Late, late at night, you can hear the city breathing in and out. All its dreams and darknesses pulsing back and forth, pushing softly against your thoughts, trying to nestle into a corner of your mind.

Even later, in the transition between very late and very early, you can smell the futility and madness of civilization and humanity drifting in from the north. It blows over the city and drowns itself in the bay. Before sunrise, the last traces are extinct. Nobody gets the stench in the morning, and that’s how we can all keep going.

This, kids, is what happens to people who don’t sleep.