The White Wall

A control system exists, not to subjugate humanity, but to prepare individuals to embrace immortality, a destiny palatable for some but bleak for others. Oblivious of this fact, an ordinary man becomes a test subject of this control system. After a seemingly mundane incident, the man woke up in a body that he does not recognize; he is trapped in an artificial world, a sort of open prison that emulates our world only superficially. Time passes walking to distant places where the invisible hands of his captors place his meager daily ration, a mindless task that consumes his life. In exchange, his captors force him to reenact fragments of his previous life recursively, whether to drive him mad or to bless him. A bleak wall limits the prison ground. On one side of the wall lives a single inmate; the other side may conceal the secret of this bleak existence. On which side are we?

“In all this there was a menace and a portent … a hint of evil, an intimation of doom. Bird, beast, or insect there were none. The wind signed in the bare branches of the dead trees and the gray grass bent to whisper its dread secret to the earth, but no other sound or motion broke the awful repose of that dismal place.”

“An Inhabitant of Carcosa” by Ambrose Bierce