Jake Uttershott opened his eyes and tentatively glanced about the room. The bright whiteness of the walls startled him as if he had glanced skyward at midday and caught the sun’s glare head on. Apart from stiffness in the legs and a slight cramp in his left arm, Jake felt the same as he had on the day he went to sleep. He blinked several times in quick succession and tried to lift his head so he could take a good sweep of the room but this move proved difficult.
 
‘Don’t move Jakey, don’t want to cause any problems that G-Tube is due for a deep clean and your Decubitus Ulcers are in a bit of a state.‘
‘Get the fuck out of my face!’ screeched Jake but it came out as one long sigh with very little word definition and only caused the nurse to chuckle.

Jake just wanted to leap from his prostrate position and kick the devil out of the little git. How dare he address Jake Uttershott in this manner?The smouldering fury that lived within that was supposed to subside began to revive. Jake clenched his fist and in his world punched the mattress with an iron will.
‘Now doctor will be here soon’ continued the nurse,’ but before he arrives would Jakey like to know the date?’ The nurse tapped away at the screen beside Jake’s bed and scanned the details for news.

‘Well today is April, 28th, 2070. ‘

Jake’s pupils darted from left to right unable to maintain a position in his eye. 2070! Then it all started to come back to him as they said it would. He had laughed when first sentenced, as if, what sort of punishment is that, not possible but now apparently it was.

Back in 2020 Jake Uttershott had been convicted for killing a bank teller in an armed robbery; he was one of the first to be sentenced under the new Coma Prison Law. When he was sent he had been a strong young man of 29 with his life before him. 
The nurse approached him with a mirror.

Jakey stared at his reflection, gone was the young man full of hope and anger and in his place was the ragged phizog of a 79 year old pensioner, only Coma Prisoners weren’t entitled to a pension.  

This hospital or Coma Prison as it was more commonly known held thirty thousand prisoners, sentenced from anything between five years to life and life now means 75 years. They are taken from the dock and straight to theatre where they are put into a medically induced coma for the duration of their sentence.

The dream analysis business is booming and many reformed prisoners have written novels based on their dreams which have been turned into blockbuster movies and produced collectible merchandising. 
Perhaps this new legislation can best be summed up by 20th century writer Virginia Woolf - “Sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life.”