When Razuli received report of the coming famine and how it would devastate his kingdom if nothing was done about its growing population, he considered the matter deeply. He looked at the books to see what other persons facing similar situations had done in the past. While some people did nothing until the inevitable happened others opted for systematic elimination of the weak to make way for only the fittest to survive.

He wondered why those rulers did not find ways to make the people sleep for a long time until the famine came and passed. Of course, there would be nothing like growing population if the people were sound asleep. He smiled to himself as he reviewed further his sleep therapy. His ego began to swell a bit. He had made a great find, he told himself. Making the people sleep was definitely better than eliminating them, whether the elimination began with the weak and graduated towards the strongest did not matter. Sleeping meant cessation of all physical activities. Instructively, there is such a thing as the sleep of death. Sleep that is hardly distinguishable from death yet very different. So why put the blood of the innocent on his hand when the same objectives could be achieved using a different strategy?

After extensive musing on the matter, he called his close aides and gave them new marching orders. “Go into all the kingdom and make the people sleep!”