Chapter 24

Chapter 24: The Eon-Long Bacchanal

This was the psychiatric hospital. A nurse was making rounds in the corridor.

“Ketchup!”

The shout cracked like thunder. Something white streaked past, so fast the nurse nearly dropped the charts in her hands. “Who was that?”

An older staffer, unruffled, pushed his glasses up. “Don’t panic. The patient in Room 211. A standard restraint suit won’t hold him. He’s probably jimmied the lock again. Off on another streak.”

Even as he spoke, several burly male nurses pounded past. “Zhao Meiyou! Zhao Meiyou, stop!”

The new intern was still rattled. “I think he was shouting… something about ketchup?”

“Right.” The old hand didn’t look up from his notes. “Two-eleven’s one of our regulars. Same since he came in—either spouts nonsense no one can follow, or it’s ketchup.”

“Ketchup!”

Zhao Meiyou dove headfirst into a ward, threw his arms wide, and declaimed, “Not gold, not syrup—ketchup is ketchup!”

It took all the men to pin him, get the restraint suit back on, and push a sedative. When the young man on the bed finally slipped under, they let out a collective breath. Zhao Meiyou was one of the hospital’s trickiest patients—not because he was violent, but because he adored singing and dancing and would launch into nude parades down the corridor, belting hymns to ketchup. The entire staff had PTSD; even the cafeteria stopped serving stir-fried tomatoes and eggs.

They shut the door and changed the lock. As their footsteps faded, the “sleeping” Zhao Meiyou shot upright, shrugged out of the restraint suit in a blur, planted a foot on the pillow, struck a White Crane Spreads Wings pose, and whispered, “Ketchup.”

He hopped off the bed and began a shaman’s jig—left, right. “Ketchup! Ketchup! Not gold, not syrup—ketchup is ketchup! God of Wealth sends congratulations, touch stone and make it gold, most auspicious! Ketchup! There’s white frost on the woman’s face! This is a loop—I have to get out! The question is, where do I go? Ketchup!”

He dropped to the floor and crawled, muttering, “Ketchup! Set the banquet in the Hall of Righteousness and let me bare my heart to my worthy brothers—who in the greenwood does not revere Dou Erdun—ketchup—back home a wife still waits in the ruin for my return—return, return where?”

He suddenly belted a snatch of opera and, at the crucial line, broke off, then, like a man possessed, chanted on a loop, “Return home, return home, ruin, Ruin 000… ketchup!”

Ketchup again. Zhao Meiyou pitched back onto the bed, and the mad light drained from his face, leaving only bottomless fatigue.

“Fuck.” He covered his eyes. “Fuck ketchup.”

He lay a moment, then gritted his teeth, got up, fished a marker from inside the mattress, crawled under the bed, and scrawled in thick strokes on the wooden slats: Ruin 000.

From below, the undersides weren’t large, and they were already crammed with messy handwriting: mission, archaeologist, friend, loop, angel, dream, door…

And a few smaller lines:

Your name is Zhao Meiyou.

You are not crazy.

This is a loop, or a dream.

Find a way out.

There was also a hulking KETCHUP, each stroke inked over and over, beside a note: You are not a man without a past. You have simply forgotten some things. If you want to remember, shout Ketchup.

Staring up at the words, Zhao Meiyou murmured, “Ketchup.”

They had told him he was a patient here, that he had been here a long time—part of that had to be true, because the place carried a certain familiarity. But no one could say where he’d come from, whether he had family or friends. He couldn’t get out, and he couldn’t recall his past. He was like someone dropped out of the sky; his earliest memory held only a single word: ketchup.

His first memory was waking in bed—unable even to speak, able only to say ketchup. Then a sing-song rhyme floated up, like a nursery: Ketchup—not gold, not syrup, ketchup is ketchup.

Hospital days had no end. He tried pairing the rhyme with every melody he could imagine, singing it out. Then one day, new lyrics came: Ketchup—this isn’t real; get out; escape the loop; ketchup.

He scared himself. His first instinct was to write the line down. He kept chanting the song; now and then disjointed phrases would bubble up. Language was a conduit, channeling up broken fragments that showed the jagged tip of some other world’s iceberg, until one day he pieced together a fact: I don’t think I’m a lunatic.

He wasn’t. Because this world was fake. He had to get out.

First, he had to remember who he was. His name was Zhao Meiyou and he was named after nothing, but that didn’t mean he had nothing. He had at least the word ketchup. That word was a key. If he spoke it at a certain cadence, sometimes, it'd be buy one get one free: things no one understood would tumble out after it—Megalopolis, pork, emergency physician, archaeologist. Sometimes strange tunes would ring in his head. He danced to them, marched, sprinted the corridor. The wilder he got, the closer he felt to something real, words erupting in a rush. Everyone said he was crazy. People who can’t hear the music always say the dancers are mad.

There was no clock here. He couldn’t see time. The sun outside the corridor never set, and he never seemed to need sleep.

He slid the marker back, wriggled into the restraint suit, climbed onto the bed, and drifted into a dream without dreams. He had no idea how long had passed when the door opened again and the male nurses filed in. “Zhao Meiyou, yard time!”

He opened his eyes.

This almost never happened—once, twice, ever. The hospital would take the patients out into the garden. Given his antics, he’d assumed he’d long since lost that privilege.

They didn’t unbuckle his restraint suit. They lifted him bodily into a wheelchair and pushed him out.

“Ketchup.” Zhao Meiyou bobbed his head cheerfully as they rolled. “March Hare, Alice—the party’s starting. Whose head will the Red Queen lop off? Ketchup!”

The garden lay at the end of the corridor. They pushed him in as if shoving a white crane into a flock of chickens.

Patients milled in clumps. Strapped into the chair, he could do nothing; he angled into a more comfortable slouch and dozed in the sun.

“Rabbit, rabbit.” Someone jostled him. “The party’s starting. Quick, turn into Alice.”

He opened his eyes. People had gathered in a ring around him, all in hospital gowns.

The one who’d pushed him was a small boy. Seeing him awake, the boy squared his shoulders. “Your Majesty the Queen!”

Zhao Meiyou looked at him. “You may rise, my faithful minister. Ketchup.”

“Ha!” another patient trumpeted, voice booming. “By decree received, we shall not be remiss—inspecting by the day—the encircling of the great mountain, the roots of Hell—on through the prefectures of Fengdu, to the linked blood lake!”

Like a supervisor taking reports, Zhao Meiyou nodded. “Immeasurable Heavenly Lord. Ketchup.”

A third patient intoned, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come; your will be done on earth as it is in heaven…”

Zhao Meiyou wrestled an arm free to sketch a cross on his chest. “Hallelujah. Ketchup.”

A fourth brought his palms together. “All sentient beings in the southern Jambudvipa—every stirring of mind is karma, every stirring is sin—”

Zhao Meiyou mirrored the gesture and offered a dharma name. “Amitabha. Ketchup.”

They sounded like a circle of mediums at a séance, chanting scriptures of every stripe. He listened a long time and could make no sense of it. He felt like some demon from another world and these people were trying to ferry him on. He turned to the little boy who’d first spoken, grabbed him like a chick by the scruff. “My good minister, what are you doing?”

Dangling, the boy didn’t panic. He blinked at Zhao Meiyou. “We’re encouraging the Queen to pluck up courage and jump into the water.”

“Jump into the water?”

“Holy water will wash your earthly shell. Bathed and reborn, the new king’s soul will emerge.” The boy pointed to the garden’s edge—also the end of the rooftop. At this height, a jump meant certain death. “The last two kings both died this way. Don’t you look forward to the new king’s birth?”

“I don’t understand. What kings? What new king?”

“You’ve forgotten? You’re Zhao Meiyou.” The boy peered at him. “First you were Diao Chan, then you were Liu Qijue. Every jump was a rebirth. You’re the third.”

Diao Chan? Liu Qijue? A wave of nameless familiarity washed through Zhao Meiyou’s skull. The boy’s lips kept moving: “The police say you’re a murderer—that you killed the first two kings and cut them to pieces—but we know you only inherited their throne.”

Before Zhao Meiyou could reply, the boy pressed on. “Now we await the final king. Your Majesty the Queen—having devoured the flesh and blood of a million subjects and two generations of kings—please become your true sovereign soon!”

Then, like a Third Reich salute, he threw up an arm and cried, “Ketchup!”

“Ketchup!” the patients around them took up the shout. “Ketchup!”

Zhao Meiyou had no idea what was happening. The garden had turned into a feverish Pastafarian revival. We worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster—thy sauce; and the noodles within that sauce; and the meatballs within those noodles; and the knowing within those meatballs. By that knowing we know what is delicious; knowing what is delicious, we love pasta; and by that pasta is born my love for the Monster who boiled me. R’amen. Tomamen—ketchup is the only salvation.

“To welcome the birth of the true Buddha,” the boy proclaimed, solemn, “citizens, let us be the first to jump!”

The words cracked like a starter’s pistol. Patients surged for the brink. Hand in hand, hand in hand, we all go jump together. Nurses and guards rushed in to block them. The boy somehow produced a knife and fork, and when a guard charged, he slashed open the man’s chest, spraying ketchup everywhere.

The sight galvanized the others. A melee exploded across the garden. In the end, no one made it over the edge, and no one was left alive. After an untellable while, silence pooled on the rooftop. Zhao Meiyou smacked his lips. “Ketchup.”

He walked through ketchup to a dead tomato, rolled it over. A guard. He knew this one.

His hand stopped mid-motion.

This guard—the man with the scar over his brow.

He wore Zhao Meiyou’s face.

Zhao Meiyou froze, then began turning the others, like someone picking through produce for the ripest tomatoes: one, two, three—two bucks a pound; buy five pounds, I’ll cut you a deal.

He went through every tomato on the roof.

They all wore Zhao Meiyou’s face.

What was this? He felt dizzy. So it was all his delusion? Was he truly insane? Killing himself inside his own body—what was he killing? His memories, his personas, his past, his self?

What had died?

Right. The jump. He remembered the boy’s words.

“To welcome the birth of the true Buddha—citizens, let us be the first to jump!”

Herded by that voice, he walked to the ledge like a sheep and stepped off without looking back.

As if the falling body had suddenly hit ground, the sleeping young man on the hospital bed jolted and slowly opened his eyes.

“You’re awake.”

The doctor at his bedside watched him and offered a hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m your attending.”

“…You said you’re a doctor.” The young man spoke like someone surfacing from a long dream. After a time: “What’s my diagnosis?”

“A very rare dissociative identity disorder. I’ve met your three alters. Now we finally meet, the primary.” The doctor smiled. “Curiously, the other three don’t seem to know you exist.”

The young man weighed this, face calm. After a beat, he said, “You killed the three alters.”

“Strictly speaking, the three alters committed a collective suicide in your mind palace.” The doctor waved it off. “It’s a therapeutic method. Once the alters vanish completely, you’re cured, Mr. Qian.”

“You’ve got one thing wrong.” Qian Duoduo rose and clamped a hand around the doctor’s throat. “I’m not the primary.”

His grip was iron. The doctor went limp from lack of air. Qian Duoduo dropped him to the floor and swept the room with a glance. No mirror—only a glass pane set in the door.

He went to the pane and met the eyes of the body he wore.

“Zhao Meiyou,” he said. “I’m here to get you out.”

“I know you can hear me. This is your dream. A dream that hasn’t collapsed means the host hasn’t faded. You’ve dived too deep into the loop—your logic and your memory are slipping. I’ll help you straighten them, and then you have to wake yourself. Do you hear me?”

It was the first time Qian Duoduo had spoken so much at once. The speed left him short of breath. He stared into his reflected face; his eyes did not waver.

“Listen to me, Zhao Meiyou.” He took a breath, steady. “When people are hurt, they bleed. They don’t bleed ketchup. Diao Chan and Liu Qijue are your friends. They are not your mother and not your benefactor. Men don’t have a uterus and don’t produce ova; therefore men can’t have babies. In the twenty-third century, the Great Cataclysm virus caused bodies to rot and die fast; corpses didn’t turn into zombies…

“You are you, Zhao Meiyou. Qian Duoduo isn’t your primary,” he finished. “I’m only here to save you.”

He didn’t know how long it took. As if misaligned gears were being eased, one by one, into their grooves, the clock began to tick again. A glimmer rose in the eyes in the glass. He heard himself speak, voice hoarse.

“…When people are hurt, they bleed. They don’t bleed ketchup.”

“Diao Chan and Liu Qijue are my brothers.”

“I was born in the twenty-fifth century in Megalopolis. I’m an emergency physician at the Level 33 psychiatric hospital.”

“Men can’t have babies… no—having them in a ruin doesn’t count.”

“The Great Cataclysm of the twenty-third century doesn’t turn corpses into zombies.”

The true facts came out one by one. In the endless fall of the dream, Zhao Meiyou’s tangled logic and memory drifted back into place. “…Qian Duoduo is not Zhao Meiyou’s primary.”

His gaze cleared. As his voice grew surer, Qian Duoduo’s worry eased. This temporary self was about to be dismissed by the returning master of the mind. Yet before the dream dissolved, he heard Zhao Meiyou’s voice ring out, a single truth declared from within a thousand fevered fancies soaked in brainfluid.

"Qian Duoduo is not Zhao Meiyou's main personality. Zhao Meiyou loves Qian Duoduo."