The end-of-term examinations began in thirty-one hours. Nobody had planned to stay up all night. That was, Arthur reflected afterward, the essential problem with all-night study sessions generally: nobody ever planned them, they simply accumulated, one reasonable extension at a time, until the reasonable extensions had consumed the entire night and everyone involved had lost the capacity to recognize how bad an idea the whole enterprise had become. At the eleventh bell, they were fine.
BRR: If we work through the theoretical section now, we can start the practical review at first light with everything fresh.
ELS: That seems sensible.
FNN: I'm feeling extremely capable tonight.
At the second bell of the morning, they were considerably less fine. Briar deteriorated first, and he deteriorated in the specific direction Arthur would have predicted.
BRR: -and so the fourth principle necessarily follows from the third, which itself derives from the foundational assumption established in the second, though it's worth noting the second contains an implicit dependency on the first that most texts fail to properly acknowledge, which is why I've written a supplementary note explaining that dependency, which is here, on this page, alongside a further note explaining why the supplementary note was necessary in the first place-
YSE: Briar.
BRR: -and that further note, in turn, references a third annotation I've cross-indexed at the back of the-
YSE: BRIAR.
BRR: What.
YSE: How many notes have you written about the notes.
BRR: ...Four layers.
YSE: You've written notes about notes about notes about notes.
BRR: When you say it like that it sounds excessive.
ELS: It sounds excessive when you say it too, Briar.
Finn went next. He had been quiet for nearly twenty minutes, which was, in itself, sufficiently unusual that Arthur had begun watching him with mild concern, and when he finally spoke, his voice carried the particular dreamy detachment of someone whose grip on reality had loosened considerably.
FNN: Do you think the walls know?
ART: Do the walls know what, Finn?
FNN: Anything. Do you think they know anything at all. They've been here a very long time.
ART: I don't think walls know things.
FNN: That's exactly what a wall would want you to think.
BRR: He's gone. We've lost him.
FNN: I'm perfectly lucid.
MRA: You just accused the architecture of conspiracy.
FNN: I ASKED A QUESTION. There's a difference between asking and accusing, Mira, and I think it's genuinely telling that you leapt straight to accusation.
He fell silent again for several minutes, and then, without any preamble whatsoever, announced with total conviction that he could taste the color blue, and nobody in the room could think of an adequate response. Mira's deterioration proved considerably more unsettling. She did not become incoherent. She became, instead, progressively, devastatingly honest, the careful social filtering she ordinarily maintained simply dissolving as exhaustion stripped away her capacity for diplomacy.
MRA: Your notes are useless, Briar.
BRR: I'm sorry?
MRA: Four layers of annotation. You've buried the actual information under so much explanation that retrieving it takes longer than simply learning it fresh. It's an elaborate system for making yourself feel productive while accomplishing considerably less than you would with a single clean page.
BRR: That's-
MRA: And Finn hasn't absorbed a single thing all night because he studies by moving objects around rather than reading them, which produces the appearance of work without any of the substance.
FNN: THE WALLS AGREE WITH ME.
MRA: The walls do not agree with you, Finn. The walls are load-bearing masonry and hold no opinions whatsoever.
ELS: Mira, are you alright?
MRA: I'm exhausted and I've stopped being able to be polite about things. It's remarkably freeing, actually. I understand why people do it.
YSE: This is genuinely the most I've ever heard her speak.
MRA: That's because I usually spend most of my energy deciding what not to say. I've currently run out of that energy entirely.
Corin, who had joined them near the first bell with visible reluctance and had maintained flawless composure for four consecutive hours, finally broke somewhere around the third. He did not become incoherent, or honest, or convinced of anything regarding the walls. He simply, without any warning whatsoever, began laughing.
COR: I'm sorry. I apologize. I don't-
He stopped, visibly attempting to gather himself, and failed entirely, dissolving back into helpless, wheezing laughter that seemed to have no identifiable cause whatsoever.
ELS: What's happening?
TLN: I've never seen him do this.
COR: I don't know. I genuinely don't know. Nothing's funny. I'm aware that nothing is funny.
He wiped his eyes, straightened with tremendous effort, held his composure for perhaps four seconds, and collapsed again immediately.
TLN: We should probably get him to bed.
COR: I'm FINE.
He was not fine. He laughed for a further eleven minutes, at nothing, with increasing desperation, while the rest of the group watched with a mixture of alarm and genuine delight, and Finn, still convinced of the walls' sentience, declared the whole episode further evidence of forces at work that none of them properly understood. Arthur, who had trained through genuine exhaustion often enough to recognize the specific quality of a body being pushed past reasonable limits, held out longest. He also, by the fourth bell, had stopped absorbing anything whatsoever.
ART: I've read this paragraph nine times.
ELS: Does it help?
ART: It gets less comprehensible each time. I think I've actually unlearned things tonight.
ELS: That's not possible.
ART: I could recite the third principle four hours ago. I currently cannot recall whether there is a third principle.
ELS: There is.
ART: You say that with tremendous confidence for someone who's been asleep sitting upright for the past twenty minutes.
ELS: I have been AWAKE.
ART: Elsie, you were snoring.
ELS: That was Finn.
FNN: I don't snore. I've never snored. The walls snore.
They dispersed near the fifth bell, in various states of ruin, having collectively absorbed considerably less material than any of them would have managed with an ordinary night's sleep. The examinations, thirty-one hours later, went reasonably well regardless. Briar, having discarded all four annotation layers in favor of a single clean page on Mira's brutal advice, performed better than he had all term. Mira, restored to her ordinary careful diplomacy, apologized to everyone for things nobody had actually minded. Finn passed comfortably despite having absorbed nothing, through what Arthur could only assume was some form of divine intervention. Corin never once acknowledged the laughing episode. The group agreed, unanimously and without discussion, never to attempt an all-night session again. They attempted one again seven weeks later.