Website and all contents thereof property of Maren Wasser
Contact me - (email coming soon)
Some might say there was a void in my life. I lived as an unconnected agent in a world of concrete things. The abstract never interested me. I did my due diligence with my friends and family. The occasional holiday greetings and facebook likes were simply upkeep, tolerated only to keep those trivialities alive for their sake. My philosophy was of the reassuring “realness” of concrete and steel. My real work and focus was cultivating this ‘real’. I managed a construction company. My life was fulfilled by business strategies, and meetings. Each day presented me with a new logic puzzle that lead to the mutual growth of people and the world we’ve built. A concrete ideal befitting a concrete world.
The last thing I expected or wanted was for any of that to change. I worked in an office building, a smooth curved tower of metal and glass; slick, cold and modern. It was nothing short of breathtaking, a beautiful model of human efficiency and power. I entered the building, that morning, with my typical sense of contented routine. I barely heard the receptionist as she greeted me with her typical cheery “Good morning, Mr. Sherman,” as I headed straight to the elevators. I didn’t give a thought to returning her greeting. Upon reflection I probably should have, but I had my routine, and I’d be damned if I didn’t stick to it. My office, situated on the 26th floor, was perfectly clean and orderly, suited to flawless productivity. I settled down to my work, but something was different this time, and that bothered me. It took me about half the day to realize that what was bothering me was that I was worried, and it took the other half the day to realize what was worrying me in the first place. The distant words of a half remembered news broadcast floated through my brain about six hours too late. The meteor screamed out of the sky and slammed into the side of the building, fragmenting the monolithic structure. I don’t remember exactly what happened, which was unsurprising taking into account that I was dead.
At least I think I was dead. I’m not sure about that anymore. I awoke warm and comfortable in a hospital bed. This of course didn’t come as a surprise to me at the time seeing as I had somehow just survived a cataclysmic disaster. I felt better than I expected. After a few moments of silently enjoying the fact that I was alive I opened my eyes to see that in the hospital room with me sat complete strangers. There were four of them sitting in the visitor chairs. Two of them were old enough to be grandparents, and the other two looked like their children. The youngest, a man of about 25, was the first to notice that I was awake. He jumped up with such force I swear I heard his vertebrae pop.
“Oh my god! He’s awake.” The rest of the assembled visitors’ heads snapped up to look at me. The synchronicity of the action was oddly robotic and unsettling. They all then stood up from their seats and approached me. They talked over each other very excitedly saying things like:
“After all this time.”
“I can’t believe it.”
and of course the most insightful of observations: “You’re awake!” One would think that was rather obvious. During this whirlwind of activity something struck me as odd about the way they talked, not in the sound of their speech. They sounded normal enough. It was something about the way their mouths moved, but I couldn’t place it. I was probably just groggy from waking up from what was probably a two to three week coma, judging by the severity of the disaster I had survived, so I put that out of my mind.
“Pardon me, but do I actually know any of you?” Somehow I was able to maintain my formality despite the deeply unsettling nature of the whole situation.
They all fell silent and just stood there staring at me dumbfounded for a while. The oldest, a woman in her fifties, broke the silence.
“Oh, John, I’m sorry, they warned us that you would probably have some temporary memory loss. We just got so wrapped up in all the excitement.” She spoke in a calm and measured voice. “Honey? Shouldn’t you call the nurse?” There was still something odd about the way her mouth moved. The oldest man leaned behind me to push the “call nurse” button. This was ridiculous. Did they have the wrong hospital room or something? That was the only logical explanation.
“My name is not John,” I clarified to the woman, sitting up. “And I remember everything fine. My name is actually Peter Sherman. I worked in an office building on South Levin Street in New York. That is, until it was hit by the meteor.”
I was once again treated to the incredulous, open-mouthed stares of the complete strangers surrounding me. This time the silence remained unbroken until the nurse came in. She stopped short as she caught sight of me sitting up, awake, and nearly dropped the clipboard she was carrying.
“He’s awake‽” she almost screamed. “When did he wake up?”
The remaining visitor, a woman in her late 20s, spoke up. “Just a few minutes ago.”
“And sitting up‽ You should have called me sooner,” she chastised. Watching this conversation, I realized what it was about people’s mouths that looked so odd when they talked. Their mouth movements didn’t match their words. I once again dismissed it as an after-effect of the coma.
The nurse turned her attention to me. “You should be laying back and resting. You haven’t moved in about a year.” She tried her best to sound soothing as she tried to get me to lie down.
I obliged despite the fact that there was no way I was in a coma for that long. Even the idea that I spent only a few weeks in a coma felt like a stretch considering I felt just healthy, strong, and awake as ever. This must be some kind of prank.
“A year? It can not have been that long. I feel just as strong as ever.”
The nurse nearly dropped her clipboard again.
“He’s been talking? Does he remember anything?”
I couldn’t take this anymore. I never had any patience for people playing pranks on me, plus this had already gone too far. “Alright, ha ha, I am sure you are finding this all quite the clever prank, but I have clearly woken up from a serious injury and I do not appreciate being trifled with.”
The nurse was quick to defend herself. “Mr. Walker, I assure you this is no prank. You have been in a coma for 11 months following a serious car accident.”
Now it was my turn to look incredulous. “Car accident? That is not what happened. I remember everything clearly. I was at my place of work, an office building on South Levin Street in New York, when it was hit by a meteor.
Furthermore, my name is not John Walker or whatever you seem to think it is. My name is Peter Sherman,”
The nurse stared at me as if I was growing antennae, while the visitors looked up at the nurse helplessly. After a few moments the nurse began scribbling furiously on her clipboard, glancing up occasionally at the machines monitoring my vitals. It was odd that the machine tracking my pulse didn’t actually beep.
“This is very unusual, perhaps unique. I’ll have to speak to Dr. Pressman about this.” The nurse hurried out of the room, turning around briefly to offer some last minute instructions. “Keep him comfortable, and don’t push him to talk or move. He should be resting.”
“Doctor Pressman? Thats an odd name,” I muttered to myself.
“You mean Doctor Pearson?” The older man asked.
“No, the nurse said the doctor’s name was Pressman.” I was absolutely sure that’s what she said.
“Don’t you worry about it and get some rest.” The older woman interjected. Her worried tone did not match the unconcerned look on her face.
Regardless, I understood her words to be good advice and that this was not a prank. Maybe I’m wrong. What if it this has always been my life? I thought to myself as I relaxed into the warm and comfortable hospital bed. “I still do not remember any of you,” I reminded them.
“Oh, right, I suppose we should reintroduce ourselves,” the older woman began, discomfort slowing her words. “I’m your mother, Maria Walker. This,” she motioned to the older man, “is your father James Walker, and those two are your brother and sister: Eric and Julia.”
I hadn’t seen any of my family in person for years, but I still know them from pictures, and christmas cards. I did have living parents and two siblings, a brother and a sister. Their names even sounded reminiscent: Martha, Jack, Aaron, and Jennifer, but these people are not them. I looked up at ‘my family’. “I still do not remember any of you.”
“I’m sure your memory will return soon,” Maria reassured me.
It never did, but of course it didn’t, because that would make sense. If memories of this other family, of John Walker, were to return I could sort them out. I could put them into neat categories of black and white, real and not real. Instead they all fall into an un-categorical limbo...a void. A few hours after I woke up, doctor Pressman/Pearson (I heard the name differently every time it was said) satisfied himself that I was miraculously, completely healthy and I seemed to not need any physical therapy. However, he insisted that I stay in the hospital for a few more days for observation, and scheduled a brain scan for the next day to get to the cause of my memory inconsistency. Most of my ‘family’ had left. Only the woman who called herself my mother remained. I took stock of my situation, and made a mental list of all the strange things I was experiencing. I knew I would never feel truly comfortable in this new reality until all of these odd experiences were listed and explained.
The major odd experiences involved my memories and other people’s speech. Both of these things were inconsistent. All concrete evidence (driver’s license, hospital documentation, credit cards etc.) insisted that I was thirty-year-old John Walker. However, I remember being thirty-five-year old Peter Sherman, a victim of a meteor impact, and apparently a miraculous survivor. As for people’s speech, the lip movements I saw did not match up with the words I heard them speak. It was like my life had become a poorly dubbed foreign film. I responded to the words I heard, but occasionally that only led to strange looks, like I was talking nonsense. It seemed that sometimes the words they actually spoke were not the words I heard, and sometimes the mouth movements I saw didn’t match the words they spoke. Which do I trust my ears or my eyes?
I glanced over at the flowers and attached get-well card left on my bedside table. I couldn’t remember if they were there before or if I merely didn’t notice them. As I thought about this a fetid smell reached my nostrils. I nearly vomited all over the bedsheets.
“Do you smell that? It is putrid.”
Maria looked around, her eyebrow cocked in confusion. “No, I don’t smell anything. Are you sure you’re alright?”
“I am fine,” I said, my voice light and airy. I focused on finding the source of the smell. It’s the flowers. They smelled awful, like rotting meat roasting on freshly laid tar.
“What kind of flowers are these?” I ask Maria
“French lilac, I think. Your fiancée sent them. They're supposed to be among the most fragrant.”
As if this day couldn’t get any worse. I was about ready to explode. “I have a fiancée? At least I know she despises me. Those flowers are putrid.”
“Are you sure you’re OK?”
“I don’t remember who I apparently am, or any of my life up to this point, I am not sure whether or not any of what I am seeing, hearing, or smelling is even real, and to top it all off I am engaged to someone I have no recollection of meeting. Other than all of that, I am perfectly okay.”
Maria went quiet after that.
The brain scan showed that my brain was completely neurotypical. However, with the discrepancy among my senses, there was no way I could be sure that I saw the results as they were. Doctor Pressman/Pearson seemed to think the results were normal, but for all I know he could have been a gibbering monkey throwing shit in my face. Maria told me that my ‘fiancée’ was coming to visit me.
Her name was Sharon. I was wandering the hospital gardens when she arrived. The garden wasn’t that large, but it was certainly diverse. All the flowers were a variety of vibrant colors, and the smells were overwhelming, everything from the sweetest of fragrances to the most rancid of stenches. Not that it really mattered. I couldn’t trust my senses anyway. This didn’t seem like an existence. It seemed more like a hell meant to punish me for some unknown transgression by forcing me to live in this infirm reality.
I heard a soft, cheerful voice behind me. “Hello, I...I’m Sharon? Do you remember me?” I turned around to see Sharon. She looked and sounded oddly familiar, but I couldn’t place her face or voice.
“I have no recollection of ever meeting you.” I say bitterly resigned to ignorance.
“Oh.” Her face fell in resignation. “How are you feeling?”
“I don’t know. I guess I feel disconnected from reality. I don’t feel like I can trust what I see, feel, touch or taste, and I don’t know if any of what I remember is real.” I surprised myself. I didn’t expect to open up to her like that, but there was something about her that felt normal and comfortable.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be there when you awoke, but I was out of town. I was sent up to New York to cover a meteor impact-”
“Where...What street!” I suddenly barked at her.
She jumped in surprise, but quickly recovered. My ‘family’ probably told her I was behaving strangely. “Gold Street.” She responded quietly.
“Oh.”
“Do they have any idea why your senses are so messed up?”
No. The brain scan showed no abnormalities.” As I said that it dawned on me exactly what about Sharon was normal. Her lips matched up with her words. She was the first person I’d met since I woke up that I knew I completely understood. I heard exactly what she said, but that didn’t explain the familiarity I had with her.
“So they can’t find anything wrong with you?”
“I know this sounds weird and out of nowhere, but I think you are the most real person I’ve met since I woke up.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I don’t experience any sensory dissociations with you. When I hear you talk I see your mouth and lips form the proper words.” The excitement in my voice dropped away as I acknowledged the remaining mystery. “The only thing about you that seems strange is, although I don’t remember you, you seem familiar.”
“How does your sensory consistency make me more real?” Sharon challenged, her tone shifted to become oddly serious and formal. “You are operating under the assumption that perceptual consistency is reality.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Why would it be? Everything you perceive is detected by sense organs converted into nerve impulses that are interpreted by your mind. Any consistency is simply a creation of your own mind.”
“Wouldn’t inconsistency be as well?” I responded.
“Exactly. Sensory consistency is not a reliable metric for determining reality.”
“Then how do I know what’s real or not?”
“That is the question.”
We stood staring at each other in silence for untold eternities wrapped up in a few short seconds.
“You’re not real, are you,” I declared finally. “You are familiar, because you look and sound exactly like the receptionist that worked at the office building that I remember working at before I died. I am merely imagining you in order to makes sense of whatever it is that is going on.”
“Yes and no. I am indeed a creation of your mind, but what is not? Does anything exist outside of your ability to perceive it? Does it matter if I don’t exist?” She turned to leave.
I, gripped with sudden panic, called out to her “Wait, stop. Please don’t leave, you are the only thing I’ve experienced here that feels real.” I needed her. She was the one sane thing in this world. The only thing that felt real. The one thing that could hold onto and believe in in a world of vagueness and inconsistency.
At that point she vanished. It wasn’t as if she merely disappeared, I don’t really remember exactly what happened, and I suppose it doesn’t really matter anyway. I realized then that the concrete reality I championed and spent my life as Peter Sherman developing doesn’t really exist. Everything that may or may not be around me is interpreted through senses which are fallible by a brain that is fallible, compared against memories that may have changed, or never even happened. I felt my soul leaning over the precipice of a void, and with the realization that the void was my reality my soul fell. The crushing weight of futility pressed upon me. I became the void. I no longer felt anything. I needed to escape from the void...escape from myself.
So I walked away. I had no direction. I merely wandered. I have no idea for how long I was walking. It was as if everything around me no longer was. All forms outside myself melted into a soft, fluid blur. I desperately wanted to melt into the world myself. It occurred to me that merely walking away wouldn’t fix this. It wasn’t long until I came across a bridge. It looked like the Golden Gate Bridge, but of course that was impossible. I was nowhere near San Francisco...or maybe I was. I suppose it doesn’t really matter. I stepped to the edge of the bridge. I don’t think I really believed that would end it. Hell, a terminal impact with a meteor didn’t work. What hope did terminal impact with water have? What have I got to lose anyway. Maybe I’ll fly.
I found myself on a bus. It was empty except for a smelly unkempt man wearing a tinfoil hat.
“Are you real?” he asked me.
“Are you?”
We sat in silence. The bus rumbled down un-named, unmarked streets. Never stopping.
I broke the silence. “Who are you?”
“Perhaps I’m important, perhaps I’m not. I could be the savior of the universe, I could be mere set dressing.”
“What is this place?”
“Not. As in this is no place. It could be a waiting room, or a final resting place. I have been here as long as this bus has run, and you aren’t the first to show up here. Many have come and left.”
“Why am I here?”
“You made a choice to peek behind the curtain, so to speak. Your search ends here. Now you need to decide if you will let your life begin.”
I stared at him confused “My search?”
“For reality. You’ve found it or are about to.”
I sat there. Working through what the odd man meant. Inexplicably, although this place was unusual, it is the most real feeling place in my memory. Something about this place felt synchronized with my brain in a way no other place did, but synchronicity is not reality, and this place was not really real. I was not sensing it merely experiencing it. Reality is that which is experienced not sensed. I was convinced that some concrete, sensed, reality was important, but it simply isn’t. ‘Functional reality’ is important. What’s really beyond ourselves is completely irrelevant in its unknowability. What we see, feel, taste, hear, smell and touch is functionally our reality. But these senses are themselves abstractions. We experience the concrete through the abstract. The abstract, therefore, carries a more significant value. Something I had completely ignored up until then. Maybe there was a void in my life, or around my life. I never realized how disconnected I was from the world around me.That was what I craved from Sharon as she left: An intangible abstract connection to bridge the void between myself and the world of other people. The ‘concrete’ reality of sensible objects was far more abstract than the ‘abstract’ connections that link people. To ignore these connections is to ignore a far more sublime reality. The bus slowed to a halt.
The man in the tin foil hat looked up. “Seems like you found out your reality. Don’t fuck it up this time.”
“This is your stop.” the gruffly kind bus driver called out.
I walked up to the bus’s doors simultaneously terrified and excited. I had no idea what awaits me at my stop. Would it be another world of abstraction, dissonance, and confusion? Would that really be so bad? I asked of myself. The fear melted away. The void would be filled.
Website and all contents thereof property of Maren Wasser
Contact me - (email coming soon)