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?”