The Absurd Protocol

## Prologue This story comes from a 24-year-old friend who is a survivor of a broken home and domestic violence. Their parents divorced, and their mother passed away from stress within a week after receiving the triple talaq (divorce pronouncement). Their father remarried, and two years after their mother's death, the father also passed away from colon cancer. Nothing was left—just a name—as their father's TNI (Indonesian National Armed Forces) pension money was taken by the stepmother. The "I" who wrote this story once experienced severe depression, during which they had thoughts of killing and suicide (the reasons remain unknown). There was a time when this "I" felt that everything was wrong: God Fate The people around them Even themselves The "I" began to question their own existence, and out of that fear... this story emerged. ## NIGHTMARE The story begins when I suddenly find myself inside a very narrow, three-sided structure. Each side is probably only about two meters wide, with a height of around three meters. One of the sides is completely made of curved glass bulging outward, allowing me to see the world outside the building. Outside is a wilderness, and yes, I feel like I am right in the middle of a forest... Oddly enough... I am with someone... I don't know who they are, and I can't even see their face; they just stand still, without movement and without sound. Suddenly, I see many children emerging from between the trees... They are pacing back and forth in that forest, they... look like they are just playing around as if they were in their own backyard. I am trapped... and somehow, at that moment, I am suddenly holding a pistol.. It feels cold, and somewhat heavy. "Huh, why am I holding a gun?" The creepy scene begins... For some reason, I suddenly squat down, aim at them, and... Bang... I shoot them. One falls, and then I stay silent for a moment... Silence. Bang... I shoot again. Silence, no change. Bang... Another one falls, dead. Until finally, they start looking in my direction, one by one... But strangely, they all stare at me with empty gazes, their faces expressionless, except that their eyes look wide open and unblinking... I keep shooting.. Bang... They start walking closer, but their movement is extremely slow. It is as if they are walking through knee-deep mud. I keep firing away... Until finally... They are right in front of the glass, the building where I am trapped... One by one, their hands begin to press against the glass... And at that moment... I see their faces up close, still with empty gazes and no expression. Suddenly... I feel afraid. I feel like very soon I am going to be punished and tortured. All of that because I have killed them. Children. Somehow, I am suddenly outside the building and I run into the forest out of fear... A terrifying fear... Fear of being punished and tortured. Then, at the same time, I start thinking about... committing suicide... Suddenly, I see a huge granite boulder that looks like a mountain—maybe 250 meters high, or perhaps even more. I climb the rock all the way to the peak, and when I reach the top... I am at a cliff bordering the ocean, a sea cliff... Like the Bunda Cliffs in Australia... But much scarier. I walk along the edge of that cliff, then I see something like an iron crane extending out toward the sea like a narrow, abandoned bridge, maybe only 30 centimeters wide. When I look at that bridge, that thought arises: Suicide... I feel like this might be a path deliberately made for me. I am going to commit suicide... By jumping off the edge of the crane and dying, tossing and turning in the ocean waves until I finally drown. But at the same time... I am also afraid of death... I am afraid of the sin of murder I committed... I am afraid of God... I feel like I have failed at being human... I feel like, whether in this world or in the afterlife, it will end up the same way: I will be tortured... I feel... as if "I" no longer have a place to go home to... I walk along that iron beam very slowly and carefully, and when I reach the end of the crane... As I imagine my death... As I prepare to jump... Suddenly, I wake up from my nightmare with cold sweat soaking my entire body. "I" wake up feeling deeply terrified and confused.