by Christopher Barr
I had a dream where I was
underwater; it was milky and shady in spots. My breathing or lack thereof
seemed to be not a problem. I was swimming barefoot in blue jeans and a white
t-shirt under this massive object above me that was blocking the sun from lighting
the water. As I approached this thing it was big like a whale floating,
but upon a closer inspection, to my dismay and disbelief, it was a brain, a
human brain, the size of a blue whale - just floating there.
After recovering from the shock
of what I was looking at, I found myself quickly shifting to asking the
question why. Why was I there swimming around in the water and why was there
a massive human brain there too? I swam along the right hemisphere of the
brain as thoughts of the vastness of creativity and the art that it can produce
when channeled properly. I was swimming by the area of the brain where
imagination is ignited. I thought of my university philosophy professor
talking about the brain-in-a-vat, instantly thinking, was I in the vat with the
brain? Was it really that huge or was I somehow really this small?
I swam over to the left
hemisphere to ascertain some logic and mathematical reasoning for such a
find. This brain was not connected to anything, it’s just floating with
no skull to protect its fragile fleshy surface from the worldly elements and it
had no body or nervous system to support it. Water is a conductor I
thought, electrical pulses travel through water, so what if the water was the
relaying system for the brain to give its orders? That’s preposterous
because biology has no record of such an organism. But that doesn’t mean
such an organism still can’t exist outside the purview of biology.
At the Frontal Lobe I stared at
its mass, it started to shiver or vibrate as if suddenly becoming cold or
possibly excited for some reason. I
reached out and touched it, calmly rubbing its jelly-like skin. The shivering stopped up until I let go, then
it started to shiver again while backing away from me. I swam down and under it passing the
Pituitary Gland when I noticed small fish all swimming around the Medulla
Oblongata, the brainstem severed three feet down from the Pons. The brain stopped shivering as I floated
underneath the Cerebellum. I was
thinking about how oddly bizarre this all was but I was also surprisingly not
as shocked as I imagined I should be.
There was sudden transparency
while looking up at the brain. I was
able to see through the outer flesh and view the Limbic System, with the
Hippocampus and the Hypothalamus easily visible. How was I able to do this and to what
purpose?
Then I woke up, strapped to a
table; thinking was I even awake because this place felt equally
bizarre. A shaded creature approached me
and inserted a black needle into my arm.
I looked at its figure, its shape and was a bit mystified. It had arms, a face, and eyes, it had skin and
fingers but yet it wasn’t human. I don’t
know if I was experiencing some form of Aphasia or was I still dreaming. Telling the difference appeared to be troublesome
because unlike the water with the massive floating brain, this all seemed
oddly…real.
I looked down at my body and noticed
that I was strapped to the table but not by straps because straps don’t
pulsate. The more I focused on whatever
was holding me to the table, the more I could feel that it was rough skin on
mine, a scaly skin, a cold skin. I tried
to lift my right hand when a painful feeling of a hundred needles was piercing
my skin. When I stopped pulling and
relaxed my hand the pain and needles went away.
What was happening to me and what
was I doing there, strapped to this table?
The creature walked over to a number of other shaded figures. I could hear clicks and slurs, was that a
language or was that a machine I was hearing?
Looking around the room I couldn’t see much, there was a skylight so I
could see that it was night because the stars were out. To my left were machines of some sort, they
sat upon one another but weren’t actually touching like one would expect, they
looked as if a magnetic field existed between them and kept them from
touching. The floor was liquid and
little beads of light traveled around it like traffic and often would travel
up and into the bodies of the creatures.
Was it some kind of internetworking system where information was moving
around like microscopic cells would or was it an energy system that was passing
on nutrients to these creatures?
I looked down and the needle in
my arm retracted into a device and then folded up into the ceiling. Three creatures came over and surrounded me;
they all placed their hands on my stomach and looked at me, staring. My mind felt like I was being hit with
powerful waves of hot water smashing against its shores. I thought to myself,
what do you want with me? Because I
wasn’t alone in there as I always was in the past. My thoughts always suffered in solitude but
not today. The smashing waves suddenly
stopped as the air in my mind was filled with silence. Within the calm, I felt language, the very
communication device we use to speak but not in the form on a page, or spoken
but rather in the ideas that inspire one to speak them in the first place. The genesis of thought that is manufactured
in the mind into an utterance that is spoken out or a word written down, there
is this nucleus that manifests itself within the mind that becomes what defines
us, it creates a signature or stamp of uniqueness that becomes thoughts with
which recall memories and forecast movement with ideas and beliefs.
This is what they wanted and I
don’t know why or certainly can’t use language to explain why that is. They want my unique code, religious believers
might call it a soul, but men of science call it by its name, consciousness. They want my brain's operating system, this is
why they haven’t killed me, this is why I’m here, I’m here as an experiment on
separation. Can the mind and body
exist…apart? The unconscious,
subconscious and conscious mind must coexist within the Homo sapiens
organism. Separation is not possible;
separation is death for one cannot live without the other.
Like the massive brain in water,
I am perplexed at what is happening but I’m curious, why is this happening and
to what end? What can be done with a
harvested conscious mind? I have to
deduce that they have a purpose for what they are doing, they have me strapped
to a table in a room, trying to figure out how to get my mind out of my brain
without killing me because they must know that if I die my mind dies with me.
These beings are clearly not
religious because for centuries people have believed that once the body dies
the soul leaves it and goes to heaven.
If this were true they could conceivably kill me and somehow, with their
advanced technology bottle my soul, my mind at the moment of my death. I can’t explain it but I can feel they have
no interest in my body or brain, whether it lives or dies. They just want the essence within it, they
want my complete identity, my past present, and future which leads me to wonder
if they are medical doctors, wanting to understand the answers to life or they
might be psychologists of some sort that want to understand why we do what we
do, why we are who we are. As they connect
to my mind I am able to extract shadows of them in my thoughts moving around, I
can feel them but that feeling is foreign to my thought processing so it is
fragmented at best.
The mind is a maze but it isn’t
digitized, it’s something else, something more.
It’s not a soul that goes to heaven when the body dies nor is it
something that can be successfully uploaded into a computer in spite of the
many scientific attempts. It is a system
of biology, a system of nature that serves as a weapon for my particular
species. A weapon against all predators and
unfortunately for our planet as well, so with that, I suppose that the great weapon
of mass destruction is the human mind and these things want it.
Is it the hardware of it that
they want because I can’t imagine they’d want the software portion, I’m no
one? I didn’t do anything with my life
thus far, for the most part, if I had to be honest, I sat around and dreamt of
the future and missed most of the present.
There are men of great genius that would serve far better subjects than
a university drop out. Why aren’t they
here on this table and why aren’t I back in my New York apartment dreaming of
being someone special, someone famous, someone important. Maybe this is important and maybe this is
what I’m meant to do if we are actually meant to do anything. This could be my great moment because they
chose me and not the genius with all the answers. Maybe I am important.
The creatures press harder
against my chest and stomach as I see the walls around me collapse into a
liquid form and fall to the floor. I can
see me to my left, no that’s me to my right, I look down toward my feet and see
a row of people on tables just like mine.
I then look to the sky and I see a dome cover reflecting millions of
bodies on tables. I see them all as dots
and as individuals at the same time.
Blue lights appear over everyone’s head, they’re doing it right now, my
nose bleeds and the blood drips up. If
the laws of gravity apply wherever I am, this evidence leads me to believe I’m
in fact upside down. I’ve been this way
the whole time but it certainly didn’t feel like I was.
I’m skateboarding down a steep
hill in Virginia……
I’m slapped in the face by my
mother……….
I’m tasting cotton candy for the
first time and I hate it because it feels weird in my mouth…….
I looked up and could see the light
spill into a vase thinking, is that me?
Is that what I amount to? Off in
the distance I can now see the Earth on fire; I’m on a space ship, floating by
the moon as my home burns.
I love the feel of grass in the
summer….if I’m not conscious then what am I?
What is happening to me… I want to go….
The Earth was attacked by an
unknown Alien life form at 21 hundred hours eastern standard time, April 20th
2034. The attacks began with the Chinese
city of Wenquan and then La Rinconada in Peru and the Bolivian city of Potosi and
then the Ecuadorian city of Quito, all these cities are among the highest in
altitude in the world. The attacks ended
four days later, spanning the globe, at Beijing, China, a city of one of the
lowest in altitude.
The light above my brow is so
bright, this is not the afterlife. This
is immediate in its….ectoplasm………………….
I’m disappearing……I’m gon……
3.1415926535….89..793………… … .. .
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