Chapter 9.

The cloudless sky embraced the pristine land, and in their intimate bond formed a delicate golden glow. The horizon gleamed with a dazzling light, unusual for my eyes. I was the first man to cross the wall, I thought, and I was filled with pride. My elation was interrupted by a fleeting memory flashing through my mind, a phrase heard somewhere: “Wherever you stand, you are behind the wall.”

The stone monster stretched out behind me. It now separated me from everything I knew and despised, the town I was born into and the people I grew up among. The mental boundary I had always figured between myself and the townsfolk had materialized in the colossal wall. And now that it was tangible, this impenetrable boundary frightened me. With a shudder, I turned around and grabbed hold of the rope I had descended. This thin, but solid link with my past reassured me. I released the rope.

I thought of all the times I had felt superior to my fellow citizens. The wall would always be an immutable part of my fantasies. I imagined myself sitting atop it, like a deity, watching with lazy curiosity the hustle and bustle of the people below. The only thing I was unable to picture was the other side of the wall. Alternately, I would imagine a white fog, a sea of clouds, or a plain as smooth and white as a sheet of paper. Even if I forced my imagination, I could never think of anything else, and eventually this space disappeared from my reveries, and the wall itself became but a bold black edge of the map of my world.

But here I was, on the other side of the wall, and paradoxically all my thoughts took me back to my town. I was about to enter its history as a great explorer, a pioneering topographer. I now thought I knew what my destiny was: to bring the mysteries of this side of the wall to the knowledge of people. I set off in the direction that had the wall on my left, taking care never to stray more than an arm’s length from it.

I walked for hours without feeling tired, hungry or thirsty. Remarkably, the landscape to my right never changed: it was always the same white desert, its hue reflecting that of the sky as the sun rose and set. For I certainly walked for many days and nights, which I had lost count of, having no space-time reference between the two infinite parallels, that of the black wall to my left and the white horizon to my right. They had become the frame to my reality, the former no longer inspiring anguish, and the latter – reverence.

The perfection of my perspective was disrupted up ahead by a wire detaching from the surface of the wall. When I reached it, I realized it was my rope: I was back where I started. I took one last glance at the undisturbed horizon and began my ascent back to the village.

The end.

What if the story had taken a different turn? Go back to the previous chapters and choose the alternative option.