I'm artistic.

STAIRWELL TO INFINITY (a bleak outlook on life)

IN THE ENCLOSED STAIRWELL, there are no windows, you can't tell day from night. Surrounded by walls, and locked in from the outside world, there is a sense of disorientation in all of its inhabitants. The key issue is, the inhabitants NEVER meet each other. You can only proceed in a vertical direction. Up or down? You begin to make your choices.

ASCENDING TOWARDS AN IMAGINARY HEAVEN? Or downwards into the murky depths of despair? There are cameras rigged up at the corner of every ceiling, every 2 turns on the flight of stairs. Who's watching? No one knows. Sometimes you find mysterious scratches on the wall, that look like symbols or even words. But no obvious sign that anyone was there.

IN THE BEGINNING, YOU TREAD CAREFULLY, worried about your safety, worried that you are not alone. Worried for trapdoors. Worried to wake that imagined creature resting deep below. You inhale and feel the cold air rising from the depths, smothering your lips. Sweat glistens on your forehead. You had it figured out before, this chamber was ventilated by thin plastic tubes in the walls, yet the air grows stale with each passing hour. On some days you find food lying around in the chamber. No insects are seen crawling about. You tap on the concrete walls to detect hollow areas. No, nothing. An echo sounds. You shout at the top of your voice until it grows hoarse. You knock until your knucles turn black, and they bleed.

You find tears rolling down your cheeks. What's there to cry for? Who will empathise with you? The situation you're in - a captive held for unknown purpose - warrants that you break down and cry. You starve for the entire day.

FOOD AND DRINK comes to you just when you needed it the most. It miraculously appears out of nowhere as you climb up to the next corner of the staircase. You decide to pull yourself together, and stop throwing kiddie tantrums or cry. You start to conserve your body moisture. Once, there was a blackout - all the lights on the ceilings went out. For a long while, you slept through it. When you woke up, a magnificent feast was laid before you. You ate well that day, for it was a banquet for the gods, and dreamt about imminent release from the tower. But not too long, you viewed it as a sadistic joke, for you were left to starve 2 days after. You start to pray and give thanks to the mysterious food...

(Author's analysis: up to here so far, it conveys the perspective of a caged animal, like how the hell does it feel to be one? How does it feel for a mature adult to lose all his social connections? In this fourth dimension... )

STUPID, but it took a while for you to mature and adjust. Obviously, you are in some perverse scientific experiment. You start to ration the last bits of food from every meal. 'They' are monitoring your progress. God knows who. You forgotten how you came here. Who tricked you into giving up your freedom?

FEARFUL of the monster in the deep, you chose to ascend the staircase. Some days, the air vents introduce clouds and fogged air, so you don't know how high up you are. Your senses are confused. It gets tiring...

Wrought with fatigue from climbing, you lose your way and go downwards instead. The light intensity is reduced to a dreadful low, and you wandered as if you are deep underground. The word here is 'Catacombs'. You wonder how's the world outside, and who locked you up in this colossal maze of undetermined length. When you find your way out of here, surely you must see it as a magnificent structure? A breakthrough in architecture... A neverending staircase?

FACED with the COLD, HARSH REALITY, you break down and cry. You starve, and to you, imminent death is such an omnious, frightful feeling. You treat each day with uncertainty. You dunno if you'd wake up tomorrow. There's nothing to look forward to in life. Absoluely true. You know this - in your blood, as you pluck out your hair to express the pain you feel inside. Your muscle aches as you continue your journey. Hunger pangs come to you.

You are done for. Mad. A raving lunatic! You are sure of it. You know this as you urinate on areas in the staircase, but find them disappearing with a returning glance. Surely, there's an end to the suffering in this staircase?

4 alternate endings...(for the believers and the non-believers, and the dreamers)

#1
Life fades out for you and you no longer exist. You now belong to a spirit in the walls of the tower. You see a new candidate being chosen for the experiment. You see how it is done. You're trapped in these walls forever, and you scream out in torment to your predecessors as you see them in the same sorry plight. In your eternal dream, you're still alive. You've returned as a test candidate somehow, and you don't realise it. Why do your memories of this place accumulate with each experience? With each passage of time here?

#2
God was watching you all the time. At the end of the stairwell, the Almighty has come to set you free. He rationalises the need to test people on varying degrees of faith. Many decide to give up halfway, but the ones who deeply believe will receive his greatest honour. The Almighty holds you up with a palm. Like a singing bird young and free, you grow wings and emerge out of the single, uppermost window of a tower to meet the day... With your wings outstretched, you flew on towards the heavens. You have passed the mandatory test requirement for becoming an angel.

#3 (a horrible sci-fi ending - Mature 18 rating: skip through to read at the next asterisk * )
One day, while you're hunting for food, the staircase suddenly gives way beneath you. Screaming forever, you plunge into the depths.

You find yourself sucked out of the structure into space.

Zero-gravity. At one with the universe.

It was cold out there. It felt as if you were falling forever into a bottomless pit... No, you musn't struggle.. and your ears don't hear a single thing.

For a moment, you felt so light and happy to meet the stars. You ignored the aching discomfort around your skull, limbs, all over... Yet, nothing else compares to the sight before you a view of the universe.. the stars shining brightly in the distance.. with too many to count... and others blinking at you. No human probably lived to see this.

As you spun around, you catch a glimpse of the disintegrating debris. You fought out the shivering cold, and suppressed the struggle within. Delirious, you felt someone reaching for you.. a loved one.. so comfortable in her arms.. heaven! In her embrace, you were suffocated while your lungs collapsed. In an instant, your soul leaves your physical form for the last time, and you chose to be happy in departure.

Meanwhile, the solitary lifeless body remains suspended in space, tossing and turning in between the stars.. making somersaults over distances. The body desiccates as volumes of air and fluids are spun out from within, causing a frozen, crystallised exterior to emerge... For a long time after you slipped out of consciousness, the remnants of your physical form were charred by a nearby star in a few seconds.

SO MUCH for God's private experiment... It was decided that it was time for the human dream of space colonisation to be realised. Hence, the Almighty tested out the best of human efforts to sustain life in space. Apparently, the gravitational field in the space station broke down, and the longest vessel (space station) in outer space disintegrated; when God turned his back to give attention to the existing problems on planet earth.

* * *

#4
PSYCHOLOGISTS are testing the performance of a batch of human clones strain #62U by assessing their intelligence and emotional responses to cope with long-term solitude in certain conditions. This study of human behaviour is a joint project between several developed nations and private companies. This investment aims to draw out the most conclusive findings on the subject of human behaviour. Months ago, a sizeable facility was designed and constructed entirely in cyberspace. Privileged visitors to the facility will report of the claustrophobia associated with movement around the narrow staircases. Unpleasant experiences felt by the clone are deleted and introduced with the safest techniques in cyberbrain engineering...

Remember the basic techniques of primitive networking? One may enchance his/her networking experience using an internet browser, by clicking on what was known as the 'refresh' button. In a similar fashion, any unpleasant emotional experiences encountered during your stay there will be deleted by the server itself...

The scientists hope that this would prove a safe haven for human strains with a long-life span, to help them get through old-age retirement and health syndromes. It has been popular opinion that this could help lighten the societal responsibility of towards care-giving for the aged.

Alternatively, it could be exploited for realistic issues such as containing dangerous criminals, or providing humane avenues to execute criminals... This would help rid society of another burden.

* * *

NOTE:
This ficticious passage was inspired by many wanderings up and down the creepy staircase of Temasek Polytechnic Library.

Ending #1 was inspired by Final Fantasy VII, the Gaia theory. It deals with mystical beliefs.

(Religions are the product of man's imagination... infatuation with the mystical and phenomenal, will ultimately lead us to develop reason, and our own unprovable theories. How can there be such a thing as 'unquestionable truth' when all the truth we cherish in our modern world right now, are theories handed over the centuries from our forefathers? Our minds work like fluid, and as a collective society, we treasure beliefs; things that are commonly accepted, and will continue thus to be accepted, necessary for the continual existence of mankind.)