The Sleep Experiment Read online

  “I wanted to see who you’re fucking these days.”

  “Jesus,” he said, shaking his head. He went to the bar, filled a tumbler with two fingers of rum, and swallowed the contents in one burning gulp.

  Brandy asked, “Is she a student like I was?”

  “No.”

  “She’s young.”

  “She’s thirty-three.”

  “Blessed with good genes. Dammit, Roy, you’ll never change, will you?”

  “Change?” He looked at her, surprised. “Change how? I can’t see other people? We’re not exclusive. You know that.”

  “I know, but I thought…” Her blue eyes darkened. “I thought you were changing. I thought maybe…I don’t know! But we’ve been spending a lot of time together…I thought… Oh, fuck it!”

  She stormed off to the bedroom.

  Wallis poured another couple of fingers of rum.

  Brandy returned a minute later, fully dressed. She snatched her handbag from the island and went straight to the door.

  “Where are you going?” he asked her.

  “To the hotel.”

  “You don’t have to…”

  “Goodbye, Roy.” She opened the door, looked back. “You know what’s sad about this? I would have been good to you. I would have made you happy.”

  “Brandy…”

  She left, slamming the door closed behind her.

  Day 2

  Tuesday, May 29, 2018

  Dr. Roy Wallis entered the observation room in the basement of Tolman Hall carrying his briefcase and two coffees in a pulp-fiber takeout tray. He set the tray on the table and said, “Cappuccino and vanilla latte. Your pick.”

  “Actually, I don’t drink coffee, professor,” Penny Park said. “Only tea.”

  “More caffeine for me then.” He slumped into the second chair with a weary sigh. “I guess I could use it.”

  “Yeah, you look pretty tired, professor.” She eyed him suspiciously. “Did you party late at a nightclub?”

  “I’m too old for nightclubs, Penny. I just had a few drinks at home.”

  “By yourself?”

  “Yes, by myself,” he said, which was mostly true. After Brandy left, he’d stayed up well past midnight smoking pot and drinking his best rum and playing music way too loud. He rubbed his eyes and studied the two Australians in the sleep laboratory. Chad was lying supine on the weight bench, presumably resting between sets, while Sharon reclined in her bed, reading a book. “How’ve they been?”

  “All good, mate,” Penny said in a horrendous attempt at an Australian accent.

  “My God,” he said.

  “Not good?”

  “It’s the effort that counts.”

  “Shaz taught me a lot of Australian expressions.”

  “Shaz?”

  “It’s her nickname.”

  “I know that—”

  “She told me to call her that. It’s what they do with names in Australia. Me, I wouldn’t be Penz, because that sounds like something you write with—”

  “Rather than a unit of currency.”

  “Ha, ha. Instead, Shaz said I’d be called Parksy. I don’t know what you would be called. Probably not Royz. That sounds like the flower, which is too feminine for someone so manly as you.”

  “Manly as me?”

  “You are a very manly man, professor. Hmmm…maybe you’d be called Wallsy? You should ask her.”

  “It’s at the top of my list,” he said. “What else did you talk about?”

  “Do you know what a Map of Tassie is?”

  “Yes, Penny, I do.”

  “Really? Prove it.”

  “It’s an Australian colloquialism for a woman’s pubic hair.”

  “Because the shape of Tasmania is—”

  “Do you really want to spend the handover discussing this?”

  “You asked what we talked about.”

  “I’ll read your notes. Why don’t you head off and relax? You’ve been up since the crack of dawn.”

  “I’m actually wide awake, professor. You know what’s interesting? Chad used the bathroom at six thirty a.m.”

  “Why’s that interesting?”

  “Because that’s nearly the time he would be waking up any other day. And when you wake up, you always have to pee. So it’s interesting because he still had to pee at the same time, even though he didn’t sleep. It means his liver is pre-programed.”

  “It’s simply his body’s endogenous, entrainable oscillation acting on its twenty-four-hour rhythms.”

  “Say what, professor? English isn’t my first language, you know.”

  “His circadian clock, Penny. Endogenous means the daily rhythms are self-sustained. Entrained means they are adjusted to local environment factors such as light and temperature.”

  “So his circadian clock will adjust to his new environment?”

  “Certainly.”

  “He’ll start peeing at all crazy hours?”

  “He’ll go when he needs to. Not when his circadian clock tells him it’s the usual time to do so.”

  “Hey professor? Can I ask you something?”

  “You’re not thinking about shaving your head, are you?”

  “Huh?”

  “Fire away.”

  “So this morning I was reading on my phone about sleep experiments. I had a lot of time to kill, right? Anyway, I came across a sleep experiment in the Soviet Union last century…”

  Wallis smiled. “I was wondering when you or Guru were going to ask me about that.”

  She was referring to a paranormal legend that had been causing a stir on the internet the last few years. According to the most popular version of the tale, in the late 1940s, five political prisoners in the Soviet Union were offered their freedom if they participated in a government experiment in which they remained awake in a sealed environment for fifteen days—by breathing in an experimental gas-based stimulant.

  “Because, you know,” Penny said, “it sounds a lot like what we’re doing…”

  “I hope our gas isn’t as toxic as theirs was,” he said.

  “Is that a joke?”

  “The Russian Sleep Experiment is a legend, Penny. Complete fiction. What we’re doing is careful, calculated scientific research.”

  “But do you think something…so awful…could happen in real life?”

  “That remaining awake for an extended period of time could lead one to insanity, self-mutilation, murder, and cannibalism? What do you think, Penny?”

  “No,” she answered sheepishly. “It’s just that the story was so creepy. Maybe because I was here all by myself…”

  “My advice to you, Penny? Bring in a good novel to pass the time rather than looking up nonsense on the internet.”

  “Yeah, right, good idea.” She yawned. “Maybe I’m more tired than I thought.” She collected her backpack and stood. “You work so much, professor. What do you do in your free time?”

  “I have hobbies. I try to get to the gym every now and then.”

  “Berkeley is so empty now, right? It’s strange with no one around. All my friends went home to visit their families.”

  “I like the quiet. It’s peaceful.”

  Penny nodded but made no move to leave. “What I’m wondering is, maybe we can go out for dinner this week?”

  Dr. Wallis tried not to let his surprise show. Although he’d already concluded that Penny was attracted to him, he’d never imagined she would be so bold as to ask him on out for dinner! Yes, he’d dated Brandy when she was his student, but he’d been a lot younger then. He was nearly twice Penny’s age—a realization that depressed him enough to almost accept her invitation…almost.

  “That would be nice, Penny,” he said. “Except that I don’t finish my shift until ten o’clock, by which time I’m rather exhausted. But, ah…thank you for asking.”

  “Yeah, no sweat,” she said, her air a little too insouciant to be convincing. “I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”

  �
��Same time, same place.”

  She left then, easing the door closed behind her until the tongue clicked metallically in place.

  Her exit was not half as dramatic as Brandy’s door-slam the previous night, yet in the still basement room, the deliberately quiet action was somehow almost as emphatic.

  ◆◆◆

  Chad Carter didn’t know for certain how long he’d been cooped up in the sleep laboratory, but he reckoned it to be about one day or so now—and it already felt like a hell of a long time. Another nineteen or twenty days seemed like a bloody lifetime.

  Initially, when he and Shaz were contemplating whether to participate in this wacko experiment, three weeks hadn’t sounded too bad. But of course he hadn’t known then just how fucked up it would be remaining awake for hours and hours on end.

  He had pulled all-nighters before, of course, on more occasions than he could count. But it was different staying up around the clock when you were shitfaced and partying, compared to when you were sober as a judge with nothing to do but watch TV or work out or stare at the fucking wall.

  Man, it was hard to believe last year at this time he had been partying his ass off in Europe…and now he was a rat in a box. He’d departed Melbourne in March with his good mate from uni, Shane Eales. They landed in London, where Shane’s sister, Laura, worked for some marketing company. Laura had a lot of hot friends and connections, and on their first night on the town she took them to some posh club, all red leather and velvet, which featured glass fold-down trays in the bathroom cubicles not meant for holding drinks. Every time Chad went to the Men’s to take a slash, he heard snorts coming from the occupied stalls. He wouldn’t have minded doing a few lines himself, but he was on a budget that didn’t include blow.

  Later in that evening, Kelly Osbourne, daughter of the Prince of Darkness, arrived at the pub and had countless blokes literally lining up to talk to her. Chad didn’t get it. She wasn’t hot. She was a spoiled rich brat. But all these guys wanted to talk to her just because she was famous by virtue of her pop?

  Always the larrikin, Shane decided to chat her up during a rare moment she was alone at her table. He sat down next to her, cracked an ice breaker—and she turned her back to him. The shutdown became an ongoing joke between them for the rest of the night.

  Three days later they flew Ryanair to Spain, where they spent a few nights in Barcelona before heading to Pamplona. The small city was jam-packed with foreigners due to the annual festival Hemingway made famous in that book of his. There wasn’t a single bed in any hotel or hostel to be found, so the only option was to buy tents and camp out in a huge field alongside thousands of other revelers.

  It wasn’t hard to find Australians when you travelled. You simply followed the beer and the noise. Chad and Shane quickly hooked up with a group of about twenty fellow Aussies that had set up base around a shitty RV with a big Australian flag taped to one side, and the next few days were a haze of drinking, tossing around a rugby ball, sleeping off hangovers, barbequing, and fucking in tiny tents.

  Two days before the bulls were set to run, Shaz arrived at the field by herself. She had come to Europe with a friend, but the friend had returned to Perth. Shaz was easily the hottest in the ever-expanding group of Aussies, and Chad had tried his best that night to get some action, but she wasn’t game, telling him she had a boyfriend back home.

  The next morning, with everyone dressed in their whites with red sashes tied around their waists, they took a chartered bus into the city. The scene was fucking nuts. Streets and balconies packed with people. Everyone running around throwing sangria on everyone else.

  First order of business was to find beer, and by noon all two dozen or so Australians were smashed. Some Irish guy who’d ended up hanging out with them for much of the morning got so shit-faced he climbed a pole and leapt to his death. It wasn’t intentional. Other people were leaping from the top of the pole into the locked arms of those below, sort of how rock stars belly-flop off the stage into a mosh pit of fans. The poor Irish bloke, however, jumped before anyone was paying attention to him. He landed on his head and was whisked away by paramedics. They heard later through the grapevine that he had passed away in the hospital.

  Which, needless to say, was a major bummer and not exactly how you wanted to kick off a festival. But despite this, the rest of the day had come good, filled with drinking games, tapas, fights, and even conga lines. Most of those in their group passed out or returned to the field after dinner, but Chad and Shane kept partying throughout the night so they could secure spots along the fence that bordered the road which the bulls followed. Chad had planned to run, but that was before the Irish guy died, which had made the dangers of running with one-ton angry bulls a little more real and frightening.

  In any event, the whole run went by ridiculously quickly, from the opening horn to the last bull charging past him lasting no more than a few minutes.

  The following day the caravan of Aussies headed to Portugal, and Chad and Shaz went with them. They spent nearly three months traveling from small town to small town that lined the ocean, surfing and drinking and partying, until they broke up. The three blokes renting the RV were heading to Germany for Oktoberfest, while many of the others had already gone home or their separate ways. Sharon told Chad she wanted to see France, and for whatever reason (in the back of his mind he’d been thinking he could still get with her, boyfriend or no), he said he’d join her.

  He parted ways with Shane, who was happy to check out Oktoberfest, and he and Shaz took a bus to Bordeaux, where they spent the night in an ancient, rundown hotel (same room, different beds). In the morning they rented a car and drove through the French countryside all the way to Paris, which, up until that point, might have been the highlight of the trip. The Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre—all that shit you saw on TV was now right around every cobble-stoned corner.

  Chad and Shaz remained in Paris for a month…and maybe the romance of the city rubbed off on her, because she finally loosened up enough to make out with him one night, though she kept telling him “no” every time he tried to unbutton her jeans.

  But whatever. Making out was kind of fun in itself, and the juvenile foreplay went on for another month before Sharon told him she was going to book a plane ticket to California. She didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. She had to keep flying west on her around-the-world ticket. Chad’s return flight to Melbourne was in three weeks’ time, but he decided to fuck going home and booked a new ticket to California.

  Shaz didn’t exactly seem thrilled by this turn of events, and Chad figured it had something to do with her attraction for him warring with the guilt that came with cheating on her boyfriend.

  Regardless, he tagged along to Cali, and they found accommodation in a house in Los Angeles, which they shared with three other Aussies and one Canadian.

  LA quickly burned up whatever money they had left, so they both started looking for jobs. Sharon found work as a hostess at an Italian eatery, but Chad had a tougher time of it, eventually deciding to become a test subject for new drug trials. He participated in three clinical trials—two with the FDA and one with a pharmaceutical giant—before he came across the advert for the Sleep Experiment, which seemed like the motherlode of test trials.

  Stay awake for three weeks, get a shit load of money. What wasn’t there to love?

  Given the professor running the show was looking for two test subjects who knew one another but were not romantically involved, Chad convinced Shaz to apply alongside him while coaching her not to mention their on-and-off-again make-out sessions.

  And now here they were.

  One or two days into the experiment.

  Nineteen or twenty more to go.

  No mornings, noons, or nights. Nothing to provide guidance or structure to the day. Just one unending slog of Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, and all the other shit playing on Netflix.

  Chad lay back down on the workout bench and gripped the barbell
suspended above his chest. At least I’ll be in shape when this is all over, he thought, unracking the bar and performing the first of ten presses.

  ◆◆◆

  Dr. Roy Wallis was watching the Australians through the viewing window. Sharon was sitting on her bed, reading a hardback Rex Stout novel. Chad was lifting weights. He tapped the Talk button on the touch panel controller and asked, “How’s everybody doing?”

  Sharon glanced up sharply from the novel, apparently startled by the unexpected intrusion. “Hi, doc. You’re back?”

  “Enjoying the book?”

  “I really like the main character, Nero Wolfe. He’s a brilliant detective who solves every crime right from his living room. He never goes outside. He just stays locked up at home reading books.” She smiled sweetly. “Just like me right now, I guess.”

  “Perhaps I should bring you some orchids to tend for?” he said, referencing one of Nero Wolfe’s favorite hobbies.

  “Would you? That would be terrific.”

  Chad finished his series of reps, then sat up on the bench. “So we survived the first day, did we?”

  “Does that mean it’s about breakfast time?” Sharon asked.

  There was no clock in the sleep laboratory to discourage the Australians from keeping track of how long they’d been sequestered. Having them count down more than three hundred hours until the experiment’s end wouldn’t be a great morale booster.

  Dr. Wallis tapped the Talk button again. “You’ve been teaching Penny some interesting slang.”

  “She’s a quick learner!” Sharon said.

  “I was hoping we could try a couple of exercises today. If you’d like to eat first, go right ahead.”

  “What kind of exercises?”

  “The first one involves tongue-twisters.”

  “I love tongue-twisters! Let’s do it now. I’m really not that hungry anyway.”

  “All right then. Nothing to it but to repeat after me…”

  In total, Wallis recited six tongue-twisters, and Sharon repeated them all back with relative ease. Chad made a few more mistakes than she did, but Wallis attributed those to the complexity of the phrases, not any faltering mental capacity due to sleep deprivation.