SLEEP MACHINE tells the tale of Tristilles Mouth Shivan, the C sectioned son of a poor carpenter. After waking to find his wife dead beside him, her eyes glazed and with a cherry on each, he realises he feels nothing for her death. Resolute, he sets off on a journey to the holy temple of Aiboh Poneg to repent what he feels is a sinful discrepancy within his mind. Meeting with a band of monks on the way past Mount Zion takes his journey on a detour to the City of Consolidated Polygons which is under siege from angry call centre employees recently made redundant after a new law was passed banning all forms of corporate subterfuge. Seeing this as an intrinsically holy war and therefore a way to redeem his hollow soul, Tristilles joins the Polygon monks against the self righteous unemployed and kills millions in the ensuing war which lasts 12 and a half long years. Bloodied and glorified, Tristilles seats himself in the Sukhasana lotus by a tree with no roots or trunk and enters a deep level of meditation. After a year of silence and stillness he rises enlightened and walks calmly through the streets looking at his feet and talking loudly of his meditative dreams while listening to "Jumping jack flash" by the Stones on a portable radio. His dream involved meeting himself as an Ogre and a White Wolf simultaneously in parallel realities. The Ogres' job was to battle through a cave of enormous woodlice and solve puzzles and traps in order to progress to the white city of Tiemuzen. The White Wolf however was already there and didn't need to eat or sleep but simply played with the children of the city and rolled in the white snow. When, as the Ogre, he arrived in Tiemuzen the children were not frightened but merely laughed at him and pulled at his fur.
On hearing of his return the monks prepare a great feast and line the road to the plaza with dead squid so that Tristilles would be saved from walking on the dirty pavement in his bare feet. When Tristilles rounds the corner to the central plaza and sees his reception he yells in horror and flings his portable radio at line of monks shouting "It's not a mountain and it's not happiness!!". He is exiled from the city and travels for a year on the backs of milk crates to the holy temple of Aiboh Poneg. Along the way he thinks only of his lost wife. The long years of his journey seem to have passed in the flicker of an eye and her cold sugared stair seems to hang over him like the smell of yesterday's burnt toast. Arriving at the temple, cold and malnourished in the middle of the night, he knocks on the great doors and is answered by the Pastor who takes him inside and gives him a cup of tea. Tristilles asks the holy man "Are these halls the sanctum of reasonable doubt?" The Pastor immediately drives his sceptre through Tristilles' heart saying "Doubt not that this will decide you!". Tristilles body is thrown out the back hatch of the Temple where his meat is consumed by the wild dogs and vermin of the holy city.