Kralizec OTC

My Journey Through Armageddon and Back

Devout Heretic of the Restored Gospel

My hearing isn’t all that great, especially when people start talking to me while thinking intently about something that has me lost in another world. I’ve gotten so used to mishearing—or partially hearing—essential words that someone says to me that I can often fill in the gaps from context. Sometimes, I guess right and find an exit out of this memory superposition. Sometimes, I guess wrong and exit the superposition embarrassingly out the wrong door. But every once in a while, I’ll go through the entire conversation agonizingly unaware of who or what I’m talking about and end the discussion with the superposition of being right or wrong still in its uncollapsed state. While these situations are typically inconsequential, they can often be embarrassing if they go on long enough—and even harmful if the right words are misunderstood.

While the stakes of this super positional wordplay are typically low, this game played out for me with what I’ve deemed a magic word during the most consequential and vulnerable moment of my life. In what was for me the battle for the fate of the universe and was for the healthcare workers surrounding me, just a typical day in the office taking care of patients, the simple misunderstanding of a word saved us both a lot of hardship. It allowed the psychotic version of myself to translate my manic stream of consciousness into intelligible communication with the healthcare providers and to understand their words and actions as consistent with my delusions.

Doing so made me the ideal patient, or at least it did most of the time, and it allowed me to accept and embrace the treatment they provided without resistance. This article is about the superposition that word created in me and how it just might apply to making the world better in small doses as well. That word is Kralizec.

Kralizec Defined

Kralizec (pronounced CRY-LAW-SEC) represents the ultimate apocalyptic event in the Dune universe—a cosmic reckoning of such magnitude that it dwarfs ordinary concepts of catastrophe or war. In the Dune saga, Frank Herbert portrays Kralizec as the mythical "Typhoon Struggle" or the "Battle at the End of the Universe"—a transformative cataclysm that would fundamentally alter the fabric of human existence across the cosmos.

This is not merely another conflict or crisis but the final confrontation prophesied for millennia by the various groups of Dune’s prescient characters. It represents the culmination of all human evolution and struggle and serves as a nexus point where humanity's fate hangs in perfect balance between total extinction and transcendent evolution. The Bene Gesserit sisterhood, with their millennia of genetic planning and foresight, viewed Kralizec with a mixture of dread and anticipation. This ultimate test would either break humanity forever or forge it into something more significant and capable of ascending to a higher realm.

The concept carries weight beyond typical apocalyptic imagery because it encompasses physical destruction and a complete metaphysical transformation of reality itself. To be amid Kralizec is to simultaneously stand at the epicenter of all possible endings and beginnings while witnessing the death of one universe and the birth of another. In this sense, it is impossible to understate the significance that Kralizec creates for those who feel they are in its midst.

I can speak to the immensity of responsibility that playing a role in such an event creates because I am a Kralizec Veteran, although not in the literal sense, and I want to tell you the story of my service.

The Road to (Mental) War

My recruitment into waging Kralizec didn’t come all at once. It happened slowly, as the gradual escalation of the scope of the project to provide affordable housing I was working on began to encompass larger and larger geographies and benefit more and more people until I crossed an inflection point. Throughout a week or so, I found myself taking on the role of shadow county commissioner, AI Manhattan Project manager, spiritual guru, and eventually, the Savior of the universe.

The original project was simple enough. I received a grant through the Mixed-Methods Evaluation, Training, and Analysis (META) Lab (whose name takes on cosmic significance later) at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies (MIIS) (whose role eventually transformed as much as mine) to study how to convert the conflict inherent in the fact that those who have housing act in ways that prohibit more housing from being built for those who don’t.

I discovered through a bit of personal research that Barcelona and the surrounding area were strikingly similar to Monterey: a coastal city with mountains and open space connected to a larger agricultural area by a road through a canyon. The main reason why one was an area of a hundred thousand people and the other had several million just with differing development histories. It wasn’t in the scope of the project per se, but I became convinced that there wasn’t any reason why Monterey couldn’t have developed something similar to Barcelona. The project was open enough to explore themes like this, but it was still meant to be geared specifically toward understanding why we couldn’t build housing in Monterey and how that affects the people who can’t find access to it, so my advisors and I thought it was acceptable to let me push the scope a bit. We were wrong.

While the initial scoping research revealed the obvious—property owners don’t want their home values to come down, don’t want more auto-oriented traffic, and perhaps worst of all, don’t want lower-income “riff-raff” in their neighborhood—these didn’t explain the entirety of why Monterey and the surrounding cities wouldn’t build more desperately needed housing. There was a level of path dependence, or being constrained by one’s history, at play that we would need to break. Zoning and permitting laws influenced by self-serving, short-sighted, and sometimes racist individuals with cache in the planning sphere, like Robert Moses, created a development framework that was hard to break out of.

Despite the depth of these systemic barriers to providing more housing, the root was purely social, and Monterey was well-equipped to address social constraints. The mayor, city council, and populace were all overwhelmingly in favor of building more housing, so the social determinants should have been relatively easy to change. But getting deeper down revealed that access to water was the real limiting factor. The watershed for Monterey was limited, and the system for granting water rights was too rigid and arcane to adapt to modern water use. Between the adoption of high-efficiency appliances, a robust wastewater reclamation project, and the building of a desalination plant, there was a path to multiplying the amount of available clean water several times. But with the dissolution of both the natural and social constraints on building new housing, what was left to explain the lack of new construction?

At this point, I felt that I must be close to the central thread that we could pluck and have the whole Gordian knot unravel. I explored the edges of the conflict, mapped out its center, and dug deep enough to find the most extended levers that would produce the most significant change. The project, in my mind, but conspicuously not in those of my advisors, became advocacy for these interventions rather than research.

In one of my conversations with a local power player, we concluded that money was the limiting factor and was what could move the needle on the desalination plant, put the right electeds in office, and streamline the planning process for getting housing built. He had spent decades understanding Monterey's social and political climate, so I trusted his assessment. He said that with $100 million, we could paper over all of the barriers and fast-track a path to get the level of housing Monterey needed. At that moment, my goal transitioned from understanding the problem to getting my hands on the $100 million to put the right interventions into practice.

Assuming the Mantle of Leadership

Boiling down my entire project to obtaining $100 million and clearing the way to use it locally to build the housing needed to turn Monterey into Barcelona catapulted me into a level of hyperfocus I had never experienced before. The answers were taking shape, but I was still a nobody graduate research assistant. I still needed a position and a pitch commensurate with the ask I was preparing to make.

For a position, the elections for student council president coincidentally happened simultaneously, and the major issue was providing more affordable housing for students. It was a perfect fit, so I recruited a campaign team to help recreate a small-scale MIIS version of the housing tools the city was planning to roll out, but with a much quicker operational tempo. The election was soon, and with the connections and organizational capacity I had through the META Lab, I was convinced it wasn’t going to be much of a struggle to stand up an overwhelmingly popular campaign to get 100 accessory dwelling units or small separated apartments attached to existing houses, built and master lease them to students through the school.

For a pitch, I needed to find a way to bridge housing for students, professors, and academics with a project compelling enough for a billionaire to throw $100 million at. I considered how I might mobilize the strengths that Monterey possessed in service of a societal goal salient enough for a billionaire to take interest. I remembered that over a decade prior, an early conference on AI safety and alignment had happened at the Asilomar Conference Center. I had recently been caught up in the hype surrounding the release of OpenAI’s GPT-4, which seemed to fulfill some of the predictions made at that conference. I also knew that the old Fort Ord had a large amount of land ready for redevelopment and was suited to being mobilized for a higher purpose than decaying away into nothing. The combination of these factors swirling around in my pre-manic mind crystallized into justifying an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars to revamp Fort Ord as an artificial intelligence development center—similar in scope to what the Manhattan Project was for developing the bomb, but for achieving AI alignment, with a potential return in the billions. And suddenly, I had my pitch.

Red Alert Rising

Now that I had a clear idea of what Monterey could be, we weren’t just talking about creating 100 more units of housing for my classmates but recreating thousands of them for the researchers, engineers, staff, and support activity that Monterey once had for the Army base. I began to see myself as the Robert Moses of Monterey—meant to transform it into Barcelona, with a temple complex not dedicated to the Sagrada Familia but to the development of safe, aligned, and effective general artificial intelligence (AGI) that wouldn’t only help fulfill our project but cut the Gordian knots of all problems limited by our capacity to understand, identify, and slice through the root of the conflict.

Of course, the pitch needed a name, and the Hyper-Knot Initiative came to me early on in my planning process. The idea, not dissimilar to the investment cycle in AI that has played out since this time, was that putting as much money as possible into developing AI and AGI was the best strategy for solving not one, not two, not a few societal problems, but nearly all of them.

If we could get enough funding, talent, computing power, and a supportive government into one area, transforming Monterey into Barcelona would be the least that we could do. So I wrote up the Hyper-Knot Initiative as an expansion of the META Lab, no longer about simple analysis of social problems but as a center for understanding and solving the types of problems themselves, as a proposal that could attract the attention of an eclectic billionaire. Crazy, of course—but just crazy enough to work, or so I thought.

And so I wrote my pitch. I wrote late into the night and early in the morning, dictating as I drove, writing on the train, writing in coffee shops where I never needed coffee, and reading in restaurants where I never ordered food. I put everything I had into drafting the pitch, clearing the way for its implementation, creating the vehicles to receive and deploy the funds, and recruiting a team to facilitate the transformation. I began to write about the Hyper-Knot Initiative in the largest possible scope over the longest possible time scale while planning and coordinating with professors, fellow students, colleagues, and acquaintances—people I could see all playing a role in creating the most impactful research institute on the planet, in an area that was just begging for a reason to achieve its full potential.

I made my pitch to my fellow students and my professors, the richest men in the world, the homeless on the street, the presidential candidates I campaigned for, and strangers I met in cafes and stores. While everyone seemed impressed and interested in the idea (I can be highly persuasive when necessary), few were willing to act in accordance with the plan. I cherish and appreciate those who were willing to act, but as I’ve reviewed the manic and hectic writing I produced during that time, it’s increasingly obvious to me that I was well out of my mind—and that my would-be collaborators were humoring me at best. At worst, they were watching a descent into madness. But for me, I was watching the Winds of Kralizec swirl on the horizon.

My Glimpse of Armageddon From The Wilderness

By this time, I had crossed the turning point of my descent into madness—or ascent as I saw it, from my perspective. I sent cold emails to famous figures I was sure would be flattered to be included in the project of a civilizational lifetime. I reached out to friends with specific expertise to pitch the virtuous schemes I was concocting to transform the nature of conflict, buy out an entire conflict, and collapse the distinctions between contesting ideologies and grand narratives. I deeply felt the coherence and precision of the action I was recommending and felt a power course through me that is hard to convey in prose. However, if you ask anyone I was in contact with during that time, I was increasingly losing contact with reality—although I was doing it entertainingly. Curiously, no one decided to try to pull the brakes. That is until the first shot of Kralizec rang out.

I was sitting outside a café that I, to this day, see more as a temple than a specific coffee shop when I received a calendar notification for a meeting about the Korea paper. For some reason, I understood that as an advance warning of a nuclear strike that would usher in Armageddon. I grabbed my bike as quickly as I could and took off toward the Office of the President of the university; I meant to convey the imminent peril we were in and try to prevent what I fully believed was the beginning of the apocalypse. I ended up interrupting an important meeting, not receiving the time of day, and leaving with a firm handshake and a promise to take up the issue later. Being heard in a small way was enough for me to calm down a bit and start speaking with the staff, who were starting the process of getting me help I still wasn’t sure I needed.

Trying Not to Join The Confederacy

It was at this moment that I began to view the staff and faculty of my institute as confederates or members of an experiment who know what is happening and why in the looming Kralizec. I saw a school that understood how global governance worked so well that they weren’t just teaching it but leveraging the MIIS Mafia, our ironically named alumni network, to guide the path of civilization for the better. I was convinced that this shadow government, whose President had just given me his blessing through a handshake, was orchestrating a crisis negotiation exercise (they literally do this every semester) with real stakes for the course of society.

The faculty and staff, I presumed, knew what was supposed to happen and how to play their role in coordinating its safe development, but I had missed the memo. The staff who gave my mental state attention, the faculty who avoided my communication, the vice president who didn’t have time to talk, the students who assisted, and the collaborators I had interviewed were all in on the plan that I was blissfully and agonizingly unaware of. I just needed to find the right way of presenting it to them so they would reveal the information I needed for my cosmic quest to prevent armageddon, similar to how a video game puts the right non-player characters (NPCs) in your path to share vital information to winning the game.

As I was on what I thought was the quest of a lifetime to prevent the tragedy of the millennium, I wanted to be very careful about who I trusted and why. There is a folk belief among the Latter-Day Saints culture in which I was rasied that if you’re in contact with an evil spirit or the devil, they won’t shake your hand, as they have no materiality and would be detected as an evil spirit immediately. In some way, my manic mind grabbed onto this idea that was floating around in my head, and I became obsessed with shaking hands with anyone I was speaking to. Achieving this feat became a dance between my perception of whether someone was trying to help me or hurt me and my interlocutor's perception of whether I was in my right mind or not.

Student Services

My first dance after receiving a tacit blessing from the (vice) president was with a student services representative from the school who was trying to determine whether I needed emergency care or not. We sat down on a bench to chat. I offered a handshake, and she refused, for good reason, in the state that I was in, but I perceived that as some kind of evidence that she didn’t have my best interest at heart. Our conversation danced back and forth between me trying to convince her of a scenario only I could see and her trying to convince me I needed to get professional help I didn’t want.

We gradually ended up working our way back to her office, and the conversation gradually converged on finding a trustworthy third party to mediate our disagreement. She called my mom, who decided to leave immediately to come and be with me. We called a fellow student I deeply trusted to keep me company in the meantime, and by the time my fellow student showed up, the representative was willing to shake my hand goodbye—which meant more to me than she’ll ever be able to know.

This MIIS <> Government Connection

I felt anxious to be in one place for too long, so my friend, who worked for both the city government and the military while attending MIIS, and I walked around the neighborhood chatting about whatever came to mind—which for me was an enormous array of subjects. We talked about school, the housing projects we were respectively working on, religion, spirituality, future work prospects, the merits of the insights that were cascading over me, and danced through many other subjects to distract me from the apocalyptic fate I was certain was coming any minute.

I explained how I could know who to trust or not, how I could discern a stranger's trustworthiness, how I needed to speak cryptically about what I was learning because it was so powerful, and how the project unified civilian, military, academic, and intelligence pursuits that lurk under the surface at MIIS at all times. He listened to me and nodded along, which I understood as tacit assent but was almost assuredly not knowing what to make of my spiel, and we continued our walk back down from Veteran’s Park toward his apartment.

On our way back home, we came across a different student whom I also trusted—he had been reading and revising my manifestos and civilizational treatise—so we executed an unnecessarily elaborate handshake handoff between myself, friend #1, friend #2, and my wife who authorized the handoff via video chat and I left with friend #2 to drink and chat at the neighborhood bar.

The MIIS <> Cutting Edge Government Connection.

At the bar, friend #2 and I talked more openly about what was happening and what needed to be done about it, as he had already, in some way I couldn’t possibly explain, been initiated and was my liaison to the other side. We talked about the ideas I was having, the pseudo-organizations I was perceiving, and all the creative energy this was unleashing within us—or maybe just me, in hindsight.

The crème de la crème for me was when he revealed that there was an organization almost identical to what I was describing as the Hyper Knot Initiative that had their structure and tech stack open-sourced and available to be forked—or copied—with a few keystrokes. I ecstatically finished my beer, boxed up the food I had barely picked up and headed back to my apartment to wait for my mom to arrive.

When we arrived, we continued our conversational dance as we coordinated to clean up the apartment that I had left a mess from several days of inattention until, perfectly choreographed, my mom arrived right as we finished. As friend #2 executed another handshake handoff with my mom, I mentioned that the day had gone by like it was a movie. He understood and reassured me that we’d be living our lives like a movie every day from here on out. He had no idea how seriously I would take him.

After he left, my mom and I ate quietly and went straight to bed. I was exhausted from dancing my way through catastrophe, and she was driving all day without knowing what state her son was in. Neither of us had any idea what I would dream up during that night of restless sleep.

My Barefoot Pilgrimage up Mount Moriah

The next day, I woke up early and was calm. I gave my mom my bed and slept on a mat on the floor. But as I was milling about, I sensed that something was off and became progressively paranoid that something was after me. Against my better instincts, I began to grow suspicious of my mother’s motivations. I saw myself as something the Church I grew up in—the Latter-Day Saints—felt disdain for and was organizing to remove. I felt that the ideas I was having weren’t just your average garden variety heresy but rather heresy that had the power to strike at the very core of the truth claims in the church and that the church would prevent that at all costs.

At the Foot of the Mount

As my mom awoke and began preparing breakfast, I became increasingly distrustful but remained calm, lying on the bed. I could have sworn I heard military helicopters—having been in the Army, I could identify them—swirling about and people outside the window communicating via radio as if to infiltrate my apartment and either neutralize or exfiltrate me. My mom had prepared eggs, and much like the famous scene in The Princess Bride, I couldn’t decide how to take the first bite, suspecting they were poisoned. I offered to switch plates, delayed, and otherwise schemed before ultimately not eating them at all.

I attempted to distract my mom by telling her I wanted to send a message to my wife, who was traveling in what I thought was another dimension and had been kidnapped by the confederates who were holding her captive to be used as ransom. Only, I wanted to send the message through the whiteboard telescreen that could communicate inter-dimensionally and not through a normal WhatsApp message which I didn’t think she could receive.

We wrote out a simple poem I thought would work well as a seed phrase or a phrase used to unlock a secret cryptographic combination. Then I sent a highly cryptic message to my wife explaining how she could get the information I needed from the only confederate I thought I could trust—and began behaving erratically enough that my mom was convinced I needed to go to the hospital.

I resisted at first and did everything I could to avoid leaving the safety of the apartment, including attempting to strip my clothes so the agents of chaos searching for me could be sure I was unarmed as I left. Eventually, my mom convinced me to leave, and I insisted on going barefoot, with my towel, and carrying my insurance card and the student debt letter I had recently received. I refused to go in the car, so my mom, worried and discombobulated by my behavior, and I, distrustful of her intentions and increasingly delusional, began the three-mile trek up Huckleberry Hill to the hospital.

The Ascent

Like Isaac following Abraham, I followed the directions my mom provided. Unlike Isaac, I tried to veer off course at every opportunity. I chose directions not from Google or my experience but from the quality of the vehicles and people we encountered. Clean or noble-looking vehicles gave me a good vibe, indicating the right way to go, while unkempt vehicles indicated the direction to avoid. All the while, I monologued about the solution to everything I thought I had stumbled into—for the camera that wasn’t there.

Eventually, after more time than necessary and negotiating nearly every step toward what I was sure was a torture chamber to rival Winston’s Room 101 from 1984, we arrived at the hospital. As my mom began checking me in, and with my feet bloody and worn, I chatted as amiably with my fellow patients as possible, insisting they go ahead of me so I could prolong the time before my torture as much as I could. Eventually, my time came, and the staff of the hospital—who I still didn’t know whether were friends or foes in Kralizec—rushed me into the crisis center.

Arriving at the Mountaintop

By the time I arrived in the Crisis Center to man my little observation chamber, I had passed from delusional to full-blown psychotic. I refused to let the staff take my blood because I was convinced they wanted to make clones with it. I even resisted their efforts to cover my bloody feet with bandages and socks to help them heal. I began thinking the staff were agents of the Church, coordinating my ritual sacrifice. I was convinced the confederates I had identified were aliens seeking to infiltrate and improve the world’s governments. I believed that unbeknownst to the vast majority—really everyone but me and a handful of people—Kralizec was being waged on a galactic and even universal level, and I was at the cosmic center of it, stationed in the Crisis Operations Center, where I was being held ostensibly as a prisoner of war and field hospital patient.

Spectating Kralizec From the Box Seats

When I settled into the Crisis Center, they started to give me Zyprexa, which they said was a sedative but initially had the opposite effect of narrowing my focus and increasing my acuity. Shortly thereafter, I started to notice patterns among the staff. There were moments when they communicated quickly and cryptically, almost as if speaking in code. I noticed that, at times, they were deeply engaged and focused on their computers, calling out for information and action from various staff members. They paid very little attention to me until I tried to step out of my containment bay. Then, suddenly, they were very interested in getting me back into place for reasons I couldn’t precisely explain. If I was insistent enough on leaving, the guard would tie me to the bed to keep me there. Luckily, that only happened once.

Why was it so important that I stay in a place where I was always in full view of my caretakers? What was so important that the nurses were fully engrossed in it and almost annoyed when I had to ask to use the restroom? What was happening that I couldn’t see, but everything seemed tied into? The answer, as best I could perceive it, was that Kralizec needed me in my bay at all costs.

Keeping My Arms Raised in The Crisis Center

I wasn’t a prisoner or even a patient. I was convinced that what was happening around me, and out there, was the real-life instantiation of the mythical Kralizec: Armageddon, Ragnarok. The battle for the fate of the universe was raging, and I was at the center of it. Not in a Crisis Center for my safety and stability, but in the Operations Center for the cause of humanity who, going off my recent reading of Dune, was in the final battle against the machines to liberate the billions of enslaved humans from their grasp. It seemed that as long as I stayed in my room, the battle went smoothly, and all the strategies, plans, tactics, and procedures progressed towards victory, but when I left, and the staff had to pay attention to me, everything started to go haywire.

In my psychotic state, being central to this cosmic inflection point that was Kralizec the same way that Moses was central to the defeat of the Amalekites created an overwhelming sense of responsibility; I was cognizant of the fact that my every thought, every action, and every word carried universe-altering significance. The boundaries between my internal mind and external reality dissolved, making me feel like both the witness to and catalyst for creation’s most pivotal moment. It was around this time that my caretakers added Latuda to the pills I was taking, which they told me was an anti-psychotic. I, at least for the time being, saw it as a potent psychedelic that opened my mind to exactly what was happening in this crisis-turned-operations center and gave me inklings of what was going on out there in the battle for the fate of the universe.

In turn, the fate of the universe depended on me and how I behaved—under full observation by the four-star generals of humanity, who were directing the war of Armageddon with me not through the commands I gave but through my presence, which served as a temperature gauge for the state of the battle and a conduit for unforeseeable intuitions about what must happen where for humanity’s inexorable rout across the universe.

Taking a Load Off in The Operations Center

With my newfound role as the shadow general of Humanity’s Universal Army, I watched my surroundings not with fear but with supreme fascination. I didn’t see healthcare professionals deciding to give me drugs and medical attention. I saw loyal subordinates actively engaged in the most important work they could possibly imagine, helping me be in exactly the prescient state necessary to discern if all was going to be planned or not. If I were to interrupt, it had to be an absolute necessity, and I had to do it as politely and graciously as possible so as not to disrupt Kralizec's onslaught. If they gave me medicine, I took it eagerly, knowing it must have some role in the state I needed to enter to create the prescience talked about in Dune that was necessary for a successful campaign.

If I saw nurses and doctors as very busy, I knew they were important to the conflicts raging as I watched. If I saw some of my supreme commanders relax and joke, it was a sign that their portion of the battle was accomplished and they were permitted a well-deserved rest. What started as a panopticon to keep me in and well-behaved for my own sake became the spectator box of the most fantastic conflict, one that kept me in the loop just enough to make 50/50 calls based on whether I had crossed the threshold of my hospital bay or not. The rules weren’t for controlling my own actions so much as they were the standard operating procedures for maintaining proper order in the Operations Center—and if I were to transgress them, it would have to be for a good reason.

Learning to Titrate the Solution

Having a front-row seat to the waging of Kralizec changed my perspective entirely—from one of terror at what might happen to me to excitement about the role I might play in something so consequential. I was so excited that I asked the nurse if he knew about Kralizec. He seemed confused, but I detected a latent expectancy underneath the veneer of ignorance, so I asked again. “Do you know about Kralizec? I want to have Kralizec,” I said, ecstatic at the possibility of taking part in the battle directly. He seemed to understand but reassured me he’d have to check with the attending doctor to ensure that adding Kralizec to my current medications wouldn’t create a negative interaction. I said I could wait as long as necessary and began to imagine what my portion of Kralizec would be like.

The wait seemed like an eternity, and I ended up entertaining myself by watching the thermostat, of all things. It seemed like it never dropped below 68 but would rise precipitously from time to time—up past 69 and encroaching on, but never passing 70. Seventy degrees felt too hot for me, and for some reason, 68 was a little too cold, but keeping the temperature within half a degree above and below 69 was perfect. I mentioned my obsession with the thermostat, never being in the right position, and not responding to my actions, and he responded that it was probably fine, that it was centrally controlled, and that the buttons didn’t actually do anything.

I wasn’t convinced. Somehow, I was sure that the thermostat was the gauge of the course of the battle I was watching, with higher temperatures equating to more chaos and less control over the battle. As such, seeing high temperatures made me nervous, and I wanted to do what I could to bring the temperature down. But, as I was wearing a flimsy hospital robe, too cold, the temperature wasn’t right either.

Eventually, I explained the problem of getting the right temperature to the nurse again, and he asked me what I would do about it, as he was convinced it didn’t matter what I did at all. After thinking for a bit, I remembered a piece of wisdom from my high school chemistry class. I could titrate the temperature.

Normally used for solutions of liquids, titration is the slow addition of one solution to a known volume of another until the concentration is in an acceptable range that produces. Titration is used to get solutions right when there are uncertain quantities and concentrations at play, and titration was exactly what I needed. The thermostat may be fluctuating, but if I pressed the up and down buttons slowly enough until the temperature was in the proper range, I could make sure it was always acceptable around 69 degrees, although never perfectly at 69 degrees, which seemed good enough for me. The nurse loved the idea and walked off without even saying goodbye.

Shortly thereafter, as I began fiddling with the thermostat, the attending doctor, whose long, flowing golden hair and a full beard created a supreme air of authority, arrived at my room at the nurse’s behest to discuss Kralizec.

Prilosec OTC: Everyday Acid Relief

The doctor began explaining what Prilosec OTC (pronounced PRY-LAW-SEC) was, but I could have sworn I saw a wink as he mispronounced the name. He told me how Prilosec is an over-the-counter medication that works by reducing the amount of acid produced in the stomach. People typically take Prilosec OTC to treat heartburn in those suffering from frequent acid reflux, where stomach acid flows back into the esophagus, causing irritation, burning sensations, and discomfort. But what I understood was that it was for people who were burning up from being too hot.

He asked me what my symptoms were, and I explained that I was too hot and thought that I needed to cool down. He looked at me quizzically as I glanced at the thermostat before I clarified what I meant. I mentioned that it—or I—should be cooler inside and that it, I mean, I, was too hot inside. He seemed to understand and approved the medication but warned me to be on the lookout for any new symptoms or side effects from the completion of my three-drug cocktail.

He informed me that when taken as directed, Prilosec OTC begins working immediately, but it may take 2–4 days for the full effect. He emphasized that unlike antacids, which provide temporary relief by neutralizing acid that’s already been made, Prilosec works at the source by blocking acid production before it starts.

Reducing stomach acid production over a 24-hour period helps heal damage to the esophagus caused by acid reflux and prevents further irritation. This systematic approach allows users to manage what would otherwise be an overwhelming and chronic condition through a simple daily routine of taking a singular pill that turns an uncomfortable, potentially debilitating condition into a manageable part of everyday life.

I took his advice to heart and soon thereafter took my first Kralizec pill on the evening of my third day in the Crisis/Operations Center. I had slept poorly the first night because I was on edge about who I thought were the dark priests of human sacrifice and worse on the second night from the anticipation of watching the most consequential battle in the history of humanity unfold in front of me. But with the combined doses of Zyprexa (a sedative), Latuda (an antipsychotic), and Prilosec for heartburn, I slipped away into a deep and peaceful slumber, awaking only briefly to hear a loyal lieutenant calling at my door to report on the progress of the battle. My caretakers informed him that I was tired from the Kralizec I had taken, that I was too drowsy to accept visitors, and that I needed to rest, but I heard his message loud and clear. The war was won.

My Garden Pavilion Entrance Interview

The next day, after a restful night’s sleep and the effects of my medication settling in, I felt much better. They informed me that the doctor would determine whether I was ready to be transferred from the Crisis Center to the Garden Pavilion, where longer-term mental health patients were kept in a semi-permissive environment that would be more comfortable for me. Hearing this, I was excited to learn the doctor’s assessment—now that I had received my personal dose of Kralizec. Eventually, after passing by several times, my turn with the attending doctor came.

He asked me about the effects of the medicine one by one.
“How’s the Zyprexa? Do you still have more energy than you can handle?”

“No,” I responded. “I feel like I’m back in control of myself.”

“How’s the Latuda? Are you still seeing things that aren’t there?” he asked.

“Of course not,” I replied. “I’m finally seeing things for what they are.”

“And lastly, how was the Prilosec? Did it help in the way you expected?” he asked with a wry smile.

“The Kralizec was great,” I said. “It cooled things down a little bit and let me sleep well. I did have strange dreams, though—I wasn’t expecting that.”

“That’s a normal side effect,” the attending retorted. “Nothing to be worried about. Just enjoy them when they’re good and get through them when they’re bad. In any case, I can see you’re ready to be transferred to the Garden Pavilion.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, “You don’t need me in the crisis center anymore? I don’t want to move on until I know that everything has been prepared.”

He reassured me that everything had been accounted for and that everything would work out according to plan as long as I took my medicine and followed the doctor’s orders. That was all I needed to hear.

And with that, he put everything in motion for me to transfer from my cramped and stark observation bay in the crisis center to a nice and comfy room in the Garden Pavillion with plenty of room for activities.

Entering the Garden Pavilion A New Man

In short order, my caretakers had me gather the few belongings I had in my observation bay and walked me over to the Garden Pavilion– a large, airy wing of the hospital bathed in natural light. Each patient had their own small room, and the layout centered around a bright, open living area filled with everything one could need to pass the time: books, board games, TV, puzzles, and even a small exercise machine for staying active. There was also a cozy dining space and a shared office area, giving the place much more of a community feel than a clinical one.

Compared to the sterile intensity of the Crisis Center, the Garden Pavilion felt like paradise. One of my fellow patients even described it as “the country club of all country clubs,” and honestly, I agreed with him. We had everything we needed provided for us and then some. Our meals were brought to us, and they were always both delicious and satisfying. We had milkshakes, fresh fruit, hearty meat dishes, decaf coffee on demand, and tea in the evenings. They even took care of our laundry, folding everything neatly and returning it to us as if we were staying at a quiet retreat rather than a psychiatric wing.

The change from the Crisis Center was immediate and tangible. I could finally swap out my hospital robe for street clothes and trade those grippy hospital socks for my sandals, which my mom had brought from home. It might not sound like much, but wearing my own clothes helped me feel more like myself, more like I was stepping out of survival mode and into recovery.

Beyond the comfort, what made the Garden truly healing was the rhythm of community life. There were opportunities to walk around the enclosed grounds and scheduled visits from volunteers who brought music into the space to play live guitar, piano, and even heartfelt vocal performances. These weren’t just background sounds; the musicians played from the heart, and their presence reminded us that beauty still existed beyond our struggles. We also had visitors from Alcoholics Anonymous and the chaplain corps, each offering words of wisdom, comfort, or just a listening ear. Family members were allowed to visit, too, and it meant a lot to sit down with loved ones face-to-face, even if just for a short while, and show them that we were on the mend.

Of course, there were limits. We weren’t allowed to leave the Garden without supervision, which I did struggle with once or twice. I remember approaching the door, overwhelmed and unsure, but the staff gently guided me back. They were firm but compassionate, always working to maintain safety without force, always treating us like people, not problems.

I do still wonder why there were so many switches and dials near the beds that reminded me of something out of the Cold War. The hospital must have been built then, but it didn’t seem to be doing anything. I couldn’t help but flip them occasionally just to see what might happen. Nothing ever did, as far as I know.

Taking my Prilosec OTC

As the days passed in the Garden Pavilion, I began to notice something—not just in myself, but in the people around me. We were all struggling in our own ways, sure, but there was something undeniably good happening in that place. People cared for each other. They made space for one another’s pain. We shared food, stories, and silence. When someone was spiraling, others stepped in—not with judgment, but with a calm, grounded presence. The staff, the volunteers, the visitors, even the patients ourselves—we created a kind of temporary village, a haven stitched together from music, kindness, and mutual recognition.

And somehow, in the middle of it all, my medication started to work. The Zyprexa brought my energy down to normal levels, the Latuda helped stabilize my thoughts and, the Prilosec OTC started to ease the raging fire in my chest. But more than that, I began to realize that the medicine alone wasn’t doing the work. It was what the medicine allowed me to see: a community, however short-lived or artificial, where people looked after one another. They fed each other, clothed each other, and helped each other stay safe. The smallest acts—like offering a decaf coffee or folding someone’s laundry—took on sacred weight.

And as my body calmed, so did my mind. The more I experienced the goodness of this place, the less I felt I needed to wage a grand war. After I was discharged, the need for Prilosec waned, and my medicines have changed entirely, and I’m not taking any of the ones I started with anymore. I even started to miss my time in the garden as I struggled through the lone and dreary wilderness of my post-manic depression. Eventually, I realized I still had the over-the-counter version of Kralizec to pay. I wouldn’t wage it by fighting some apocalyptic external battle but by taking my metaphorical Prilosec OTC. by choosing small, quiet, intentional acts to care for people and build a community to prevent the buildup of desperate and explosive fanfiction of the real deal. That insight and continual struggle for good to triumph over evil within me was my true medicine.

Waging my Kralizec OTC

These days, I wage my Kralizec OTC in quieter ways. I offer help where I can—carrying boxes for coworkers, proofreading assignments for classmates, checking in on friends who seem down. I stay late to clean up after meetings for which no one else wants to stick around. I try to be a steady, kind presence—someone people can count on, even in small ways. When someone needs something and they ask, I try to say yes. And when they don’t ask, I still try to notice and offer if it’s appropriate.

I’ve dedicated myself to causes that aim to relieve suffering in the long term—charity work, service projects, mutual aid, research, and policy. But I also study the best books I can find, from all traditions, in search of truth. I’ve come to believe that knowledge is not enough without framing—and so I try to frame my experience and the experiences of others in ways that uplift, empower, and enlighten. Not to put people in boxes or to label them but to draw lines of meaning through chaos. The more I understand, the more compassion I feel—and the more responsibility I carry to act on that understanding.

I fall short, of course, but recommit myself as often as necessary and do my best to follow the promptings of the same spirit that moved those who helped me when I was at my lowest. Where others once visited and provided comfort, I now seek to return the favor. The highest calling I know is to mourn with those who mourn and comfort those who stand in need of comfort. I want to give food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, take in the strangers, clothe the naked, visit the sick, and go to those in distress. These quiet, ancient imperatives, filtered through verses I half-remembered, have taken on renewed significance since my personal brush with the ultimate. At best, I’m working to be connected to something much greater than myself.At the very least, I’m just happy to be here to tell my story.

When I left the Operations Center, out-processed through the Garden Pavilion, and returned to my normal life, I understood that my services were no longer needed in the cosmic theater. Though I felt a twinge of disappointment—an old part of me hoping I’d be called back to the front lines—I knew that particular battle had been won. The battlefield had shifted. My services were now needed elsewhere.

As the great poet Walt Whitman put it, “I am large; I contain multitudes.” I carry with me the memory of Kralizec, and although some part of me still longs for the storm, I have a different war to wage now: the daily battle between good and evil, order and chaos, self-interest and service, and noise and quiet. Between the impulse to do something grand and the commitment to do many small, faithful things that make catastrophe less likely, I’m erring on the side of the small and simple things that make great things come to pass.

And so, I take my Prilosec as needed, not to stave off heartburn but to keep the fire within me properly tempered. My mission is not to hold the line not in some far-off battlefield, but, to fight the good fight here and now in every action I take. As Alexandr Solzhenitsyn put it so poignantly, “the battle line of good and evil is drawn such that it runs through every human heart. I am now a Kalizec Veteran who waged the war ‘out there’, but now, I wage a much smaller and more important war: the one between me and my Kralizec OTC.