- 08 November, 2025 *
I - Annual examination
The clinic smelled of alcohol and metal.
The lights never flickered, not once. They hummed a constant white noise that made silence impossible. He sat on the observation chair while the nurse wrapped thin wires around his temples. Her hands moved with a tired grace, like someone performing a ritual without faith. The doctor stood behind a glass partition, checking the readings.
It was his seventeenth annual examination. He has always been stable. The machine always spat out “NORMAL”. He expected the same result. Brief pulse, a printed code, permission to live another year in equilibrium.
But for the first time, the machine hesitated. It took a longer time to give the result than usual. Then a short beep, the screen flickere…
- 08 November, 2025 *
I - Annual examination
The clinic smelled of alcohol and metal.
The lights never flickered, not once. They hummed a constant white noise that made silence impossible. He sat on the observation chair while the nurse wrapped thin wires around his temples. Her hands moved with a tired grace, like someone performing a ritual without faith. The doctor stood behind a glass partition, checking the readings.
It was his seventeenth annual examination. He has always been stable. The machine always spat out “NORMAL”. He expected the same result. Brief pulse, a printed code, permission to live another year in equilibrium.
But for the first time, the machine hesitated. It took a longer time to give the result than usual. Then a short beep, the screen flickered red and froze.
READING: INCONCLUSIVE
The doctor looks over to the patient, then to the nurse. Nobody uttered a word.
The same day, he was sent to a rehab centre. A place for the outcasts who no longer met the system’s expectations.
II - Behavioural assessment
The facility was blindingly bright. Air smelled of something faintly chemical, like erased handwriting. It was a big maze of wards with corridors overlapping themselves, identical and endless. Everything looked sterile. Workers were in white gowns and masks. Everything in white, no place for colour.
Each room contained one bed, one screen, and one patient. The nurse came to check the patients every day, checking vitals that never changed. The doctor visited rarely, his steps were sharp and rehearsed.
Days folded into each other. Sometimes he dreamt of colour, a memory of red theatre curtains, a blue glass cup, a woman’s laughter: things that didn’t belong in this place. He woke with his pulse too fast. The monitors blinked furiously, then went blank again.
At night, he sometimes spoke aloud just to hear a human voice. The walls absorbed the sound instantly.
When she entered his room one night, she found him sitting on the floor, wires coiled loosely in his hands. The machine lay silent, unplugged.
“It doesn’t feel like sickness,” he said softly - not as confession, but as fact.
She didn’t report it. The next morning, she marked his file STABLE.
III - INCONCLUSIVE
A week later, he was released. “Controlled home observation,” they called it.
His apartment was spotless, government-issued, pale walls reflecting the surveillance lights. Machines monitored his breathing, sleep, and thought frequency. He spent days dismantling them, one after another, until only one screen remained.
The nurse visited for the final data collection. She entered quietly, clipboard in hand.
She checked the last monitor. It blinked twice, then dimmed. Outside, the report began to upload automatically. The screen read: INCONCLUSIVE. For a moment, she watched it flicker, the red light pulsing like a heartbeat. Then she typed in her override code. The line of text shifted. READING: NORMAL. The system accepted it without question. She knew what it meant - falsifying a record, protecting someone who no longer met the system’s expectations. But for the first time in years, she felt something close to certainty.
When she left, she didn’t erase the manual log. She left the entry open, with her identification clearly visible.
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