A RECON: SLEEPY PEOPLE
story by Patrick Breheny pjbreheny@hotmail.com
Dear Commander,
We arrived on this planet, and there was a phenomenon we had never encountered anywhere before. Their ‘night’ cycles are only hours, not decades or centuries
long. And most of them voluntarily lose consciousness during this period.. I say they do that freely because they lie down, don’t collapse, and those that do stay awake for employment or entertainment reasons have to compensate by sleeping during the short ‘day’.
They are the oddest creatures in the known universe, and this somnolence occurs not only to the dominants but all the lesser species. Their lives culminate too. All of them, from amoebas to whales, ‘die’ Cease to live. Decay.
We have no word for such an occurrence. The ‘people’ live on average to ‘ages’ in their late 70s. Ages. They count years, their season cycles. They reach a prime at about 30, then begin to rot. Their physical peak is at around 18, when they are quite correctly still considered children Can you imagine Mesla, who has always been, getting ‘old’? Being replaced periodically?
I was of a mind that they were only like this because they believed it. I opened a medical clinic in Los Angeles, and had many people asking me for sleep medications. Their bodies didn’t want to sleep, but their convictions told them they had to. In exasperation on a day, I asked one “Why do you sleep?” And I blurted, “I don’t sleep.”
He looked at me and said, “You have ears like Spock.” A fictional character. Yes, it’s true. I do. Our engineers need to work on the human camouflage design.
I implanted a monitor on him, and heard his conversation at the Hollywood Division Police Station. He told a woman at the counter about me. She laughed. He insisted they go and look at me. She said, “If we get any more complaints like that, we sure will, okay?”.
With the monitor, I was able to transfer thoughts to him. They seem to sense our presence, think they can transfer back, talk to us.
I told him to say, “And they never die.” He did.
She said, “Sir, if you have delusional problems that’s not a criminal issue, but we have list of organizations that might be able to help you.”
I laughed, and that thought made him laugh. (My adolescent behavior. I think I’m only about 800) She got angry. She said, “We have a busy department. If you’re wasting my time with a prank, you can be arrested for that.”
He said he was sorry, then obsequiously left. Apologized. Can you imagine that? You do what you do, say what you say. That’s it. What else? It happened but it shouldn’t have happened? It didn’t happen? They have the strangest notions. You can do anything, then say “Sorry,” and expect they’ll say “Oh, that’s okay.” We know you don’t play pranks on Zeno. There, if she believed he did that, he would have been pulverized. We don’t die, of course, but we can be terminated. That’s a tough punishment when you know you might have never ended otherwise. “Keeps you from misbehaving”, as we say.
Is there a purpose for us there? They seem at the end of their survival cycle for the current various species, and since we have all time, we can wait. No reason to be impatient. Perhaps we could endow them with sleeplessness and immortality, but their progress is so infantile, and in fact is the reason for their pending demise. It was just not in them to “Let It Be”, as they like to sing but are incapable of.
Transfer of natural resources to Zeno is impractical because of the distance, Colonizing in their strange darkness-light pattern would make us like them. I confess that being there sometimes made me nap. My recommendation is to tag it INHOSPITABLE ENVIORNMENT FOR LIFE AS WE KNOW IT, inhabited by inferior specimens, best left to become another barren rock.