「CONTINUITY」

 

〈 voice message - SUZY - 〉

Bel, I know the meaning of life.

I thought I oughta tell you . . . because you're my sister. My deeeeeear sister.
And because yesterday . . . yesterday . . . you me bought some pudding. Greeeeeeeeen pudding. It was good.

You probably know this: I like pudding. Thank you for buying me some. That was really nice. You're . . . the best.

Before you showed up with your boyfriend, Mom had baked some chicken, and I said: Mom! It smells! Fuck chicken! And she hit me! She just hit me! And that, that made me sad.

It was her fault. The chicken was burnt as usual and there was smoke everywhere. Then you came over and . . . and . . . brought the pudding. And, um — Thanks.

Bel, I'll grow up and I'll buy you some pudding. You'll see.

That, that I promise. But . . . in the meantime . . . um . . . what I'll do is . . . I'll pay you back with a secret. A biiiiiiiiig secret. A reeeeeeally big secret. Because I'm a big girl. And I think Mom's not wrong when she says those secrets which aren't worth sharing aren't secrets really worth keeping. Well, I remember you were pretty angry when I told her about boyfriend number two. — Let me now make that up to you.

So, the meaning of life.

That's easy, Bel.

First of all, it depends on what you want.

You and the other adults . . . I can't believe you all didn't figure it out yet. But that's okay, because I'll just tell you.

I'll just tell you what that is.

I wanted to tell you this, before I go to sleep. This is veeeeeery important. You'll know why in a minute.

Bel, I have what your boyfriend calls a theory.

Do you know what it is?

(whispering) That you are not you, and I am not me.

Let me explain, Bel.

I'm not just being weird. I was reading this one book. The one, you know, your boyfriend left in the house.

You know the one — with the pictures of brains. I don't know what most of the pictures inside it are. I also don't know most of the words in it.

But faster, I'm a reading faster and faster. I'm catching up to you, Bel.

The part about dreams. That's what I read. I got help from Marvin the Help Object on my tablet. Beats using a dictionary like Mom still does sometimes.

It said . . . I think it said . . . that nobody understand continuity of consciousness. Something about how the average frequency of depolarization, potential fluctuations decreases, I don't know. Dreams. Something about how we, people don't understand dreams.

(A long silence.)

Bel, I understand dreams . . . and I wish that I didn't.

When you were younger, and I was small, I told you my dreams and you told me yours. I think . . . I think . . .

The book listed all the difficulties about continuity. How a person is just their memories, and how that's all just something called a neural network, which can just be a computer. But how that's not conscious.

It went on like that. It's a thick book. You could defend yourself with it.

Bel, I'm convinced. Your boyfriend said somebody important wrote the book.

It's simple.

I was drinking from a water bottle, from pack of water bottles. — Mom likes mineral water.

The package is sold as one, and the question is how is it one thing.

It's not one thing, it's just sold as one thing. It's a package of water bottles. There's no continuity, Bel.

(whispering) I think . . . I think . . . that we don't have to fear death.

That's because we die every time we fall asleep. We dream as we die.

What we see becomes less and less coherent, as the guy calls it.

It does that because parts of our brain shut off, one by one.

Our memories remain, but like the guy says: That's storage, not conscious.

When we are about to wake up, we start dreaming again.

The brain starts constructing . . . a new consciousness from the memories.

Parts of the brains that were off turn on, like I said, pretty simple.

That's why all the dreams are so random and make little sense and only look like things we've seen or thought about but there's no coherence, consistency, — that's the word.

We wake up, and think we are the same person who fell asleep.

There's no point in continuity, it's easier this way, no continuity, and the guy says he can't come up with how we have continuity and identity. Says: there's no evidence for it, and no reason for it. Says we don't know how continuity and identity actually occur.

Maybe, maybe they don't occur. You'd think he'd consider the possibility, being a professor or something and all that.

The new person who rises from the bed has the same memories and thinks they are the same person who went to bed — but I think they're not.

The consciousness part, the I of the person, are the desires, what that person wants, and that's just random, but definitely biased, like the guy says, biased by the memories. Biiiiaaaased.

Bel, I thought you should know, because you're my sister.

I mean, your my sister's ten thousandth copy, or something, and I'm her sister's five thousandth copy, but that's close enough.

The guy says something about how meaning is information about information and what remains after we abstract, throw away some part of what we know, what is irrelevant to our means to our purpose, ah, revealing what's relevant for that purpose, modally relevant, um, varying with cooonnnntext, the meaning, the internal information, which we extra . . . extrapoooolate. The extrapolation is the purpose. What we want.

He explains that a book with more pages has more information and yet a book with as many more pages but with many of them torn out as irrelevant can have even more information — because it can have far more meaning. There isn't as much basic information but the book is more meaningful and the total information at all levels together is greater.

Um . . . I made notes. One second.

Preferences, the I, what we leave when we can take, also decide both our purpose, what we want, including what we want to learn — says the guy — and what we abstract, both directly and because of our purpose being what it is.

So . . . yeah.

If the meaning of what we have in life depends on what we want, ourselves, and if what we want depends on our memories and dreams, Bel, doesn't that mean that the meaning of our life is seeking continuity for ourselves?

Assuming this theory is right.

That's what I've been thinking, anyway.

I wanted to tell you before I go to sleep, because, you know, well . . .

I wanted to tell you while I am still alive and you are still alive.

(A long silence.)

Good night.

. . .

〈 voice message - BELLA - 〉

Su . . . that's . . . really . . . creepy. Really.

Please, chill the fuck out.

Don't tell that shit to Mom; she'll absolutely freak. And she'll yell at me . . . and I just don't need that.

It's good that your reading more, and, um —

You're eating too much sugar. — It's going to your head.

No more pudding for you.

Think positively. If you eat less carbs, you won't get fat.

. . .

``Convince your reader of a conspiracy theory told from the perspective of a child. You can only write in second person, meaning the child is convincing you of the conspiracy theory.'' (@foragingquietude , @svashta)

〈 Constrainedwriting Challenge〉

  #creativity #fiction #writing #scifi #shortfiction #constrainedwriting
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            I usually write stories which are 10,000–25,000 words ... 40–100 pages.

ABOUT ME

I'm a scientist who writes fantasy and science fiction under various names.

The magazines which I most recommend are: Compelling Science Fiction, the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and the Writers of the Future.

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WISE GUYS — practical thinking
FISHING — thinking about tools and technology
TEA TIME — philosophy
BOOK RECOMMENDED — fiction and nonfiction reviewed

©2018 tibra.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This is a work of fiction. Events, names, places, characters are either imagined or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real events or persons or places is coincidental . . . . Illustrations, Images: tibra.