How long can the human animal go without sleep? Swan did not sleep during all of the time he was cocooned, though he dreamed.
He dreamed about being lost inside the huge edifice where he was lying; of wandering through curving halls that looped back upon themselves. The entire building was gray and unfinished as if, at a certain phase, during this very dream perhaps, its construction had been abandoned.
Was he asleep then, since he was dreaming? Is it possible to be simultaneously asleep and aware your body is imprisoned while you wander through its tomb? It was like that, this sense of multiplicity during a continuous waking dream, as he walked for miles in search of an elevator or a goBells to take him to the surface, to drive him up and away along a spiraling ramp. (Swan was convinced there was a ramp that looped around the perimeter of the subterranean structure.) And, by these wanderings, amid the welter of featureless rooms, he finally found a blue gray car inside a closet barely bigger than the car itself. It was broken-down with its doors missing, covered in debris inside and out that looked like splintered bone. He squeezed his way onto the seat and the machine came to life. Swan’s heart leapt.
“To the Cumulus,” he cried.
“Layer upon layer, Mr Swan,” the goBells responded. At least that’s what Swan believed he heard.
“I’m sorry?”
“Lair inside of lair,” the voice of the goBells whispered before its battery gave out completely.
Swan covered his face with his hands. He was miles deep, naked and alone. He’d consumed nothing, not even liquids in many weeks, and still his spirit wandered.
This was when he concluded that his body was dead. He had, as his barber had once predicted, become a ghost. How fearful it was to inhabit a death like this, both captive and free! Perhaps, if he could extract himself from the wreckage of this car, the ghost of himself at least, might still find its way to the surface? But why? To what purpose? Ottala was inside his actual body which lay elsewhere, and without her, there was nothing. Only the saddest sort of ghostly existence awaited him. What did the world, which was in its death throes anyway, matter to a wandering ghost who had no stake in it?
The answer was horrible and obvious: it didn’t matter at all. And yet, to stay here alone, accompanied by his endless stream of thoughts, was more than Swan, or any other being, dead or alive, could bear.
But even at that moment, as Swan was debating how to put up with eternity, tubes were sustaining his living body without his knowledge. As he recovered from his physical injuries and paralysis, tubes were providing hydrating fluids, nourishment, and carrying away excretions. He’d failed to notice, in the early stages of his repositioning inside the cocoon, numerous prickings in the veins of his neck, his arms, his groin, his ankles…. During all this time, he was being transfused with amino acids, algae pap, artificial plasma, petrochemical hemoglobin and many other subtle and complex nutrients. He was being revitalized without knowing it. He’d also not yet realized, since he’d given up on being a living person, that he could move his tongue. The realization arrived when he was farther away than he’d ever been, running frantically down a long gray featureless corridor. He felt his tongue stir ever so slightly and his mind reconnected with his physical being as he tried to mouth a sound. He moaned and coughed. He felt the mucous back into his throat. He experimented with volume and pitch. It took hours to remember how it felt to speak, for noises to become meaningful, but the moment eventually arrived. “Oddara!” he was able to slur at last. And instantly, the fabric of the cocoon that encased him ripped itself into a thousand pieces.
Sounds like a typical night's sleep for me.