Title: Spaced Out 

Characters: 

LAYLA: A distracted girl who spends most of her time planet-hopping instead of doing her assignment due tomorrow

CONSCIENCE: LAYLA's conscience.

Setting:

LAYLA hunches her back on the computer in a lonely room at midnight. 

(A computer shines on LAYLA's face as she types on a keyboard. Her eyes droop when the clock strikes midnight.)

LAYLA: Please, let me finish this. I can't work anymore... 

(LAYLA yawns, and her eyes shut for a second.)

CONSCIENCE: Layla, wake up! 

(LAYLA looks around her empty room.)

LAYLA: Who are you? I can't see anyone. 

(CONSCIENCE turns on the lights. LAYLA, who can't see CONSCIENCE, freezes.)

CONSCIENCE: Stop that nonsense. We need to talk about something. It's urgent. 

LAYLA: (sighing) Yeah?

CONSCIENCE: Look at your room. 

(LAYLA looks around her room. Old potato chip bags and empty soda cans litter the floor. Piles of pad papers and sticky notes clutter her desk. LAYLA's computer, meanwhile, has hundreds of tabs.) 

CONSCIENCE: You've been drifting in space for too long. 

LAYLA: How long?

CONSCIENCE: Three years. And don't use the "pandemic excuse" on me again; I've become immune to it. 

LAYLA: Woah. (She swallows her saliva.) Anyways, I'm just working on a paper. Nothing special, nothing urgent. 

CONSCIENCE: That's your final exam due tomorrow. It's twenty percent of your grade. Do you want to graduate college?

LAYLA: Honestly, I want to binge-watch Netflix.

(LAYLA opens another tab on her laptop and types on her keyboard. She is about to press the search button when CONSCIENCE slaps her face.)

CONSCIENCE: What did I tell you about planet-hopping?

LAYLA: What planet-hopping?

(CONSCIENCE points at the tab bar on her laptop. LAYLA gasps.)

LAYLA: What should I do then?

CONSCIENCE: Take responsibility and return to planet Earth.

LAYLA: But I don't want to do that. I'm too far out in space.

CONSCIENCE: That's your biggest problem.