Down the hall from a now sleeping Emily, Claire and Anne were working on their homework. Claire was writing a paper for her English class- Anne was answering what felt like ten zillion questions about observing insects.

Her Yeerk, Iftran 392, insisted it was only two hundred and thirty two.

Next semester, no science classes, the Yeerk told Anne sternly.

As though I need to be told this! This is worse than… She trailed off.

Than high school science?

Definitely. No comparison between the two. Anne turned to her roommate.

"Yo, Claire?"

"Yeah, Anne?" she questioned, still typing her paper.

"This stinks. I mean, it really stinks. Do you know what time it is?"

"What time?" Claire's fingers were still typing away busily at the keyboard.

"2:45. In the morning. Unless it's a weekend, we shouldn't be up so late."

"And if we were, we'd be doing something fun, not writing these annoying papers," Claire agreed, eyes not leaving the keyboard. "Or doing insane amounts of reading, or…"

She was interrupted by the phone.

"Hello? Yeah, it's Ted. What's up? No, we're still away…I mean, awake." Then she laughed. "Okay, that too. How's the paper coming along? Two and a half pages…that's great. Oh, it's supposed to be ten? When's it due? Aw, Sue, you've got loads of time. Yeah, Anne's here. She's fine, but she's stressed out about her ants…okay, I'll tell her." Claire turned to Anne. "Merl says to flush 'em down the toilet."

"But I like ants!" Anne protested.

Claire rolled her eyes and continued on the phone; "No, I think Emily went to bed. Oh, I see. Okay. Well, look, Merl, I need to write five more pages by ten o'clock tomorrow morning…I have three so far, so...Yeah, I have a thesis. I just need to evolve it. Okay, I'll let you in. 'Bye!" She frowned. "Did I just say, 'evolve it'? I'm going crazy!"

"What did she want?" questioned Anne, having finished question number one hundred and ninety-eight and now starting one hundred and ninety-nine.

What I find amusing is that you didn't even ask who it was, Iftran laughed.

How could I not know? She said "Sue" and called her "Merl." You don't get many of those around here.

I know, I just find it amusing that you can concentrate on both things at once.

Anne shrugged. Let's just get this finished, okay? I want to get at least fifty more done by tomorrow, given that the whole thing is due on Wednesday.

I should have made you drop out of college, Iftran laughed.

"Anne?"

Anne snapped out of her "reverie." "Did you say something?"

"Yeah. A couple of things, actually. Talking with Iftran again?"

"She wants me to drop out of…I did not say that!" the Yeerk interrupted, taking control of the vocal chords. "I merely said that I should have made her drop out. As a joke." Seeing Claire's puzzled look, Iftran added, "Out of college."

She then released control.

Claire laughed. "I think we're all going to be in danger of losing whatever sanity we have or of dropping/failing out before we graduate. The workload is insane."

"Um, Claire…you're the one who's taking five credits!" Anne retorted.

"Yeah, but just four of the classes are real ones. The other two don't really count."

I believe your roommate is crazy, Iftran observed.

I've noticed. But then again, so am I.

I have noticed that, Iftran laughed.

"Anyway, what did Merl want?"

"She wanted to know if Emily was here. She came by around 10 for a little, but that's it. She's probably asleep. You know how her Yeerk is."

Anne nodded. "A regular mom, that one. Probably sent her to sleep as soon as she left for her dorm. Did Susan say what she wanted?"

"Just that they were coming over to do homework. She can't concentrate in her room. Too much noise from the hall and all." She glanced at her unfinished paper again. "I still have nearly five pages to write on this."

"I'll let her in, you do your paper. I have until Wednesday to finish this junk, and a few minutes isn't going to make a big difference." She got up, yawned, and head out of the room.

The hall was silent, even more silent than usual. She could hear a faint jingling of keys and knew it was one of the RAs, checking to make sure no one was drinking, vandalizing the bathroom or the halls, or basically harming themselves or the campus in any way. (The campus came first.)

A few minutes later, Merl was approaching the dorm.

"Hey," Anne greeted as she opened the door.

"Hey, Nerd," Susan replied, using her pet name for Anne's man name. "How are the ants?"

"They're all right. It's the homework that I want to flush down the toilet," Anne/Nerd grumbled. "And your paper?"

"Well, I have stuff written, but I need a thesis."

"Claire's got the opposite problem."

"We should combine them," Susan laughed.

They headed up the stairs.

"Hey, Merl," Claire greeted, not looking up from her paper. "Sorry, I'm at this really good part…"

Susan smiled. "Grab hold of the inspiration, Claire. We all could use it."

Anne flopped down on the floor. "What we could use is sleep."

"Dude. I think all of us combined got maybe enough sleep this week for one person. If that." Claire's eyes and fingers didn't leave the keyboard as she spoke.

"This time of year, the professors go crazy. So does everyone. There's, like, all this stuff to do in the next few weeks, and it should have been done over the past three months or so," Susan sighed.

"Even Emily looks like she hasn't gotten a lot of sleep lately," Anne noted as she retrieved her science questions. Then sighed. "And you know her…she's the one who says she'd rather fail than pull an all-nighter."

"Looks like we're doing both," replied Claire. "It's crazy."

Just then, there was a knock on the door.