Projects > Story-of-the-Day > speel

It all started with baby Julio.

There was a problem right at birth. All the town doctors were called, including me. We examined him day and night without rest, but couldn't figure out what was wrong. But there definitely was something very wrong.

Baby Julio cried and screamed terribly. At times he would become unconscious and not respond.

The symptoms went on for a couple of weeks. I spoke with the parents, the Speel family, and told them that even if their baby makes it the illness might last his lifetime.

That's when the parents told me that they were experiencing the same symptoms. We had no idea a full grown adult could contract this disease. They described how their bodies would become unconscious for hours at a time.

Clearly, the illness was contagious. I quickly went to the town leader and told them about the spreading Speel illness. She ordered a quarantine. Nobody could come in or out of the Speel household. Neighbors gossiped and talked about how the family would become unconscious, they called it "speel"ing.

Three days after the quarantine started, we found that it was ineffective. The neighbors had started speeling.

I suppose it was inevitable due to my exposure. I started speeling as well. It didn't really hurt at all as long as you didn't fall down when you became unconscious. I just made sure to be near soft things when I felt a speeling session beginning. I even dedicated a room for it.

Soon, everybody in the town was speeling. Then the next town over. We didn't know, but this disease had reached a global epidemic level within three months of Baby Julio's first symptom. Humans would never stop speeling after this. Or, as it became known a few centuries later, sleeping.