Grandfather Clock

The dream began underwater, it was milky and shady in spots. My breathing underwater appeared to not be a problem. I was swimming barefoot in blue jeans and a white t-shirt under this massive object above me that was blocking the sun from lighting the water. As I approached this thing, it was big like a whale floating, but upon a closer inspection, to my dismay and disbelief, it was a brain, a human brain, the size of a blue whale - just floating there.

After recovering from the shock of what I was looking at, I found myself quickly shifting to asking the question why. Why was I there swimming around in water and why was there a massive human brain there too? I swam along the right hemisphere of the brain as thoughts of the vastness of creativity and the art that it can produce when channeled properly. I was swimming by the area of the brain where imagination is ignited. I thought of my university philosophy professor talking about the brain-in-a-vat, instantly thinking, was I in the vat with the brain? Was it really that huge or was I somehow really this small?

I swam over to the left hemisphere to ascertain some logic and mathematical reasoning for such a bizarre find. This brain was not connected to anything, it was just floating with no skull to protect its fragile fleshy surface from the worldly elements and it had no body or nervous system to support it. Water is a conductor I thought, electrical pulses travel through water, so what if the water was the relaying system for the brain to give its orders? That’s preposterous because biology has no record of such an organism. But that doesn’t mean such an organism still can’t exist outside the purview of biology.  

At the Frontal Lobe I stared at its mass, it started to shiver or vibrate as if suddenly becoming cold or possibly excited for some reason.  I reached out and touched it, calmly rubbing its jelly-like skin.  The shivering stopped up until I let go, then it started to shiver again while backing away from me.  I swam down and under it passing the Pituitary Gland when I noticed small fish all swimming around the Medulla Oblongata, the brainstem severed three feet down from the Pons.  The brain stopped shivering as I floated underneath the Cerebellum.  I was thinking about how oddly peculiar this all was, but I was also surprisingly not as shocked as I imagined I should be.

There was a sudden transparency while looking up at the brain.  I was able to see through the outer flesh and view the Limbic-System, with the Hippo-campus and the Hypothalamus easily visible.  How was I able to do this and to what purpose?

Then I woke up, strapped to a table; thinking was I even awake because this place felt as equally bizarre. I know I set my grandfather’s antique table clock ahead one hour. I was in my room, ready to go to sleep and set the clock, I closed my eyes and was thinking about lost time. I remember thinking about the relativity of time and this whole daylight savings thing was a joke. I must have eventually drifted off and what, now I’m here, strapped to this table in the future. 

A shaded creature approached me and inserted a black needle into my arm.  I looked at its figure, its shape and was a bit mystified.  It had arms, a face and eyes, it had skin and fingers, yet it wasn’t human.  I don’t know if I was experiencing some form of Aphasia or was I still dreaming.  Telling the difference appeared to be troublesome because unlike the water with the massive floating brain, this all seemed oddly…real.  What would Descartes think of all of this? Would he trust it?

I looked down my body and noticed that I was strapped to the table but not by straps because straps don’t pulsate.  The more I focused on whatever was holding me to the table, the more I could feel that it was rough skin on mine, a scaly skin, a cold skin.  I tried to lift my right hand when a excruciating feeling of a hundred needles was piercing my skin.  When I stopped pulling and relaxed my hand, the pain and needles went away. 

What was happening to me and what was I doing there, strapped to this table?  The creature walked over to several other shaded figures.  I could hear clicks and slurs, was that a language or was that a machine I was hearing?  Looking around the room I couldn’t see much, there was a skylight so I could see that it was night because the stars were out.  To my left were machines of some sort, they sat upon one another but weren’t touching like one would expect, they looked as if a magnetic field existed between them and kept them from moving.  The floor was liquid and little beads of light traveled around it like traffic and at times would travel up and into the bodies of the creatures.  Was it some kind of internet-working system where information was moving around like microscopic cells would or was it an energy system that was passing on nutrients to these creatures?

I looked down and the needle in my arm retracted into a device and then folded up into the ceiling.  Three creatures came over and surrounded me, they all placed their hands on my stomach and looked at me, staring.  My mind felt like I was being hit with powerful waves of hot water smashing against its shores. I thought to myself, what do you want with me?  Because I wasn’t alone in there as I always was in the past.  My thoughts continually suffered in solitude but not today.  The smashing waves suddenly stopped as the air in my mind was filled with silence.  Within the calm I felt language, the very communication device we use to speak but not in the form on a page or spoken, but rather in the ideas that inspire one to speak them in the first place.  The genesis of thought that is manufactured in the mind into an utterance that is spoken out or a word written down, there is this nucleus that manifests itself within the mind that becomes what defines us, it creates a signature or stamp of uniqueness that becomes thoughts with which recall memories and forecast movement with ideas and beliefs.

This is what they wanted, and I don’t know why or certainly can’t use language to explain why that is, or why I seem to understand it.  They want my unique code, religious believers might call it a soul, but men of science call it by its name, consciousness.  They want my brain’s operating system, this is why they haven’t killed me, this is why I’m here, I’m here as an experiment on separation.  Can the mind and body exist…apart?  The unconscious, subconscious and conscious mind must coexist within the Homo sapiens organism.  Separation is not possible; separation is death for one cannot live without the other.

Like the massive brain in water, I am perplexed at what is happening but I’m curious, why is this happening and to what end?  What can be done with a harvested conscious mind?  I have to deduce that they have a purpose for what they are doing, they have me strapped to a table in a room, trying to figure out how to get my mind out of my brain without killing me, because they must know that if I die my mind dies with me. I need to set the clock back. They are connected to me, but I’m also connected to them. This river is flowing in both directions. They detected a space-time shift that was caused by my grandfather’s antique table clock moving forward in time. They are here to understand time.

These beings are clearly not religious because for centuries people have believed that once the body dies the soul leaves it and goes to heaven.  If this were true, they could conceivably kill me and somehow, with their advanced technology, bottle my soul and my mind at the moment of my death.  I can’t explain it, but I can feel they have no interest in my body or brain, whether it lives or dies.  They just want the essence within it, they want my complete identity, my past, present and future which leads me to wonder, if they are medical doctors, wanting to understand the answers to life or psychologists of some sort, why am I able to figure out how to defeat them?  As they connect to my mind, I can extract shadows of them in my thoughts moving around, I can feel them but that feeling is foreign to my thought processing, so it is fragmented at best.

The mind is a maze, it isn’t digitized, it’s something else, something more.  It’s not a soul that goes to heaven when the body dies nor is it something that can be successfully uploaded into a computer despite the many scientific attempts.  It is a system of biology, a system of nature that serves as a weapon for my species, a weapon against all predators. The greatest weapon of mass destruction on Earth is the human mind and these things want it.

Is it the hardware of it that they want because I can’t imagine they’d want the software portion, I’m no one?  I didn’t do anything with my life thus far, for the most part, if I had to be honest, I sat around and dreamt of the future and missed most of the present.  There are people of great genius that would serve far better subjects than a university drop out.  Why aren’t they here on this table and why aren’t I back in my New York apartment dreaming of being someone special, someone famous, someone important.  Maybe this is important and maybe this is what I’m meant to do, if we are meant to do anything.  This could be my great moment because they chose me and not the genius with all the answers.  Maybe I am important.

The creatures press harder against my chest and stomach as I see the walls around me collapse into a liquid form and fall to the floor.  I can see me to my left, no that’s me to my right, I look down toward my feet and see a row of people on tables just like mine.  I then look to the sky and see a dome cover reflecting millions of bodies on tables.  I see them all as dots and as individuals at the same time.  Blue lights appear over everyone’s head, they’re doing it right now, my nose bleeds and the blood drips up.  If the laws of gravity apply wherever I am, this evidence leads me to believe I’m in fact upside down.  I’ve been this way the whole time, but it certainly didn’t feel like I was.

I’m skateboarding down a steep hill in Virginia…… 

I’m slapped in the face by my mother……….

I’m tasting cotton candy for the first time and I hate it because it feels weird in my mouth…….

I looked up and could see the light spill into a vase thinking, is that me?  Is that what I amount to?  Off in the distance I can now see the Earth on fire; I’m on a spaceship, floating by the moon as my home burns.

I love the feel of grass in the summer….if I’m not conscious then what am I?

What is happening to me…  I want to go….

The Earth was attacked by an unknown Alien life form at 21 hundred hours eastern standard time, November 16^th, 2034.  The attacks began with the Chinese city of Wenquan and then La Rinconada in Peru and the Bolivian city of Potosi and then the Ecuadorian city of Quito, all these cities are among the highest in altitude in the world.  The attacks ended four days later, spanning the globe, ending at Beijing, China, a city of one of the lowest in altitude.

The light above my brow is so bright, this is not the afterlife.  This is immediate in its….ectoplasm………………….

I’m disappearing……I’m gon……ga….. …

3.1415926535….89..793…………   … .. .

I snapped awake, in my bed, six months from the time I laid down.  My clock is now set back. Was it a dream or insanity? I looked down at blood leaking out of a pinprick in my right arm. I am alone.