Broadcast Mind | 0 | Pre-Intro
The strange device is unpleasantly cold and heavy in your palm, but its controls are cell-phone-similar and thus mostly intuitive, and you find yourself caught upon the feeds sprawling across its screen. You're holding it close to your face and squinting it into something like focus, although it blurs in and out of clarity each time you blink. As you study it, the pointer finger of your free hand curls round and round a tuft of your hair - a slow, pleasant, practiced motion.
Syntax varies in the textual entries, you note - as does diction. Same with the audio and video feeds. Like shifts in narrative voice, the patterns of speaking, the vocal pitch, the apparent sex and ethnicity of the speakers varies. The subjects make obscure references that render their messages cryptic - but you make note of the names and terms they speak, anyway. And you note the faces you see on the screen, pondering the chance of repeat appearance. If it happens, you can check for continuity of characterization. For a seam.
And you wish you had something with which to truly busy your hands, with your mind gone so terribly awry. It seems to you that by engaging the utter focus it takes to construct a substantial tower of cards or dice, you might enable yourself to notice something, anything aberrant about the way in which you're seeing, sensing this strange place. But you're simultaneously aware of the distinct possibility that every tower you've ever built has been illusion. The vague irony of the phrase 'house of cards' tickles at the back of your mind and then you're staring at the small window across the room, looking out at what lies beyond. But the shapes ahead are indistinct and blurred - masses of color with bleeding edges. The sort of foggy ambiguity with which you've always seen things - the sort of ambiguity you hate, you've always fought against.
You want facts - cold, solid and unequivocal. None of this discontinuity and phenomenological uncertainty. But you're acutely aware that the likelihood you'll get your factual certainty is slowly ticking away from you. You've never been so aware of the passage of time in a dream before, after all. Nor been so overtly conscious of your sensory and physiological responses to a dream setting. The comforting likelihood that this is simply the product of particularly lucid dreaming is decreasing with each hour that slides by, and odds are building for the other possibility on the table.
Namely, incipient schizophrenia. Psychotic break.
There's also the off chance you're dead, of course. This maybe should've been your first suspicion, considering the last memory you can conjure is one of facing off with a mass murderer. However, you're skeptical to the point of dismissal when it comes to the possibility that human consciousness continues after death. And you're pretty damned certain your plan was fool proof.
His face now flashes in your mind's eye -- rather, the distinct shape of it. Because, if by some chance you've suddenly slipped into a catatonic state, odds are good you've keeled over at his feet. The face is oval and symmetrical, framed by stylishly cut auburn-brown hair that catches glimmers of spare light midst the darkness of a vast, cavernous space. It's very nice hair, tidier than yours has probably ever been in your life, and you feel like smirking at the fact that one so pathologically narcissistic might also be so stereotypically beautiful. He had the perfect facade -- and you cracked it right down the middle. The sound of his voice - breaking, pathetic, maniacal - plays through your mind and you feel something like triumph swell within your chest, but you can't undo your awareness that it's perfectly possible your victory and the path leading to it were illusion, too. Your memory of it is no more nor less cogent than your experience of this room, this device.
It's almost a comforting thought, at this point, to imagine yourself slumping into catatonia at the feet of the man you've beaten. Because at least then, you've got the small consolation of knowing that he'll forever be haunted by the fact that he lost pathetically to an adversary suffering from nascent degenerative psychosis. Silver linings and all of that.
But even that small comfort won't stick, in light of all this uncertainty.
Pride bristles down your back and your find yourself thinking that perhaps you shouldn't care. If you can't tell the difference between illusion and reality - then what the hell does the difference matter? And all else being equal, why not choose as 'reality' the scenario you like best?
It's something you learned long ago: if you don't set your compass to something, you're without direction. But even as you begin to warm to it, you're convinced of this rationalization's inherent futility. And that futility weighs heavily upon you, leaves you thinking that perhaps you've really cracked. Perhaps you've finally failed like those damned losers of the first generation. You always were rather schizoid, you suppose - a poster boy for the sort of solipsistic detachment and skepticism that some say leads to schism with reality. But you always considered yourself more pragmatist than skeptic, what with your focus upon goals firmly contextually grounded in experiences you took for reality.
Experiences you took for reality. Who the hell knows if they actually were. Or if there is such a thing. You're going in circles now, and you know all this is pointless.
So, you give a brumal sigh, reach for the dart in your pocket, and drop the device idly aside. As it clatters to the floor and rolls away, the feed ends.
Syntax varies in the textual entries, you note - as does diction. Same with the audio and video feeds. Like shifts in narrative voice, the patterns of speaking, the vocal pitch, the apparent sex and ethnicity of the speakers varies. The subjects make obscure references that render their messages cryptic - but you make note of the names and terms they speak, anyway. And you note the faces you see on the screen, pondering the chance of repeat appearance. If it happens, you can check for continuity of characterization. For a seam.
And you wish you had something with which to truly busy your hands, with your mind gone so terribly awry. It seems to you that by engaging the utter focus it takes to construct a substantial tower of cards or dice, you might enable yourself to notice something, anything aberrant about the way in which you're seeing, sensing this strange place. But you're simultaneously aware of the distinct possibility that every tower you've ever built has been illusion. The vague irony of the phrase 'house of cards' tickles at the back of your mind and then you're staring at the small window across the room, looking out at what lies beyond. But the shapes ahead are indistinct and blurred - masses of color with bleeding edges. The sort of foggy ambiguity with which you've always seen things - the sort of ambiguity you hate, you've always fought against.
You want facts - cold, solid and unequivocal. None of this discontinuity and phenomenological uncertainty. But you're acutely aware that the likelihood you'll get your factual certainty is slowly ticking away from you. You've never been so aware of the passage of time in a dream before, after all. Nor been so overtly conscious of your sensory and physiological responses to a dream setting. The comforting likelihood that this is simply the product of particularly lucid dreaming is decreasing with each hour that slides by, and odds are building for the other possibility on the table.
Namely, incipient schizophrenia. Psychotic break.
There's also the off chance you're dead, of course. This maybe should've been your first suspicion, considering the last memory you can conjure is one of facing off with a mass murderer. However, you're skeptical to the point of dismissal when it comes to the possibility that human consciousness continues after death. And you're pretty damned certain your plan was fool proof.
His face now flashes in your mind's eye -- rather, the distinct shape of it. Because, if by some chance you've suddenly slipped into a catatonic state, odds are good you've keeled over at his feet. The face is oval and symmetrical, framed by stylishly cut auburn-brown hair that catches glimmers of spare light midst the darkness of a vast, cavernous space. It's very nice hair, tidier than yours has probably ever been in your life, and you feel like smirking at the fact that one so pathologically narcissistic might also be so stereotypically beautiful. He had the perfect facade -- and you cracked it right down the middle. The sound of his voice - breaking, pathetic, maniacal - plays through your mind and you feel something like triumph swell within your chest, but you can't undo your awareness that it's perfectly possible your victory and the path leading to it were illusion, too. Your memory of it is no more nor less cogent than your experience of this room, this device.
It's almost a comforting thought, at this point, to imagine yourself slumping into catatonia at the feet of the man you've beaten. Because at least then, you've got the small consolation of knowing that he'll forever be haunted by the fact that he lost pathetically to an adversary suffering from nascent degenerative psychosis. Silver linings and all of that.
But even that small comfort won't stick, in light of all this uncertainty.
Pride bristles down your back and your find yourself thinking that perhaps you shouldn't care. If you can't tell the difference between illusion and reality - then what the hell does the difference matter? And all else being equal, why not choose as 'reality' the scenario you like best?
It's something you learned long ago: if you don't set your compass to something, you're without direction. But even as you begin to warm to it, you're convinced of this rationalization's inherent futility. And that futility weighs heavily upon you, leaves you thinking that perhaps you've really cracked. Perhaps you've finally failed like those damned losers of the first generation. You always were rather schizoid, you suppose - a poster boy for the sort of solipsistic detachment and skepticism that some say leads to schism with reality. But you always considered yourself more pragmatist than skeptic, what with your focus upon goals firmly contextually grounded in experiences you took for reality.
Experiences you took for reality. Who the hell knows if they actually were. Or if there is such a thing. You're going in circles now, and you know all this is pointless.
So, you give a brumal sigh, reach for the dart in your pocket, and drop the device idly aside. As it clatters to the floor and rolls away, the feed ends.