What If Everyone Partied Nonstop for 1 Year

Vacation has come. Happy, you rush home, put on your best suit, and go to the friend’s place. It’s a big country house. You pass through a wide gate decorated with lights. Music is coming from inside.

You go in and find yourself in a spacious hall. A rock band is playing on the stage. You meet a lot of smartly dressed people. Everyone’s dancing, talking, drinking cocktails, and eating pizza.

You go out to the backyard. It’s even more fun here than inside. People are splashing in a huge pool, playing ball. The DJ is playing a funky music set. This is the best party of your life. You meet cool guys and girls, talk with them, dance, eat, and drink.

The rock band plays rousing songs, and when you get tired of dancing, you go to the pool and swim. In the middle of the night, fireworks start off in the sky. Colorful lights paint the night red. Yeeeeeaaaahhh!!!

Morning. You don’t even remember how you fell asleep. You wake up in one of the house’s rooms and hear the music. You open the door, go down, and... The party’s in full swing! The rock band is still playing, and there are lots of people dancing around.

You go to the backyard and jump into the pool to freshen up. You planned to go camping today, but since the party is still going on, you decide to stay. Music, people, swimming pool, food, cocktails, dancing. Night falls and...

Morning. You hear the music again. You go down to the main hall. The rock band continues to play, but they look exhausted. Cans of energy drinks are scattered on the stage. You can’t see people you met yesterday, but there are newcomers.

Nobody is swimming in the pool because it’s raining outside. The DJ is sleeping in a chair, the music playing without him. You’re not having so much fun anymore. You have a breakfast of chips and soda and go home to take a shower. As you go along your street, you hear your neighbors having parties too but don’t pay much regard to it.

At home, you turn on the tap — hm, doesn’t work. It seems there was some kind of accident and water was turned off in the whole neighborhood. You decide to go to the party house and have a shower there. A new band is playing, and more new people have arrived. You finally wash yourself and decide to stay here for another day. Someone orders pizza with drinks. You eat and dance.

Morning. Your ears are ringing from all the music. You’re going to leave for good. You go down and see your friend on the stage. He says that whoever stays at this party for a whole year will get a million dollars. Your jaw drops at this generosity and you decide to stay.

A week has passed. Your hearing has adjusted to the music. Every two days, the rock band and DJs are replaced. New people appear in the house, but you also see familiar faces. You’re not the only one who decided to try to win a million.

July. You walk around the house in slippers, passing through the dancing crowd. A rock band is playing, but you don’t care — you’ve got earplugs.

You’ve already quit your job and are getting used to a party lifestyle. You cleaned up your room, but in the late afternoon, a few guys and girls decide to have dinner there. You get angry and go to sleep in another room.

August. You’ve gotten to know every corner of the house. By the way, the place is deteriorating with every passing day. Cracks appear in the walls, the ceiling turns yellow, the floor creaks, and there’s also an unpleasant smell in the air.

In one of the rooms, you discover towers of empty pizza boxes. You can’t look at them — you’ve already got stomach issues from all this fast food. The pool is dirty, but people still swim in it sometimes. DJs keep switching, but the music doesn’t.

You meet people who have been here as long as you have. They don’t look very fresh, there are black circles under their eyes, and their hair is a mess. You wonder if you look any better and seek a mirror, but turns out all of them have been broken.

September. Moving around the house has become difficult because your feet stick to the floor. Remnants of pizza and snacks are lying around, moldy, and there are rats scurrying all over the place. Some of the guests continue dancing, others sleep right on the floor, and others still are carrying the TV out of the house. The party is getting ugly.

The next morning, you wake up and decide to fix everything. You go to the bathroom, find a mop with a bucket, go down, and start cleaning the floors. You move to the rhythm of the music. People around start joining you. Cleaning together is fun too!

Then, you go to the pool. You take out all the trash with a scoop net. Cans, boxes, food leftovers, torn clothes, toys, and even a false tooth. After that, you fill the pool with bleaching powder. You don’t sleep for almost two days and make the house sparkling clean. All the rooms are shiny, no rats anymore, the air smells nice, and even the rock band is playing clean instruments.

You don’t have the strength to stand up any longer, so you collapse on the bed and instantly fall asleep. You sleep for almost a day and wake up because a group of people burst into the room. They laugh, litter on the floor, and spill their drinks. You go down and find yourself in the middle of a new party. Everyone is dancing, eating pizza... and ruining the house. Noooo!

You leave the house in frustration. This is unbearable. There are still 8 months left and you know you can’t take it. You run out of the house and find another party. Right on the street. People are having fun and dancing. Music plays everywhere. What’s going on?

You go to the nearest store. People are grabbing everything from the shelves, talking, and tapping their feet to the rhythm. You run to another store and see the same picture. Libraries, cafes, city administration, schools, sports grounds — all of these are nightclubs now. You ask people what’s going on here, but all they answer is, “We’re just having fun!”

November. You’ve already accepted that the party spirit has captivated the whole world. Factories, markets, hospitals, and shops stopped working because everyone just hangs out. The streets are filled with garbage. People look tired but somehow happy. The water has been turned off in dwellings and everybody bathes in the city lake. Luckily, the food is still there and people share it with each other.

January. Let it snow! Everybody’s singing. Muscles on your legs have become stronger from all the dancing. There’s no more electronic music because there’s no electricity. Rock bands play drums and acoustic guitars. Some even bang on trash cans with sticks. You think you might be going crazy. You laugh for no reason, and when you find yourself in a quiet place, the music still rings in your ears.

March. The snow has melted and people keep having fun. They look like they just got out of caves. Those tired of dancing leave the city, becoming hermits. It’s actually become a new trend.

May. You don’t know what year, what month, or what day of the week it is. But now you’ve learned to make fire with no tools but sticks and stones, play music on trash cans, and hunt. Bored people bring down entire houses and catch horses to ride around the city.

It seems to you that the party has been there all your life. It’s certainly been there for ages. You climb to the roof of the highest building and watch the whole city hanging out. Joyful cries, sounds of broken glass. You lie on your back and just look up at the sky. For the first time, you feel at peace.

June. All of a sudden, it’s over. The merriment and party mood has disappeared in a blink of an eye, and people have opened their eyes to the consequences. But the cool thing is that no one looks upset. Everyone has had a great rest. No one knows what got into them for such a long time, and it seems the planet has just given us all a chance to relax and take a break from modern life full of stress.