Travis Barnes always woke up 16 minutes before his alarm clock sounded. Every weekday morning at 4:14, his eyes opened. He lay motionless until 4:29. He wasn’t sure if he had conditioned himself to do this or whether the implant dictated his actions even at this early hour. He gazed up at the ceiling of his room at the halfway house, savoring the last few minutes of repose he would have until long after the sun set that night. He thought he noticed a new crack forming near the corner above his head, but he couldn’t be sure. After so many months in the program, the days had begun to run together. There was little sense in paying attention to such minutiae.
As he counted down the minutes, Travis tried not to think about the sequence of events that landed him in this mess. Nevertheless, the memory always returned, eating up valuable seconds of his vanishing downtime. Like with the alarm clock. Travis couldn’t tell if it was his own guilty conscience or the implant that dredged up the memory every morning. The program’s administrators refused to explain the details.
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