The Asylum

“Have you come to sedate me yet again Dr. Walsh?”1

“Mike, you and I both know that this is for your own safety. What are you doing in that corner?”2

“Admiring the lovely padded finish on this wall.”3

“ I see, how are you feeling today Mike?”4

“That depends on what you want to hear doc.”5

“Nothing you say will get you out tomorrow Mike. Just tell me how you feel, for the record.”6

“I feel…satisfactory.”7

“…I see. Do you mind if I approach you? As you said before, I am here to medicate you.”8

“I grew up in a town along the coast9

Along that coast there was a cliff10

On that cliff there was a sign on a post that boast11

‘Approach at you own risk’12

Most…didn’t”13

“I see.”14

“Do you?”15

“You know that this mean I will have to ask for some assistance-”16

“Does it?”17

“-Jim will have to come in and assist me.”18

“The Neanderthal? Oh, I liked the looks of him! Alright Dr. let us do this.”19

Geoffrey Walsh opened the heavy white cell door and quietly asked the orderly in. Jim Rank was new at The Asylum. He had worked in what Dr. Walsh called “institutes” before and seen many things that were understandably placed in them. This Michael Mortimer character was the most understandable yet. He had never even been let to see this man before now. He was supposedly insane; The Asylum orderlies had a scale for the craziness of the freaks that resided there. Understandable, Freaky, Nuts, Crazy, and Insane, that was the order from least to greatest intensity in which the scale went. The other orderlies spoke of this man as no more a man than an empty shell. Sure he could communicate, he could interact, he was actually quite personable, but once you cracked that layer…you saw that this shell was well eroded by many a wave.20

Jim was expecting a gaunt loose haired small man with an intense stare of some sort. What he got was kid, he had to be only 20 years old. He was average size and didn’t appear gaunt. The boy had thick black hair, and an almost bored stare. His brown eyes looked empty, the lids almost half closed. His eyes seemed to look straight through Jim. Not in the way that you might see someone with eyes like that, Jim could almost feel the boy analyzing the padded wall behind him.21

Michael held out a hand to Jim.22

“Nice to finally meet another of my handlers, Jim Rank correct?”23

Jim shook the outstretched hand.24

“Yes, Michael Mortimer I presume?” He said with a smile. “Well, quite a handshake you got there.”25

“Thank you, I’ve been working on that in my free time.”26

“Well, now that you two seem to be acquainted, shall we proceed?”27

Michael stared at the padded wall. He nervously pinched the skin on the outside of his knuckles. Finally that goddamned doctor has left. He could already feel the sedative working. Slowly he slumped against the thankfully padded wall and slid to the ground. He let the blankness soak into his emptiness. He tried to savor this temporary bliss, it would not last long and he would wake again.28

He was outside. Free. Whatever that meant. He was not in The Asylum. He had broken out. So many people in an open area, he could really appreciate this vision. He thought that this in itself was amazing, these creatures that could alter the environment, walking around…oblivious. At least 16 in sight were talking into cell phones, not even about important things.29

“NO! I told you not to overfill the bowl!”30

“Hey man! Where are you? Oh, dude you're not gonna believe this-!”31

“OK, so you lied to me?”32

These were the problems of people. These things were important to these people. Did even one of them appreciate the work that went into creating that tiny metal device they were jabbering into?33

A woman tripped and dropped the folders of paper work she was holding. None of the people even saw it happen. They walked on, their eyes working like tunnel vision on their own destination. They didn’t have time to help her. Michael went over to the woman and bent down.34

“Do you need any help?”35

The woman eyed him suspiciously.36

“Uh, yeah, sure. Thanks”37

He piled the folders into a neat stack and handed them to her.38

“Nice to see that someone notices when someone falls isn’t it?” He asked.39

“In this world it’s kind of awkward, but yes it is nice.” She replied.40

“Would you like to have lunch with me?”41

“Excuse me?”42

“Would you like to have lunch with me right now? If you’re not too busy.”43

“I, well, uh…”44

“As you say, it is awkward but nice and I have not had anyone to talk to for quite some time.” He said eying her papers. “With all the work you have to do it looks like you have not either.”45

She smiled. “Why not, there’s a nice sandwich shop around the corner and I’m on my lunch break anyhow.”46

“Sounds ambrosial.”47

“So what do you do with your life Mr. Mortimer?”48

“Well, I’m schizophrenic. What I do is talk to hallucinations.”49

She paused and stared for a split second as if second-guessing her opinion of this man.50

“I meant how do you make a living.”51

“Oh, well I was in The Asylum so the doctors there provided me with everything I needed. I broke out though, so I suppose I do have to fend for myself now.”52

She had an uneasy look in her eyes now. She leaned over her cup of coffee.53

“I see, so I guess your time here is short? Surely you can’t just be walking around in the open like this. Aren’t the doctors there going to come after you?”54

“I suppose they eventually will find me and bring me back. Until then I’m going to enjoy this while I can.” 55

“If you took the time to break out though, then why not keep running so you can enjoy this for the rest of your life.”56

“Well, then I’d have to fend for myself, pay taxes, get a job…it is so much work. At The Asylum all I have to do is, nothing really.”57

“What about talking to people, you said you haven’t had any people to talk to in a while, I can understand that being in The Asylum there aren’t people who are…um…understandable. So don’t you want to be able to talk to people?”58

“Then it would not be as special anymore, I fear I would lose my appreciation of the ability to communicate if I could always talk to people. Whereas now, I truly appreciate this conversation we are having.”59

She stopped a minute, thinking.60

“Are they here now?”61

“I don’t know. I can’t differentiate between them and reality. To me they are real, I can touch them just the same as I could touch you and the feeling would be the same.”62

“Well, point out any person in this café who you think is not real and I’ll tell you if they are or not.”63

“How do you know that if I point someone out to you and you don’t see them that they aren’t real?”64

“Well doesn’t the saying, ‘seeing is believing,’ mean anything to you?”65

“You don’t see them, you don’t believe in them. I do see them, I do believe in them. How do I know that you aren’t one of them?”66

“Well, I’m not, I’m real.”67

“How do you know?”68

“Because, when you leave, I’ll still be here. I won’t just fade away into non-existence.”69

“When I leave though, I won’t know if you disappear or not.”70

“Well, you could leave a video camera here or something to record whether I disappear or not.”71

“That would be inaccurate because I could not say whether I am hallucinating you on the tape or not.”72

“Other people can see me though.”73

“How do you know that they aren’t all schizophrenic though? How do we know that any of what we see is real at all? What does it mean to be real?”74

“What are you a philosopher now?”75

“I suppose. Yes.”76

“Oh, ok.”77

“Do you know what subjectivity is?”78

“Sure, it means that something is particular to a given person, it’s an opinion.”79

“Do you know what objectivity is?”80

“I guess it would be the antonym of subjectivity.”81

“One would think so! I believe differently. The way I understand it is that objectivity is the majority of opinions believing in the same thing. It IS subjectivity except that every one of those given persons has chosen the same thing. Subjectivity is objectivity only when everyone has the same opinion. Objectivity is always the same as subjectivity. It is similar to how a square is always a rectangle but a rectangle is not always a square.”82

“That’s very interesting…keep going.”83

“I definitely will. Have you ever tried to imagine nothingness, absolute absence of anything?”84

“Sure, some people believe that there is an end to the universe and that there is ‘nothing’ beyond this border.”85

“Have you ever tried to imagine it though? Absolutely nothing. Imagine a cardboard box with toys in it. If you take out all the toys, there is still an empty box. You can stick your hand into the box. Obviously there is space in the box for my hand to go. Nothingness means that there isn’t even space. So what is it, is it solid, is it gas, is it all at the same time? That’s still something though, isn’t it? How can that be possible?86

I believe that if nothingness is so complex that the human mind cannot even comprehend what it would be like, our minds would be incredibly defective. But they are not, so therefore I believe nothingness is impossible. The very idea of a mind requires the mind to have no flaws, flaws require that there is a rulebook so to speak about what is right about the mind and what is wrong, which brings me to my next topic.87

“Do you believe in morality?”88

“Of course.”89

“How do you believe in it though, what is it you believe about it? What is right to you and what is wrong?”90

“Someone once told me that evil was the unreasonable, deliberate infliction of involuntary suffering. I believe that that is morally wrong.”91

“That is a perfect statement. You say that you believe it is wrong though, is it? Where is it stated that it is wrong?”92

“Well, we created the idea of morality I suppose, so how something is wrong or right is how humanity says it is, or anyone.”93

“That is my point, I am saying that morality isn’t moral though, it is a creation. What if we met intelligent life, the morals of this species might be completely different than ours, and do we think they are wrong? They do not; they probably think we are just as wrong as we think they are. What do you think?”94

“I’m just going to let you keep on talking.”95

“Well, I say that if there is no rule book for how things are supposed to work, then how can our minds be flawed? Which means that nothingness is consequently impossible.”96

“Where is this going?”97

“You will see, bare with me. Do you know what the term infinity means?”98

“I sense that whatever I say you are going to come up with some explanation of why you think it is wrong.”99

Susan Calvin was finding this very interesting but she was apprehensive about this man. She also was not knowledgeable in this subject so she was getting a little confused. She didn’t know if what the man was saying had any truth to it at all.100

“One would think that infinite means that something has no dimensions, it goes on forever. Infinity can be said to be small or large, put into context, ‘something is infinitely small or large.’ Size is subjective though. Nothing can be small or large; it all has to do with reference points. In effect, anything that has to do with infinity is something that cannot have any size or measure. I believe infinity refers not to the idea that something has no bounds, but to the fact that something is all forms of what its subjective measurements can be simultaneously.101

Now imagine timeline that has an origin at zero. Let’s say we have a timeline from zero to ten. Now take the same timeline and zoom out, now this timeline is from negative one hundred to one hundred. Now zoom way in, the time line now is from a half to one. Negative bounds, positive bounds, and origin of a timeline only exist in reference to the timeline concerned, because the timeline could go on forever or it could end at ten. Now do this zooming in and out at an infinite speed and remember, this means to zoom in and out at all speeds possible simultaneously.102

Alright, have you ever heard of space-time?”103

“Vaguely, it has to do with how the universe is held together or something.”104

“Yes. Space-time is the idea that space and time are not independent of one another. They form one symbiotic place. Using this, space-time has always existed because of time being infinite and thus space is also infinite because the idea of nothingness being impossible.105

All right, now that I have all of that explained I will move onto the main course. 106

The theory of the Big Bang says that at first all of the matter and energy in the universe was contained in a tiny, infinitely small singularity. Knowing about both subjectivity and infinity, we see that one could be smaller than this singularity or one could be bigger. So if the universe is infinite, then there are no reference points of which to compare movement because you can always take one more step. In fact if you think about it, movement is impossible because of the lack of true size to the universe. Expand on this and we see nothing at all can exist because nothing can be anywhere in a place that is everywhere. Do you see? How can anyone be anywhere in this place if it has no exact dimensions, if it is all dimensions it can be at all possible times?107

The way I see it is that the only thing that truly exists is the mind. So what is this place? Well, I believe it some sort of illusion that our minds create to give explanation for the idea of ‘here’. If the universe contains only thoughts, then there would be no way for them to communicate or interact, so this place we are in was inevitably created as a playground for our minds. And that is all I planned to say.”108

She didn’t know what to say. It was all coming at her too quickly. She again thought that it was all just made up. She didn’t know what to think anymore. Could this be true? The tingling of the café bell on the door broke her thoughts. A doctor man wearing a doctor’s lab coat entered the café followed closely by two beefy men. The men came over to their table.109

The man in the lab coat said, “Well Michael what a coincidence that we find you here on this fine day.”110

Michael recognized all three men as workers from The Asylum. He replied, “Walsh, Rank, Othello we meet again I see.”111

The two orderlies went on either side of Michael and lifted him up by his armpits, as they carried him away he turned his head and spoke to her,112

“It was nice chatting with you.”113

They went out the door and that was the last Susan ever saw of him. A few moments passed. She looked down. For a split second she thought she saw had hand fade just slightly, revealing the napkin underneath. Then everything went back to normal. She looked around the café; every person there was talking on a cell phone.114