Chapter 6d
Throughday, Nostembro 2734,
I have spoken to many people about my problems and researched as thoroughly as I could muster. This isn't much, of course, I don't know many people or even what questions to ask. I've tried to describe everything truthfully and completely, tried to make everybody understand so they could offer the best advice possible, but few understand.
I talked to a psychologist. She listened quietly, didn't ask many questions, didn't give any answers, then referred me to a psychiatrist. "A specialist in the field," she told me, "would really be better suited to help with the specific types of troubles you're having," so she wrote his number on one of her cards and told me his name.
What I think she meant to tell me was that I'm showing signs of Schizoaffective Disorder including delusion, auditory hallucinations, disorganized speech and major depressive episodes packaged with a history of suicidal ideations. What I think she wanted to tell me was to go to somebody with a higher pay grade because she didn't make enough to deal with that.
I thanked her, put the card away, and only ever went back once, just as I was exiting, to throw the card away.
My mind is obviously fucked. Maybe she doesn't get paid enough to fix it, that's probably a fair assessment, but who does, really? I mean, problems like I have? No legitimate professional that I knew of, at any rate.
So I tried a psychic. She was relaxed and confident. She told me a card in my past represented my upbringing. She said that I was outgoing but had been hurt. She made general statements which I occasionally agreed with. When she got something wrong she would question me about it. She took time to formulate answers and used what information I offered as affirmation of her skill. It was a very moving performance but not altogether enlightening. I wonder if I could get a job in that field. Seems like a pretty cozy fit. Sit and lie to people all day and they pay you for it. It's like being a politician without the cameras or being a lawyer without the courts.
I have spent a lot of time at the library listening to myself, trying to pretend that the voices I hear all belong to the silent readers around me. During this time I have read. It's hard to focus without silence but I've managed to learn a few things, not from psychology books or texts on the paranormal, but on science.
Except...it's not really science. From what I'm reading it sounds like mostly conjecture at best, ego stroking at worst. What I've found is a section on quantum mechanics. This is speculative science, things nobody can prove so smart guys sit around and wax poetic about. As a field of study it sounds both pleasant and worthless. For me, though, maybe there's some worth.
If, quantum mechanics tells me, there is a possibility for me to die then the universe splits in two at that point. From that point on, I am both alive and dead. I think back to the first time I could have died, at least that I remember. I got my shoe stuck in a railway between two beams when I was eight. There was a train coming, of course there was, the danger was part of the excitement of walking there, but I had made the danger real by getting stuck. In another world I didn't just take my shoe off ad recover it after the train went by. In another world I sat there stupid-eyed like a tiny deer waiting to be mowed down and died a very quick and painless death. In that world, I never had the option to kill myself.
Some people say that once an observer can see the outcome, alive or dead, the two worlds crash together and the multiple possibilities collapse into one truth. Some people say the two worlds simply go on infinitely, each splitting in a myriad of directions any time there is a possibility of different outcomes. That's the one I'm most interested in.
When I hear these voices, I know that they're mine. They don't talk to me, even about me, but they are me. Somewhere the world has split and then split again and one by one they die and refuse to die while I am left here with seemingly no option but to live on.
There's more. Some people say that I can't die. No, that's not it exactly. That I won't? That one of me won't, I guess. The phenomenon is referred to as quantum suicide. I like the sound of it. What it means is that any time the world splits at a death like I've described, one world where I'm killed by a train and one where I remove my shoe, one side will always be alive. The next time that branch comes up to the same cross roads, one will die and one will live. If each time one has to live, though, where does it stop? That same one lives on forever, narrowly dodging death at each turn, regardless of his own will and actions.
I believe that I will live forever because of this. I think that I am the prime of this equation and that I am the one fated to live on. Somehow, we are connected, and recurrent voices remind me that I will not die. I have tested this. Yesterday, after lengthy consideration, I put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger. The gun jammed. The day before that I mixed ammonia and bleach inside my home and sat by the bucket. A neighbor somehow saw what I was doing and pulled me out before the pain even started. I'm not confident I would've died, anyway.
The others bleed over. I dream of what their lives could be (and are, perhaps, in another time line) and hear them whispering their last words. It's still a distinct possibility that I'm just crazy but maybe that's the source of it rather than the result. Which came first, the schizophrenia or the voices? I like to laugh at my own jokes. They don't get much outlet. I intend to use that one on an actual person once I find one with a sense of humor.
When I finally did locate a scientist I could talk to he was evasive and didn't tell me much of anything about my voices or dreams. He really didn't tell me anything about quantum mechanics, despite my having sought him out specifically for knowledge in the field. What he told me was this:
There's a man, and he's a prisoner someplace, and he's sentenced to die. Maybe he was a murderer or a terrorist or even just a normal person in a place where people are culled on the basis of beliefs, it doesn't matter. Anyway, the judge or whatever, the person that breaks the news to him, says that he's going to be hanged at noon on a weekday, so Monday through Friday, in the coming week but that he won't know when and that the hanging will be a total surprise to the prisoner. He won't see it coming at all, they tell him, and it'll be one of those five days at noon.
Now, this prisoner thinks he's a pretty smart guy, regardless of whatever crimes he may or may not have committed, and all he's got on his schedule for the coming week is death, so he sits down to try to figure out when he's going to be killed. The first thing he does is rule out Friday. He thinks that, if he's still alive on Thursday afternoon, the only option left is Friday, which obviously will not be a surprise. So he knows it has to be before Friday.
Then he rules out Thursday. Since it can't possibly be Friday, he's already figured that out, that makes Thursday the last viable day. That means that if he's still alive on Wednesday, Thursday can't come as a surprise. Then he rules out Wednesday the same way, then Tuesday and Monday. So here it is, Sunday night, and this guy is reclined in his cot being thankful that he won't die.
This goes on for a few days then, Wednesday at noon, he's pulled from his cell, strung up and hanged and the whole thing is a huge surprise to him.
The story was funny, I guess, but doesn't pertain to me. If I were that guy I wouldn't have died. His argument made total sense from how I saw it, he just took a wrong turn at the fork. I've tried to see some point in it and I think I do but here I am, still alive, and I just don't think it applies to me. Maybe the prisoner thought he was in the same position I am. Ultimately I know that these branches keep sprouting no matter how far up the tree you go. If I live to be one-hundred-fifty then I know there's going to be at least one of me dying every damn day from one organ failure or another or disease or infection, I know the worst is still to come even if I'm not the last self standing. It's just that I've decided that I will be the last self that blows that argument away.
Obtained key 5  |