The Experiment

Dr. Mathers held out a small box. “Please put all your electronics in here. Any metal or valuable objects. Everything from your pockets.”

I felt a thrill of nervous excitement jumping a straight course through my body as I followed his instructions and placed my cell phone and wallet into the box Dr. Mathers was holding out.

“Very good. Now change into these and meet me back here. There will be a shelf in there where you can leave your clothes.”

He had given me a white jumpsuit. One that had a plastic zipper on the front. I quickly changed, finishing by trading out my own black socks for the white ones he had given me, as my over-active brain wondered if the color was significant to the experiment we were about to do.

Returning to the previous room, Dr. Mathers opened a thick white door and motioned me inside. 

In the center of the room was what looked like a twin size bed, encapsulated inside some kind of a pod. I felt my heart rate accelerate again. 

Dr. Mathers cast me a look and nodded, as though he knew the excited state of my body, despite my attempts to look cool.

“Go ahead and lie down on the bed there. This set-up will take a minute so you have plenty of time to relax.”

“Yeah, right,” I muttered to myself.  

As he busied himself with the computer settings, I laid down. Immediately the bed rose up around me as I felt myself sinking into the softest bed I had ever been in. It molded to my frame, forming a cocoon around me, and I found myself relaxing despite my nerves. The feeling it gave off in abundance was “Safe.” I felt safe. And sleepy.

“You understand what you must do?” Dr. Mathers’ voice floated over me. “You are my eyes on the ground. I can only see what you see, hear what you hear, feel what you feel.  Let the environment be everything to you. Experience everything as fully as you can. We cannot collect the data unless you live it for us. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” I spoke in my head, but it didn’t seem to matter. Dr. Mathers was attaching electrodes around my body, my head. The rapid two-hour training was running through my head and even though the only instruction was to live whatever comes up,  I wondered vaguely if I could botch this.

“Who is it?” I mumbled.

“Better you don’t know. It allows you to make pre-judgments, you see. Better to go into it fresh. Just report the facts.”

There was a strange distance to his voice. I nodded. 

“Are you ready?”

Another nod.

“I’m going to close the pod now. Just relax, accept whatever comes to you.

At first there was only blackness. Deep and impenetrable. The longer it lasted, the more I felt myself lulled into a deeper calm until I was on the verge of falling asleep. Maybe I did. 

The world came back, slow and blurry. I opened my eyes and blinked several times, but the colors still seemed dull, muted and faraway. Some irresistible force was fighting to pull my eyelids closed again. Sleeping sounded like bliss. Not because it actually felt like bliss, I noted as I gave in and allowed my eyes to close again. It was bliss simply because it meant I wasn’t here, in this dull, dead world. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t anywhere. 

Some time later my eyes opened again. I felt horrible. My eyes felt sticky and my head hurt. Mentally I wanted to sleep again but physically I felt I had slept too much. What was this?

Okay, I told myself. Let’s get up and see what we’ve got here. 

I wandered down the carpeted hall of what looked to be a comfortable, fair-sized house. It was a bit messy. Who was I kidding? It was a lot messy. It was probably the messiest house on the block. And I had been in a few, so I knew. 

“Mommy!!”

I turned and saw a little boy standing in the doorway to his bedroom. 

My son, I thought. He was just three years old and as he stood there holding his sippy cup, I could see the mess of toys behind him. A strange surge of anxiety welled up in me.

“Clean up your toys,” I mumbled, without energy.

“Mommy...tan you pway wif me?” 

The anxiety tipped into a panic attack. I felt a scream of despair building on the inside. My heart thudded in my ears, feeling both faster and slower at once. My thoughts whirled in a panic and I choked, wondering how I was going to come up with the interest and the energy to play with this child. This line of thinking was immediately met with a rush of guilt.

I’m a terrible parent. What is wrong with me? Can I just go? It would be so much better if I wasn’t here. Then my son could get the care he really needs. I can’t...

My lungs struggled to pull in air, but my breathing remained slow...too slow.  Like suffocating on clouds. A numbness spread over my body.

“Maybe later,” I whispered, my voice barely audible as I turned away from my son’s crestfallen face. 

I stumbled into the living room and deposited myself lifelessly into the chair there, staring at the mess around me. What a disaster. I closed my eyes. Not really sleeping. Just trying to collect enough energy or drive to open them again.

When I finally did I gave a small start of surprise as I stared straight ahead. I rolled my eyes to one side, then the other, and finally mustered the strength to turn my head as well. The muted colors that had surrounded me upon waking had now gone completely gray, bleeding their colors into some unseen vacuum that left this world completely dead and lifeless. 

I caught snippets of thought running through my mind as I stared at the barren landscape of my room, listening to my son cry in the other room, unable to collect enough energy to stand.

Remember when I was going to be a lawyer? That was before I got pregnant. That was back when I was going to make good on my dreams. 

My thoughts tumbled around all the goals I had. Goals which I had stubbornly refused to let go of, even though the time was far gone for some of them and I hadn’t actually taken significant action towards any of them for a very long time. My life was full of starts and stops. No progress. I tumbled down a vortex of grief and guilt as I considered these lost dreams. The internal journey left me, if possible, more depleted than before. As I projected back in time to the years when those dreams were still alive, I choked on a sob. The circumstances were different than now. Perhaps more open to my aspirations. But that same dark cloud that accompanies me everywhere now, was still present then. I had never been free to just live. To just be. It was all so exhausting- fighting each day of your life.

“I’m hungry,” the child before me announced.

With a Herculean effort, I pulled my body up and staggered to the kitchen. In a zombie-like trance, I smeared some peanut butter and jam onto a piece of bread and, using both hands to heft the weight of the half-gallon jug, poured out a cup of milk. Returning to the living room, I placed the sandwich and the milk in front of the toddler and collapsed once more into the chair. Utterly spent from my efforts, I watched with dead eyes as a glob of jelly dropped onto the carpet.

Closing my eyes again, I returned to my thoughts.

Is this my life? Is this it? Zombie life. What’s the point?

The day passed like an eternity in much the same fashion. Dull, gray, hopeless. I looked to the days behind me and before me and saw the same thing reflected back at me like a hallway of mirrors, echoing emptiness through time.

I heard the door open and my husband walked in. There was a fleeting kiss on my forehead, the scent of the spearmint gum he always chewed, the touch of his hand on mine, smooth but for the mole at the base of his index finger. Strange how all these details showed up so clearly in my gray world. Then, mercifully, he took our son and went out for ice cream.

I tried to sleep. To sink into oblivion again, but there was no sleep left in me. I felt silent sobs wrenching my heart in pulsing waves until they couldn’t be silenced. A painful, keening wail rose up and then the tears flowed freely with the very vocal sobs, like a dam had burst and could not be put back. This seemed to last for hours and at the same time, not long enough.

A dreadful calm enveloped me as a cold rationale that seemed foreign, yet completely trusted, began to drive me. It didn’t even waste time with explanations or troubling thoughts. It simply moved me to action. It was such a relief to finally be moving. To be DOING something, after so much time spent fighting to be in action and still finding myself sitting motionless on the couch. I moved forward. It will end…

The heavy blackness dissipated and I became aware of the luxurious mattress as it cradled me. The mattress around my face was wet and bringing my hand up, I felt the tears on my face. My eyes opened to the bright white of the lab. A lab created by Dr. Mathers to allow one person to step outside of themselves and experience another person’s reality. The experiment that could only be done if the person sharing their life was no longer experiencing it themselves.

The lid to the pod opened and I saw Dr. Mathers standing there, eyes wet as he held a hand out to me.

The smell of spearmint washed over me as I stared at his upturned hand- and the mole right at the base of the index finger. A lump formed in my throat as I looked at the ring on his hand. 

“Your wife,” I whispered.

 I did not need to see his nod to know that I was right.