I found Jacob in the kitchen at 2 AM, his gaunt face illuminated by the harsh light of the refrigerator that cast shadows across his hollow cheeks. The soft hum of the appliance was the only sound in the otherwise silent building. He grabbed an energy drink and popped the tab, chugging it like a man dying of thirst while his Adam's apple bobbed with each desperate swallow.
"Your brain burns approximately twenty percent of your daily calories," I said from the doorway, causing him to choke and splutter in surprise as he sprayed a fine mist of neon-green liquid. "If you're not feeding it properly, all that processing power goes to waste. Like trying to run high-performance software on a dying battery."
