Sleeper for the State

As the sun set shadow spread over the apartment like spilt oil. Inside, a woman glared pitilessly at a man across the room. Pity and anger contorted her normally pretty face.

“You know that this is over, right John?”

John acknowledged the pronouncement with a downward flicker of his eyes. He mumbled back, “Cynthia, I just don’t understand why. I thought that we were okay.”

Without hesitation Cynthia replied, “I need to do better. I need somebody with ambition, with life. You right now are like an Unconscious. I thought that it would be better after you got a job, but it wasn’t, and now you lost that too. John, I’ve told you how it is. I think you should leave.”

         And John moved to exit the apartment, barely seeing the door as he staggered through it. He inhaled again only when he felt the thick outside air rush over his body. John walked for a moment with his eyes closed. The sidewalk crumbled beneath his feet, and John tripped over the sunken pavement. He lay there, trying to repress the well of emotion inside him, trying not to think about Cynthia’s dismissal. After a few minutes of silence an aerocar honked as it narrowly missed landing on him. The driver hovered over John and shouted for him to clear the parking area. The noise woke John from his horizontal reverie. He stood up and quickly motioned an apology. The driver just shook his head and turned off his landing lights. Looking up at the sky, John reflected at how much more alive the stars had seemed since the last neighborhood streetlight had been broken a few years before.

         Hands in his empty pockets and with no place to go, John began to wander the broken city. He shuffled quietly, his head down and his feet scraping the pavement. To his left John noticed the window display of an electronic pawn shop. Behind the reinforced plastic window was a working television. On its screen were two men in suits. One was fat and spectacled, the other thin and gaunt, and they were speaking to one another over a couch. From the subtitles John surmised that the two men were debating the morality of the Unconscious. The fat man was talking. His words were relayed to John through the blocked text on the bottom of the screen.

         “The simple fact of the matter is that the world has become too overpopulated for everybody to be awake. There aren’t enough resources. What we have in the unconscious is a painless way to keep people alive and happy without having them put such a massive strain on the earth. Yes, it may not be ideal, but it is the best we can do. Surely you don’t want to go back to the water wars of the sixties.”

         Commercials cut in before the gaunt man could reply. John elected not to wait for the program’s return, and instead began to move again. He had always felt ambivalently with regards to the Unconscious. Rationally he could find no fault with the procedure, but he could never shake a vague feeling of unease whenever the topic came up in conversation. Looking down, John realized that he stood over an underground holding facility for the Unconscious. In the distance he could see the silhouette of the transference center. The light of the moon projected the chain-linked shadows of the rusted fence onto the building. It was disconcerting to John that a few dozen yards beneath his feet were thousands of humans captive in perennial sleep. They said that the Unconscious dreamed.

         “But is that enough to call them human?” John said to himself. Shuddering slightly, John closed his coat and continued moving.

         He walked until he saw the lights of his favorite diner. He was good friends with the staff, had even worked there for a few months, so he knew that they would be generous with his tab. Smiling for the first time since Cynthia had started their last conversation, John pushed open the door and saw the familiar face of his old friend Chuck. Chuck was the assistant manager of the small restaurant. He had worked there for years under the tutelage of the manager, Mr. Hube. The two worked well together, with Chuck’s amiable nature indispensable in dealing with customers and Mr. Hube’s intelligence well-adapted for dealing with money. John had been a regular at the diner for almost as long as Chuck had worked there.

         “Hello Chuck. How is business treating you?”

         Chuck replied in a more somber tone than usual. His iconic grin was absent. “Business is going well John. How are you?”

         John answered back, “I am doing okay. Cynthia and I broke up. Why are you so glum if business if going well? Be happy in prosperity.”

         With a furrowed brow Chuck sighed and responded, “Mr. Hube transferred into being Unconscious.”

         John’s eyes widened in shock. He stuttered out his surprise.

         “Mr. Hube, an Unconscious? Why? He had money, a family, plenty to stay awake for. Was he in an accident or something?”

         Chuck shook his head sadly.

         “The Government found out that he wasn’t paying taxes. He had to choose between thirty years in a forced labor camp or being put to sleep. He knew that he wouldn’t make it two years in any camp, so he figured that being Unconscious would be his retirement. This way, too, his wife can keep working here in the restaurant. The Government would have probably tried to foreclose us if he hadn’t gone to sleep. Mrs. Hube, she is all torn up, talking about transferring into being Unconscious too. With her kids dead, and her husband asleep, she says she doesn’t have anything to live for anymore. I never handled any part of the money side, just food and customers. I wish I had known. I could’ve helped. I just…” and his voice trailed into silence. His eyes were wet when he looked up again.

         John put a hand on his shoulder and murmured sentiments of sadness.

         “It’s not so bad. Being an Unconscious isn’t so bad, at least that’s what the televisions say.” He stood up to leave.

         Chuck wiped his eyes and told John to stay.

         “Hey, I know that times are tough for you right now. Stay and I’ll give you a hot meal. Just lock the doors; I am going to close for the night. I am going to sleep in the back. Do you mind if I turn the lights off? That way nobody comes up expecting us to be open.”

         John nodded and thanked his friend. After Chuck brought the food and went to the back, John sat alone in the dark, thinking. Maybe Mr. Hube was not so bad off after all. Surely he had a far more attractive option than he would have had before the Government started to allow criminals to choose to be made Unconscious. Before it would have been a choice between death and a forced labor camp. Now they just had to give up being awake, and could spend the rest of their lives in dreams.

The Government had started the program after the death penalty was ruled immoral. Not willing to squander precious resources on nonworking captives, the Government declared that a prisoner could either earn his allotment of resources toiling in a forced labor camp or could exist in the resource conserving hibernation of the Unconscious. Most serious criminals, those faced with the prospect of decades in a camp, chose to become Unconscious. John thought that Mr. Hube had made the right decision. He wondered if it was right for his wife to consider being Unconscious as well. She was a miserable person awake, and had been even before losing her children and her husband. At least if she were Unconscious she would not be so lonely.

         John finished his meal and stood up to leave. Glancing at the diner’s cracked clock, John saw that it was almost past curfew. Not wanting to be caught by a Government patrol, he hurried out the door, making sure it was locked behind him. Now imbued with a sense of purpose, John rushed back to his apartment.

         As he entered the single room John made sure to stomp his feet to scare away the rats. They scattered more slowly every day. John feared the day when they would finally muster up the courage to counterattack. Radiation from past wars had made rats larger and more intelligent. Some were large enough to brush up against the middle of a man’s shin. Lack of food had made them feral and dangerously aggressive; it could be a mortal mistake to leave small animals or children unattended.

         “If you’re looking for food,” John shouted at the rodents, “you won’t find any here.”

         The statement was true. The Government had ceased doling out John’s daily allotment of food and water after finding out about John’s newest layoff. Resources could not be wasted on some nonworking vagrant.

         “Now what I am going to do? I can’t expect Chuck to hand out a meal every night. He is in a tough business, especially with Mr. Hube gone and his wife losing it. The diner isn’t a welfare center, after all.” John was talking to himself.

         “Not that a welfare center is going to do me any good anyway. I wasn’t expecting to have to use welfare credits again so soon, otherwise I could have saved them. No place is going to hire me now, not with my work record.” The volume of John’s voice was rising steadily. “Damn Cynthia, she knows how much I need her, especially when I’m out of work. She gets allocated more food and water than she needs. I am going to need some of that tomorrow.”

John was understating his dependency on Cynthia. Although she had provided him food and water in his unemployment, she represented much more. She was John’s solace from depression and loneliness; seeking her approval had inspired John to search for jobs and apply for positions at the education centers. Such basic survival measures had never appealed to John without the added impetus of Cynthia. She was his hope in a better future, a future founded on her. John had spent nights watching her sleep, worrying about making a happier life for the two of them together. And now she was out of his life, leaving John to plan a future alone. He began to cry. A rat hissed in the background. Suddenly, a notion that John had been mulling over since he left Cynthia’s apartment crystallized in his head.

To his tired mind, it seemed as though the night’s happenings had conspired to place the idea into his thoughts. Relieved, and determined in his new path, John finally fell to uneasy dreams.

         The next morning found John in the lounge of the local transference center. He sat nervously tapping his legs. He stopped when he saw a pregnant woman across the room frown at him. Pregnant women came to the transference center in order to deposit their babies in Unconsciousness.

Since the end of the theocratic wars of the forties, the surviving establishments had criminalized abortion. However, this prohibition had gone against Governmental population control measures. Because the world had already been burdened enough by enormous amounts of planned babies, to have all fetuses develop into children would have been disastrous. In a compromise with the Government, the churches decreed that it was moral and ethical to carry pregnancies to term and then transfer the baby into an Unconscious. The reasoning was that the baby’s soul was safe in the body until the body expired, at which point its uncorrupted nature would ascend into the better realm. As such, all unwanted or unapproved babies were transferred into Unconsciousness. The idea of safeguarding souls found a wider application, however. The churches determined that those people in inevitable collision with the worse world should be transferred into Unconscious so that they could enjoy the afterlife. People who admitted to homosexual desires, heretics, and other subversives were relegated to Unconsciousness, officially in order to protect them from themselves. Several of John’s friends had been transferred into Unconsciousness because they were subject to homosexual thoughts.

         John was waiting to meet with a technician. His status as a possible willing Unconscious gave him a special designation as most of those put to sleep were criminals, subversives, and abortions. Only a small percentage of people voluntarily became Unconscious. The Government actively supported such “Sleepers for the State”, as it labeled them. Through advertising, campaigns, and financial promises, the Government encouraged people to become Unconscious so that “the conserved resources can be delegated to better the world at large.” Such campaigns targeted primarily the slums of the cities, where poor, uneducated people ostensibly had little for which to stay awake. Others subjected to the Government’s exhortations included the elderly, the ill, and the bereaved. The Government focused on people who it considered to be either inefficient for the state or ready to leave the physical world. John began to seriously consider becoming an Unconscious after seeing a flyer the night before.

         The flyer had shown a picture of a sunny beach in paradise. “You can spend the rest of your days in this kind of pleasure,” the flyer had read, with “Sleeper for the State” displayed prominently on the bottom. The words resounded in John’s mind. Inspired thusly, he had marched over to the center and proudly placed his name on the list for possible candidates. John flushed with pleasure as he imagined sending Cynthia the government check awarded to the family of the Unconscious.

         A man in a white pair of scrubs called out John’s name. John’s heart fluttered as he realized that the man was the technician who would put him to sleep. The man beckoned for John to come, and John followed him into a back room full of mirrors and furnished with a single red chair. Motioning for John to sit down, the man began to speak.

         “The process is actually very quick and painless. First I swab your arm with a topical analgesic. Then, I inject a heavy sedative to eliminate any pain or worry. Then I inject the chemical that will transfer you into a permanent Unconscious. The entire process takes only a few minutes.

         You are aware, of course, of the tremendous service to the state that you are performing in this noble act. Because your body will use so fewer resources while it is Unconscious, all the resources that you are not consuming will be used to raise the standard of life for everybody else.

         However, I do not want you to get the impression that you are sacrificing anything in your service to the state. The rest of your life will be spent in happy dreams. You will exist in a series of pleasurable sensations. You will have no worries, no pain, nothing negative at all. You can actually select beforehand some of the dreams that we can place into your head during your hibernation. Here is a brochure of some of the favorite programs for the Unconscious.”

         And the technician handed John the brochure.

         “I expect that you have already designated the persons or person who will receive the reward for your voluntary transfer into Unconsciousness. Everything else, as far as your property and personal possessions, will be handled adequately and respectably by the Government. Do you have any questions?”

         “What if I ever want to wake up?”

         The technician stiffened and pressed his lips together tightly.

         “I am afraid that your question demonstrates a misunderstanding of what it means to be an Unconscious. The process fundamentally results in an induced coma. You will not be able to formulate wants, or even any thought more complicated than the simple perception of pleasure. Your mind, your ego will always be in flux. There will be no cohesive pattern of ego or inner narrative. Your subjective experience will consist of an infinite progression of various pleasing stimuli. It is ultimately happy oblivion.

         I hope that I am not deterring you, as I think that this characteristic of the Unconscious makes them the lucky ones. While we have to sit, watching the world decay around us, the Unconscious sleep, blissfully unaware. Life is but a sequence of silly distractions anyway. All conscious people do is divert their attention as they wait for death. Being Unconscious takes all the suffering out of the equation. After all, what torments us the most while awake are the notions of past mistakes, missed opportunities, and hopeless futures. The Unconscious have no memory, no running narrative, so every moment is the best that they have ever had. Their lives play out in senseless pleasure. Honestly, I am only awake because the Government has ordered me to do so for another five years. After that time, I will gladly surrender my consciousness in return for peace.”

         The technician finished his speech and watched John for a reaction. To John, the technician’s words sounded so reasonable that all his misgivings were put to rest. Only one thought troubled him.

         “Would you mind if I looked at some of them?”

         The technician eyed John warily. No voluntary candidate had ever made such a request. Most insisted on undergoing the procedure as soon as possible, as if to outrace any lingering doubts. After a moment’s reflection, the technician decided that no harm would be done in appeasing John’s request.

The two descended in an old elevator that clinked nervously every few seconds. After a few minutes, the cart stopped moving and John and the technician stepped out. John gasped as he gazed into the immense cavern and saw a boundless stretch of human beings.

The cavern was poorly illuminated by aged phosphorescent lights. Shadow obscured any distinguishing characteristics of the people, so that to John they were only vague figures of arms and legs. Completely still, thousands and thousands of Unconscious occupied small cells. Each sleeping person had his own box and each box was only large enough to hold the person. The boxes encased the people totally. Some were stacked on top of others; John assumed that the plastic was very thick in order to support the weight. The cells were arranged in straight rows and columns so that no space was wasted in the storage. Wires exuded from the sides of the boxes, they looked like insect legs collapsed beneath the mass of the bug itself. John stepped further into the cavern and winced as his ears perceived an enormous volume of noise.

         Without asking for the technician’s approval, John ran over to the nearest cell. Inside was a woman with tubes and wires had attached to various points on her body. Her blond hair and pale complexion made her look as though she had been bleached in her sleep. John wondered why such an attractive woman would transfer into being Unconscious, but then he saw the wedding ring still on her hand. Her husband had most likely died or been made into an Unconscious, and she had decided to join him in oblivion.

The woman was nearly motionless in her cell. The only sign of life was only a subtle motion of her lips and throat.  He realized that the deafening noise of the cavern was the collective roar of thousands and thousands of human beings cooing and sighing in unison. Beneath the tubes and wires and electrodes, John saw that the Unconscious person in front of him was smiling.

         Back up in the room John swayed woozily as the technician injected him with the sedative. All doubts erased from his mind, John thought joyfully of his new life of happiness.

         “And here is the chemical that will make you an Unconscious. Goodbye John.”

         John watched as the contents of the syringe drained into his veins. He could feel the cloak of oblivion advance over his brain, eating his consciousness up, thought by thought, memory by memory. With his last second of consciousness he thought of Cynthia. Then the roar of the ocean took over, and John was on the sunny beach of the dream.