In the Beginning
First there was the smell of new cars, and the rhythmic muffled hum of medical equipment. Whispered voices. Then the room came into focus. Off-white walls and people in clean white labcoats, but the view was immediately obliterated by a bright pen-light. Grimaced and blinked a few times after it was taken away. The man with curly grey hair and spectacles is putting the pen-light back in his pocket and whispering to the sour-looking brown haired man, who is taking notes on a clipboard.
They then asked a battery of questions ranging from "how do you feel" (asked in a cold clinical manner, answer noted down on notepad) to "do you know who you are and why you're here?" (answer, no, noted down in notepad, no further explanation given).
Then there were physical tests. Running on a treadmill. Blood samples taken. Many different off-white rooms, off-white corridors. Lots of people in labcoats. Never a friendly face.
Finally a quiet moment in a room with mirrors on two walls. Or one-way windows more likely? In the mirror is the only man not in a lab coat. In a green hospital gown, the man in the mirror has pale skin and a bald head. The barest evidence of stubble just beginning to appear on it, like the chin, after a long day. That man is me. I lift my right arm, he lifts his left. Turn to the mirror on the side and he does the same thing. In between the mirrors, there's a third man, the reflection of a reflection. He lifts the same arm as me, he alone is not an inverted image, but I can't make out his face, he's obliterated by the crack between the mirrors.
Finally was parked in a little room with a small bed, the way one puts a tool away in the shed. Went to a sound dreamless sleep. Hours later another day began with people in labcoats resuming their tests all over again. Some tests and procedures were repeated, some were new. More off-white rooms and off-white halls, people in labcoats, and me in a hospital gown. I wondered if behind the other doors there were more people in gowns.
I went along with the tests, it was all I knew anyway. In order to have strong opinions and a desire to be doing one thing over another, you need some kind of basis for comparison, and I had nothing. I felt ambivalent about everything -- maybe they were just going to harvest my organs.. I didn't really care.
Some of their tests were logic problems. Some were ethics questions. They'd show me pictures that they seemed to expect me to have an emotional response to. They tried not to give anything away, and they were usually pretty good at treating me like an object, but I could tell they were getting a little concerned.
Sometimes they'd forget I was even in the room. Between tests I'd usually just sit there staring at the opposite wall anyway.
"No one could have no reaction to that!" the woman across the table whispered to her partner while I stared between them like a tin man.
"No true person" the man whispers while trying not to move his mouth, as if that'd prevent me from hearing.
This is to replace this and the first half of this entry to create a better beginning for this story.