Chapter 1 (The Ward)
They said there was a place beyond the edge of reason—a vast asylum hidden behind clouds, where the deranged built kingdoms out of dust and swore they were sane. They called it The Ward. No one knew who founded it, or why the gates were never locked.
When I arrived, they stamped a number on my wrist: Patient No. 8,247,600,000.
Condition: Persistent Hallucination of Meaning.
The corridors stretched endlessly—padded walls disguised as cities, ceilings painted like skies. The inmates were everywhere, walking freely, smiling proudly. They believed the asylum was a paradise.
In one hall, patients painted invisible borders across the floor and fought over them until their children bled. They called it patriotism. They waved colored cloths and screamed that their side was pure, that dying for the cloth was noble. When enough corpses piled up, they called it victory and held parades.
In another chamber, they gathered in temples of marble and glass, arguing about whose invisible god loved them more. Some prayed for peace, others for annihilation. Their gods had many faces,
but all demanded sacrifice—money, guilt, or blood. When the buildings crumbled, they rebuilt them even higher. The doctors called this faith therapy.
A wing smelled of burnt metal and glowing screens. Here, the inmates stared into small rectangles for hours, feeding their souls to flickering images. They envied each other’s happiness, not realizing it was manufactured. They called the process connection. They judged worth by numbers—likes, followers, hearts—and rotted quietly inside.
Down another corridor, the patients competed to exhaust themselves. They worked endlessly, though no one remembered why. They built machines to replace themselves, then wept when the
machines did it better. They swallowed pills to stay awake, pills to sleep, pills to feel nothing. When they collapsed, the doctors whispered, “You’re doing great.” They called this therapy success.
Elsewhere, a group performed rituals around glowing counters, gambling with food, homes, and lives. They called it the economy. They celebrated when the numbers rose—even if forests died,
oceans choked, and the poor vanished beneath their feet. The richer they became, the more hollow their eyes looked.
There were lovers too—desperate, feverish. They mistook possession for affection, and fear for passion. They clung to each other not out of love, but terror of being alone. They called this romance. When the illusion broke, they tore each other apart, then repeated the ritual with someone new.
One day I stumbled into a room where children cried softly in the corners, clutching devices brighter than the sun. No one held them; their parents were chasing numbers in another wing. The
doctors gave the children screens instead of lullabies. They called this modern parenting.
What horrified me most wasn’t their madness—it was how normal it all seemed. They celebrated their suffering. They sang while the planet burned. They drowned in illusions and called it progress. Every horror had a cheerful slogan, every delusion a brand.
Once, I asked a nurse why no one tried to escape. She smiled thinly. “Escape? There’s nowhere else to go. They built the walls themselves—and painted them blue so it looks like sky.”
That night, I wandered deeper through the dark until I found a great observatory. Inside, dozens of glowing spheres hung suspended. Each represented a ward—cold, distant, silent. But one sphere
pulsed with color: blue, green, white. Beautiful. Fragile. “That’s the old one,” whispered the nurse behind me. I stared at it. “Oldest patient?” She nodded. “And the sickest. The inmates call it home.”
The realization bled through me like poison.
The asylum wasn’t hidden beyond the stars. It was right here, beneath our feet.
The Ward was Earth. Every war, every prayer, every obsession—every desperate attempt to prove sanity in an insane
design—was ours.
And suddenly, I understood why some souls stop coming back. Why the Buddha turned his eyes inward. Why the saints sat beneath trees and refused rebirth. They weren’t escaping life. They were escaping The Ward. They had seen the total madness of the world—and wanted no more of it. They were the only ones who finally woke up.
Chapter 2 (The Escape)
After the revelation, I could no longer sleep. The walls that once felt safe now breathed. Every hallway hummed with the pulse of delusion. I saw through the madness, but the others continued to dance in it as if it were holy. I wanted to scream, to shake them awake. To tell them: “You are not patients. You are prisoners of your own dream.”
The nurses noticed the change first. They whispered when I passed. “He’s begun seeing too clearly,” one said. “It happens sometimes. Best to sedate him.” But they didn’t. Not yet. They were curious—like scientists watching a rat realize it was in a maze.
I began visiting the halls I once wandered blindly through. In the patriotic wing, I spoke softly to soldiers polishing their medals. “You don’t need to kill to prove you exist,” I said. They stared at me, confused. Then one laughed bitterly. “If I don’t fight, who am I?”
In the faith ward, I told the priests, “Your god doesn’t live in the ceiling. He’s the silence between breaths.” They called it blasphemy and threw stones. “Silence,” one shouted, “is the devil’s trick.”
In the chamber of wealth, I told the traders, “You can’t buy sanity with numbers.” They smirked, tapping their screens. “We’re not buying sanity—we’re buying power. That’s close enough.”
In the love ward, I told the couples, “Love without possession is freedom.” They blinked, uneasy. One woman turned to me and whispered, “Then what will hold us together?” “Nothing,” I said, “except kindness.” She began to cry.
Soon, the nurses came. Their white uniforms glowed in the dim corridors like ghosts of control. “You must stop,” one said gently. “You’re disturbing the treatment.” “The treatment?” I asked. “You mean the disease.” They exchanged a look. “You don’t understand,” said another nurse, her smile trembling. “These people need their madness. It keeps them functional. Without it, they’d collapse.” I laughed, though it hurt to do so. “Then collapse is the only cure.”
The next day, they took away my access to the main halls. My meals arrived through a slot in the door. But I had tasted freedom, and silence no longer satisfied me. I began scratching messages on the walls: Wake up. You are dreaming. A few patients read them in secret. Some wept, some laughed, some reported me to the doctors.
Then came the warning. They brought me to a white room. The Chief Physician stood there—tall, pale, expressionless. His
badge read Director of Sanity Preservation. “You’re spreading infection,” he said. “Truth isn’t an infection,” I replied.
“It is here,” he said. “Our patients survive because they believe the lie. You want to heal them? Then you’ll destroy the order that keeps them alive.” “Alive?” I asked. “They’re only breathing.” He sighed, almost sadly. “Then we must stop your breathing, too.”
That night, I was taken to the basement. There were no screams—only the hum of machines, the scent of disinfectant, the quiet efficiency of erasure. They said it was euthanasia. I called it graduation.
Before they injected me, I looked up and whispered, “They’ll wake one day.” The nurse shook her head. “You poor thing. Hope is the last symptom.”
The needle burned. The world began to blur into white. And as I drifted, I saw it—the great blue sphere spinning above me, trembling under its own madness, but still beautiful, still alive. My last thought was simple, calm, and final: May the next patient remember.
