It: An Idea I Came Up With
One night, as I was laying in bed and attempting to sleep, one of those random thoughts came into my mind. You know, the thoughts that you have briefly, for maybe half a second, and you have no idea where they came from, and then they're gone, and you wonder whether or not you really thought that. They often have the vibe of not recognizing something you're seeing and making some sort of subconscious wild guess about what it is before your conscious mind catches up. Regardless of what exactly they are, I had one of those.
It was a mental image of a generic-looking humanoid figure, neatly wrapped in white bandages, and slightly translucent, like backlit fog. It walked silently around my mindscape. Mindscape- it sounds weird, but it's just the word I made up for the blank kind-of-a-space that you see when you're not seeing anything else in your mind... Actually, the word that best describes it is a backdrop, or maybe a screensaver, now that I think of it.
For a moment I could see it, well, not walking exactly, but more like being at one place at one time, then another place at another time, and transitioning smoothly between the two. Then it was gone. I wasn't afraid of it, I think, because I didn't get the impression that it was trying to do me any harm. Then again, I didn't feel comfortable with its presence either, because I didn't get any impression from it. Just blankness. Because I was thinking about it, it returned, because I was trying to recall exactly what it looked like. It watched me. I watched it back. I wondered for how long it had been watching me. I had no way to find out.
I thought about it some more in the following minutes, and another thing that intrigued me was how it seemed to outright defy any sort of name or personality I tried to give it. You may have noticed by now that I've been referring to it so far as only it, capitalized only at the beginning of a sentence. I couldn't call it It, or IT, or it, or it, or "it." I couldn't even call it Bob. I couldn't classify it as human or alien, male or female or any gender in between, good or evil. These rejected each other, not like oil and water (you can actually mix those, it turns out, with a process called emulsifying), but like the ideal we have in our heads of oil and water. Two things that will stay separate, no matter what you try.
I eventually fell asleep, while still trying to figure it out. I woke up the next morning with this:
It's trying to not exist.
Now this was information! I now had the idea of a story behind it. All too often in stories you have someone playing with forces they don't understand, because of human desire, and then they go too far and disaster strikes. This made it less the indecipherable haunt of my mind and more of a character whose story I could discover. I figured it had originally been a human, and, well, the sequence I described happened. The disaster that strikes them is mostly not existing any more. I said "mostly" because it can still exist in minds, which aren't quite on the plane of reality. Because let's face it, even if we combined the knowledge of all the psychologists and neuroscientists in the world, we still wouldn't know all of how this mass of grayish jelly does all the things it does. And, since magic is defined as something we don't understand, something that we somewhat don't understand is somewhat magic. Somewhat can't exist.
I don't know if I managed to get what I was feeling about the brain across to your brain, because language is an annoyingly imperfect way of transmitting thoughts, but I'll move on.
"So," I thought then, "what does it want now?"
It doesn't know what it wants.
It doesn't know this, but it doesn't want any more.
It drifts silently, watching and mostly-not-existing.
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I wanted to write down that little somewhat-of-a-story, because I thought you might find it interesting. I hope it doesn't haunt your nightmares- after all, it doesn't want anything, and certainly not to harm you. If your mind somehow warps its character, or rather lack of one, so that it becomes a malevolent being, I sincerely apologize. Minds are like that sometimes. It's partially my fault. I seriously doubt that my mind had all that story planned out when it conjured up that image late at night. But isn't that what we do? Take small, raw things that your brain comes up with, expand upon them, change them, polish them, present them, learn more about that process of expansion, change, polish, presentation, for next time. That is, quite literally, what creativity is, and I realize that so suddenly it's astonishing. I find that realization more fascinating than it, really.
It was a mental image of a generic-looking humanoid figure, neatly wrapped in white bandages, and slightly translucent, like backlit fog. It walked silently around my mindscape. Mindscape- it sounds weird, but it's just the word I made up for the blank kind-of-a-space that you see when you're not seeing anything else in your mind... Actually, the word that best describes it is a backdrop, or maybe a screensaver, now that I think of it.
For a moment I could see it, well, not walking exactly, but more like being at one place at one time, then another place at another time, and transitioning smoothly between the two. Then it was gone. I wasn't afraid of it, I think, because I didn't get the impression that it was trying to do me any harm. Then again, I didn't feel comfortable with its presence either, because I didn't get any impression from it. Just blankness. Because I was thinking about it, it returned, because I was trying to recall exactly what it looked like. It watched me. I watched it back. I wondered for how long it had been watching me. I had no way to find out.
I thought about it some more in the following minutes, and another thing that intrigued me was how it seemed to outright defy any sort of name or personality I tried to give it. You may have noticed by now that I've been referring to it so far as only it, capitalized only at the beginning of a sentence. I couldn't call it It, or IT, or it, or it, or "it." I couldn't even call it Bob. I couldn't classify it as human or alien, male or female or any gender in between, good or evil. These rejected each other, not like oil and water (you can actually mix those, it turns out, with a process called emulsifying), but like the ideal we have in our heads of oil and water. Two things that will stay separate, no matter what you try.
I eventually fell asleep, while still trying to figure it out. I woke up the next morning with this:
It's trying to not exist.
Now this was information! I now had the idea of a story behind it. All too often in stories you have someone playing with forces they don't understand, because of human desire, and then they go too far and disaster strikes. This made it less the indecipherable haunt of my mind and more of a character whose story I could discover. I figured it had originally been a human, and, well, the sequence I described happened. The disaster that strikes them is mostly not existing any more. I said "mostly" because it can still exist in minds, which aren't quite on the plane of reality. Because let's face it, even if we combined the knowledge of all the psychologists and neuroscientists in the world, we still wouldn't know all of how this mass of grayish jelly does all the things it does. And, since magic is defined as something we don't understand, something that we somewhat don't understand is somewhat magic. Somewhat can't exist.
I don't know if I managed to get what I was feeling about the brain across to your brain, because language is an annoyingly imperfect way of transmitting thoughts, but I'll move on.
"So," I thought then, "what does it want now?"
It doesn't know what it wants.
It doesn't know this, but it doesn't want any more.
It drifts silently, watching and mostly-not-existing.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I wanted to write down that little somewhat-of-a-story, because I thought you might find it interesting. I hope it doesn't haunt your nightmares- after all, it doesn't want anything, and certainly not to harm you. If your mind somehow warps its character, or rather lack of one, so that it becomes a malevolent being, I sincerely apologize. Minds are like that sometimes. It's partially my fault. I seriously doubt that my mind had all that story planned out when it conjured up that image late at night. But isn't that what we do? Take small, raw things that your brain comes up with, expand upon them, change them, polish them, present them, learn more about that process of expansion, change, polish, presentation, for next time. That is, quite literally, what creativity is, and I realize that so suddenly it's astonishing. I find that realization more fascinating than it, really.
Me too. I've seen it in the fringes, in the grey spaces between sleep and waking. It claws through my mind, seeking answers. Seeking something it hasn't already found a thousand times in a thousand minds. And as I drift off, it finds it.
ReplyDeleteI awoke with a triangular glyph, faded but recognizable, imprinted on my hand. I cannot remove it. I fear sleep now. I fear waking. I fear reality. I fear all that is not real.
Most of all, I fear myself.
That sounds like a truly unsettling encounter, however I doubt that was it. It is simply the faintest afterimage of something that used to exist. It does not have any intent, so it does not have malicious intent. Also, a triangular glyph on your hand? Well, I'm no glyph expert, of course- this blog is about modern computer programs, not ancient, mysterious symbols- but you could always consult a glyph guide. That might be helpful in identifying your particular nocturnal terror, and seeing what you can do in the rare circumstance that you're not doomed already. Just visit the dark library, through the screaming portal in the staff room of your regular library, to borrow one. Just make sure to return it on time.... And now, hmm, what do you say to people again in this situation? Get well soon? I don't remember at the moment, but I'm sure your funeral will be very nice, regardless of whether or not they find your body.
ReplyDelete