Sleep App Nightmares
“Apparently I Flatlined at 3:12 A.M., Then Rebooted Myself. Should I Call a Doctor or a Priest?”
Financial analyst Roger Vance awoke feeling surprisingly refreshed–until his sleep app notified him that he had technically died twice during the night. The app, REMrage, then awarded him a “Rest Like the Dead” badge and recommended celebratory chamomile tea and a ghost-themed guided meditation.
“It said my heart rate dropped to zero for three minutes,” Roger said. “Then I got a confetti animation and a message saying, ‘You’re crushing the REM game.'”
Experts are baffled. “We’ve never seen sleep scores over 100%,” said sleep tech analyst Dr. Lena Cho. “He transcended rest. He entered the sleep singularity.”
The app’s social features alerted Roger’s entire contacts list. His sister texted “WTF,” his boss sent a sympathy email, and his gym offered a posthumous membership discount.
When Roger reached out to REMrage support, they replied: “Sometimes our users achieve such calm they momentarily leave the plane of existence. It’s a feature, not a bug.”
Now nervous to go to bed, Roger has taken to sleeping upright in a chair with a pulse oximeter and a rosary. “I just want normal nightmares,” he said. “Not cosmic rebooting.”
Meanwhile, the app’s developers are marketing a new premium feature called “Death Nap,” which simulates brief metaphysical departures for $4.99/month.
Auf Wiedersehen, amigos.
