A Thought about the Stockpiling of Sleep

A doctor friend of mine believes he’s able to stockpile quantities of sleep. He undertakes the exercise, sleeping for days at a time, so that he will able to call on these reserves and work unimpaired for stretches of up to 36 hours.

This is all very well, but if you believe in the positive then surely you believe in the negative too, in the long ignored reality of sleep deficits. Like it or not, the world is in debt to sleep. There are simply too many light bulbs burning, screens flashing, and even whole cities that boast never to sleep. But this state of affairs can't continue indefinitely, the bubble must burst and when it does there will be an apocalypse of sleep, arguably congruous with the first horseman on his pale horse as John, under much duress from his revelations, can’t be blamed for mistaking a deep sleep for death. When this happens, the whole world will be asleep on its feet, and the planet will vibrate with the deep breathing of billions of people and infinitely more animals.

But how did this happen? I blame coffee, the working man’s cocaine. The systematic caffeination of our bodies has done enough to keep us from sleeping but not enough to truly wake us up, so we travel from espresso to espresso in a haze, our bulbs only dimly glowing and our debts multiplying.

I suppose it isn’t really important to know how this grand narcolepsy came about. It's here now, and there are no scientists, psychologists or even philanthropists to study it, all of them are asleep. As a narrator I am exempt, as a narrator never sleeps much like an elephant never forgets and the ability to ride a bicycle is never forgotten once learned. The bears are awake too, lumbering around and curious about the snores of billions. The bears too are exempt because, although they narrate nothing, they have diligently been paying their debts each winter and therefore owe nothing. The fish aren't so lucky. They never sleep, perhaps because their world is like a constant dream. Belly-up now. Killed by dreams. Many of us could say the same. This will no doubt effect our responsible and well-rested bears, who wade into rivers and catch the fish so iconically with their paws, but isn’t it always the case that the hardworking and conscientious pay for the choices of the wicked? After the fish, the humans will suffer the most, and, for the most part, simply because we are good at it. Not so much the old, although they suffer best of all. The old, like the fish, sleep little but despite this they don’t run into deficit. As a narrator this phenomenon is hard to explain, perhaps they sleep less in preparation for the great sleep, the one John of Patmos attributed to the rider, which all sleep thus far has only been practice.