Everybody's as tired as I am.
They decided to do away with sleep.
Thought we could get more done that way.
They couldn't just jump into the change, of course.
They had to experiment on a whole town, first.
Guess whose town got picked?
Marcie and Kendall and Reilly and me -- all awake for more than six days now.
Our bodies keep going. But what about our minds?
We've been taught meditation techniques that mimic all the natural rhythms of sleep.
But what about our dreams? Where do we put them, once they bubble up from our subconscious, anyway?
Dreams need to be lived, not suppressed.
The town keeps running, day and night.
Everyone has two jobs. And a lot of spare time, to boot. Industry has quadrupled. Efficiency, too.
There is no let-up.
I asked the other day, what percentage of us are allowed to go mad before the experiment is considered a failure?
I didn't get an answer.
Someone decides to give birth to an idea. Perhaps it's me. The idea is this: why don't we take over? They need to sleep, the rest of the world. We don't. It's as simple as that. They'll never keep up. I go around knocking on doors all across town. I explain my plan. People go along. Don't they always?
We get up a posse and head over to the next town to begin our takeover. The next town is experimental, too. What they're experimenting with is sleeping twenty hours a day and only being awake for four. Works for lions, doesn't it? We're all jealous as hell to see them snoozing away. The takeover would be way too easy. We move on to the next town.
This one is a city of geniuses. They've all been grouped together -- those with superior brain power, to see if they can save the world from the rest of us.
If that fails, the next town is the opposite: inferior brain power. Sometimes morons can solve problems the rest of us can't.
Well, we don't take over those places, either. Not worth it, in either case. I begin to wonder if there are any normal towns left on the planet. We come to one, at last. Not too much of this or too little of that. A beautiful place to settle down. Get some rest.
Then someone sees the sign:
Nuclear Testing Site.
We're all so tired, we just don't care.
They decided to do away with sleep.
Thought we could get more done that way.
They couldn't just jump into the change, of course.
They had to experiment on a whole town, first.
Guess whose town got picked?
Marcie and Kendall and Reilly and me -- all awake for more than six days now.
Our bodies keep going. But what about our minds?
We've been taught meditation techniques that mimic all the natural rhythms of sleep.
But what about our dreams? Where do we put them, once they bubble up from our subconscious, anyway?
Dreams need to be lived, not suppressed.
The town keeps running, day and night.
Everyone has two jobs. And a lot of spare time, to boot. Industry has quadrupled. Efficiency, too.
There is no let-up.
I asked the other day, what percentage of us are allowed to go mad before the experiment is considered a failure?
I didn't get an answer.
Someone decides to give birth to an idea. Perhaps it's me. The idea is this: why don't we take over? They need to sleep, the rest of the world. We don't. It's as simple as that. They'll never keep up. I go around knocking on doors all across town. I explain my plan. People go along. Don't they always?
We get up a posse and head over to the next town to begin our takeover. The next town is experimental, too. What they're experimenting with is sleeping twenty hours a day and only being awake for four. Works for lions, doesn't it? We're all jealous as hell to see them snoozing away. The takeover would be way too easy. We move on to the next town.
This one is a city of geniuses. They've all been grouped together -- those with superior brain power, to see if they can save the world from the rest of us.
If that fails, the next town is the opposite: inferior brain power. Sometimes morons can solve problems the rest of us can't.
Well, we don't take over those places, either. Not worth it, in either case. I begin to wonder if there are any normal towns left on the planet. We come to one, at last. Not too much of this or too little of that. A beautiful place to settle down. Get some rest.
Then someone sees the sign:
Nuclear Testing Site.
We're all so tired, we just don't care.
