Alarming alarm

The sharp beep of our future evil technology masters pierced through the air and into Sara's eardrum. The eardrum which is sadly connected to our brain through a network of dubious nerves resulted in her sleep being disrupted. Her eyes fluttered open, closed, and opened again to reach and end the incessant beeping sound once and for all. After turning off her alarm, Sara slept like a 9-year-old on summer vacation.

Unfortunately for her, the responsibilities she had were those of a 29-year-old with a job. She got up as the invisible hand of adulting smacked her across the backside. In a mental stupor, she got ready for work.

As her dark circles absorbed the bright office lights, she harrumphed. Other colleagues, with varying degrees of black bags under their eyes, murmured in the morning, leaving out the "good" pointedly.

A smile brighter than the office lights met her at her desk. It shook her out of her open-eyed slumber and she said "Why are you so happy?" "

You know it's a beautiful day, the sun is out, there is a gentle breeze and our boss is on a trip." Sara's colleague Gemma replied.

This broke through Sara's scowling expression as the muscles on her face relaxed.

"Why do you look like you slept on a coffin?" Gemma piped up.

"I snoozed my terrible alarm 16 times, I hate getting up at 7, send me back to my college days, ah those were the days."

"I used to hate my alarm. The standard alarm sound is so horrible, it just gave me a headache early in the morning." Gemma agreed

"That sound is some sort of conspiracy, " Sara said while vigorously shaking her head.

"Why don't you change it to something more mellow?" Gemma inquired.

Sara blinked "I er, the other options are equally bad."

"I don't mean the factory options but something mellow."

"It would put me to sleep all over again." Sara gave a crooked smile.

"How about a bird chirping? Not a cock-a-doodle-doo but a nice birdsong."

Sara sighed and then her face brightened "Do you remember that bird noise I posted last year that got me 100 likes on social media? I could make that as my alarm."

"There you go! Your own personal alarm."

Sara immediately took out her phone and made a snippet of the birdsong her alarm sound. She went through the day humming the same tune and looked forward to the next morning.

"Weeew peew weee" The beautiful sound of nature knocked on Sara's head respectfully, nudging her to wake up.

Thus Sara was down to snoozing her alarm 5 times and being almost on time for the office. Things were starting to improve and Sara, with the superior knowledge that nature is quite better than man-made monstrosities, was doing much better.

A month later Sara felt the knock of her gentle alarm but her biological clock raised its eyebrows. She opened half of her eye and saw that the sun was wrestling with the clouds to rise. The half-open eye glanced at her phone and it was 5 am. She went back to sleep. 5 minutes later. "Weeew peew weee"

Sara sat up in annoyance, with still only half an eye open. She was ready to curse the modern technology that was her phone when she realized that the sound was coming from outside the window.

It was the same bird that she had recorded last year in order to seem nature-loving on social media. The false alarm for her alarm made her set an alarm to change the sound of her alarm. Sara sighed and resolved to change her alarm to the sound of a lovely ballad about how life is not fair.