Flash! Fiction by Peter McMillan - HTML preview

46

We

How much more can there be? Uninterrupted visual stimulation all day long, some days. That's if we can trust this neurological chro-nometer implant. On those days, no shadows, no colours, no shapes; no rest from the all-enveloping whiteness.

On other days, shrill, harsh tones dizzy our hearing, but we have no sight, no smell or taste or feeling on these days. Each day gives us only a single sense. The others are shut down.

Except for those days when every nerve tip is ignited, and all the senses are awakened for a split second, then shut off, then switched back on, over and over again. And so on, for days or maybe weeks. Long enough that we seem to have lost track of much of what is happening to us.

Where isn't known to us. Only what is allowed can be seen or heard by us, and only then on sight days or hearing days. There's nothing to smell on smell days but a noxious odour, but we can't cough or hold our breath. Taste days make us crave something salty or sweet, but we don't eat anymore. We try not to feel.

Who is behind this, we don't know. He or she or they or it might only be in our heads. But are we really real or is someone thinking us? Memory and imagination are useable, but mostly we don't know which is which.

Before there was one among us who described things that he said he really saw or felt or heard. He wasn't convincing though. He was with us for a while, but he's not here any longer.

He told us that he couldn't feel anything but his feet and that they always felt wet, and then he said he saw them in a clear plastic 47

tank on the table opposite. That shocked us, because we couldn't feel or see any of this—not wet feet or tanks or tables or rooms or buildings.

Before— Before what? Earlier. Earlier there had been a splash. An impact and the sound of us dropping heavily into water. The jarring we felt throughout. But we didn't see a thing. And then we floated to the top and stayed there, rising and falling until the water calmed.

Before the splash, a buzzing, grinding, vibrating, sticky, bloody pro-cedure removed us from the skull.

Prior to the extraction, we lost control of our muscles, and our heart raced while our limbs jerked and flopped. The needle helped, but we were still awake—inside.

Before the needle, a squeaky hospital gurney carried us to the operating room.

Previously, we had been put in an empty room with no windows and not even an outline of the door.

There was another room before that with a chair and a table and on the table a pen and paper and our signature at the bottom.

Prior to the signature was the lecture hall filled with 200 students taking Professor Smartt's course in the Philosophy of Mind. The topic that day was Putnam's brain in the vat.

It all began with a posting on craigslist. "Students needed for pio-neering multidisciplinary experiments into multiple personality disorders. Tuition fully paid on completion."

First published in Danse Macabre Issue, Vol. 6, No. 7, September 2011.