three swings.

Lora sat.

Garrett sat beside her.

“Well,” he said.

“Well.”

“What now?”

“Nothing.”

“We’ve already done that.”

“We can do more.”

A car passed, and somewhere behind them, someone dropped what sounded like a large metal object and swore. A possum moved along a fence, taking small steps balancing on the narrow ledge. He really looked like an underperforming circus clown, overweight and at the end of his career; he almost fell but recovered ungracefully and melted into the next tree. She took his hand and gripped tight,

“Exciting,” Garrett said.

“Shhht.”’

“You wanted exciting?”

“No.”

It came out before he could think about it. Lora shifted lower on the bench and planted a small kiss to his neck. He lost his train of thought but smiled when she snuggled under his arm.

They didn’t talk for a while.

It wasn’t the silence Garrett remembered from dates, where you desperately searched your brain for another question before the other person decided you were boring. This silence didn’t seem to require fixing, but his phone buzzed.

He ignored it, and it buzzed again.

Lora’s head dropped onto his shoulder.

Garrett froze, not romantically.

Physically, because her skull was surprisingly heavy, and he waited for her to move, but she didn’t.

“Lora?”

Nothing.

“You’re asleep.”

Still nothing. Garrett twisted just a bit and looked down, and her eyes were closed.

“You paid absolutely no attention to the tarot lady.”

A tiny sound came from her that might have been a snore.

Garrett smiled that wonderful auto-deprecating girl-falling-asleep-on-date smile, and his phone buzzed a third time.

Very carefully, without moving his shoulder, he pulled it from his pocket.

NOSLEEP ACTIVITY ALERT

No productive activity detected for 2h 47m, and three options appeared underneath.

Garrett stared at them: two hours and forty-seven minutes.

What had they done?

Walked, had bad cake, looked at clocks, not bought a book.

Lost twenty dollars to a woman who’d told him something he already knew, sat on a bench.

Nothing, oh well; at least it was a kiss - planted on his neck

Yesterday, MemoryLock had shown him four empty hours, and Garrett had felt sick. He’d deleted them.

Now he tried to remember the last two hours and forty-seven minutes.

Lora kicking jacaranda flowers.Sometimes soup, her stealing his cake.

The tarot woman calling his ambitions boring, the clocks, the possum and especially the nothing quite their kiss…

His phone buzzed.

LOW-VALUE PERIOD DETECTED.

Garrett almost laughed.

Lora stirred against him, and he stopped moving while she settled again.

For five years, Garrett had been buying hours: four extra hours every night, then maybe another 10 minutes on the bus.

He’d borrowed money to buy them. Upgraded software to protect them. Filled them with plans for things he would do when he finally became the person who deserved all that extra time.

And yesterday he’d deleted four of them because he couldn’t stand knowing he’d wasted them.

Tonight he’d wasted nearly three, and he wanted them back already.

Not to change them, to have them again.

His thumb hovered over MEMORYLOCK.

He could save it every stupid little piece.

The app would timestamp the evening, analyse it, preserve it. Tomorrow he could ask DreamDecoder why he’d enjoyed it. Maybe there’d be a chart.

Garrett looked down at Lora.

Then at the phone, and he pressed the side button and the screen went black.

His shoulder began to hurt after ten minutes.

He stayed.

He didn’t film her sleeping, nor did he photograph the jacarandas.

He didn’t review the tarot woman because he didn’t know where and what time it was.

For once, Garrett wasn’t asleep, and for once, he wasn’t trying to be.

He just sat there while Lora slept.

Eventually she stirred.

“How long was I out?”

“No idea.”

She lifted her head and rubbed her face.

“Did I snore?”

“Like an old industrial machinery.”

“I don’t snore.”

He just laughed slightly

“Sorry.”

“For what?”

“I kind of ruined the evening.”

Garrett looked at her.

“How?”

“I fell asleep.”

He considered this.

“No,” he said. “I think that might’ve been the best part.”

Lora looked at him.

For half a second, Garrett worried that this sounded romantic.

For another half second he worried that it didn’t.

Then she stood and stretched.

“Come on.”

“Where?”

“Home.”

“Mine or yours?”

She stared at him.

Garrett raised both hands.

“I meant directionally.”

“Sure you did.”

They walked back.

At 12:38 a.m., Garrett stood in his apartment.

The UnDreamer 3.0 waited against the wall.

ROLL IT UP AND TAKE IT ON THE GO!

He unrolled it, then stopped while he contemplated his bed.

He hadn’t properly slept in it for years.

It was mostly where he kept laundry and crashed at midnight. Garrett pushed the clothes onto the floor.

He lay down, and nothing happened.

He waited; still nothing.

No app, no timer, no cortisol regulation, no DreamDecoder.

No countdown until maximum cognitive restoration.

He closed his eyes and the whirring inside his head seemed louder.

For a moment he panicked.

What if he couldn’t do it anymore?

What if his brain had forgotten?

He reached for his phone.

Stopped.

He thought about six clocks showing six different times and the cake.

Purple flowers under Lora’s shoes.

A sleeping woman getting heavier against his shoulder.

Nothing.

Then Garrett did something he hadn’t scheduled.

He fell asleep.