On an otherwise normal Wednesday, the Sharing began.
As far as anyone could tell, the rules were:
If you fell asleep, you would spend the duration of your time asleep as a passenger in someone else’s body
The host was randomly selected with no geographic bias. Waking up and falling back asleep would reset host selection.
The passenger would see, hear, and feel anything the host did.
There could be more than one passenger per host. These passengers could communicate with each other by thought.
The host was never aware of the presence of any passenger.
It went by many names at first. Sleeping Life, the Panopticon, the Passage, Linkage. Eventually, the Sharing caught on in almost all languages.
In some ways it was the end of privacy. You could be watched by a nameless stranger at any moment.
Others felt like they were never alone.
The Sleepers were those who tried to escape their own lives by falling asleep as often and as long as possible.
And then, one day, a woman knocked on John’s door. Her name was Sophia. She lived in Germany, and had an accident. For the past 9 months, she had been living in a coma. She had been a Passenger in John’s head for that entire time.