i have been searching for a science fiction short story i read ~25 years ago - it was in a short story anthology book, probably not very famous because i've tried to plug it in and got nothing.
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synopsis (since its a beautiful story and i may as well share it in case someone else here has read it and/or can prompt engineer chatgpt better than me):
- Humanity reached abundance but also got overpopulated - so the solution was to shard humanity by days. 1/7 of Humanity wakes and works on one day of the week, sleeps in cryopod the other 6 days.
- Main character is happily at work on a Monday tightening the screws on the planetary solar panels, when he notices a sleeping woman in another pod (another day, say Saturday idk) and falls in love on sight (i'm not 100% sure if it was physical-only, he may have read more about her or exchanged letters or something but cant fathom in-world reason how that would work)
- After a lot of personal cost and effort, he manages to get a once-in-a-lifetime exemption from the government to switch days, and wakes up on Saturday for the first time in his life.
- Goes over to see the woman... only to find she's asleep, because she just transferred to Monday because she also fell in love with him. He's barred from switching back because it was a onetime deal.
- Goes back to work to his new Saturday job... loosening screws on the planetary solar panels.
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(above MAY be a hallucination of two stories, its been so long that i'm not sure anymore)
Read this a long time ago, then re-read it a couple of years ago. They called the pods "stoners" and it made me laugh. Can't remember the name though. It must have been in a collection of short stories.
i have been searching for a science fiction short story i read ~25 years ago - it was in a short story anthology book, probably not very famous because i've tried to plug it in and got nothing.
---
synopsis (since its a beautiful story and i may as well share it in case someone else here has read it and/or can prompt engineer chatgpt better than me):
- Humanity reached abundance but also got overpopulated - so the solution was to shard humanity by days. 1/7 of Humanity wakes and works on one day of the week, sleeps in cryopod the other 6 days.
- Main character is happily at work on a Monday tightening the screws on the planetary solar panels, when he notices a sleeping woman in another pod (another day, say Saturday idk) and falls in love on sight (i'm not 100% sure if it was physical-only, he may have read more about her or exchanged letters or something but cant fathom in-world reason how that would work)
- After a lot of personal cost and effort, he manages to get a once-in-a-lifetime exemption from the government to switch days, and wakes up on Saturday for the first time in his life.
- Goes over to see the woman... only to find she's asleep, because she just transferred to Monday because she also fell in love with him. He's barred from switching back because it was a onetime deal.
- Goes back to work to his new Saturday job... loosening screws on the planetary solar panels.
---
(above MAY be a hallucination of two stories, its been so long that i'm not sure anymore)