eQualia

His head snapped to the doorway. J. fixated at the space in the room beyond.

After a moment, “what do you see, J.?”

“I thought I saw her.”

”'Thought'?”

J. rotated his head to stare ahead, right through H.

“You thought you saw her?”

“For a moment, walking by. It was a blur.”

“It was peripheral.”

“Yes. Out of the corner of my eye.”

“Do you ever see her directly? Straight in front of you in clear view?”

J. sat for a more moments than was probably necessary. Rubbing his chin against his hands held out in front of him.

J. finally, “sometimes she is ahead of me. Sometimes I can move in, she's not just peripheral, but I have never seen her face. Not clearly, not directly.”

“How do you know it is the same person? That you are not mistaking her for a real stranger?”

“I don't – Know. I just feel it. I intuit that its her.”

“What is the feeling you get when you see her?”

J. pressed his nose against his fingers so hard his nose began fold back slightly, before he let the rest of his face slip behind his hands. “I feel like I have just seen a person I used to know very well, that I haven't seen in a long time. Like I need to see her face and be sure, and say something to her.”

“But you don't know what her face looks like?”

“No. But I imagine it.”

“What do you imagine?”

“Differently. I imagine it differently. Each time.”

There was no response for a long while. H. was smothering himself between breaths. J. stared at his knee, seeming to let time pass to wait for more.

“Am I sick?”

H. thought about J.'s question. After leaving a few moments for processing, “not fully. Not truly. Superstition was a means of creating an imagined world that allowed the untreated, mentally ill, participate in society meaningfully...”

H. gave J. a look that combined annoyance and anticipation for the rest of the answer.

H. slapped the end of his chair's arm, “you are not a sick person playing into a collective fantasy of the people around you. You are a, unverifiably, sick person who is partaking in someone else's game.”

“Are you a part of this game?”

A moment, “I am a spectator.”

“This isn't a spectator's game. After all, I am certainly not intending to play. I didn't get a choice in this, I have no out. Who else hasn't chosen this? Or doesn't know they are part of this?”

The walls we built with a wave like curvature to them, bending in and back out, the crests often being spaces for gathering.

At this moment, looking down The Hall, he had the sensation he was literally swimming in it. They took on a shadowy form, their outline shifting moment by moment in as though they were roto-scoped moment to moment by a painter in his internal theater. He felt he should keep some distance from the walls, he couldn't be sure if he was getting close enough to bump into them.

He waded down, the floor had a main path, wide enough for several persons to stand side-by-side and pass another group without breaking each others eye contact. The path peeled into ramps, typically down into shared spaces, where people congregated among furniture. The noise from these hovels deflected against the ramped floors and up into ceiling that bent and shaped to reflect the floor.

He had the sense of being enclosed when on the path, the waved walls broke open into large rooms that gave him the sense he was suddenly expanding out into space, voices collecting around him, and shimmering silhouettes of shadowy people who moved among each other, 'living drafts for a painting', he thought.

He noticed how slowly his thoughts moved through his own mind. He became sensitive and almost ashamed of it in that moment. A couple passed by him while on the path, and he wondered if they thought about as slowly as they spoke too. Something emerged in his mind, of words being the at the peak a self, somehow held up by the whole combination of senses and faculties that unwittingly became the trust of language.

He was standing still, becoming upset at the sensation that seemed to swarm about the lining of stomach. There was an illness about the feeling, perhaps anxiety or something actually infectious. Everything about everything was off by many degrees in his current experience, and his normal sensations and feelings were foreign to him entirely.

A large room expanded out, two stories reveled themselves on both sides. and the path split two ways with a hearth in the middle of them.

He felt entirely out of place and vulnerable. Walking into this last room was like walking onto a stage surrounded by a crowd on all sides.

Shuffling on, he could make out figures in closer detail. The ghostly outline of colors surround every single thing seemed more intense here. But he intuited each person more easily than typical. He thought to make his way into the crowd and get off the path.

Either side of him felt too particular, he didnt see anyone that he knew and had any interest in either way, so he slowly glided in to the open heart.

Furniture of organic shapes encircled the center, pooling into smaller collections of seats that faces each other. About a dozen people among them, they mingled.

On the perimeter he exchanged a silent greeting with someone, who then smiled to say, “You look like you're tripping harder than you were ready for.” in reply he squeezed his eyes in an overt cringe, somehow trying to both an acknowledge the point and avoid drawing any attention to himself. Also, avoiding actually speaking, which he feared he might somehow fail to do correctly.

They all stood or sat facing inward toward each other. All deep into something he had no context, or particular interest in. Out of his left peripheral view, he saw someone utterly disengaged in the goings-on, and looking directly at him.

She was particularly hard to see clearly.

He initially thought she was brown haired, but looking longer thought she was now black haired. Grey shirt, and darkened pants, he was only just getting close enough to tell her eye color as he moved towards her. She lay angled with a foot on the floor, and her middle back on the seat of the couch. Her upper back and head lay against the cushions, holding herself up by an elbow.

She didn't say anything, and he noticed she was had dark red hair. She stared at him, blue eyes with shadow like wrinkles that shifted about her face. Her hair seemed to swarm, fading in and out of slightly different configurations moment by moment.

The invasive emptiness he felt swarming his stomach moved into his chest. He felt like his heart and lungs had blurred out of existence, and he was struggling to breathe and live.

She adjusted herself slightly, but stayed fixated on him. A handful of blonde hair, fell across her face.

The walls moved out and away from him, and the ceiling felt like it was coming down fast and close to hitting his head. Everything blurred to the point of blindness, and he collapsed.

H. came out dragging a hollowed shell of a humanoid figure. Hands hooked under its shoulders, he slid the machine through successive heaves to the center of the room.

“It isn't...” J. was either breathless from astonishment or from shock, probably both.

H. took a breath, “it is. I hid this older model during the extermination.”

H. motioned J. to help lift it into a chair. Once seated, H. pulled its head forward and started flicking his thumb against the back of its neck, making slight adjustments searching for a gap. A click, and it was open to receive cabling.

“Does it even work?” J. had a sense that this machine wouldn't take what they wanted, or needed, it to take.

“I don't remember what exactly was wrong with it, but it was a model I put aside to fix later. I figured if it was found, I could use the fact it was broken and 'forgotten' as an excuse.” H. had its cabling set, and a slight glow drifted into its eyes, and dim lights shown down its legs and arms.

H. pushed the head back against the chair, fixing it to look straight ahead.

“Are you going to try to fix it?” J. never seemed sure that he understood H.'s exact plan, it was never something J. cared to share openly.

“I think we should leave it be for now. See what happens to it.”

J. was again feeling out of the loop, “For how long? And how long until you decide to really fix it, or at least try to remember how it was broken.”

“However long is needed,” J. then made an uncharacteristic followup, “I'd like to leave the brokenness as a challenge. I remember enough to know that it won't be inaccessible to our friend.”

---

Sitting in an abandoned room, the lights dimmed on the figures outline, before glowing back to normal a moment after.

The lights are off and the room is silent. A light layer of dust was collecting on the machine from time in wait.

Within a second, its head ticked to the right, then back again.

The lights dimmed, then rose again to their normal levels.

Moments passed.

Within a second, its head ticked to the right, then back again.

Now many more moments passed.

The lights dimmed...

“I saw it spazzing”

“Spazzing?”

“Just – Writhing. Moving about.”

“I cant just assume ... It was out of the scheduled muscle conditioning period of the day?”

A nod, confirming it was completely out of schedule and not controlled. The boss leaned with one hand on the rolling medical cart, and slammed the other hand against it, a combination of frustration and some other emotion he had not identified yet.

Looking over the animal, it hung with its head up and butt down, like on a meat hook. It had a combination of tubes coming down from the sealing that suspended the animal and also provided oxygen, nutrient enriched blood, electricity for the muscles, whatever else.

“I will call the neurologist we have on contract. We can have him do an evaluation, and see if there is something still alive in there. I'm hoping there's just something mixed up with the wiring or something...”

---

The neurologist had a slightly grim look about him. He was not so overtaken he couldn't conceal his reaction, but he did believe he was in sympathetic company so hiding was unnecessary.

“Its not entirely clear. Never really is... But on physical examination it looks like the movements could be caused, in part, by the central nervous system reforming and repairing itself. Beyond that its unclear what exactly is causing the movements and reactions, we can't know the triggering stimuli without controlling more conditions and conducting more active brain scans.”

“Can you fix it?” said the boss.

“We have to surgically lobotomize it again. Looking at the age, its possible this may occur again within its lifetime, the records show the first neural separations were drawn as well as it could've been done, we may be dealing with a genetic condition that encourages such regrowth. I can't confirm that myself, that would be a geneticist.”

“This thing is clinging on to life,” boss said as he looked over the skinless animal, with an open cavity from its throat to its rear. It turned slowly as it hung between them.

“Have you considered upgrading?”

Boss looked at him with a somewhat sideways look.

The neurologist continued, “those new models. Neuronal development is slowed dramatically so the death and creation cycles are massively slowed. The original brain separation holds longer, but the central nervous system functions well enough that the muscle development cycles still work normally.”

“Its too expensive right now, we can stay in compliance right now with these models. Maybe some generations out, we will upgrade.” He had an almost exaggerated frown in saying as much.

“I can do the lobotomy now. You should be good for maybe 5-7 years. Not enough data to be specific beyond that.”

“Is it suffering?”

A sigh, “the closest to a straight answer is: no. You're effectively in compliance since it has no hormonal functions for stress, and the brain is too damaged to enable processing of peripheral stimuli. But its on its way to redevelop at least some of that capability. These types of movements can be .. Like the crossing of wires during the repair, its sorting itself out and messages are coming through wrong and causing unintended effects...

... Don worry about it. We're addressing it early”

---

The employee laid back in a chair, wide awake now that the muscle conditioning cycle had begun.

A crowd of squeaking, swinging bodies were shifting on the hinges they hung from.

Looking out and across the room, skinless, gutless creatures flailed their limbs back and forth. Blackened eyes stared out at the room around them; the lack of skin meant no eyelids, and the color faded and darkened as the cells died and burst from overexposure to light.

He stood up and walked through the room.

The arms and legs were hoove-less stubs. The movement was not programmed for anything but maximal stress on the muscles to encourage development. The arms and legs rotated in and out, throwing the weight of animal into a swing on the tubular hangar.

A sense overcame him. A sense of presence.

Something alive was in the room with him, looking over him, sensing him.

He turned around to look at where he thought he felt it from. Down the hall, nothing. Nothing but swinging meat.

Goosebumps ran up his arm. He was on the edge of a chill.

The whirring, squeaking of bone, muscle, and mechanical tubes continued.

He hoped he was alone.