A woman in Arizona falls asleep at the wheel on the interstate at precisely 3:19 PM local time, on March 7th, causing an accident that claims four vehicles but no lives. She’s a paralegal, on the way to some meeting with some set of documents or other, but the crash obviously takes precedence, and when the paramedics arrive on scene they find her passed out in her seat. Breathing is steady, pulse is strong. They figure a concussion, or some other head trauma to conk her out. She comes to exactly 17 hours, 12 minutes, and 39 seconds later. No one is timing this. The doctor watching over her reports that, aside from a bruise on her leg, she’s fine. No concussion or head trauma at all. Toxicology shows nothing out of the ordinary. She figured she was well-rested, doesn’t think she was tired, but things happen. She carries on with her life no worse for wear.
It is 37 days later, April 13th, when a prison in Turkey suffers a severe lapse in security. At 1:09 AM local time, approximately 28 guards on duty, all in the same ward, had fallen asleep at the same time. Some prisoners who were awake noticed this, finding guards lying right there on the floor, not caring at all about comfort. One prisoner was a model inmate and trusted to help operations. He saw his opportunity and promptly opened several cells, swung open the doors leading outside to freedom. Some followed the path and got out, some didn’t. Other guards were awake, from other blocks and sections, but a good amount of people managed to get out. These other guards would run into the now empty cell block and try to shake their coworkers awake, but nothing worked. They just all came too on their own in a bit over 17 hours later. All but two of the prisoners were caught after their escape. All the sleeping guards were fired, despite their protests, despite not knowing why they fell asleep, despite not remembering anything, not even a dream.
It’s only 11 days later, April 24th, when a water park in New Zealand finds all 487 of the guests and staff shut their eyes, the bright sun shining at 12:33 PM. The lazy ineffectual draping of eyelids isn’t quite the same as squeezing and pinching one’s face to block water; almost everyone in the lazy river suffers from some eyesight damage from the chlorine, a few of them even go blind. Some of the people on the sun chairs get burnt and have to peel skin off them for weeks. It wasn’t as bad as could be, though. This was much more public, these were kids with families coming to pick them up, and when the arrived to the scene and called the cops to help, everyone was still asleep. If they were still breathing. Nothing would wake them, not even the compound fracture on the boy who went down the slide at the wrong time, nor the several people getting shocked under the cold water of the showers in the locker rooms. The wave pool had 16 corpses in it. Nothing would wake anyone aside from time passing. Once the 17 hours 12 minutes 39 seconds passed, eyes fluttered open. No one knew anything. The water park was closed.
Just a week later, on May 1st, a plane carrying 617 passengers crashes into the tarmac at Kuala Lumpur Airport. Communications had ceased some time before the crash, and the black box shows nothing but a sudden silence a few hours after take off. The wreckage shows everyone strapped into their seats, none of them wearing an oxygen mask, no signs of panic. That black box recording didn’t even show signs of anyone pounding at the door. Miraculously, 6 people survive. They wake up a little over 10 hours later, all the same time, in different hospital rooms. None of them knows why they were asleep.
Two days later, a local news station in Cuba is live reporting a baseball game. A filled stadium all lowers their heads and falls to the side just at the top of the sixth inning, including the reporter and cameraman. The pitcher winds up then slumps over, the batter holds onto the bat like a pillow. They cut back to the news station where the talking head can barely get out a single question before she, too, rests her head on the desk in front of her.
The next day a senate vote in DC has everyone fall asleep around the time they reach their 22nd “nay.” Then hours later, before the senators even wake up, there’s reports of a university in Cork, Ireland falling the same fate, students lining the walkways and snoring. Another few hours and it’s a community market in Ghana. Research bases in Antarctica send a delayed report talking about sleep issues, and how one of them was frozen solid since they were outside.
It’s happening multiple times a day now. Some new report, some horrifying story. The globe chases sunlight and stays at home otherwise. Caffeine sales skyrocket, so do the sales of more illicit uppers. But it doesn’t help. Everyone needs sleep. The people who wake up are perfectly fine, just scared and hazy like anyone else from a dreamless sleep. It’s never the sleep that kills anyone. One week the ISS starts to plummet toward the ocean, the story comes in as an unfortunate timing on when to do some necessary repairs. Somewhere, in orbit, a lone cosmonaut is waking up in terror and looking down at everyone. Car accidents happen more and more, planes fall out of the sky, pets take a bite, things keep dying. The patterns are studied, but no answers are given. No common denominator, no identifiable cause for concern. People just need sleep.
Everyone gets enough of it one day. At 11:27 AM UTC-0, July 8th, everyone closes their eyes. The things you’d expect would happen, happen. Cars crash, shards of glass and torn hair made tacky with blood line streets across the globe. Planes simply don’t land. Some have enough fuel to keep in the air the whole time, but most don’t. A new graveyard forms over the seas. Some simply slip and fall against hazards they would’ve otherwise been perfectly safe avoiding. Some drown in their bathtubs. A good amount of people don’t even notice that something’s happened at all, already in bed, just thinking they’re being lazy and sleeping longer than they need to. For a good long while, there’s not a single person with their eyes open, no one conscious to see what’s happening. There’s a gap in human sum knowledge that lasts 17 hours 12 minutes and 39 seconds. No one even remembers having a dream, or waking up with a start. Just a smooth nothing that left everyone feeling well rested.
