She knew that even a few hours of deep sleep would heighten her senses and sharpen her acumen for the night to come. But the night to come was akin to the night before Christmas, and she couldn’t wait to open her presents. She tossed and turned as she planned and plotted. Her ocImps suddenly began projecting a small, subtle globe that appeared two feet directly above her darkened, still closed eyes. The globe was adorned with a pleasant-looking smile, and as the orb began to pulsate with a regular cadence—brighter and brighter—the smile widened. The pulsations continued to increase in intensity; a yellow-hued wake-up call that Sindhu had set five hours earlier—except that Sindhu didn’t need to wake up. Disgustedly, she opened her eyes, reached in front of her, grabbed the virtual orb-alarm and tossed it as far as she could. The anthropomorphized orb winced as it virtually bounced off several objects around her room before hitting the corner of her desk and fizzling away like a popped balloon.
