The TV flickers with grainy footage of an elderly Vietnamese man working in a field. It is yet another slow burning Thursday night.

One roommate sits on the couch. A bag of chips is frozen halfway to his mouth, and his eyes are glued to the screen. The other lies spread-out on the floor like a starfish, staring at the ceiling. He hasn’t moved in forty-five minutes.

“The old man moves with such mobility that you’d never guess he is just over 82 years old!” says the narrator, and continues the documentary with a reverent tone. “However, it is his sleep condition that has baffled doctors for decades!”

“Dude. DUDE. Are you seeing this?” He waits but gets no response. Not even an eye twitch. “This guy hasn’t slept in SIXTY YEARS. Six. Zero. Years.”

A moment of silence tries to stretch between them but is interrupted by the crinkle of his foil bag and insistent crunch of potato chips.

“…..makes sense.”

“JESUS!” The chip-eater jumps. ”What the hell is wrong with you, do you have real life LAG? I thought you were dead. You haven’t blinked or moved in like an hour. “

“Can’t be dead. I’m breathing. The blinking is optional.”

“What? No, it’s not. Look, forget that—this guy, Thai Ngoc,” he gestures wildly at the TV, “he got a fever in 1962 and then just stopped sleeping. Doctors can’t explain it. How is that possible?”

“High vibration.”

“High—what?”

“He’s vibrating at a frequency where sleep becomes irrelevant because his body regenerates while awake.” The starfish doesn’t move. His eyes remain fixed on a water stain on the ceiling. “Life seeks more of itself. A diseased body is a low-vibration body. He’s calibrated perfectly.”

The first roommate inches down the chip bag. “You’ve officially lost me. Are you having a stroke?”

“He works the fields. Is under the sun. Makes rice wine in isolation. No energetic interference. Pure earth energy. It’s a perfect closed loop.”

“He also smokes a pack a day and drinks half a liter of rice wine.”

“Exactly.”

“Exactly? Those things kill you!”

“Do they? He’s functioning at such a high frequency that his cells repair themselves while he’s awake.”

The skeptical one blinks. “So you’re saying cigarettes and rice wine make you immortal.”

“No, I’m saying high vibration makes you immortal. The cigarettes and alcohol just balance each other. He’s sharp from the nicotine, present from the alcohol. It’s a tightrope act. He doesn’t know he’s doing it consciously, but his body does. That’s why doctors can’t explain him.”

“This is insane.”

“Is it? What brainwave state are you in when you’re sleeping?”

“I don’t know, the sleeping one?”

“Theta. Four to eight hertz. REM sleep. Delta is even lower, at point five to four hertz. Deep sleep. That’s when your body repairs. But you know when else you hit theta?”

“When?”

“Flow state. When you’re creating. When you’re completely present. If you live in alignment—consuming life, creating life through art, through flow—then your body heals itself constantly with no need to shut down.”

“So you’re saying he is enlightened, and enlightened people don’t need sleep.”

“I’m saying people who live in the present moment function like they’re already in theta or delta states. Their bodies don’t need to shut down to repair because they’re always repairing. Energy in, energy out.”

“Wait, what about all the other brain waves?”

“Gamma is thirty-eight to eighty hertz. That’s intense mental activity, problem-solving, stress. Beta is fourteen to thirty-eight: active concentration. Too much beta and you’re stressed out of your mind. Alpha is eight to fourteen: relaxed, daydreaming. But theta? Theta is where the magic happens. REM sleep. Creativity. Processing the day’s events. Except Mr. Ngoc processes in real-time because he never LEAVES theta. He’s living in permanent flow state.”

On the TV, Mr. Ngoc drinks from a jug of rice wine.

The chip-eater stands up, paces. “This is insane. Everyone needs sleep. That’s BIOLOGY.”

“Is it? Or is it just programming?” The starfish finally blinks. Once, like a lizard. “What if sleep is just what low-vibration humans do because they believe they have to?”

“BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO!”

“Do they? Mr. Ngoc’s identity is ‘man who doesn’t sleep.’ He says he WANTS to sleep, but wanting something means you don’t have it. You are what you are, not what you want to be. His identity overrides his desire. That’s why he can’t sleep even if he tries.”

“That’s…” The first roommate sits back down with a thud. “That’s actually kind of sad.”

“Is it? He’s eighty-something years old. Works all day and night. Three houses. Active. Healthy. He’s living proof that humans can transcend biological limitations through consciousness alone.”

The documentary cuts to doctors examining Mr. Ngoc, looking confused and defeated.

“Okay. Okay. Just for argument’s sake, let’s say you’re right. How would that even work? He needs to get energy from somewhere.”

A hand lifts off the floor and points a finger to the water stain on the ceiling. “The sun.” 

“The SUN? We’re not plants. We can’t just absorb sunlight. Humans don’t photosynthesize, right?”

The starfish’s fingers twitch. “But not all plants do either. Plants that don’t utilize the sun for energy are mycoheterotrophic, meaning they lack chlorophyll and get their energy from feeding on fungi. Think orchids, or vegans. Then, there are the parasitic ones that attach and feed on other plants for their nutrients and energy, which sounds like us I guess. So yes, perhaps we don’t actually need to be in the sun either. Not directly. But maybe if we eat enough chlorophyll….”

“We’d turn green?”

“Not fully. But think about the color spectrum. If you consume enough chlorophyll, you’d shift from beige toward…gray. Then green.”

“Gray.”

“Yeah. Like—”

“Oh my god. Are you saying aliens are just enlightened photosynthesizing humans?”

“I’m saying it’s possible.”

“Wait. I just remembered something. I was on Reddit once, and this woman posted her lunch. There was this gray cement-looking thing on her bread and I was like ‘what is that?‘ and she said ‘avocado spread‘ and I thought she was insane. Then the next day I realized my phone had the night filter on—you know, the intense orange one—and it made the green look GRAY.”

Silence.

“So you’re validating what I’m saying.”

“I…I guess I am. Shit.” He shakes his head. “No. HOLD ON. Your theory doesn’t stack.”

“Well, no, cause we don’t have chloroplasts. So we are missing the function that makes photosynthesis possible.”

“Oh. See? Theory debunked! That sounds a bit more science-y. I was gonna say that that can’t be true because by that logic cows would have to be green since they eat grass all day…”

“EXACTLY!” The starfish bolts upright. “But they are not because cows don’t have high vibrational consciousness!”

The other roommate yelps and almost falls backward off the couch, and his friend continues.

“Plants have awareness but no action, animals have action but no complex awareness, and before you start bitching about how your cat is aware,” he points a finger right at him, ”I said COMPLEX awareness. The kind that lets you create on deeper levels than just fornication. Humans have BOTH. We’re in the middle of the spectrum. E equals MC squared. Energy requires movement AND awareness! WOW!”

“I don’t follo—”

“If you live like an animal, you die like an animal. If you live like a plant, you die like a plant. But if you combine the awareness of plants with the action of animals through human consciousness, you transcend the basic needs of low vibration! If a person lives in alignment through their own natural regeneration—consuming life, creating through flow state creativity—their healing state offsets decay. They live forever.”

“That’s impossible—”

“Is it? Think about reproduction. Why do we feel the urge to reproduce?”

“Because…biology?”

“Because LOW vibration! When a low-vibration soul realizes it’s going to die, it seeks multiplication and expansion through creation. Energy can’t be destroyed, right? Life seeks more of itself. Reproduction is just an accessible form of expansion that can be done with low awareness. Animals do it. Plants do it. They spread seeds and die because they have no other means to create. But high-vibration beings? They create through ART. Through IDEAS. They don’t need to reproduce because they’re already expanding through consciousness!”

“That’s not—”

“Our bodies are seventy percent WATER! We breathe constantly! That’s kinetic energy! Potential energy! Water and wind—we’re walking power generators!”

“I think we should get some sleep, man.”

”This makes me think that breathing can be used as a mechanism to utilize the human body as its own source of energy. MECHANICAL ENERGY!” He’s standing now, arms spread wide. “OH MY GOD, BREATHARIANS WERE RIGHT!”

“BREATHARIANS ARE INSANE!”

“Are they? Or are they just enlightened beings who’ve mastered their self-sustaining biological systems?”

The TV shows Mr. Ngoc smoking a cigarette in his empty house at 4 AM, looking peaceful. From the room, the upwards starfish points a finger right at him.

“Mr. Ngoc doesn’t sleep because his identity is that of the man who doesn’t sleep. He says he wants to sleep, but that’s the problem: wanting something means you don’t have it. Want to sleep? Get no sleep. Why do you think it is precisely when you try to stay up late that you feel the need to sleep? His identity is what he is, not what he wants to be. This old man unconsciously shifted the mechanics through his own belief system!”

The first roommate picks up his phone. Scrolls. Puts it down. “So you’re telling me the reason I sleep eight hours a night is because I believe I need to.”

“Yes!”

“And if I stopped believing that…”

“You’d stop needing it. The body becomes self-sustaining.” The enlightened one drops back to the floor, resuming his starfish position. “Sleep is a choice, not a need. It’s a tool to visit other dimensions if you want. But it’s not necessary. We’re all just operating on belief systems we inherited. We sleep because everyone sleeps. We eat because everyone eats. We age because everyone ages. But none of it’s real. It’s just consensus reality.”

Silence.

“This is the weirdest conversation we’ve ever had.”

“Is it weirder than the time you tried to convince me that pigeons are government drones?”

“That’s still true.”

“Sure.”

The documentary narrator concludes: “Despite extensive testing, medical science still cannot explain Thai Ngoc’s condition. He remains a mystery.”

“He’s not a mystery,” the starfish whispers to the ceiling. “He’s just awake.”

The chip-eater looks at his roommate, then at the TV, down at his chips, and then slowly sets the bag down.

“How long have YOU been awake?”

“What day is it?”

“Tuesday.”

“Then…four days? Maybe five. Time gets weird when you stop punctuating it with sleep. It all just becomes one long present moment.”

“That’s…that’s not healthy.”

“Isn’t it? I feel amazing. I’m living the dream while awake. I’m not tired. I’m just here. Constantly. Presently. Infinitely.”

The first roommate stands up, backs toward the hallway. “I’m going to bed.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s midnight, and I’m tired.”

“Are you? Or do you just think you are because that’s what you’ve been taught to think at midnight by Big Mattress?”

“I…” He stops and considers it. “No. No, I’m actually tired. Physically tired.”

“If Mr. Ngoc did it by accident, imagine what we could do on purpose.”

“I’m going to bed,” he stares at his unblinking friend on the floor. “And tomorrow, we’re having a very serious conversation about whether you need to see a doctor.”

“Doctors couldn’t explain Mr. Ngoc!”

“Goodnight!”

He leaves. The bedroom door closes. Locks. The starfish remains on the floor, eyes fixed on the water stain, which kind of looks like a galaxy if you stare at it long enough without blinking.

On TV, Mr. Ngoc walks through his village at dawn, looking more alive than most people half his age.

“Sleep well,” he whispers to no one and smiles at the ceiling. “Or don’t. Either way is fine.”

______________________

In this story, one thinks we sleep because we believe we must, eat because we believe we must, and age because we believe we must. But in reality, belief is just a story we tell ourselves about what’s possible, and stories can change.

What story are you telling yourself that isn’t true? And what would happen if you stopped believing it?

The question isn’t whether Mr. Ngoc really doesn’t sleep. The question is: what else have we decided is impossible that isn’t?