Jules was nearly out the door when she spilled her to-go cup of coffee all over her pants and shoes. Not the best way to start the week, for sure.

She darted back inside, changed, grabbed her bag again, refilled her cup with whatever was still left in the pot — not even close to enough — then stepped onto the moving sidewalk down the street. Those extra minutes changing meant she’d have to use the left lane the whole way to the office.

 

There was no time to stand and leisurely review her appointments while sipping coffee. Not today. She shielded her eyes from the morning glare as the twin suns crept up above the skyline and breezed past the right-laners.

 

Jules arrived at the office on time, barely, regretting that she couldn’t even spare a mere 45 minutes for breakfast at her favorite cafe. She had prepared for her first meeting. It was a quick ninety-minute check-in with Dave, a direct report in Receiving. She’d have to keep him on track, as always. He was a decent guy, always great to work with, but all over the map. Hence the running agenda each time they met.

 

Next, she had her biweekly directors group. Luckily, this one was only three hours long. It devolved into one big gripe fest. She appreciated having a group like this where they could speak relatively freely — but come on! If she had to listen to Sanjay drone on about the lack of resources in his division one more time, or hear Seo-Jun whine about the new strategic plan, she’d lose it.

 

She had a mere one-hour break before back-to-back meetings with Finance and Marketing, ninety minutes each. She hadn’t prepared for those. Since the Finance Director was new and the Marketing one was interim, she had easily faked her way through both.

Her one-to-one with Kelly immediately followed and should have been rescheduled again. It had been on their calendars for a month.

 

Then, it was time for lunch. She refused to give the company the satisfaction of eating while at her desk, pretending not to work. She had done that most of her career as a junior director, to show everyone she was a go-getter and could perform just as well as the seniors. Ever since her promotion last year, she was done with that. She now intentionally did zero work during her two-and-a-half hour lunch break. As. She. Should. Instead, she ate, read, went to the gym, showered, hit that appointment with her primary care geneticist, then went back to the office.

 

The four-hour holo seminar after lunch was a bit of a bore but she didn’t have any active role and drifted in and out of the conversation. The last four hours were blocked off for client relations, onboarding new hires, dealing with that tool from Accounting, addressing the so-called “Logistics Problem,” and trying to make peace with HR over that hiring snafu from last month. No small task there, she thought.

 

After work, she ran errands for a few hours, followed by a quick pit stop home when she dropped off groceries and walked the dog. Then, off to the twins’ game. This particular game usually took no more than five hours — six tops — since it was against a team they clobbered twice before, but this time it took close to seven. After that, they went home for dinner, had a playdate with one of the kiddos from Drama Club (like there wasn’t enough drama raising pre-teens already!), and did a few hours of schoolwork. Finally, they relaxed and watched a vid together on the holo.

 

After that, bedtime for the twins before book group. She hosted this time so she wouldn’t have to get a sitter and call an Autodrive. Added bonus: the twins’ bedroom was down the hall so the noise never bothered them. Jules hadn’t actually read the book she and others covered that night but had heard it was good. She had debated whether to just look over an AI summary beforehand, so she could pretend to follow along, but was torn over the ethics of it.

 

After book group it was definitely time for B-E-D. Sure, she had read for two or three hours before actually going to sleep so she wouldn’t have to pretend for the next book group, but she figured she could get maybe twelve to fourteen hours of rest if she was lucky. It wasn’t enough, but it was the best she could do. It would all start up again the next day.

 

She would have liked to have been more productive but she wasn’t in her twenties anymore. Plus, as a single parent it wasn’t as easy as it used to be when she was just, well, single. Either way, there were still only sixty hours in a day.

 

The following morning, Jules was up before the second dawn, on the treadmill for a couple of hours while watching the news on the holo. There was a piece with some scientists talking about the history of the planet, and how the suns, all three moons, and tides affected the length of the day. It was something about how the gravitational pull of the moons created bulges, causing high tides, but with solar and thermal gravitational pulls also creating bulges. All these bulges would then pull against each other, causing the rotation of the planet to slow down.

 

She was only half-listening, knowing she’d have to get the twins up in an hour or two and get them ready for yet another fourteen hours of school. She did hear one of the scientists say that, if things had gone differently a few billion years ago and if different forces canceled each other out, the rotation would’ve gradually sped up and days might have only been about twenty to twenty-four hours long.

 

Twenty-four hours!, she thought. Can you imagine that?

 

Who could possibly get anything done in just twenty-four hours?