The New Blueprint

By: DD

There once was an occupant inventor. She relentlessly worked on tools that would make her life better. One day she created a patch that made not sleeping possible. One could attach this patch to their body and not need to sleep. This patch would supplement all of the functions that your body regulated during sleep, like oxygenating the blood, repairing cells, and resting the nervous system. The patch was medically sound and posed no risk to a person’s health. The inventor spent the next several weeks enjoying her new free time without any fatigue. She thought to herself, “There never seems to be enough free time in the world. I should sell this so people can have more time for fun, leisure, and family time.”

She began taking her amazing patch to companies to see if they wanted to buy her product to promote to the world. The inventor did not try to sell the patch herself because she had no interest in marketing; her mind was only interested in creating. Entrepreneurs salivated over the inventor’s creation and quickly bought the rights to the product from her. The first patches were sold to the public under the exact circumstance that they were designed for. It was acclaimed as a gift of time, use it to spend more time with loved ones, take up a new hobby, watch your children grow up. There were those that were skeptical, as there are doubters of any new product. These skeptics thought, “I like sleeping. Sometimes I need a break from the world and a fresh start.” Soon the doubts of the resisters were eroded by the commercials for the product and the reinforcement by their friends, neighbors, co-workers, and family all telling them how much better their life was because of the patch.

It wasn’t long before seventy percent of the world population was on the patch. The patch industries profits were tied to getting more of the population on the patch so they continued marketing. The marketers came to the conclusion that the only people not on the patch lived in third world countries and could not afford it. The industry came up with a plan to subsidize part of the product’s cost so that the poor could receive the benefits of wearing the patch. Although the third world did not pay the same price as the rich there was still a profit being made on their sales. The losses that the industry took in patch sales were made up in longer working hours in third world factories.

The patch industry succeeded and everyone on the planet was going without sleep. Not sleeping was no longer a luxury it was a precedent. Working hours began spilling over into patch hours that once were for leisure and free time. No longer were people buying the patch so they could improve the quality of their lives. They were now buying the patch just to stay competitive with the other occupants. Those who wanted to sleep were called prehistoric, for these were modern times and our technology allowed us to spend more time during the day building the tower of civilization that we occupied. Employers started screening for people who didn’t wear the patch. Patch resistors were accused of hurting business and the economy. The occupant institutions created sleep insurance. People had been known to sleep occasionally on the patch because it was still a natural function for the body to shut down and the patch was not flawless. People paid part of their salaries for sleep insurance so they were protected if they were to ever fall asleep when they should have been working. New companies sprung up offering stronger patches for more money. They marketed these patches to people’s fears. Telling the occupants not to risk falling asleep by wearing an extra strong patch.

One day the inventor looked up from her work and realized what she had done. She had turned the world into working zombies. Buying the patch no longer liberated, but rather imprisoned. The inventor thought back on the entire history of innovations in the modern world. She realized that people use to buy cars to joy ride or to visiting family. Then it became a necessity to get to work. Computers were used to simplify life, then people were required to know how to use for employment, they needed to have access to them to find a job, and were forced to spend part of their income upgrading them to keep relevant. After the upper and middle class markets were saturated with an invention, industries always turned to the third world under the pretense of charity. The inventor saw that the patch was the same as the automotive, computer, television, telephone, internet, radio, housing, and textile industries. She woke up to realization that there was no choice in the tower of civilization, but only the illusion of choice.