The Fifth Stage by Christoffer

My weary eyes, my wandering mind. My temple losing its hold on reality, falling through the cracks of existence; a fight I will soon lose, surrendering to sleep.

In my specific vocation, you encounter a substantial number of curiosities: the victims and the malevolent, the fools and the fool-hearted. Navigating their realities, judging their behavior, their motivations, sifting through statistics and data—lives. Drawing judgements on a moment’s glance, or the nature of an out-of-place remark. People hold contempt for the likes of me, and I don’t blame them. After twenty-something years of this path, I believe myself to have gathered somewhat of a conscience. Or at least a reason for this infernal insomnia.

The irony then; to find myself in the serenity of these late hours. Why? Why this sense of tranquility after acquiring a knowledge that would grind all of civilization into dust?

Let me recollect.

-

A wave of déjà vu flowed through me as I presented my credentials as an insurance investigator to the tired receptionist at the mental hospital. By robotic routine she prepared my plastic identity tag as I recalled her presence from another case: A proper fool, newly admitted after his home caught fire. Police found him in less than his underpants, expressively wandering a nearby forest. Undoubtedly my most rapid solve time to date. Definitely arson; definitely involved, but the question of active fraud lingered. As the interview started; sequentially did his performance; throbbing eyes and hearing voices. I interrupted and expressed a simple truth. That this particular ward had not discharged a single patient in decades. He was given two options; either live with sanity in prison or remain to perform insanity for even longer. Facing the reality of spending life amidst real lunacy, he broke down once more and the case was closed, followed by personal notoriety from the local law enforcement.??

”I can prescribe something for that.” The doctor suggested as my microsleep faded away. We traversed down the corridors with locked patient doors. Tiny windows hinted fragments of broken individuals as I pondered about the experience of a disintegrating reality to such serious degree. It stirred me nauseous. ??

”The initial report mentioned him in a catatonic state. Car collided with a parking pole near the beach, and police found him gazing at the rising sun, unable to communicate.” The doctor explained as we arrived at a specific door.??

”I’ve concluded a severe mental breakdown and acute depression. He showed signs of extreme paranoia, which is why he ended up here for observation.” The doctor continued as I peered through the limited view through the small window. It revealed a curled-up man in the corner of his bed, dressed in unremarkable all light blue.??

”Any danger?” I queried.??

”No spontaneous violence, only occasional mild anger, nothing out of the ordinary.” He replied.?

”Any, you know, suicidal stuff?” I inquired, provoking an odd smile. ??

”On the contrary. For the diagnosis I’m leaning against, there should be notable signs of it, but it seems every time we try to calm him down with any substances, he gets violently defensive, blaming us for repeatedly killing him” ??

”Repeatedly?” I asked. The doctor ignored further explanations and nodded a ’go-ahead’ to a nearby nurse who approached the door. ??

”He can talk?” I pressed.??

”Quite so.”

—

”I want you to investigate an oddity.” My boss stressed over the phone. It was still early and dark as I kissed my sleeping son goodbye. ??

I drove, indulging an extra-strong coffee, wiping the condensation off the cold car windows revealing morning dew glistening over the empty city streets.

Arriving, the remnants of the facility still smoldered, casting god rays in the morning sun. Firemen gathered equipment, rolling up fire hoses. The police captain and fire chief conversed as I approached. Familiar faces from old cases, Roland and Parker.??

”Here we go again, oddballer.” Roland greeted with a smile, holding out his hand and I greeted them both.

”Yeah, it’s clear arson, and a sloppy one indeed. Still searching for the guy.” Parker added.??

”You see these tracks, and the residue?” He pointed at the ground, and an open petrol can. ??

”I’m guessing someone accidentally doused the place, then accidentally tossed a cigarette on it?” I replied. ??

”What would we do without your amazing deduction skills?” Parker exaggerated with a laugh. ??

”Anything else?” I inquired and Roland described the scene with his wild gestures:??

”Pretty cut and dry, our guy botched his parking, went inside and torched the place. Would have needed access codes and ID card considering the fire started deep in the labs with all the equipment and documents gathered in a large pile. We’re about 109 percent sure who did it.” I took in the scenery. Most of the building still stood firm, a dark slice where the roof had been, its surviving windows oozing a dark residue.??

”What is this place?” I asked as they too gazed up.??

”Some laboratory, neuroscience kind of stuff,” Parker informed while Roland made an exit for his car:??

”I’ve lined up some employees and emailed the profile. Let me know if you get anything else out of this mess.” ??

They knew I would solve it for them.

—

The rest of the world stirred as I took a bite out of my ham-cheese sandwich at a nearby coffee-shop. People slowed to a halt in front of the mess for their customary social media rituals before moving on. The swirling aroma from the busy kitchen filled the air with a hunger-inducing texture, if it hadn’t been for the stench of grilled plastic wafting through the entrance door. I texted my son to remember locking the door before school and turned my attention to the iPad glowing the perps profile. ??

He was a smart one; Paul, the owner. Wrote a paper on quantum mechanics, some collapsing functions beyond my realm of understanding. Moved into neuroscience and sleep research, later bought the place 15 years ago with the help of private investors. All paid back by his treatment contributions to big pharma. He showed no prior mental health issues, no problems of any kind, not even a hint at some immoral love triangle with interns, nothing. If he had grasped for wealth he would merely have needed to sell and be content, but rather he let himself be consumed by work, by his life passion. Odd indeed. I needed more backstory.??

—
?
I entered the apartment of one of Paul’s lab assistants. She gathered away some kid toys as I shed my coat, waiting patiently amid the fragrance of last nights sleep. ??

”Sorry, this morning. But I already talked to one of your colleagues?” She said and I showed my ID, prompting the all familiar ”you people” reaction. ??

”What do you want?” She uttered as we settled in the kitchen. I pulled out my iPad to show the documents. ??

”Why do you think he did it?” I queried.??

”I really don’t want to screw him over, okay?” She hesitated with a nervous head-scratch. I softened my tone.??

”I’m afraid he’s pretty much screwed already. I just want to understand why, and in this situation, it would probably even help him, help all of you.” It was a well-rehearsed line, a useful tool in my bag.??

”I dunno, he was fine until a couple of months ago. We all worked on neurological sleep patterns, trying to find irregularities and outliers in the data. Then he started to spend more and more time on it than everyone else. Trouble sleeping…” She paused abruptly. I let her breathe.??

”He’s the lead researcher, he didn’t have to do all the grunt work himself, that was our responsibility. But he kept locking us out. Then… he snapped one day. Found him having a panic attack in his office, serious one. We didn’t make anything out of it with our review and all coming up, and then all of this happens.” She shook her head.? ?

”Any copies of the research?” I probed, already sensing the obvious.??

”No, everything was in there, and I checked our network backup from here and, no it’s all gone. I can’t even tell you anything really, he knew the entirety of it. He even cut out his old research partner which I thought was strange; they always published together.”??

”Some animosity between them?” I inquired.??

”No, not at all, Paul just kept isolating himself and his research. I think it was that kid,” She said noticeably struggling to recall his name. ??

”What kid?” I pressed.??

”A patient of ours, he had some neurological issues we gathered data on. I think that broke him for some reason.”??

-

The nurse unlocked the door to Paul’s room. ??

”He’s not gonna do anything.” The doctor assured me while keeping a safe distance himself. I carefully moved into the room as the door shut behind me with an echoing slam.

The room was sparse; a bed and a table with two chairs made out of light wood. Above the bed a window; although secured with tempered glass, I hoped. In the corner by the door, a discarded bible. I sat down, observing Paul still curled up on his bed.??

”It’s a double-sick joke.” He mused. ??

”What is?” I inquired. He turned to the Bible. ??

”Thinking that would help me while mocking my profession.” He muttered. ??

”I don’t think that was the intention.” I said placing freshly printed documentation on the table. ??

”No, they just think its part of the cure.” He continued muttering.? ?

”For what?” I fired back.?

”The fear of death!” he shouted towards the door as if to shoo away some lingering staff. He stood up to view the documents.??

”I’m from your insurance company and…” I tried before he interrupted. ??

”Fuck you! Why are you really here?” His aggression startled me as I found myself lacking an honest answer. Case was already somewhat done.??

”Actually… I don’t know.” I replied. He laughed.??

”You really don’t, do you?” He remarked, settling down on the chair. ??

”Well, lay it out then, what do you need of me?” He pushed as I tried to regain my composure. My wandering eyes noticed the details of the wall. At first I had thought them part of some intricate wallpaper, but in that moment realized the work was his. Thousands of small lines for which the first few thousands had been crossed out. Paul noticed my observation.? ?

”That’s just my estimated number of deaths so far, and the rest.” He remarked and pointed casually.??

”Because the staff here kills you?” I inquired with a tad of mockery.??

”Exactly! Stupid fucks wouldn’t understand it even if I did a lecture on it.” He muttered.??

”Try me then” I provoked and he tilted his head, judging my intellect. ??

”What’s your level of knowledge in neuroscience? In quantum mechanics?” He mocked back.??

”Not even a little” I replied, feeling a returning aura of authority. He laughed and I interrupted him:?

”But I do like to know more about the kid.” My inquiry seemed to rattle something within him. His hand reached out and grabbed a photo of the burnt-out interior. His demeanor fading into something broken. ??

”You sure you want to know?” He warned me as my eyes wandered over the scratch pattern on the wall.??

—
?
A couple of months prior, Paul and his colleagues made an enigmatic discovery: Through the hundreds of thousands of neurological measurements spilled out on long graphs, the exploration began with a small red circle, drawn with a sharpie around a curious anomaly, accompanied by a sloppy handwritten remark: ”Odd”. Additionally, with some other pen, another note; a nod to old-time explorations as some kind of warning: ”Here be dragons”. No one knew from who. Paul fixated on this little oddity and spent all his time attempting to replicate. ??

As sleep sets in we venture through four stages of being, each one drifting our mind and body deeper down until our dreams reveal themselves. The dragon Paul had discovered, lured down there in our deepest existence. It quickly drove Paul and his team to prematurely open their celebratory Champagne as they hypothesized the existence of a fifth, much deeper stage of sleep. An unknown, lurking underneath our experience, gatekeeping the door to our dreams. In that fundamental dark something played tricks with our consciousness. ??

Traditional scientific knowledge describes it as a form of flow; a cyclic sea; our brain waves calmly moving through neurons as we lose ourselves to the deep. But these dragons broke those waves, crashing through, forming a whirlpool that Paul found himself to have seen before. He obsessed everything into a new experiment; pooling resources into a modified detector from his days researching quantum mechanics. As he steered this ship through this realm of data, something creeped up inside him, stirring forth a nauseating possibility. Like a splinter in his mind, something wasn’t right about what he had witnessed. The similarities with his previous work was too aligned. How the waves broke up and collapsed, how they formed anew, how they erased. Almost like… ??

For months, these dragons haunted him. Sleep eluded him, and sustenance became a distant concern. He was followed by a truth he couldn’t stomach, and least of all share. Believing himself saved from his obsession by an arriving new patient; Riley, a shy teenager with severe narcolepsy disorder, he paused the project. Returning to the practice of treatment and all his daily old routines. ??

But as the graphs kept scrolling and Riley’s confused eyes yearned for Paul’s help he fell into despair. Seeing this kid fall asleep multiple times each hour, realizing the profound implications and horror it entailed. He couldn't endure it, couldn't cope with it… so he ended it.??

—??

”You lost me.” I admitted to Paul, still lost in memory.??

”The fifth stage wasn't a new level of sleep, another brain process or function of the body. I had the proof… but fortunately that’s all gone now.” He threw the photo of the burnt lab back onto the pile of documents. My confusion was palpable.??

”Have you ever had a near-death experience?” He asked. I shook my head.??

”I would call you lucky, even though that would be nonsense in this context.” ??

”Why is that?” I questioned.??

”Whenever someone goes through that experience, they’re technically dead. We rejoice, hug them and cry out our joy when they get revived. But they’re not who they were.” He paused, gauging my comprehension.??

”Since there’s no way we could measure their experience, we wouldn’t know. Humanity never built any machines to test what transpires deep down when people die and return to life… But that’s exactly what I did.” ??

”You mean… someone died?” I asked, taken aback? ?

”Everyone dies. All the time.” He affirmed, pausing to assess my capacity for understanding.??

”That was what we discovered. What the fifth stage really was.” ??

”You mean to say that people somehow die when they sleep? Why would that be such a big deal if we later wake up?” I ranted back. As if disappointed in my lack of insight his posture fell, seeking the right words for my lesser mind; arriving at what could only be described as a cold punctuation to everything said prior: ??

”We don’t.” His words echoed in the small room, the hard reverb poured something cold down my spine. ??

”Our individual experience, the one you and I have right now, the feeling of myself looking at you—the experience of being, seeing, touching, tasting, all of it—it ends. Our mind, our journey as the self, ourselves, plunges into a place where our continuity ceases, dies, then everything collapses into a new self. This new self forms within the same brain state that serves as a foundation as we flow forward like a newborn birthed into the dreams formed by our pre-existing memories. Reshaping itself into a continuation from all that preceded.” ??

In silent paralyzation it all dawned on me as I slowly connected the dots. A creeping panic that crawled through me like thousands of needles. Calmly he gestured towards his wall-markings.??

”All these deaths I’ve had, and all those deaths my future will experience. But… Riley, that poor child. Imagine the markings on his wall, all those lives lost in an hour… every hour.” I observed a change in his breathing, teeth clenching as he seemed haunted by his empathy and struggle for self-control. I took a few slow breaths. ??

”You destroyed all evidence because of this?” I asked. He turned and leaned forward staring into my eyes, marking his words:??

”Just imagine a world with this knowledge as our life experience.” He gathered together the documents in a nice ordered pile before a final form of mockery:??

”And you thought I cared about insurance?”??

—?

Now I’m here.

Staring at these strange words; some form of daily memoir making me numb. I filed Paul’s case as inconclusive; I have no reason to believe him, but equally, no reason not to. And I will never know.??

I experience the texture as my fingers glide over this notebook paper. Hearing the muffled traffic outside, a late night argument at some street corner. The scent of an empty coffee cup lingers in the air. The subtle pulsation of my heartbeat. My middle-aged eyes strain to pierce the darkness in this silent nocturnal atmosphere.??

Someone will remember these moments tomorrow. But it will not be me.??

Hearing my son breathing in the adjacent room, deeply immersed in his slumber, deep down in that calm pulsating ocean. I tried to bid farewell rather than good night, but how could he comprehend? Briefly he goes silent; then continues to breathe.??

I miss my lack of sleep. As my days were filled with thoughtless acts; my mindless living gave way to that insomniac curse. Now I’m cured, yet how can that be? This infernal knowledge that would burn the world, yet it made me free.