Now they realized that total idleness was exhausting, and it was a more frightening exhaustion than they had ever known. When they got tired working or studying, they could rest, but now rest itself was tiring, leaving sleep the only recourse, but the more they slept the sleepier they became.
When they lay awake they had no desire to rise, since their very bones felt soft and rubbery. They simply lay there looking up at the ceiling, their minds absent of thoughts, and none likely to come. It was hard to believe that lying in bed with an empty mind could be so tiring. They’d lie for a while, and then fall asleep, and eventually they couldn’t tell day from night.
Humans were a sleeping creature, they decided, and waking was the abnormal state. During those days they became denizens of slumberland, spending the bulk of their day living in dreams. Dreams were better than being awake, since they could return over and over to the country depicted in the New Five-Year Plan, go inside that megatower, ride the huge roller coaster, visit Candytown and taste a piece of windowpane.
The only time the boys communicated now was when they woke up and told each other about their dreams; when they finished, they pulled up the covers again and went back in search of the wonderful world they had just visited. But they never found it, and were taken instead to a different place. Little by little the dreamworlds faded and grew more and more like the real world, until eventually they found it very difficult to distinguish the two.
One time somewhat later when Zhang Xiaole went out to get food, he happened across a box of baijiu, and so the three boys began to drink. They’d started on beer during Dreamtime, but now drinking to excess was widespread, as children discovered that the fluid’s bite brought a tremendous thrill to their numb bodies and psyches. No wonder adults used to love it so! They finished drinking at noon and came to after dark, but to them it was as if only four or five minutes had passed, so soundly had the booze knocked them into a dreamless sleep.
They could all sense that the world was somehow unusual upon waking, but they gave it no more thought, since they’d drunk so much. After a sip of cold water, they considered what was out of the ordinary, and quickly hit upon the answer: The walls of the room weren’t spinning. They had to restore the world to normal, and so began searching for more alcohol.
Li Zhiping found a bottle and they passed it around, letting the blistering fire pour down the throat and set the whole body afire. The four walls gradually started to move again, and their bodies turned into clouds that moved with the walls, up and down and side to side, as if Earth had become a raft bobbing about in the ocean of the universe, liable to capsize at any time. Letter carrier Li Zhiping, barber Chang Huidong, and chef Zhang Xiaole lay there wallowing in the cradle-like rocking and turning, thinking of the wind blowing over them out toward the endless cosmic ocean.
By dint of enormous effort, the children’s national government managed to ensure that key systems maintained essentially normal operations during Slumbertime. Water supply, transport links, telecommunications, and Digital Domain all remained operational, and it was due to these efforts that the Candytown period did not experience the accidents and disasters that swept the country during the Suspension. Some historians described the forty-odd days of Slumbertime as “an ordinary night extended a hundredfold,” which is an accurate comparison. Even though most people are asleep at night, society continues to operate. Other people felt the country was in a coma, retaining essential life functions even while unconscious.
The child leaders used every method at their disposal to wake the country’s children from their deep sleep, but none was successful. They repeatedly resorted to the remedy used during the Suspension, having Big Quantum call up all the phones in the country, but there was no significant reaction. Big Quantum summarized the responses using the New World Assembly method into one statement: “Go away. I’m sleeping.”
The leaders visited the New World community online, which was largely empty and abandoned. The New World Assembly was a vast plain devoid of human life. Since the start of this period, Huahua and Xiaomeng visited Digital Domain practically every day, each time hailing the country’s children with the greeting, “Hey, kids, how’s it going?”
The response was always the same: “We’re alive. Bug off.”
So they said, but the children didn’t actually hate Huahua or Xiaomeng, and they were unsettled if the two of them failed to show up on a particular day, asking each other, “Why aren’t those two good kids online today?”
“Good kids” was something of a sarcastic jab, but it was a friendly one, and it was a name people called them from then on. And hearing the response “We’re alive” every day did give some comfort to the leaders, for so long as it was there, the country hadn’t experienced the worst.
One night when Huahua and Xiaomeng visited the New World Assembly, they found more children than usual, around ten million, most of them pretty wasted. Most of the cartoon avatars were carrying liquor bottles bigger even than the avatars themselves. They wove and stumbled in the assembly or tumbled into piles, conversing drunkenly. Like their counterparts at the computer in the outside world, from time to time the avatars took a swig of digital booze. The liquid, which probably used the same element in the image database for all of the bottles, shone like molten iron and lit up the cartoon bodies when they drank.
“Kids, how’s it going?” Xiaomeng asked from the platform in the center of the assembly, like she did every day, like she was visiting a bedridden patient.
Ten million children answered, and Big Quantum summarized their responses into a stammering “We’re… fine. Alive…”
“But what sort of life is it?”
“It’s… what? How are you living?”
“Why have you totally abandoned work and study?”
“Work… what’s the… point? You’re good kids. You… you can work.”
“Hey! Hey!” Huahua shouted.
“What’re you yelling for? Can’t you see we’re drunk and sleeping?”
Huahua got angry. “You drink and sleep and drink some more. Do you know what you are? You’re little pigs!”
“Watch… watch your mouth. You’re up there cursing at us all day. What kind of class… class monitor are you?” “Class Monitor” was the children’s nickname for Huahua; they called Specs “Studies Rep” and Xiaomeng “Life Rep.” “If you want us to listen to you, fine… fine. Now it’s time for you to down… this bottle!”
Then a huge liquor bottle descended from the blue sky and hovered in front of Huahua, dancing mockingly. He smashed it with a wave of his hand, and its molten iron contents showered down in glittering fountains around the platform.
“Hah, piggies,” Huahua said.
“Still at it?” Bottles came flying from all parts of the assembly, but were caught by a software screen and disappeared into thin air at the edge of the platform. More bottles magically appeared in the empty hands of the children who had thrown them.
Huahua said, “Wait and see. You’ll starve if you don’t work.”
“That includes you.”
“You little piggies really deserve a spanking!”
“Hahaha. You think you can… spank us? You’re talking to three hundred million kids. We’ll see who ends up… spanking who.”
Huahua and Xiaomeng took off their VR helmets and looked through the NIT’s transparent walls at the city outside. This was Slumbertime’s deepest sleep. Few lights were on in the city, and its forest of buildings shone icy blue in the unearthly light of the Rose Nebula, like sleeping snowcapped mountains.