Upon Insanity

Are you mad?


Are you. Mad?


It's something a madman once asked me.



"Of course not."
"You're lying." he grins. spinning the knife in his hands. The oscillating blade flashes, reflecting the light from the fire.
"I'm not. I'm as sane as the next man."
"But how sane is the next man? Or the man after that? Or any of the men before? Never mind that, how sane are the women?"
"What?"
He laughs, and tosses the blade. It flicks high into the air, and my eyes are drawn to it. One, two, three rotations. He catches it deftly. It never stops moving.
"What's madness?" he asks.
"You."
He wags a finger, tipping his hat at an angle. "Not so. It's myriad. It might be scientific, illnesses in our brains. Neurons misfiring. Dots not connecting. Chemicals not reacting. Or all of those things happening, but in the wrong places. Or maybe it's a sickness of our souls, a mangling of the moralities in the ghosts in our machines. I don't know; I am not mad. My head is clear as day. As the birds in the sky, or the fish in the river. I see them swimming, little swishes of their tails, moving them forward. Swish, swish, swish."
"I - "
"Bloop."
I frown, as he cackles again.
"Of course you are mad. If you are not, how do you explain the pictures in your head? When you sleep. The faces of people you know, or those you've never met, straying into surreal situations, or consorting with confuddling creatures. Portraying powers that shouldn't be possible. Places you've been, their realities warped, only just recognisable as things you know, but twisted by the boundless stretches of your own imagination. Do you not dream?"
I nod.
"And are they not strange?"
"Well...yes."
He laughs delightedly. "Therefore you are mad. There is a little bit of madness in us all. Without insanity, we could not be human. We would be identical, functionless machines. Oh, speaking of which. A walking train."
He points with his knife, and I look. He's not lying.
It saunters along the tracks, clicking its boots merrily. Steam puffs from its giant chimney, and its bright yellow body is streaked with dust. Ten massive, trousered legs propel it along its rough path, carrying the train at least eight feet from the ground. Its feet pat with a keen rhythm, and every so often a cheerful toot erupts from its front carriage. It trails the rest of the procession behind it, the dull brown compartments bouncing along like tin cans on a string.
"Nice trousers." I admit grudgingly.
"Thank you, you're very kind." whistles the train, not breaking its impressive pace.
We watch it crash through a border crossing, heading for the ocean.
"Such a shame," the madman shakes his head, "that people only get glimpses of their own madness. And barely ever remember them. You are far more lucky."
"So is this a dream?" I ask, rapping my fingers curiously against the window of the car. The contact causes ripples, flowing slowly outward like those of a stone in a lake. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see my long-dead grandfather salute me from the back seat.
"Of course this isn't a dream." snaps the man. "What a crazy thing to suggest. You don't dream. You wake up, and you remember one. That's it. You can’t ever experience a dream. This...this is so much better than that."
A baby bottle suddenly bounces off the window, making me jump.
"Stop the car!" I yell.
"Who are you talking to?" the man asks.
I suddenly realised he's not driving, and there is no car. I'm stood on the corner of the pavement, staring at a sensible brick structure. I know where we are. This is Egham station. But it's warped, like the man had said. I can see it clearly, but the dimensions are all different. I raise a finger, tracing the edge of the track out of the station as it curves away from me, stretching around a distant bend that I know shouldn't exist. But I don't know why I know that. Another train skitters around the bend as I watch, gaining speed as it patters into the station. Hordes of faceless people cheer as the new train bends its knees level with the platform, and they pile on.
The tap on the shoulder makes me jump.
It's Robert Webb. I turn to see earnest eyes, and a pleasant smile. Over his shoulder, I can see the building site; cranes disappear into the clouds, and masses of sand is dredged across the green pavement. It makes that short street seem much larger than I know it used to be.
"Excuse me." says Webb. "David and I - " he gestures over his shoulder, where a skeletally thin Mitchell waves politely at me, "are here to fight zombies."
I frown. "What with?"
"This fish." he answers, gesturing to the haddock flapping futilely on the ground.
He scowls at the sound of my laughter.
"It's not funny." he says. "This is a very deadly fish."
Behind him, David Mitchell nods seriously.
I walk to the building site, the pair of them at my shoulder. Putting my hardhat on, I hear a shout come from somewhere far above us. Mitchell and Webb step neatly apart as a great cascade of sand pools on the concrete at our feet.
"I'm sorry for laughing." I say. "But there aren't any zombies here."
They raise their eyebrows, confused.
"Of course there are." says Webb. "There's one over there."
He points.
The fat zombie stands with its back to us, two thick tree-stump legs parked on the narrow girder, looking out to the sea. The steel is short and wide, allowing plenty of room for the creature's heavy feet, and coloured with a purple tinge. Vague patterns flow through it, circles and squares and triangles all colliding and coalescing into each other with the grace of agile, living things. I stare, transfixed, until the nausea starts in the pit of my stomach and the bile rises in my throat. The steel ends abruptly a little way past the creature, burrowing into a gigantic black obelisk. The massive structure looms far above the zombie, its peak disappearing into the clouds. Waves crash against its broad base, and the thing on the girder angles its gruesome head downwards to stare. It looks especially obscene against the bright blue of the sky behind it, and the mysterious majesty of the obelisk. As if someone had lobbed a handful of red-flecked mud against a carefully painted landscape.
Without warning, a wave slams against the foundations below, sending up a huge gush of spray. The zombie moans and turned its head away instinctively, and in that instant, it sees me.
It squeals, pumping its chunky legs into a frenzy, achieving a speed I wouldn't have thought possible for its size. I turn and slam my fist on the door, my eyes finding David Mitchell's, gazing curiously from behind it.
"Let me in." I beg.
He shakes his head.
I pound on the door. It doesn't budge.
"Please."
"Nope." he says firmly, with the academic authority that comes across so well in his panel shows. "We've changed our minds."
I don't scream as I face the demon rushing towards me.
Now that it's closer, I can see its twisted, elongated jaw, and the blood on its outstretched fingers. The t-shirt it wears is in tatters, and the zombie's stomach bulges alarmingly. I can hear the chatters of the many tiny, vicious little things it contains, and for the second time in as many minutes I almost throw up. I look for a weapon, but there's nothing anywhere near me on the girder, and Mitchell has left the door firmly locked behind me. I know that even if I could find a weapon, to puncture the zombie's stomach would be death - the tiny abominations would swarm me. The zombie is closer now, rushing past the others - how had I not seen all the others? - and I can hear the snapping of its jaw, and see the terrifying hunger in its eyes. Instinctively, I raise my plasma cutter, and shoot a thin line of fire directly at its knee.
The flesh squelches as the flames tear into it, and the zombie screeches as the leg is torn away. It slips, meeting the girder with a loud clang, and both parts of the creature plunge into the sea below.
I stare at the cutter in my hand.
How do I have control over this?
Am I insane?
The others race towards me, the combinations of their hideous idiosyncrasies blending together until I can't see them as separate beings, only a single snowballing maelstrom of horror, gathering speed as it rattles towards me.  
I know what I can do.
I close my eyes, and concentrate.
When I open them, it is early morning, and I'm standing in a deserted street in the middle of Manchester. This one is especially odd. Not because of its proportions - the buildings seem normal sized. Blurred but otherwise unremarkable posters litter the walls. Not because of its inhabitants - there are none. It's early in the morning, perhaps 7am. The sun is shining hopefully, and frost has gathered on the windows. It's exactly as I remember it. That's at once the most comforting, and the most frightening thing.
I'm never going to find my purple jukebox here, I realise.
My legs burn as I pedal frantically up and down the streets. Nothing even closely resembling a music shop jumps out at me. Near one of the universities I spot a jukebox, but it's not purple. I shout in frustration. Purple's the one I want.
"Are you mad?"
I spin, almost falling off the bike.
That same man is there again.
"Who are you?" he asks, spinning a knife in his hand.
"Me?"
"You're mad."
"I'm as sane as the next man."
He gestured around him, at the wide, sparse streets.
"But isn't this strange?"
"No, it's real."
He laughed, a long, high giggle.
"Everything you see is real. It's just been strangely put together. Did you know; our brains can't construct faces from scratch? Everyone you meet here, you've seen before, in some way or another. Their surroundings are more...malleable. Malleable."
He rolled the word around in his mouth, as if tasting a fine wine.
"Truth is stranger than fiction, and fiction is created from truth. And if the fiction is created from the truth, then either the fiction must be somewhat true or the truth must be somewhat fiction. You follow, yes? Normality only exists as it's created by us. We say what's normal. So who's to say what's real?"
"Are you real?"
He laughed. "You'd be mad to think I'm not real."
The man - the madman (or just the man) - straightened his jacket. The knife has vanished.
"Come on." he said. "We have to see Matt Damon about your jukebox."
He turned on his heel, and opened the door of the gym behind him. I follow him, my mouth dropping open in wonder. I'm on the edge of a cliff, towering hundreds of feet above a grey mass of fog that obscures much of the calm ocean below us.
Out beyond the cliffs, against the backdrop of a lime-green sky, a city waits, floating serenely above the blue water. The buildings aren't like any I remember seeing before - jagged edges reach towards the clouds, and clumps of soil tumble off the chunks of land that inexplicably suspend them in the air. Many of them are half-built, their steel, meshed frames visible through the outer masonry. The metropolis stretches for miles, far farther than I could see. Dark, spherical vehicles flicker between the spires, scurrying and swarming like insects. I can't see anything besides air, earth and metal amongst the buildings, but I know that the creatures living there aren't human. They're aliens from some distant planet, and either they've come to me, or I've come to them.
In the centre, an immense tower rises from the ground like a nail from a puddle. It has only two distinct sides, with its foundations apparently built on the shape of a giant, thin oval. Like the other structures, it has no doors or windows, or any other aspects that might normally define architecture in the world I'm used to. I can only see one dark, blank facet, glowing faintly green with a mysterious energy.
It fills my vision as we get closer, and I stare at the huge central spire as we circle it. I can feel the man at my shoulder, and I know something is wrong.
This shouldn't be here.
We spiral higher around the nameless tower, with the structures surrounding it fading into the mist like anthills.
Our craft - my craft - passes briefly through a cloud. I turn to stare outwards, back to the landmass we came from. It is wide and unremarkable. And so very far away.

I ask the question aloud; although I'm not sure the man is even there anymore.

"Is this real?"


I lean forward, and tumble from the machine.



The tower is gone.




As is the city below it.





The sky is no longer green.






There is only a grey blanket of fog, rushing up to greet me.






Is this a dream?






Am I insane?






The fog envelops me.






We'll soon find out.