The day we stopped sleeping, we were not aware that the dream-city was (in some way) a real place. We tourists were unaware of its precarious political situation. We woke up and discovered our partners and friends comatose, and we attributed out initial insomnia to the stress of discovering some kind of global epidemic of sudden-onset dropsomania. After a few weeks without sleep, which we miraculously survived, we began to entertain other hypotheses.
Sleep withdrawal symptoms, of course, were dangerous. We had no alternative but to go cold turkey, of course, what with sedatives…
