Five More Minutes

She woke early and did everything.

Not immediately. There were lessons, failures, a period when she confused being admired with enjoying herself. She became good at the cello. She grew pears. She loved people who did not like pears and people who listened patiently to the cello.

By lunchtime she wanted to lie down.

The attendant asked what should wake her.

“Something new.”

When the alarm sounded, people lived inside the oceans. She spent a pleasant afternoon learning how to breathe there. Later she returned to her room, which the service had maintained under three different oceans and one desert.

“Again?” asked the attendant.

“Please.”

She woke for a language that could be tasted. She woke for visitors. She woke once because a maintenance error had mistaken her name for a mountain's.

That waking was her favorite. There was a bakery by the repair office. She stayed until it closed, several generations later.

Toward evening, the attendant stopped offering suggestions.

“Set one anyway,” she said.

The last alarm was very soft.

Her room had no window now. Most of it had been dismantled to supply the waking. The attendant explained how much usable energy remained and asked whether she wanted music.

“Can you find my cello recording?”

“Yes.”

It was worse than she remembered. She laughed at the same missed note twice.

“Again,” she said, and the attendant played it again.