For
as long as I can remember, I've always awoken in a panicked state of
fear, dripping with sweat, ready to fight or flee. As soon as I
realize I'm safely in my bed, I feel intensely relieved. But relief
from what?

I'll
try to go back to sleep, but my body is wide-awake. It's as if I'm
two different people, one who lives in the waking world, and one who
lives in dreams. What kind of trouble is dream-Renee getting into?

The
amount of relief I feel once the darkness clears and I find that I'm
in my bedroom is what really scares me. In waking life, I never feel
that much relief about anything. For a weight that heavy to be lifted
from my heart, I fear that I would have to wrongly think my mother
had died, and then be relieved when I discovered the mistake. So does
that mean that I'm spending my nights going through all kinds of
hell, thinking it's real? Just because I can't remember it when I
wake up, doesn't mean I didn't live through it. Those experiences
have to leave a scar on your psyche.

The
earliest memory I have is of jerking awake, screaming as hard as I
could. I'm surprised I didn't shatter any glass with that scream. I
couldn't have been more than four years old. My bed was soaked with
sweat. I didn't know that much sweat could come from a human body. I
laid back down, with my back to the door.

What
was I so scared of? My vocal cords hurt. Then I felt like I was being
watched. Actually, I didn't feel, I
knew
I
was being watched. You know how when you try not to think about
something, it's all you
can
think about? My
mind instantly supplied me with mental images of all kinds,
murderers, demons, monsters, lurking in my room, staring at the back
of my neck.

I
wanted to turn over and see that it was all in my head, but it was
hard to work up the courage. I finally convinced my muscles to move,
turning over quickly and finding there was a silhouette in the door.

I
must have gasped or made some frightened noise because the figure
immediately moved towards me.

“
It's
okay, it's me,” my dad said. I hugged him with all of my might.
“What was your nightmare about?”

It
took bravery just to get words to come out of my mouth. “Hell,”
I whispered. I don't remember the nightmare, I just remember what I
said. But I will never forget what my dad said.

“
There's
no such thing as hell,” he said. He gently rocked me, holding
me tight.

I
looked up at him and asked, “There's no hell?”

“
No
honey, bad people made it up a long time ago.” He tucked me
back into bed, then kissed me on the forehead and started to leave.

“
Why?”

He
stopped in the doorway and said, “They wanted to scare people
into being good.”

“
Did
it work?”

“
Not
really,” he said, turning the light out. “Good night,
Renee.”

“
Dad,”
I said, “What happens when we die?”

“
We
don't.”

I
remember every bit of that more clearly than I can remember what I
did yesterday. I guess it's burned in my memory with such clarity
because it's the moment I discovered that I was immortal. I didn't
know how or why it worked.

A
lot of people have vivid memories of witnessing death and
destruction. I think that's because most people live in a delusional
cloud of immortality. They go on thinking that nothing bad will
happen to them. Then when they are face-to-face with sudden tragedy,
their way of thinking changes. For me it wasn't witnessing the truly
terrible and unconcerned reality of the world, it was discovering
that I couldn't die. I suppose that means that I instinctively
thought that I would die one day. We must be born knowing we're
mortal. It makes sense; anyone born thinking they can't die is not
too likely to live long enough to procreate.

If
you watch a real video of a child-soldier getting shot in the head,
seeing him go instantly from a scared, brave boy to a lifeless hunk
of flesh, it alters how you understand the world. We remember the
moments that don't go along with the way we understand the world and
our place in it. We instantly forget the minutae of our lives, but we
remember vividly the moments that don't belong. It must be a way for
our minds to collect data. Outliers are the key to understanding.
Witnessing something that goes against your worldview changes the way
you think. That alteration of your consciousness leaves a physical
scar on your brain, which we call a memory.

I
have a lot of memories.

A
monkey's severed head floats in a viscous solution. Dozens of wires,
emanating from the skull, climb the walls of a glass vat. Milky,
decaying eyes stare straight forward.

A
pale, sickly woman in her thirties watches readouts on three monitors
intently. The roots of her red hair are fading into gray and falling
out in clumps. She tweaks several digital knobs marked “
Feedback
Impulse
,”
then presses “Apply and Restart.” She looks to the
monkey's face. Its eyes begin blinking rapidly. She spins in her
chair, facing a glass enclosure.

A
four-foot robotic skeleton sits against the white wall of the test
chamber. Its head hangs down, unconscious. The woman takes a drink of
coffee and watches the figure closely, waiting. The robot seems to
wake up, raising its head. Two small cameras nested in its skull
flicker back and forth, controlled by several small motors. The
robotic figure stands up shakily. She approaches the thick glass
wall. The robot looks at her with its glass eyes. She sips her coffee
and stares into the ghost in the machine.

She
opens a slot embedded in the glass, pulls an apple from her lab-coat,
and drops it into the slot. The apple comes to rest in a plastic
receptacle on the inside of the glass.

She
looks back to the robotic figure. It stands, though not straight up,
its eyes stay on her. She bends down, tapping her finger to the glass
next to the apple. The robot approaches the glass, staring right
through her.

“
Come
on, pick up the apple.”

The
robot extends its metal right hand slowly toward the glass, toward
the woman.

“
Not
me, pick up the apple,” she taps near the receptacle. The robot
slides the metal fingertips across the glass. The bewildered robot
examines its hands, touching them to each other, awed by the strange
sensations. The robot sits down with its back to the glass.

“
Come
on...”

“
Having
trouble Nellie?” a male technician asks from the doorway.

“
I'm
trying to calibrate the mouth,” Nellie replies without looking
away from the robot. “The teeth show a lot of grinding, like
the pressure sensors aren't reporting high enough, or the muscles are
turned up too much...or both. But I'm having trouble testing it,
since we don't have calibrators for this kind of thing and he never
seems to want to eat. You got any ideas?”

He
approaches, standing next to Nellie, looking over the shoulder of the
robot. “Have you tried turning up the hunger value?”

Nellie
rushes back to the display and sifts through hundreds of controls,
finding hunger. She presses the bar and slides it across, drastically
increasing the hunger sensor. She quickly returns to the glass.
“That's why I keep you around, Peter.”

“
Really?
Are you feeling alright?” Peter asks. He's tall and skinny.
He's shy, speaking very softly.

“
I'm
fine,” Nellie responds.

“
Just
seems like an obvious fix,” Peter replies. Nellie throws him a
dirty look as she picks up her paper cup of coffee. There are about a
dozen empty cups strewn around her workstation. “Maybe you're
working too hard, you could use some rest.”

“
Sometimes
I forget about all the things I can control,” Nellie replies,
“I'm fine.”

Peter
examines her sickly face. “Did you make him hungry?”

“
Yeah,”
Nellie replies.

“
Why
isn't he eating?”

“
There's
a delay,” Nellie replies.

BOOK: Solipsis: Escape from the Comatorium

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