Hello friends and welcome to Sleep Tight Stories. Blue has woken up very early for no reason at all and cannot think of anything to do except go into Red's room and get her phone. It is Saturday so everyone is still asleep and Blue decides this is the perfect opportunity to cause some chaos. He moves silently down the hall and gets closer to Red's door, which is unlocked. The Chronicles of Blue The Trap Blue woke up at 5.47am for no reason he could immediately identify. He lay there for a second, waiting to see if his brain was going to hand him something useful. This happened sometimes. He'd be deep in a dream that was really just a math problem wearing a dream costume and he'd surfaced just long enough to write down the solution before going back to sleep. His brain didn't really rest, it just changed subjects. He'd look this up once, the sleep science stuff, and the earth research on it was interesting but also clearly written by people who had never actually experienced a brain that refused to stop working. Most humans consolidate memories during sleep, said one study, very confidently. Blue had found this adorable. He waved his hand near the side table and his lamp clicked on. Not the same as Mars. On Mars, the habitat lighting would gently brighten when it detected you waking up, like it was easing you into consciousness on purpose. Here, you just hit a switch like an animal, but it worked. He got dressed, comfy clothes, Saturday. He stood in the middle of his room for a moment thinking. His door was probably unlocked. Blue liked to think of himself as a person of discipline and focus. He also liked to think of himself as someone who, when presented with an obvious opportunity, took it. These two things were not always in conflict. He went into ninja mode. Heard meant socks only, no shoes. Wait on the outside edge of each foot, avoid the third board from the bathroom, the squeaky one, and breathe through your nose. Blue had never actually met a ninja, but he'd read extensively about the subject and was confident he had the general idea. He made it to Red's door without a sound, tried the handle, and it opened. Red's room was, as always, a disaster. Not a chaotic disaster, more of an organized chaos where Red knew exactly where everything was, but the organization was invisible to anyone else. Blue's room had visible organization, labeled logical. Red's room looked like the aftermath of something. Books everywhere, notebooks open to random pages, a half-finished diagram on her desk that Blue had glanced at once, and recognized as a protein folding problem she'd been working on for two weeks. He didn't understand how she thought in here. He also didn't mention this because it would start a whole long conversation ending in nothing conclusive. There, her phone on the desk. She told him once that she'd started leaving it across the room so she had to physically get up to turn the alarm off. Something about discipline. Blue had nodded very seriously and filed this information away immediately. He tiptoed across the room. He was three steps from the desk when the lights came on. All of them, full brightness, and then a sound, a small mechanical click from somewhere near the desk. And Blue looked up, directly into the lens of a small camera mounted to Red's bookshelf, which was at that exact moment taking his picture. He stood very still. Got you. Red was already sitting up in bed, fully dressed. She had been lying there in her actual clothes, under the covers, waiting. She looked extremely pleased with herself. I knew, Blue said immediately. You did not know. I absolutely knew I came in here on purpose. To do what exactly? Blue looked at her phone on the desk, then back at Red, to tell you something. What were you going to tell me? He thought very fast that breakfast is important and we should make waffles. Red stared at him for a long moment. The camera on the bookshelf sat there being smug. Stinky head, Blue added with dignity. Red laughed. She actually tried not to, which made it better. How long have you had that thing? Blue asked, looking at the camera. Two weeks. She got up and pulled her hair back, since you changed my alarm to that foghorn sound. That was funny. It went off at four in the morning, Blue. Still funny. He looked at the camera again, with genuine professional respect. Ten-sensor? Pressure pad under the rug, actually, from the desk to the door. Blue looked down at the rug. That's pretty good. I know. He wanted to ask more about the pressure pad, but decided this was not the moment. I'm still going to get your phone. I know you're going to try. They went downstairs. Their mother was still asleep, which on Saturdays was the natural order of things. Blue got out the waffle iron. Red found the battering ingredients and started measuring without being asked. Which Blue noted was probably why she was better at cooking than him. She actually followed the steps in order, which was boring, but effective. I've been reading Father's Old Physics journals. Red said cracking an egg. Blue looked up. Which ones? The theoretical ones he left in the bottom of the study box. Quantum field stuff mostly. There's one paper he co-wrote in. She checked her memory about 11 years ago on vacuum energy fluctuations. Blue was quiet for a second. I didn't know those were there. Neither did I until last week. Red stirred the batter. Some of it is pretty advanced, even for me. She said it plainly, not embarrassed. Red was good at knowing what she didn't know yet. Blue poured the first waffle. What's the part you got stuck on? The renormalization section. He's using a regularization approach I've only seen once before, and the notation is... It's not wrong. It's just unusual. Like he developed it himself. He probably did, Blue said. He did that. I know, read Watch the Waffle Iron. I was thinking about the vacuum energy problem, though. The paper assumes the fluctuations are symmetrical. They're not. I know they're not. That's what I'm saying. So either he knew and was simplifying for the paper or... Or the model breaks at the boundary condition, Blue said. He was already thinking. Did he account for the boundary? Reds led him a notebook. She'd already been working on it. Three pages of calculations. Her handwriting getting faster and less tidy toward the bottom, where she'd been really moving. Blue read through it while the waffle cooked. He picked up a pen without asking. She didn't say anything. This was how they sometimes were when nobody was performing anything for anybody. Just two Martian kids in a two green earth town eating waffles at six in the morning, working through their father's old math. Blue found the problem in her third page. Here, you're carrying the asymmetry through, but you dropped a term in the third line. Red leaned over, looked at it, made a small annoyed sound that meant he was right. Fix that and the back half probably resolves, Blue said. Probably, Red said. They ate the first waffle standing at the counter, passing the notebook back and forth. The second waffle they ate at the table. By the third one, they had filled another two pages and were arguing about whether their father's conclusion still held if you corrected for the dropped term, which Blue said it didn't and Red said it mostly did and they were both probably a little bit right. Outside, the sun was coming up over all that green. Neither of them mentioned it. And that is the end of our story. Good night. Sleep tight.
