City of Consciousness

Something seems amiss. I feel as if I have forgotten something, but I’m not sure what it might be. I have the sensation of standing on air. I remember my whole life clearly. There are no gaps. There can’t be anything wrong.

I don’t sleep well tonight. My dreams are filled with death and drowning. No matter how hard I try I can’t break the surface of the water. I can’t take a full breath of air. Death is all around me. People are dying all around me. I can’t see them or hear them but I can feel them.

My friends are not sympathetic. They disregard my discomfort. It remains untouched at the edge of their plates as we split the check. My physical is this afternoon. I walk to the clinic alone.

There isn’t anything wrong, but they do the scans and take the same samples they always do. I hate going to the clinic. All the plastic and humming gets inside deep inside you, through your head and into your gut. It just stays there. You can’t digest it.

I find a note in my hand. They are killing you. I leave the clinic feeling that something is wrong. Something has changed, something that has changed many times before. The note is still in my hand. I can’t go back to the clinic. Something bad is happening there.

Weeks pass. I am scheduled to return to the clinic. I don’t go. I ignore the calls. There is knocking on the door. They force me to go to the clinic. They remind me that the health of the community depends on my own health. They remind me of my civic duty. They force me into the scanner. They take samples from my skin. I leave the clinic.

I leave the city. I find a device on my person. They are watching me. I destroy it. Weeks pass. I am due at the clinic. Nobody comes for me. My skin begins to turn green. I feel strange. I feel bad. Something starts to grow from my body. I don’t know what to do. I’m afraid to go back. I’m afraid to return to the clinic. I don’t want this to happen to anyone else. My body gets grows weaker.

I leave the clinic. I try to leave the city. They stop me. One of the guards says not this time. I don’t understand what he means. I see the city clock. The date is wrong. It says that it is several weeks later than it should be. I don’t understand.

They take me to the top of a tall building. They take me into a fancy office. There is a man there sitting at a black desk with the back of a silver chair forming a halo behind him. His window provides a panoramic view of the city. But the room is still dark, as if it doesn’t accept light from outside.

The man talks to me. I am going to tell you a story then I am going to give you a choice. Are you ready? The human brain has an incredible mechanism. It allows this thing we call consciousness to come into existence. It allows it to persist over time. This consciousness provides continuity for all of the relations the brain makes between time and space and memory and identity. Do you know how this consciousness, this sense of Being is ignited and perpetuated. Every moment that sense of I is being destroyed and replaced with a new sense of I. That new I perceives itself as the last I just as it too is destroyed and replaced. We think of ourselves as the same person we were years before. In truth we are nothing but placeholders, ghosts. I hope you are following.

Now, here in this city. We have mimicked something that consciousness already does. It has allowed us to create a city of peace and progress and order and health unrivaled in the outside world. You yourself have been destroyed, body and all, thousands of times since your conception. Every time you have gone to the clinic you have been taken apart and replaced with all new parts exactly like the old ones. You are in a way only a few hours old, though you can remember years of experience. Now you know.

Of course, now that you know you can’t be allowed to return the city. You can’t be allowed to leave for the outside world. You can either join the council or we will close your existence indefinitely. If you join the council, you will be allowed to participate in the administrative functions of the city.

I ask if joining the council might give me the power to change the way this city is structured.

That is not a function that the council performs.

I want to spit in the man’s face. He is a liar who plays God over thousands of lives every day. He is a mass murderer. He knowingly oversees a daily genocide. But I am afraid to die. Even if I have died hundreds or billions of times, the sensation of life, of Being is too real to ignore. I choose to join the council. Perhaps some good will come of it. Even if I am choosing the life of the puppet. It seems better than no life at all. I am lead back to the elevator. I will begin a new life. I am tempted to attempt an escape. I hold myself back.

Another me awakens in the wilderness. A friendly face looks down on me. I see you got my note, says the friendly face. Come with me. I’m going to take you to a faraway place. You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be free.