EVERYTHING IS, NOTHING IS

Legal BS: The original characters and plot of this story are the property of the author. No infringement of pre-existing copyright is intended. This story is copyright (c) 2013 CallMePagliacci. All rights reserved.

All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc., are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this story. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.

One: The Red Pill

The air in the lecture hall was dry, hot. Bella's clothes stiffened as the damp from the rain outside evaporated in the central heating. A mosquito was buzzing away somewhere in search of a meal.

The professor left his lectern and gestured to an illustration on the blackboard. On it, there was a crudely drawn cylinder with a blob inside of it, shaded darker than the contents of the cylinder. Two chalk lines flowed from the blob, over the edge of the cylinder, to an arrangement of squares that looked like an Apple II.

"We conclude our lecture on thought experiments," he wheezed as he walked back to the lectern, the rhythm of his stride interrupted by a prosthetic leg. "With the modern classic. The brain-in-a-vat."

The class murmured as a whole when they realized what the drawing on the blackboard was meant to represent. Bella sketched a quick mockup of the same in her notebook. Her computer looked more like Hal.

"The setup is simple. The experiment posits a human brain, removed from its body, suspended in life-sustaining liquid, connected to a supercomputer. The computer creates electrical impulses identical to the sensory input the brain normally receives: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. Consider the following: since the electrical impulses the brain receives from the computer are exactly the same as those it would receive from the sense organs, how does the brain know if it's in a vat or a skull?

"Consider the example," the professor continued. "A lecture hall full of students. It's impossible to know with certainty that one or all of you aren't brains-in-vats."

"But… I'm real," a blonde frat boy in the third row interjected.

"How do you know?"

"It… I… feel real."

"Feel is subjective. Reality is interpreted electrical signals. From your perspective, there's no way to know. Which begs the question…"

Bella's gaze flickered over to the boy a few rows ahead of her. He never spoke, and never took notes. He just drummed his long, elegant fingers against the wood veneer tabletop; the smallest fraction of a grin rounding his cheek. A man's Mona Lisa smile.

The buzzing grew louder. How was she supposed to concentrate with that devil insect flying around? She looked around, a notepad poised to make the kill. The walls of the classroom dripped down, melting into thick tree trunks. The chairs condensed into moss-covered rocks, dripping down into an organic arrangement. The mosquito was gone, forgotten, only the faint slush of a nearby stream tickled her ears. Nothing seemed amiss at all.

.

.

.

Behind my desk, the readouts on my monitors even out as I adjust the controls, like a DJ mixing sound levels. Each slider sends signals down a wire, or a chemical through a tube. Those wires connect to electrodes hidden under her long, dark brown hair; needles bury themselves in her soft, pale skin. Drip, drip, drip—Lethe oozes into her blood.

Lethe, as red as the blood itself. The river of forgetfulness, of oblivion, in Hades. But I don't know if it's me or Bella that's in hell right now.

She comes here one night a week, the darkest of circles under her eyes, and allows herself to be attached to all those wires and tubes and needles. She hates needles, hates the attention of all the techs. But she comes anyway, because Bella Swan can't dream on her own. With my machine, I can make her dream.

It's the only way I can make her see me at all.

Author's Note:

This fic will be drabble-esque, no update schedule, and probably entirely unbetaed. It's my way of trying to find my writing mojo again, and to attempt to reconnect to the fandom.

It's going to be strange.