Morning People

A short story

Cassie Silver’s husband shook her shoulder, first like a soft breeze, then as an intense summer gale. 

“Good morning, baby,” Winston said as he hovered over her. 

Cassie opened an eye. At six-feet-two, Winston was already tall, but to Cassie’s not-yet-focused, pre-dawn eye, the top of his head appeared to graze the ceiling. 

“How’s my girl this morning?” Winston chirped like an annoying robin.

“What time is it?” Cassie growled. 

“It’s three-thirty.”

“The hell? I don’t have to get up until six. Why are you waking me at three fucking thirty in the morning?” The anger bubbling inside made it impossible for her to get back to sleep, which made Cassie even angrier. 

“Today’s December first and the Early Rise Amendment takes effect. You have to be at work at six a.m. I figured I’d wake you a little earlier the first day because you’ll probably need additional time today. But starting tomorrow you can get up at four o’clock, an extra half hour of sleep.”

“Four a.m. Fuck me. This is a living nightmare,” Cassie said. A symphony of synonyms slid through her mind: dystopia, hellscape, torture, Tartarus. Her heart rattled, a frightening sensation she’d never felt before. 

I want out of this place.

Winston shrugged and turned on the TV, which broadcast a continuous looping scroll of the new law to the tune of newscasters' commentary.

Amendment XXVIII: The Early Rise Act

Section 1:

To promote productivity, discipline, and the pursuit of individual and societal well-being, a mandatory wake-up time of four o’clock in the morning local time on weekdays and six o’clock in the morning on weekends and Federal holidays shall be established for all individuals within the jurisdiction of this Constitution.

Section 2:

Beginning on the effective date of this amendment, all persons above the age of 10 shall be required to wake up in time to commence their daily activities, including but not limited to school and work, which shall begin no later than 6:00 a.m. local time, except as otherwise provided in this amendment.

Section 3:

Exceptions to the mandatory wake-up time shall be granted for the following circumstances:

(a) Individuals with valid medical conditions certified by a licensed physician who require alternative sleep patterns or necessitate rest beyond the designated wake-up time.

(b) Workers engaged in essential services, such as emergency response, healthcare, transportation, and other critical industries, may be exempted from the mandatory wake-up time during their scheduled work hours.

(c) Those serving in the armed forces when so designated by the appropriate commanding officer.

Section 4:

Congress shall have the power to enforce this amendment by legislation.

The day after the amendment’s ratification, Congress changed the motto on paper currency from In God We Trust to Benjamin Franklin’s sage words, Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.

The government lauded the new, more productive American society. 

“I want to go back to sleep. I want to sleep forever,” Cassie said. 

Or at least until eight, though even that’s too early.

Before the Twenty-Eighth Amendment, late risers like her begrudgingly tolerated a world created by and for the benefit of morning people in which school started early and managers scheduled meetings at dawn. 

Cassie remembered taking her SATs in the era before the Twenty-Eighth Amendment at eight o’clock in the morning. No wonder she didn’t score as high as she should have. 

Early risers have always wanted everyone to be like them. 

Morning people treated late risers as if their sleep habits were conditioned, not genetic, a preference rather than their immutable being. 

Go to sleep at the same time every night, don’t drink coffee or cola after noon, don’t nap, and only use your bed for sleep. You’ll be a morning person in no time.  

Morning people looked down on those who needed to sleep late like they were only half-human. 

Late risers are weak, late risers are lazy, late risers don’t contribute to society. They choose their life of sloth. 

While many late risers were good at hiding their condition, when bosses discovered an employee wasn’t a morning person, they often demoted or fired them.

Many parents didn’t want their children to marry lackadaisical late risers. 

Some landlords wouldn’t rent to late risers because not-morning people were likelier to make noise late at night. 

But Cassie, like other not-morning people, knew the immutable truth: Late risers are genetically programmed to sleep late. It’s who we are. 

“I’m up late, and I sleep late—when I can,” Cassie had said to her fiance, Winston, a morning person, while they were dating. 

“Can you live with a late riser?” He said he could because he loved her.

She accepted Winston’s words because she was in love with him, too. 

The Twenty-Eighth Amendment was a steamroller squashing the souls of late risers. No longer was sleeping late an option. Now, late risers had to battle their own genes, a war they were bound to lose.

Forget sneaking in a late sleep on weekends, too. Even before the Amendment’s ratification, many—soon to be all—cities and towns installed sirens that sounded at six o’clock in the morning on Saturday and Sunday. New York’s alarms were like the air raid sirens of the Cold War era (probably because the city repurposed those actual sirens), Boston broadcast chirping birds, Chicago woke its residents with the Andrew Sisters blaring Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, and Newark dispatched their entire caravan of trash trucks. 

Seven a.m. Sunday breakfast parties were the rage. Cassie loathed them. Winston loved them. 

“Whatever happened to life, liberty, and especially the pursuit of happiness?” Cassie wondered. 

Why did I marry a morning person? What was I thinking? Love? I wasn’t thinking, and apparently neither was Winston. Being married to a morning person was fine until yesterday. Winston got up when he wanted, leaving me in blissful slumber. 

Cassie had enjoyed their mismatched sleep schedules because it gave her alone time twice a day, every day. 

She pulled the blanket back over her shoulders, closed her eyes again, and did quick math. Last night, she went to bed at one a.m. That’s two-and-a-half hours of sleep. Maybe tonight she’d get three, three-and-a-half hours. Maybe. 

I’m not going to last a week like this. 

Pillow feels good. Pillow feels soft. She felt her brain shutting down, a powerful current dragging her back to sleep. A curtain opened to reveal the beginning of a dream as she reentered the void between wakefulness and unconsciousness.

“Go away!” she shouted.

She bolted up in bed, her eyes now wide open. 

Oops. I mean, go away, cyclops. Scary dream. 

“What?” Winston’s hands shook. He slipped his phone out of his pocket and quickly turned from Cassie, his back to his wife. The phone was locked. She couldn’t have seen anything. It had been locked all night long. She didn’t know. 

“I didn’t mean to say that out loud. I’m sorry.” Cassie pressed her lips together as if to contain the words already spoken. 

“You must have been partially asleep and in a nightmare.”

A nightmare, yes. But what did Winston need to see on his phone at three-thirty in the morning? Between waking and when Cassie had her morning coffee, Winston’s phone pirouette evaporated from her memory, leaving her a vague, nagging feeling that something was off. A lot was off today, the first day of the Twenty-Eighth Amendment.

Somehow, Cassie made it through her day at the office. Not somehow—thanks to her company’s generous supply of free coffee.

Cassie took comfort in the camaraderie of droopy eyes, glum faces, slumped shoulders, and feet shuffling along the carpeted floor, silver and blue static sparks where they tread—those were the badges of not-morning people, people like her who were now condemned to a life of perpetual sleepiness and woe. People who never wanted to see a sunrise but who loved watching the planets wander across the night sky, people who thought one a.m. was the apex of the day. 

Late risers, people of the night, forever under the tutelage of early-morning oppressors. 

Cassie arrived home at half past three. Now that the nation was on an early schedule, employers modified their schedules. 

Cassie and Winston ate dinner a little after five in the evening, and an hour after that, Winston suggested they get to sleep. “We have an early day tomorrow.”

“We have early days forever, babe. I don’t think I’m going to make it.”

“Sure you will. In nine days, you’ll be used to getting up early. That’s what the experts say. You just have to tough it out for nine days.”

“Nine days.”

“The time will pass quickly, you’ll see.”

After dinner, they went directly to bed. Within a minute, Winston fell asleep.

Cassie spent the next hours turning like a chicken on a rotisserie, searching for a position that would bring about sleep. She was sleepy but did not tumble into slumber like her soporific husband.

She got out of bed, padded around the room, looked at her phone, and then looked at Winston’s phone, which, though locked, displayed recent notifications, including a Signal message from somebody called Addison. Winston never mentioned a co-worker named Addison or said he used the encrypted app, Signal. Cassie and Winston used Whatsapp to chat, and Winston used Microsoft Teams Messaging for work. She made a note to ask Winston about Addison and Signal in the morning. 

The morning newspaper and television news were filled with stories about people arrested for violating the Early Rise Act, as if that was the only news. “That didn’t take long,” Winston said during breakfast. He tapped the New York Times article on his phone. “They’re rounding up violators and hauling them off to prison by the truckload. The lucky ones will be sentenced to a government-operated conversion facility, but most will be imprisoned. The irony is that they’ll still have to get up before dawn in prison.”

Winston whistled. “Ten thousand arrests on the second day alone. That’s just the beginning.”

Winston laid his phone screen down on the table. “The government means business, sweetheart. Fortunately, you’ve got me, a natural-born morning person to make sure you don’t oversleep.”

“Yeah, lucky me.”

Over the next eight days, Cassie managed to fall asleep earlier, though never as early as Winston. She woke each morning—finally to her alarm without human intervention— tired, irritated, and hating her life and the law.

On the morning of the tenth day after the Twenty-Eighth Amendment became law, Cassie confessed her inability to become a morning person. But Winston already knew because pamphlets and brochures for conversion centers covered their dining room table. 

“They’ve got powerful treatments. Highly effective, great success stories.”

“How would they know? Early rising has only been the law for ten days.”

“Even before the amendment, some wanted to transition to morning people.”

“Or they were coerced.”

Winston shrugged. “The Amendment confirmed the way America should be. Nothing more. You’ll see. Now let's find a Morning Center that’s the best for you. I like this one in Vermont, but it’s your choice.”

Easy for him to say. Fury boiled her blood. After seven years of marriage, Cassie felt Winston had become her enemy. Or was every early riser her enemy now? 

But what choice did she have? Coffee was already losing effectiveness. It’s either morph into a morning person or suffer perpetual sleepiness.

For the next twenty minutes, Cassie studied the brochures in silence, weighing the pluses and minuses, finally telling Winston that she thought the facility in California sounded best. 

“Are you sure?”

“No. How can I be sure? How can I evaluate something I know nothing about? I don’t think this is going to work at all and I’m just doing this because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in prison. This is awful, Win. I’m—”

And then she burst into tears, a cascade of salty water spilling from her eyes.

When no more tears remained, she gulped air and said, “I don’t even believe that a not-morning person can be transformed into a morning person. We’re born this way.”

“But you’ll do it?” 

Cassie nodded. “Yeah. I’ll do it.”

“It strikes me that the facility in Vermont is better—nicer rooms, better food, more seasoned staff.”

“I kinda want to go to California.”

“California’s got a time zone change, which might wreck any modifications to your biological clock.”

“It’s only three hours. I’m sure that won’t make a difference.”

“Three hours is the difference between getting up at four thirty and seven thirty. I really think you should stay in the same time zone, Cassie.”

“No, I want to go to California.” If she had to go to a center to transition from a late riser to a morning person, she should at least go where she wanted. 

“You’re not going to leave the facility during the program, so it doesn’t matter where you are. Vermont is a much shorter flight, too.” 

Her rage welled at America, Winston, and herself for letting herself become trapped into a tacit, if not explicit, acknowledgment of the pseudo-science of converting a late riser into a morning person. Unless they were going to pluck out her DNA with magic microscopic tweezers and replace it with morning-person DNA, this treatment would be a waste. 

But in the end, did the location matter? She would suffer ten days of senseless misery regardless of where she went, so the hours saved not flying to the West Coast were smarter. “All right. I’ll go to Vermont.”

Cassie secured a reservation at the Vermont Morning Center for two months later. She had not imagined the popularity of the conversion center, but many people like her wanted to fit in this new world. Wanted wasn’t the right word. Needed to was better. Had to was even more accurate. 

“I’m glad you chose our facility,” Dr. Allegra said. “I understand from your husband that you almost selected a conversion center in California.”

They sat on opposite sides of a soft leather couch. Cassie noticed that Allegra’s office didn’t have a desk; instead, with the two sofas, warm lighting, a painting of a thick forest at dusk on one wall, and another of a sailboat above glassy, blue-green water on the opposite wall, the office felt more like a bedroom.

“You’ve been talking with my husband? Isn’t this supposed to be a confidential arrangement, just between the patient and the facility?”

“Ordinarily, yes, but in some special situations it’s not.” He sipped his tea.

Cassie stiffened her back. “What do you mean?”

Allegra leaned forward and lowered his voice. “It’s only forty-three miles to the Canadian border. We’re taking you over tonight after dark. That’s why Winston steered you toward this facility.”

“Say that again.”

“We’re exfiltrating you to Canada.” 

Cassie took a minute to process. “Wait. How do you even know I want to go to Canada?”

Allegra offered a wry smile. “If you don’t, this conversation never happened and you’ll have a happy, and hopefully productive, ten days at our facility.”

 “I can sleep as late as I want in Canada?”

“You can.”

“Oh my god. Yes, I’m going.” 

Allegra glanced at his watch and said, “You leave at two a.m. It’s now a little past five. Do you want to nap for a while? The drive to Canada’s short, but”—he took a deep breath— “we need to be on alert.” 

When Cassie didn’t reply, Allegra continued. “Out of nearly one hundred expatriations to Canada, we’ve only had one mishap: one capture and that was during the first week when we were simultaneously exfiltrating and learning how to. I’m happy to tell you that one of our team is ex-CIA; that wasn’t the case back then. So, while our success rate is ninety-nine percent, chances are even better that you’ll arrive safely in Canada. I wanted you to know so you can make an informed decision.”

“You mean choose between having to get up early every morning or living a free life in Canada? I’m going.”

Exhaustion and stress herded Cassie into sleep at around nine p.m. Allegra woke her four hours later.

The small guest room came into focus. Like in Allegra’s office, pleasant lighting bathed her eyes. She slipped off the bed and rubbed her bare feet on the plush carpet. 

“It’s time.”

“I just realized I don’t have a passport.”

“You won’t need one. We’ll cross the actual border on foot.”

“Do I need a new identity or anything like that?”

“No. There’s no chance of America extraditing you because they can only issue an extradition warrant for an offense that’s also a crime in Canada.”

“One last question before we go. This must be very expensive. Who’s paying?”

“Your husband.”

“Really? Will he be joining me in Canada?”

Allegra stayed silent.

That means no. Now I get it. What easier way to get rid of an unwanted wife than to dangle paradise in front of her? 

She’d missed the obvious clues: His new clothes. Visits to a grooming salon. Coloring his beard. More time at the gym. The Signal message from Allison. 

Cassie huffed. 

“We have to go. The guide who’s walking you across the border will be there at four a.m. and we’ll only have a five-minute window.”

“I’m ready.” I’m ready to get out of this country and never come back.

Evelyn, Cassie’s driver, told her they would avoid the interstate and cross into Canada near Salaberry-de-Valleyfield. She tuned in a rock station as the gray Toyota Camry navigated the sparsely lit Route 22. 

The high beams of a car behind them reflected off the rearview mirror, startling Cassie and causing Evelyn to say, “Fucking driver.” Trees bordered the narrow, two-lane road, giving her nowhere to pull over and let the car pass. 

As they approached a layby, the first they’d come across since the car started tailgating them five minutes ago, another car appeared in front, the two vehicles boxing them into the pull-off.

Before Evelyn could turn off the engine, four people, two men, and two women, exited those cars. One of the men motioned to Evelyn to turn off the engine while another opened the passenger door, grabbed Cassie’s arm, and yanked her out. 

Evelyn unlocked her seatbelt and opened her door, but the woman shoved her back inside and commanded, “Sit.”

“I’m responsible for Cassie’s—”

“You’ll do as you’re told. Now sit still and don’t talk.”

The woman watched Evelyn while a man surveyed the road in both directions. The other two people escorted Cassie into the thick woods.

The woman shoved Cassie against the tree while the man stood several steps away, his thumb hooked into his belt, his jacket open, the moonlight revealing a holstered pistol. 

“Cassie Silver,” she said. 

It didn’t sound like a question, but Cassie nodded anyway.

“Do you want to go to Canada?”

Her heart raced, and her throat knotted. She gripped one shaking hand with another, hoping to steady them both. 

“Or would you rather help America?”

“Help America?”

“We’re the resistance, late risers, like you.”

Cassie’s legs wobbled, but the woman caught her before she tumbled to the forest floor. 

“My name is June. We don’t have much time, so I’ll lay it out succinctly and quickly. You’re welcome to continue to Canada and live your life waking at noon, sleeping when you want. Unlike America, which barred television, Netflix, and other streaming services past nine p.m., Canada airs shows all night. Canada’s bars close at two in the morning; in the United States, you’ll never find one open past seven o’clock. You can drink coffee all night in the North, but selling coffee after three p.m. is illegal in America. New York is a ghost town after nine o’clock, but Montreal hops until dawn. But you know all this. We are asking you to stay, to fight against those who oppress us.”

“What can I do? How can we possibly defeat the Constitution?”

“I’ll tell you exactly what we do.”

One person at a time. That’s what June told Cassie. 

But one person at a time was only part of the problem. Their weapon was complicated to manufacture, requiring an advanced laboratory and five weeks per vial—and one vial served one person. Second, the government knew about the resistance, shutting down the clandestine facilities all the time, arresting and incarcerating anyone found inside. Resistance scientists were in short supply; the necessary materials were scarce. 

“It’s slow and dangerous. But it’s the best plan we have, the only plan,” June said. “Each of us do as many as possible—spouses, principally, but when the opportunity arises, neighbors, people asleep on planes and trains, whomever we can.”

After June explained how the resistance fought against the twenty-eighth, Cassie fell to her knees. This time, June didn’t stop her. 

A menagerie of thoughts swirled through Cassie’s mind, and floating at the top of those thoughts was revenge. 

“I’m in,” Cassie said as she stood.

The next day, she called Winston.“When did the affair start?”

“Six months ago, when it looked like The Early Rise Act would be ratified. Can a morning person live with a not-morning person under these conditions? It worked okay for six years for us, but that’s only because you could sleep late and do whatever you wanted to in the evening after I went to bed. But now? Why shouldn’t I be happy with somebody who’s also a natural morning person? Why shouldn’t you be happy in Canada?”

Cassie raised an unseen eyebrow. His quick confession didn’t surprise her because he thought she’d never return to America. But I never left.

“Do you really care about my happiness?”

“Yes, of course.” 

“Yeah, well sending me away didn’t transmit that message.” Neither did cheating on me. 

“Look, bottom line: Morning and not-morning people are no longer compatible. They can try to make it work, but sooner or later the weight of the Twenty-Eighth will crush the relationship.”

“I hope you’re happy with Allison—”

“Addison.”

One of the advantages of being a night owl was that your reflexes, senses, and brain were at one hundred percent at two o’clock in the morning. 

Cassie slipped her key into the lock and slowly turned the tumblers. She removed her sneakers in the entryway and tiptoed to the bedroom, slowly opening the door. 

The street light and glowing alarm clock digits gave Cassie all the illumination she needed.

Winston was fast asleep. Deep sleep also cocooned Addison, who faced toward the bed’s other side, her long, blonde hair absorbing the clock’s orange hue, giving her an odd punk vibe. 

Cassie crept toward the bed and stood over Winston. She removed the vial from her left pocket, a syringe from her right, and filled the syringe. She opened a pre-moistened tissue and dabbed his arm with the anesthetic to block any needle pain.

She had practiced injecting oranges twenty times.

In one fluid motion that took less than a second, she stabbed his left arm, depressed the plunger, and withdrew the needle.

Winston stirred, mumbled, “A disturbance in the force,” and rolled in Addison’s direction. 

Cassie quickly retreated to the hallway, where she realized she hadn’t been breathing for the last minute. She leaned against a wall and gulped air.

I did it! 

The virus would carry late-riser DNA to Winston’s cells, genetically transforming him. June had said the transformation takes less than twenty-four hours. 

One person at a time, but not everyone. She slipped the unused syringe meant for Addison into her bag.

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If you enjoyed Morning People, you’ll also like my story, New Memories.