by Domino Finn
Even worse, I lacked baser senses that are often taken for granted or forgotten. The tension around my eyes as I held them shut, the tightness in my throat when I swallowed, the soothing lightness of air as it moved through my sinuses. All of it, everything, was conspicuously, noticeably absent.
The scientists seemed to be giving me truthful answers. They told me I was here by choice but they were not necessarily looking after me. They also said I was not okay and that I could not end this trial. So I was an experiment of some sort, unable to sense anything—what did that infer about my condition? What was to be my ultimate fate? There were disastrous implications.
"Will I be able to see, hear, or do anything ever again?"
Thunderous rays came crashing into me, not one or two but three times, raking against my brain like waves full of gritty salt and sand. The shock, the horrifying helplessness, the dawning inevitability of truth all tangled into a wicked burden and it was all that I could take.
"Let me out!"
I screamed with as much indignation as my shattered confidence could muster. I tried to thrash against the nothingness and push away the men who held me. I wanted no part of this riddle. I had no desire to consider that I might never get well and this could be a permanent state. I shut out the thought that the only new thing left for me to experience was death.
"LET ME OUT!"
I had to take action. I had to fight. I had given the questions a fair try, but every breakthrough brought with it less reason for hope. I tried to attack my torturers, first by screaming; but I soon found myself taking wild swipes, kicking and clawing the ether. I had gotten in a fight before. I remembered then that my instincts took over, as they did again. Without thought or consideration I tried to lunge at imaginary assailants, feeling that I could get lucky or catch them by surprise.
But there was nothing. Nothing. Not only couldn't I see anyone before me but there was no answer to my demand. The force of my will was sucked into the black hole and left no remains. Nothing to show for my efforts. Nothing.
I was a shell of consciousness. Perhaps that is what all men are on a fundamental level, but isn't it the purpose of will that it be exercised? What is thought without action?
If I was in a sort of conscious coma, could I thrust my chains away and force myself to move? I pushed my body, focusing on my legs, endeavoring just to wiggle my toes. A start was all I needed. Some small twinkle of feeling, to prove that I was able, would be sufficient.
Just a speck of perception.
At that moment, I could perceive a very faint but positively aberrant sensation. I would suggest that the twinge felt as if it was outside my mind. Not that I was somewhere else or outside of myself, but rather I sensed an itch where there should have been none. But the impression quickly fizzled into the void and I could not return to it.
No matter. It became increasingly clear to me that escaping, sitting up, or even wiggling were all beyond my purview, and I resigned myself to the game once more.
"Can I move at all? Can I move my legs?"
I wasn't sure that I would get a response after my tantrum, and there did seem a hesitation, but a brilliant shine exploded over me twice. No, I was unable to move my legs, but there remained a nagging suspicion that I had fired slightly off target. Was simply locomotion my concern or was there more to my underlying conjecture?
"Do I have legs?"
The light captured me, lifted, and let go. Once, and again, and a part of me began to understand. I was not okay. I couldn't move my legs because I didn't even have them.
I remembered a distant time, wondering what it would be like to not have legs, speculating how I would cope with the condition. I recalled thinking the future would make that unlikely, that somehow technology would prevent such debilitating states or otherwise correct them. But optimism about the future is often unfounded.
I was smart. I was practical and logical and a firm believer in science. Was that devotion to be betrayed?
A long forgotten memory came back to me. I was a child, running through a store looking down, watching my feet bounce over the dirty tiles. It was an odd thing to remember, and not very significant in any context. But it was a memory. I think it was the produce section of an old grocery store because I was holding an apple with an oval sticker on it. Sometimes it is funny how the human mind works.
But I could not move. I could not run again. I could not hold things again. Could I? I had to settle for some good.
"Do I still have my arms?"
I didn't know what I expected. A powerful radiance buffeted my mind twice in what I considered to be a tragic comedy. As the light disappeared into the black I wondered what further purpose my questions could serve. I was an invalid. What more did anything matter?
Forgotten memories. That was what I had. But why could I not recollect how I got here? Why was it so hard to remember my life?
No. That wasn't the pressing matter. Perhaps it was relevant but I needed to know what had happened to my body. I needed to know what fate I was to look forward to. I started broadly.
"Do I have a body?"
Two flashes returned mercilessly.
This couldn't be. There was some misunderstanding. They told me I was human—a body of some sort is required. No arms and legs would explain my inability to move or touch, but how could I not have a body?
I had to be lying in a bed with scientists standing over me. They had to be communicating with me through electricity because of my condition. I wasn't able to stand or shake their hands or behave like a normal human but I definitely was one.
But I could also not use my eyes. My ears weren't working. Why couldn't I smell or taste or speak?
"Do I have a face?"
Electricity battered my being. A quick pause and a second shock followed, and a consummate horror overcame me. I had thought I was injured, but I was nothing.
My eyes weren't blinded. My eardrums weren't blown out. My legs and arms weren't amputated. My face wasn't burned. None of these things were possible because I had no physical body. I was nothing, in a sea of nothing.
The darkness sprawling before me was not an obstacle. It wasn't a foreign element—it was my home. I was in a state of being that others could only try to imagine, restrained by their earthly binding. I wasn't trapped but free to stretch myself through the firmament. My will was my only constraint, I thought.
But if that was true, why was I powerless?
I was smart. I was pragmatic. I remembered those things. I also remembered bits of my life: being embarrassed in class, or the kiss with my eyes closed. It was impossible for me to be physical and then immaterial. Science could explain this.
To say I didn't have a body could mean many things, but it couldn't be that I no longer had any physical presence. I remembered holding an apple once. An ember of the actual must have remained.
So if I was alive, what was left of me besides my consciousness? What was the minimum of my being? What was absolutely essential to my ability, as a human, to survive?
"Do I have a heart?"
An emanation of light collided into my consciousness. No, my question was wrong. The flash faded and returned as the familiar rhythm of a negative response. A heart was not what I needed.
"A brain?"
The impact was so quick it was startling. A brightness flooded me deeply and lingered as it departed. The solace that followed finally signaled a success. I knew it. I had a brain.
Quietness and clarity pervaded.
"Do I have anything else?"
Static entwined my soul and heaved once, twice, then released me. For the first time, I truly understood. I was still myself but that was a different person. I no longer possessed a body or was able to move. No more did I have need of nutrition or a beating heart. The entirety of my cognizance was solely contained in what must have been sitting on a counter in a jar: my brain, likely hooked up to machines, communicating to scientists through electrical impulses and neurons.
The vastness of my world seemed so much smaller in that context. I had so many questions. How did I get here? What did I look like? What did my future hold?
Mostly, however, I wondered how this was possible. What manner of technology could create this circumstance? This was apparently a hardship I had brought upon myself, yet I couldn't conceive how it had been achieved. I thought I had a cursory interest in speculative science, but something like this was not yet within grasp. Science was surely not this advanced.
Unless… It was possible that developments had occurred while I was asleep. How long had I been in slumber?
"What year is it?"
Time had not been a variable I had considered. It opened the door for many interpretations. Many years could justify the science, explain my memory loss, and rationalize the fact that this situation was intentional. I considered the facts with such focus that the lack of a response went unnoticed.
How much time had passed? How did those years treat my body? I had not been in an accident per se but maybe I was living beyond conventional means. Oh God.
The thought came to me in an epiphany.
"Did I die?"
I waited in complete silence for the blinding light to reply. I hung in the air of oblivion for long moments, staring into the space that only I could see. Death was inconceivable, I thought, but how could I discount anything anymore? After this uncanny experience, I could no longer presume what was possible.
The electric flashes did not come so I repeated the question with urgency.
"Yes or no; did I die?"
The emptiness before me sat inert and left me in a troubling bath of tranquility. I waited at the ready but it was futile—I was not getting a reply. The light had left me.
The scientists had told me they didn't know if I would be able to see or speak again, but they didn't say no. Whatever I was, I was surely an experiment, but that didn't speak to what I would become. If this was the leading edge of science then perhaps I could accomplish a bit of discovery myself. I had perceived a sensation before, something besides the light, and plausibly something within my power. It was conceivable that there was something there to explore.
But those concerns aside, every indication was that, if I possessed anything valuable, it was time. The black was ever present, suspending me, and I was but a child awakening.
I relaxed and settled into the eternity. I could figure this out. I was smart. I remembered that.
-Finn
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