Punctuality Problems

"The important thing is the educational experience itself — how to survive it." — Donald Barthelme

Cori woke up to a high and whiny sound filling her cluttered dormitory room. She rolled out of bed and grabbed her Student Information Device (SID). A sort of planner, organizer, and alarm clock economically packaged into a hand-held device the size of a small novel; University standard issue.

"Ugh," she said. Today is not a day I want to be woken up early by imminent annoyance, she thought, Starting the week exhausted is not the way to go.

Cori hit a button on the side of the device; the sound ceased. The SID display read, "WARNING: Temporal Disturbance. Local time altered. Low battery: change soon." She turned off the SID and quickly glanced at her clock: "1:20 PM." Her heart nearly skipped a beat. Her only Monday class, Genetic Engineering 253 Making Friends: Technique & Practice, started in ten minutes — on the other side of campus. Cori snatched up her things and started sprinting.

It's trouble if students are late for afternoon classes because morning didn't happen, thought Cori. One day isn't enough time to recover from Saturday's Fiasco Science Fair. I'm certainly not, and yesterday, people were still picking shrapnel out of their clothing.

Cori absently dodged through the normal campus hazards: High Energy & Entropy lab exhaust pipes, ambulatory vending machines, and the occasional crater. She vaguely remembered some of the new ones as she crossed the quad— it was all a bit foggy, she had awakened quite confused in the Student Health Center late Saturday afternoon.

What kind of sick person skips over Monday morning? she thought, There's nothing inherently bad about it. It's just unpopular because it comes after Sunday night.

Quickly glancing up at the University clock, Cori noticed the clock read Sunday, not Monday. Double-checking against her SID, she sighed. She was about twenty-four hours early.

"Not again," moaned Cori. Still, she couldn't remember what was the official policy for repeated days?