Why do humans cling to gods and religions? When you look at it from an outside perspective, it looks like the act of a fool. A desperate act to prevent oneself from being forgotten by everyone, including themselves.
But not believing might be twice as foolish—you lose nothing but your pride.
Personally, I think this shows how being conscious is being foolish; for foolishness is the essence of man, and without it, he is nothing. It is our foolish and unreasonable desires that have made us evolve. It's what differentiates us from animals.
I was suddenly pulled from my thoughts back into reality. The bus stopped. Others looked around. I figured maybe we had arrived at our destination, but one look outside was all it took to realize we were in the middle of nowhere. Men in suits, probably employees of the school, boarded from the back.
They told everyone to stop talking, so the previously loud atmosphere came to a halt.
They started tying blindfolds around everyone's eyes until finally the cloth pressed against mine. The moment it slipped over my eyes, the world vanished.
Darkness.
Without sight, other sounds became clearer. Shoes scraping against the bus floor. A swallow from the boy beside me. The uneven breathing of someone further down. I knew they were afraid. My chest felt heavy too, but I couldn't tell if it was the same thing.
Rough hands guided us forward, one by one, off the bus. My shoes met stone, then gravel, then stone again. A twisting path. A maze. They were walking us into a maze.
I kept count in my head. Sixteen steps straight. A turn. Twenty-three more. Another turn. The rhythm felt deliberately irregular. Like they were trying to throw us off.
After what felt like hours, the blindfold was finally pulled away.
Light stabbed my eyes. I squinted, forcing them to adjust.
I looked around. Roughly three hundred others stood here. That meant groups had been brought in from different buses, different entrances of the labyrinth.
Before us stretched the courtyard of the maze. Stone walls towered in every direction. Paths coiled and twisted, vanishing into darkness, intersecting in patterns that seemed almost alive.
Sunlight fell across the large statues of four different Roman gods, covered with moss and ivy. Their condition suggested neglect, like a once-great empire reduced to history.
The first test had begun.