Dreams of Sleeping Beauty
   
    Above her feet sat the stained surface of Dromena’s desk. Yet the surface could not be seen. Over the years, layers upon layers of papers and pens had created a fossil record of her activities. Through the years Dromena was forced to get chairs that could rise to meet the surface of her mountainous desk .
    At the very top of the pile was a series of papers she’d written on the history of fairytales. Each was perfectly scribed with flourishing handwriting, for what was the point in doing such productive work without the proper inkage?
    Dromena found her eyes drawn constantly to the same book with an unfinished piece on it. She had kept it aside, finding the subject matter rather peculiar.
    Now it was the time to return to this very book, so she lifted it to her center of focus and stared at the name.
    Sleeping Beauty. What a peculiar name…. In Dromena’s mind there was nothing beautiful in the idea of sleep. It was an enigma, perhaps, but nothing more. The constant but steady belief in this matter had been instilled in her mind from youth.
    Scanning the tale, Dromena found herself shaking her head. It was an odd story of a girl who, because of a curse, slept for a hundred years.
    How could a girl sleep for an hour, let alone one hundred years?
    Dromena craved the caffeine not because it gave her energy but because it prevented the one taboo idea of her society: being unproductive. Almost a century ago, a scientist had solved the human flaw- the tendency to be lazy. Surely there was a point to humanity’s existence, and the only way to find it was to be useful.
    Through time, the concept of procrastination and the taking of breaks were removed from civilization. Humanity benefited greatly from it. Diseases were cured in record time and puzzles solved. Yet there was still something bothering the suddenly driven humans.
    1/3 of the ancients’ lives were spent asleep. It was their demon and fatal flaw- giving into tiredness. So certainly the key to being productive was giving up sleep. Decades ago, scientists set to work to vanquish the last enemy of humanity and managed to do so, providing energy to future generations through chemical means.
    Thus, the productive new humans accomplished even more. They were able to specialize in the most incredible fields, and the education system expanded in order to put youths to the full extent of their productivity.
    Without time to rest, there was time to work. And when there was time to work, then one could be useful in society.
    Dromena knew the early humans slept. They spent nearly half their days asleep. But until this assignment she had picked up to show extra productiveness, she had never imagined being able to sleep for such a long time.
    What happens when one is asleep?
    Her active eyes drew down to the text of the ancient tomb and froze at a single word.
    Dream.
    “ What is a dream?” Dromena pondered out loud. Her feet thumped into the ground, and she frowned and felt a tickling notion in her head. She knew this word, perhaps had even seen it before.
    The synapses in her mind snapped quickly and Dromena shot up. Her body bounced swiftly over to the screen at her wall, and she stopped before it. The cool surface met her fingers, as she looked the word up.
    In order to be productive humans needed technology to aid their quest. Books and writing were mostly obsolete, with preferable typing and voice oration used. Yet Dromena found herself enhanced by the feeling of a stylus in one hand and the sight of ink dancing across a piece of parchment.
    Her habit had been tolerated as long as she could do the same work as her classmates in the same given time. So Dromena was forced to use more caffeine and chemicals to keep her hands constantly awake.
    In front of her, the screen lit up with words that hardly fit the story of Sleeping Beauty. The words spoke of determination to make dreams a reality. But what did Sleeping Beauty dream of? Did she wake and set out to make her dreams real?
    The story ended with a prince kissing the sleeping princess and carrying her away on a fabled happily ever after, a constant theme to the fairytales, Dromena noticed.
    Her fingers moved of their own accord while Dromena thought this over. Yet her eyes snapped into focus as sharp colors filled her visions. Dromena’s lips fell open, in shock, from the sight before her.
    She had seen paintings before. Dromena had seen paintings made to make the viewer think about the subject matter and find a deeper meaning. She had seen paintings that were windows into a dark and tragically unproductive past. But Dromena had never seen a painting like this one before.
    The colors seemed to swirl together, delicately, so as if to dance. They looked alive, but there was a particular mystic way to how they bowed into each other. Spritely yellows that were bright enough to keep Dromena awake from their glare were subdued by mellow shades of black and grey.
    Although the shades and hues did dance, they also seemed to give into each, creating a waterfall effect of ease and trust. The word hit Dromena gently before blowing off an invisible weight before her. In her world trust wasn’t a companion- competition promoted productivity, and trust wasn’t an element of her type of competition.
    Stepping back from her world, Dromena found herself entranced. It was as if the painting before her was meant to suck the caffeine and the life from her, and replace them with a sensation that made Dromena sway gently back and forth.
    Her eyes fluttered slightly, and suddenly it seemed as though Dromena’s legs could not bear the weight of her body.
    “ Have the pills worn off already?” she mumbled beneath her breath. The instinct, one pushed and prodded into her mind since youth, kicked in, forcing Dromena to avert her gaze from the painting that lit up her screen and turn to her desk.
    A pile of work waited, and in fear of the painting’s affect, Dromena kept the thick tomb of fairytales aside, in her mind and on her desk. As she turned to the next piece of work lying on her mountainous desk, there was nonetheless an inkling of hope that she’d somehow manage to find her way back to the tale of Sleeping Beauty.

    Some human instincts were unproductive. Laziness and a tendency toward a lack of focus were just two of the many that had been cured ages before Dromena’s time. One human instinct that was deemed to aid the quest for ultimate productivity was curiosity. It promoted a drive that was genetically embedded in humans- to search for answers.
    It was this very drive that plagued Dromena for days to follow. In classes she found her mind crawling away from the complex lectures and education system back to that night. While her hands scribbled down page-long proofs, her mind settled on the image of that surreal painting.
    Her eyes seemed to buzz, only gently at first, but with a tempestuous fury as Dromena recalled the fairy-like dance of the colors. Her eyelids, which seemed to be glued to the indent in her skull since birth, would lower as the image engulfed her mind, rapidly at first but slowly as Dromena fell under its trance.
    Although the paper on fairytales was turned in ages ago, Dromena held onto the tome of fairytales. Physically it was somewhere in the mountain of her work and desk. Yet mentally it was like fallen snow- constantly finding its way to the top of her many worries and obligations.
    A girl who slept for a hundred years…. The idea itched, in Dromena’s suddenly tumultuous mind. Guilt pricked in her mind as she recalled researching sleep.
    To the ancients, it was used to gain energy in order to manage the next day. Sleep wasn’t just an activity to keep idle- to be lazy and unproductive. Rather, sleeping was vital in staying alive; without it the ancients would have died.
    Sleep was a flaw, Dromena thought to herself. Not once in her life did she have a single recollection of ever sleeping. Instead memories of energy pills and yearly visits to get a new deposit for them filled Dromena’s mind.
    In the texts, from years ago, she dug deeper, practically tearing through the layers of snow-like material time had worn upon her world. It was simple enough to find papers or essays on why sleep wasn’t needed, yet it was harder to find writing on dreams.
    The idea of a dream plagued her. It refused to fall into the layers of Dromena’s life and somehow always made its way to the top of her attention. Now, as she mindlessly sat in class, listening to a lecture on the stars, dreams rose up and up and up. The topic refused to sit down, and left an uncomfortable burn in Dromena’s gut.
    Yet just as her mind turned this idea over, tasting the delicate trails sleep and dreams left in Dromena’s mind, a shrill bell rang. As her classmates rose to hand in their notes before the next class began, Dromena remained seated.
    She had one thought in her mind: guilt.
    She was neither an ancient like Sleeping Beauty nor did she desire sleep. No, Dromena was raised to be a perfect productive member of society- she was born to give back and to take in everything offered in her direction. Dromena was not meant to sit in class and- and- and
    The word hit her- brushing up to her face slowly like a kind summer breeze before ripping away her sense of comfort like an icy winter gust. Daydream. She had spent an entire hour thinking about fantasies, and in that hour, Dromena built many beautiful castles up in the sky. But they were clouds- and clouds always fall apart.
    Instead of producing tangible results with her time, Dromena had chosen to perform an activity that yielded nothing. A hot flush rose up her cheeks as she realized she wasn’t productive- that she could not be productive without facing the truth.
    Dromena could not avoid dreams or sleep: they would keep finding their way back to the top of her mind. And the itch in her mind wasn’t going to leave, unless she chose to face the truth of the matter.
    She was curious. It was coded in Dromena’s genes for her to feel the slow delicious burn of pandora’s curse. And humans needed in all senses some kind of answer to quell the itch of curiosity. So Dromena looked up and knew what she had to do.
    She had to find a way to experience that surreal images. She had to dream! But in order to dream, Dromena first had to fall asleep.

    Productivity in its heart could make anything seem possible. It could even make finding a way to avoid the pills possible. Although the government regulated whether someone consumed his or her pills, to prevent sleep, they did not check if the correct person consumed his or her pills.
    A week after discovering the tome on the tale of Sleeping Beauty, Dromena fed her dog the two bright orange energy pills she was supposed to take every night. After telling her parents good night, and watching them head to the library in their house for more work, Dromena walked with a high head to her room.
    Her dog did not have the same digestive acids, and the government would discover her crime. But there was no other way- simply the drills to be efficient and productive that instilled in her mind since youth would not work on this matter. Society ensured that there was no way to avoid the pills without notice.
    Dromena locked her door, and quietly shoved her desk in front of it. Pieces of paper and notebooks fell from its surface as it finally stopped. She had hours and the strangest feeling started to engulf her mind.
    The usual tinkering feeling to her thoughts began to slow and Dromena’s foot stopped its rhythm as she lay down on the ground of her room. She was committing a crime- she was going against everything society stood for. Dromena was going to be unproductive, and she didn’t know the cost for this. The only things she knew, was the sudden numbing sensation that crawled languidly through her mind.
    Slowly, as all matters related to the subject of sleep come, her muscles relaxed and her breathing evened. Dromena could feel her heart, which usually beat so fast that she often thought it’d explode from her chest, slow. For the first time in her life, Dromena shut her eyes, not from her own accord but from the pressure coming down on her mind.
    It swept through, not like the pills galloping in her blood, but gently as though sprinkling a layer of carefully made snowflakes on her mind. Dromena could feel the sensation lap at her, gently and easily; and she felt herself unable to stop it.
    For a moment she was terrified; if this was sleep, then it was uncharted territory where she didn’t have control. Something in her mind screamed for her to shake this feeling off, but something in her heart hummed and slowed with ease.
    There was a moment when the blackness of Dromena’s eyelids filled with light, and then the world was gone.
    In his twenty years working with the Department of Regulation for Enervation Maladies or DREAM, Cervantes Laevinius had never seen the beacon indicating that someone had not consumed his/her energy pills. So when the beacon went off, in the middle of the night when he was forced to take a night shift, he first checked the dusty technology. And when it wasn’t malfunctioning, Cervantes had to change into his uniform and read over the procedure for this type of malady.
    As he headed to the house of Dromena Stronach, Cervantes wondered why a girl with such an impeccable record would forget to take her pills. The only blemish, if it could count as a blemish, was the fact that every single one of her professors had noted that she wrote out her papers and notes- something seen as a slight to the decree on productive classroom behavior.
    Yet, that wasn’t enough to warrant avoiding the pills. As he knocked on the door to the house, Cervantes glanced up at the front, noticing that the left most room did not have a light on.
    The thought snuck up on him, and Cervantes felt as though the world had turned over. He wasn’t prepared for this- only once in his training was there any mentioning of this- this complete and utter offense.
    Suddenly, he pounded on the door, and a woman with wide eyes and hair pinned back opened the door. Flashing his badge at her, Cervantes headed up the stairs and to the door of the room.
    The penalty for unproductive classroom techniques was a minor report, but the penalty for something as extreme as what he suspected Dromena Stronach was doing- well, it was death.
    So Cervantes, unable to open the door, had no choice but to call his force before removing the hinges and pushing the desk placed in front of it aside. He could hear sirens blaring outside, as he flipped the lights on and froze at the sight before him.
    Dromena Stronach, the same girl whose image he carelessly glanced at minutes ago, was on the ground. Her body stretched out across it horizontally- something Cervantes had never seen before. Her eyes, unlike the wide bright blue ones in the photo, were closed.
    But her body wasn’t rigid or struck with pain. Looking closely, Cervantes could see that her muscles had relaxed and her ink-stained hands were loose by her sides. He came close to the girl and sat down on the ground, noticing that her lips were parted slightly and her hair spread out behind her like a fire.
    He didn’t need to look behind to the doorframe to see the girls’ parents, but Cervantes remembered one thing- something that could crush them. Twenty long years ago he discovered in class the price for not taking the energy pills when his best friend forgot to.
    Someone so young certainly did not deserve death. Glancing around her room, Cervantes could see the trail. Curiosity had taken another from the world, and his eyes stopped on the tome of fairytales beside her body.
    “ Perhaps no mortal is meant to know what Sleeping Beauty dreams of.”
    There was beauty to this stillness, but there was something even more beautiful to the fantasy that rose before Dromena. Behind her, her mortal world was collapsing into pieces as society faced the brutal inhumane truth that curiosity: their god was wicked. Yet in front of her rose an image of surreal dancing colors and brightness that seemed to embrace Dromena’s figure.  So she stepped forward, unaware of where she was going, but no longer feeling the pressure of curiosity and her society’s burdens. Her heart didn’t seem to explode, and there was something spectacular to the stillness of Dromena’s hands. Simply Dromena stepped forward, into the unknown, not knowing anything but that a dream awaited her.