pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq

I ran into a man at the store. Literally. I ran into him. He started babbling faster and faster but the faster he talked the more I understood. Then something looked over me and I realised I was in my bed and this was a dream. But there was something looming over me. It was in my room with me leaning on my bed. But I couldn't wake up. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't wake up. I panicked for a moment. Then I felt soft lips press against my forehead. I relaxed. It was my mother looming over me in my bed. I woke up. I saw my mother. She smiled at me softly. I gave her one back and rolled out of bed.

"How are you son?"

"Good. For a moment there I couldn't wake up. I just felt something looming over my bed and couldn't wake up."

"Oh. Sorry."

"It isn't a big deal," I walked over and took my morning meds.

"How are your meds?"

"I like them. I like them a lot."

"Is that normal? I thought most mentally ill people don't like their meds. They stop taking them."

"I'm not most people. I'm not even most paranoid schizophrenics."

"You're not schizophrenic!"

"I'm schizoaffective." I shrugged. The difference was subtle and the treatment was the same.

"Lots of people have psychosis."

"But I get manic and I have delusions."

"Do you still get manic? What delusions?"

"I'm not supposed to talk about them. And yeah I do. I still do occasionally even on these meds."

"Do you self harm?"

"I've burned by myself on my old dab rig." I lied by omission.

It wasn't something I was going to get into with my mother. She walked out of the room and I let the black cherry flavour of the saphris sit on my tongue until the pill was completely dissolved and I swallowed. That was how the sublingual pill worked. I could feel it now turning certain parts of my brain on and off. It felt good. I took some Clonazepam. My doctor wanted me at none but I liked the drug. It was taken recreationally in places. It felt really good. Not as good as opioids but still very good. And unlike opioids it didn't cause constipation.

It was over all an improvement.

I sat on my bed and let the drugs take me. My head didn't quite spin but it was on the whole a very pleasant feeling coming from my brain. Clonazepam flooded the brain with dopamine and saphris made chemicals like oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine do more with less. Usually I had to jerk off to feel such a good sensation but with these drugs it was all too easy.

"Big brother! Gonna be late!"

I got up and threw on some clothes. I slung my backpack over my shoulder. I walked out to greet the smiling face of my sister. I patted her gently on the head and she beamed at me at the sign of affection. So sue me. So set me on fire. I loved my sister and I was in a good mood.

"No we're not. I still have time to enjoy my coffee. Hush now."

"We need to go!"

"We have five minutes. Chill out."

I poured coffee from my coffee maker in the fridge. I mixed some creamer and added the caffeine to my system. Coffee was so sweet. So was Klonopin and Saphris. It was delicious. I drank my coffee slowly and examined the newspaper. The drugs made me tired but I could focus through with some effort. It was interesting. Reality was well lubricated and went down smooth. I loved it. It was like weed but with less hallucinations and paranoid thoughts.

It was like vicodin but without being horrifically dangerous. I had kept that from my parents but it was very easy to overdose on opioids.

I'd made little progress on the sofa couch problem but I'd started studying abstract algebra. It was essentially the different ways things could be symmetric. There were only so many symmetries up to isomorphism. It made me wonder about the universe and whether it was abelian. It made me wonder about how many states the universe could be in. I'd seen some pretty big numbers tossed around for that sort of thing. 10^{10}^{100}. Maybe more. The universe wasn't like a rubik's cube. Some particles could be expected to behave in a predictable way and some particles could be interchanged. For example under the one electron hypothesis every electron could be substituted for any other electron.

I enjoyed my coffee. Flavours swirled and danced in my brain. The qualia. The experience.

There's this feeling you get sometimes if you're into the study of consciousness. Like oh my God. The mystery is in me. If you get past the philosophers slinging shit at each other you realise that underneath it all is the mystery of how meat makes a mind. I thought it was all a statistical process but who could really say? How does your brain transfer words into thought? And it may be that consciousness is just a game the brain plays behind justifying decisions it was already going to make. We call this The Hard Problem of Consciousness. The (singular) Hard Problem of Consciousness. There existed soft problems of consciousness but this was the big boy. The biggest inner mystery. And if the greatest mystery of all time was hiding anywhere else but inside our own heads we'd never stop talking about it. We take it for granted. Food gets eaten and enjoyed. We are food which can enjoy food. We are the universe tasting itself through the qualia. There's no such thing as orange. Just wavelengths of light. Our brains turn wavelengths of light into colour. The redness of a sunset. The blue of the sea. All of it wasn't real. When I drink my coffee I don't see chemical information of what I am drinking flooding into my mind. Instead I taste coffee. And right now, on these drugs, everything tasted good. Everything. Pain and pleasure are neighbours in the brain. For the first time in a long time I loved being alive. So I pondered the inner mysteries.

The only acceptable answer to the question 'when does a human being become alive?' Is 'I don't know.' When do we live and die? That was another inner mystery. The inner mysteries were everything. They gave life purpose. They gave life meaning. It was in the pursuit of them that meaning was found even if I never did get a clear answer. Was consciousness a statistical process? When do humans wake up for the first time? Do animals have minds?

pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq

Yukinoshita caught my wrist. I stared at her. She stared back. Then she rotated my wrist inwards and upwards to reveal the shallow slices into the insides of my skin. I pulled away from her with a glare. She met it with her usual prowess. I turned back to the chalkboard. I wasn't sure how she'd even noticed but she was the first person who had. Her powers of observation were not to be doubted, that's for sure.

"When?" She asked.

"Friday evening," I answered. It was a Monday.

"Why?" She demanded.

"Everything feels good on these drugs. Any intense feeling feels good. Pain and pleasure are neighbours in the brain. I'm sure you understand."

"Not really." She pulled her hair back and out of where it was in her face a little. "Is that all?"

I frowned at the question. "What do you mean?"

"Is that all the self harming you've done?"

"I used to burn myself on my dab rig but that wasn't the same. I didn't burn for pleasure."

"Okay."

"Okay?" I wondered.

"Okay. Now that I know I can get you to stop."

"I don't want to stop."

She smirked. The arrogant bitch. "I'll get you to stop all the same. Do you need a change in drugs?"

"I like my drugs."

"That's not what I asked."

"Too bad. I like my drugs. I like cutting myself. I don't want them to stop." Not even my little sister had noticed the cuts. Yukinoshita had with that sharpened gaze. Or perhaps my little sister merely hadn't said anything. Impossible to tell. We call that 'incomplete'.

"What if you go too deep. You'll break your promise."

I flinched. Promises were sacred. "I won't. I'll be careful."

"Can you be so careful?" Yui walked into the clubroom. She gazed between us at Yukinoshita's question.

"What is it?" Yui wondered.

"Did you know he's been cutting himself?" Yukinoshita asked her.

"What?! No! Hikki!"

"Damnit Yukinoshita." I swore. "It doesn't do to worry her."

"You would have kept me in the dark?" Yui's eyes welled with tears. She blinked them away at the same time I looked away and back to the board. I was studying finite fields. The Riemann Zeta Hypothesis had been proven over finite fields.

"It's not like that. It's intensely personal."

"You hurting yourself is personal to us too." Yukinoshita sliced. I glowered without heat. I was too sleepy on these drugs. I couldn't think clearly really. There was a haze on me. Shadows upon me.

"Is it just some intense feeling you're looking for?" Yukinoshita demanded. She was unrelenting in the way she pressed in on me.

"Yeah. I guess. Anything that wakes god up."

"What's that mean? What do you mean by that?" Yui wondered.

"I'm the man who dreamed up something so intense it woke god up and that's what this nightmare is. Now it just wants to sleep."

"I don't understand," Yui whined.

"What about sex?" Yukinoshita asked.

I snorted. "Yeah with all those people willing to sleep with me."

They were both silent and glanced between each other.

"Hikki I'd-" Yui started.

"I would-" Yukinoshita began.

They looked at each other again.

"But yes. I imagine sex would do it. Provided my meds don't cause impotence or something frustrating. But for now I cut and that's fine." I marched into the silence.

"We are not fine with it."

"Too bad," I fired back at Yukinoshita.

"Hikki…"

"What?!" I snapped. She flinched and I regretted my tone. "What?" I repeated more subdued.

"Please don't hurt yourself."

"No. I'm going to." I breezed a hand through my hair frustratedly. Damn Yukinoshita. She just had to share with Yui and now Yui was looking at me with those big red eyes. She was on the verge of tears.

Yujkinoshita's disappointment I could stomach but Yui's eyes were all over me.

"This isn't just. This isn't fair," I snarled. Yukinoshita gazed cooly but Yui flinched.

"What? The consequences of your own actions?" Yukinoshita demanded.

"It's my body and I'll slice it if I want to. Stop looking at me like that, Yui."

"Don't do that." Yui whined.

"Don't do what?" I shot back.

"Don't say something like that then call me by my first name."

"Yuigahama then."

She whined. "I want you to call me by my first name. I don't want you saying things like that."

I sighed. "You can't have it both ways."

"No. You can't have it both ways." Yukinoshita fired. "I want you to promise the next time you feel like cutting yourself you'll call one of us. It doesn't matter which one."

"Fine," I spat.

"You promise?" Yui pressed leaning forward.

"Yes. I swear." I relented.

pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq

-WG