Hello, me again! Your favorite Conspiracy Theorist! This section is reserved for questions in the guise of stories that wouldn’t normally fit in the larger narrative. Our first question of the day comes from Nom de Plume, who asks:
Who was the very first patient to be admitted?
There’s a funny story behind that. The worst sufferer from the invasion when THEY arrived was patient 000000005. He wasn’t the first to go crazy, but the way he was driven mad is very interesting.
This man lived his life every day in a fairly unassuming way, going from work, and coming home. With just one minor difference - he was deathly afraid of going up and down stairs without putting his right foot on the first and last steps. This meant having to sometimes do two steps at a time just before the last ascent or descent, resulting in some bizarre hopscotching on the stairs. Because of the risks of looking foolish in miscalculating how far he needed to go, he devised elaborate mechanisms and forewarnings to prepare himself for unfamiliar stairs.
He was convinced that if he didn’t complete his rituals every day, the world would come to an end. He would faithfully stick to his routines on a regular basis, sometimes doing them more than the required number, just to be sure. His obsession progressed to such an extent that he was unable to do the most basic tasks without completing his rituals. His mania extended to not just memorizing the stairs at his place, but also the stairs surrounding his place of residence, just in case he was ever invited over. Not that he ever visited his neighbors, but better safe than sorry.
This was only further exacerbated when his company was in the process of joining another, and he was sent as a representative. Since there were no building plans, he did what was the only logical choice in his mind - he snuck over to the place at night so he could calculate the number of stairs beforehand. Sure, he could’ve simply asked someone, but the number of stairs is remarkably fluid - the top and bottom floors don’t count as “steps”, and someone might mistakenly include those or not, and he couldn’t take that chance.
So, while prowling the stairs of the Fire Escape, he was quickly found and caught by security. There was no way he could plausibly give an answer that could satisfy them - how could they possibly understand? So, he did the next best thing - he confessed he was there to steal inside information.
Boy, was that ever a bad move! He was instantly charged with insider trading, despite the fact that there was no incriminating documents on his person. It was reasoned that he must’ve moved the information elsewhere, and the merger fell apart. The irony was that the charges against the man would’ve been dropped if he could’ve simply explained himself. But he was too embarrassed to do so.
Considering the severity of his crime, and the lack of physical evidence, he was sent to a Minimal Security Prison. It was only after multiple meetings with his psychologist and social workers that his dreaded secret finally came out. It turned out that in addition to his phobia about stairs, he’d devised all kinds of minutiae rituals for controlling everyday life. How many times he chewed his foods, placement of his eating utensils, the folds of his clothes. Only with intense intervention and training was he was able to wean himself off his daily habits and stop worrying over them so much.
But the biggie remained his phobia about staircases which he remained adamant about. He exclaimed that the few instances where he accidentally put his left foot first felt like the sting of thousands of needles spreading throughout his body. They said that was a result of new stimuli he wasn’t used to yet. They reassured him that his worries were nothing more than silly little phobias of little consequence. On his next Day Pass, with spurred motivation from his supporters, he was able to bravely take a step onto new territory.
It was just an unfortunate coincidence that THEY came on the exact same day, hour and second he was on the verge of stopping.
Once the ensuing shock passed, he regressed back to his regular schedule twice as hard in order to reclaim back what was once lost. While others were struck with the fear of not knowing what was going on, he alone felt responsible for the condition of the world today, and relapsed even further than before.
To his dying day, he believed that if he increased his efforts from where he left off, the world would turn back to the way it was. But THEY are here to stay, and no amount of doorknob-checking, washing hands or stair-walking will put the world back the way it was.
Especially in this place with no stairs at all.
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