Identity Crisis

What happens when one day you wake up dazed and confused and you really don't understand what is happening to you.

 

 

 

He awoke. At least that is how he now thought of it for previous to this sensation there was...nothing. This is not to say that this was consciousness for what he did sense was jumbled and confused. Bright and incoherent shapes, an explosive expansion of light...and...shadow. Sound- sounds! A deafening din. Tactile sensations- pressure felt along of his...extremities. Pain. His first cognitive feel was pain.

How long was he aware if awareness this was? he wasn’t sure. He only knew that after awhile the dimness- lessening of light, increased and with it the sound and the pain...

So ended the first day.

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He awoke. This time he knew he was conscious. This time he was aware of light as light and dark as dark but his surroundings still had no form or depth or definition. Sound, too, had developed its distinctions, a differentiation in octaves, but volume still had no meaning. The only sensation to become clearly define was the pain.

The pain...no, touch, was felt in several degrees of intensity and over a larger area of his...body. He...felt the feeling as located along that area away from that he could distinguish as vision...his back. And another, less intense... pressure from the direction in which he was...forward. He rested on his back.

On his back. On his back. He rested...on his...back.

His first cognitive thought.

The second day ended.

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He awoke. He now sees shapes and is aware of dimensions and form... depth and knows he is staring up at...at... a lit, white expanse of...of...brightness, bordered by a lesser shine... shade. The shape was...square.

He was staring at the ceiling.

He was staring at the ceiling. He was staring at the ceiling. He was staring at the ceiling.

And his hearing, yes...hearing, had improved and he was aware of...sounds. Whirring...ticking...plop, plop, plop, tap, tap, tap, ding, ding, ding... and they had different volumes. Noise, both soft and loud, sharp and dull, distinct and subtle. He knew that they came from different places, directions, sources. They were different sounds. Different sources. Different places...outside.

Pain was gone. He knew now that he was laying down and staring up at the ceiling. He knew now that he was in a...room...and that he was...asleep for sometime and that now he was awake.

 

With this realization came thought and thought became ideas and ideas took form and the form became thought and thought became ideas and ideas took form and the form became thought and thought became ideas and ideas took form and the form became thought and thought became ideas and ideas took form and the form became thought and thought became ideas and ideas took form and the form became thought and thought became ideas and ideas took form and the form became thought and thought became ideas and ideas took form and the form became thought...and he thought, and there for... he was.

 

And so ended the third day.

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He was awaken by the pangs of hunger for he had not eaten in the last three days. Eaten? To eat. To take nourishment...feed. He had not eaten in...in...in three days. Three.

One, two, three. Numbers. Number- one of a series of symbols of unique meaning in a fixed order that can be derived by counting. Four, five, six, seven-many...less...positive, negative, fraction, ratio- numbers. yes, that’s what it means. Logic. Deduction. What have I deduced?

I have been...alive-having life, living, in existence or operation, active...for three days. I have not eaten in three days. The feeling is hunger. I am hungry.

I am hungry. Hungry; experiencing a desire or need for food. Yes, I...I? yes, I. I am hungry.

I am hungry. I am hungry. I am hungry. I am hungry. I am hungry. I am hungry.

So, what am I to do? Deduce. I must...feed; to give food to, to supply with nourishment.

Feed. Feed. Feed. Feed. Feed. Feed. Feed. Feed. Feed. Feed. Feed. Feed- food.

I have to eat...food. Deduce...think, I must find food.

To eat I must move; to change in position from one point to another.

Move. Move. Move. Move. Move. Move. Move. Move. Move. Move. Move. Move.

He achingly move his head forward using muscles and nerves he was not aware he possessed. The mind behind the thought was determined and he took possession of that which had up to this time rebelled against him. His body was his and he its master. He lifted his head and for the first time surveyed his surroundings.

He was in a room sparsely decorated having only a bed...bed, a piece of furniture for reclining and sleeping, typically consisting of a flat, rectangular frame and a mattress resting on springs...bed, and nothing more. The blank, colorless white walls and ceiling that were his universe for the past 3 days now seem small and encroaching. He needed to get up from the bed. he needed to leave the room. He needed to find food. He needed to satisfy his pangs of hunger if he were to... survive.

To survive...to remain alive or in existence.

Just outside the door... door- a means of approach or access... he was able to see outside of his...his...his room and if, if, if he could just get up and...and...and...walk- to move over a surface by taking steps with the feet... he could leave this place and find...food.

Food. Food is located in an area called a kitchen and the kitchen is in another room.

He knew that. How he knew that he wasn’t sure. It was in a place in his mind called memory-the mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experience...and yet how could that be if he did not exist before three days ago. Or, he thought, he hadn’t existed. Or, maybe, he had existed, lived and was unconscious and had lost his memory. That memory now returning as he gain awareness of that other life. Yet, this didn’t seem right either. It almost confused him into inaction. He needed to think it out. He needed to deduce what had happened to him- what is happening to him. Think.

No conclusion can be reached- need more data.

He needed more data, more information, the kind he could only get if he ventured outside this confining space. He needed to leave this room. He needed to find food. He needed to find in information he could use to find out...who he was...is.

Who am I?

This new line of questioning almost paralyzed him and it would have succeeded if it were not for the need to obtain the knowledge he sought and satisfy his other hunger for food.

Slowly and painfully, with the stiffness of unused limbs, he pushed and pulled and squirmed and rolled his body off of the bed and fell with a weighted, dull thud on the carpeted floor. The pain, the agony he felt was reminiscent of that he had experienced during his awakening (re-awakening?), sharp and excoriating, yet not specific to any one area. It was birthing of another kind, out of the womb he had known for all these past days, out through the canal of life and into the outside and nourishment and...existence.

He couldn’t move any further for a while for he was weak and his muscles were too atrophied and not ready for movement. He laid faced down on the plush surface of the floor, bright green shagged carpeting, soft and comforting, its sensation more preferable in that he could actually feel it, was aware of it. He almost fell asleep and startled himself awake with the realization that he was about to lose consciousness. He could not allow this to happen. his survival depended on it. He needed to move.

MOVE! MOVE!...

And so he crawled away from the bed, out through the door and into the hall way...and another room.

Another room. Multiple rooms. Dwelling, domicile, apartment...house. I live in a house. That’s what this is, it is a house and I live in a house...my house. I live in my house and I am hungry in my house and I will eat... my food in my house. My food. I will eat my food in my house. I will find food in my kitchen. I have to find my kitchen. There, there, across the larger room- the living room, through that other door way, that’s where the kitchen is.

For several more hours he dragged himself across the vast expanse of the living room. He ignored the ache of his stiffened muscles, the painful reddening of his limbs as they rubbed on the carpet that once had provided comfort. Through the door frame on the opposite end and into the kitchen. The carpeting bordered there and the floor was cold and hard with a slight antiseptically smell to it. He looked up to the towering walls of the counters, the multiple drawers and cabinets, the spaces he knew (why did he know this?) had held what he sought. He looked up at the impossible heights and...he passed out.

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On the fourth and a half day since his initial awakening, he found himself out of his bedroom, passed a short hall way, across light brown carpeting of the living room, and on the cold, linoleum flooring of the room he remembered as his kitchen. How long he was out he wasn’t sure but he did remember that when he began this odyssey it was light...day, and now it the room was dark- night. It took him several exhausting hours to get there and now that he had his goal within reach he was damned if he was going to give up now. With all of his remaining strength, he stretched upwards to the top of the counter and with all his might pulled himself up. He had almost lost his grip on the flat polished surface when in one swift motion he instinctively reach up with his left arm and gripped with both hands. As if dragging himself vertically, he pulled himself up and reach the top of this once insurmountable plateau. He brought his legs underneath his weight and steadied himself leaning against the counter.

He surveyed the topology of his new found territory, the differing objects and artifacts none of which suggested food but of food preparation, until his vision caught the existence of a single item that seemed out of place (why out of place if he had never been here- his kitchen, this was his kitchen). It was a bottle. A clear capped bottle with a dark liquid visible inside. And with the bottle, next to it, a rectangular, flat, white sheet of parchment, writing material...paper. On that sheet of paper was written...words (“a sound or a combination of sounds, or its representation in writing or printing, that symbolizes and communicates a meaning and may consist of a single morpheme or of a combination of morphemes”). Words, and he couldn’t read them.

Was this food, or was this stuff in the bottle something else. What did the words say? Who wrote this...did I write this? Was I trying to tell myself something and trying to pass that information on from my previous life? Or, did someone else placed this here for me and maybe good...or bad.

Someone else? Other? Others? No conclusion can be reached- not enough data.

Since he nothing else to lose (at least that was his thought at the time) he balanced himself as best as he could and while holding with his right arm he reached with his left and grabbed the bottle. His legs buckled and he fell to the floor but that was not until he had made sure he had a firm grip on the bottle. he landed on his side and was helpless again on the floor, but this time he had at least one advantage. He knew that once he...drank what was in the bottle either he was going to feel better, or worst, but at least different. He gripped the cap with his teeth, it loosened and some of the liquid spilled into his mouth, it was bitter and sickening and not at all of what he had expected as being good. He drank it just the same and tried not to wretch. Just then, the room began to spin, consciousness began to slip, and his last thought was of regret.

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It was several hours after the beginning of the fifth day, he was sitting on a cloth, paisley patterned, easy chair staring at the blank screen of the t.v. of his living room. He awoke to the brightness of the new day refreshed, strengthen and alert. He remembered the days past and the ordeal of the night before. He remembered the bottle and the message left next to it. He remembered grabbing onto it as he fell down to the floor, struggling with the cap, drinking the foul, syrupy liquid and then waking up to...to...knowing where he was, what things were, when it was, but not who he was. He also became aware that he had developed new found co-ordination in his muscles, and his mind, and that he was able, though unsteadily at first, rise from the floor and stand almost unaided. He still could not walk without assistance and had to go short distances from one counter top to another and, when he reached the living room, a chair, an end table, another chair until he found himself presently where he sat. There he sat staring at the wide, gray, blank screen of his t.v. set which was mounted on the wall, thinking and puzzled.

What puzzled him the most was not that he was able to recognize the object on the wall, or that he knew of the items, in form and in function, that surrounded him, or even that he was able to reasonably move out of the kitchen area within minutes when it had taken him hours the day before. No, none of that, nor thinking of what may have been in that bottle, or least of all what it had done to him occupied his thoughts. No, what troubled him the most at this moment was what the note next to the bottle said.

He had almost forgotten it, that note- the white, rectangular sheet with the incoherent lines that he knew had meaning but of which he was ignorant about. He was about to leave it as he made his way out of the kitchen when it caught his eye and, almost unconsciously, snatched it while it was still in his range of reach. Like a child learning to walk, he stumbled and knocked and shuffled across into the other room until he plopped into the soft, cushiness of solid comfort, the well worn fit of a friendly place he knew came from a deeper memory. As he was finally grew comfortable, easing his heart rate and breath to a calm level, he then found the note crumpled in his left hand. He was about to drop it on the floor when a thought- a curious thought, urged him to un-crumple it and examine it with some detail (“No conclusion can be reached- need more data”). He brought it up onto his lap and with his right hand straightened out the creases until it was reasonably flat. He took a deep breathed sigh and prepped himself for the oncoming challenge of trying to cipher the meaning behind the note. He took one look and to his surprise...he could read it! Not only could he read the symbols and words and take meaning in the morphemes and structure- he understood it. At least, he understood what was written.

And this is what it said,

“Hello, Adam. Drink this. You will know.”

Know what? Who is Adam? Am I Adam? Was I the one who was suppose to drink this? If not, then who? And if there is another, where are they? Could they be Adam? Was it meant for them?

(“No conclusion can be reached- need more data.”)

So, now he sits staring straight at the blank screen of the t.v. thinking over the meaning of the message and it implications. Fact, he is alone, or at least he has not come across anyone else thus far in his house (although he has yet to check the other rooms). Fact, the bottle was left in the kitchen area and was the only item within reach at a time when he needed a source of sustenance. Fact, the affects of the content from the bottle did not do him harm, but on the contrary, have expanded the usefulness of his mind and body exponentially. Fact, his ability to read the note, though surprising in it own right, is also written in a language (“dialect, speech, tongue, vernacular- yes, yes, yes I know”) that he understood so it may have been intended for him. Fact, it was addressed to “Adam”. Conclusion, unless information runs counter to, or enhances as such, the available facts I can only assume that I am Adam. My name is Adam.

I have a name and that name is Adam. Adam is sitting in his chair. Adam is also hungry. Adam has to eat. The food is in the kitchen and there is where Adam has to go and get his food. Adam has to get up from Adam’s chair and walk using Adam’s legs to go to the kitchen and eat the food Adam needs. After Adam finishes eating, Adam will return to Adam’s living room, sit in Adam’s chair and think.

So, Adam got up from his chair, found something edible in the cupboard, ate briskly, returned to his chair in the living room and thought some more until he fell asleep.

Thus evening followed, and morning came, the sixth day

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Adam awoke with a start on the sixth day in his comfortable easy chair in his living room. There was a sound coming from one of the other rooms, an irritating buzzing, that compelled him to investigate.

(“Is there someone else here? could that be Adam? No, I am Adam.”)

He steadied himself both mentally and physically for the task he was about to perform and rose from his chair (“Adam’s chair”) and as quietly as he could, he followed the noise down the hallway and into an adjoining room. The soft plush carpet and his bare feet hid any sound he could have made as he walked. Occasionally, he would stop and try to listen to any sound underneath the continuous peal, detecting nothing, he would continue. The source of the din was a room across from the one he had first gain consciousness in and its door was closed.

(“What to do? What to do? What to do?-knock! and say, ‘hello’, that‘s what to do!”)

Gathering courage, and realizing the feeling of fear for the first time, he slowly raised his fisted hand and rapped lightly on the closed door.

“Hello?”, he said softly.

The noise continued and nothing else could be heard coming from the room. Feeling more brave this time he knocked louder on the door and, thinking he may not have been heard over the loud sound, in a booming voice he shouted, “HELLO!”.

He jumped backwards into his room and fell unto his bed, his heart pumping quickly within his rapidly heaving chest, as the door opened to reveal the interior of an empty room. Well, it was almost empty.

It was similar in size and dimension to the one he knew as his own, though the wall coloring was of a darker, bluish hue. The bed was of the same size and had linen sheets of better quality then the white stiff ones he had known of his own bedding. They matched the color scheme of the room. There was also more furnishings in the room and included a night stand, set close to the door and to the right of the head board, a dresser, and a full length mirror. It was in the mirror he first saw him, and his image, and that caused panic in Adam. Fleeing, he ran back into the living room, stumbled over a foot stool and leaped over the back of a couch. There, he waited to see if the intruder (“aren’t I intruding on him?- No! this is my house!”) would come out chasing him. He waited in what felt like forever before deciding to find out what kept this editable confrontation.

(“Why do I feel disappointment?”)

Slowly he got up, stealthily walk back down the hallway to the room where the blaring continued, gently pushed the door open to see him standing there.

“Who are you?”, he demanded, “Why are you here? Don’t you know that this is my house?”

Irritatingly, all his adversary would do was to mouth back his own words. He couldn’t put up with this and decided that he would rush his enemy before he himself was attacked. Adam ran headlong into the bosom of his opponent and was quickly stopped by the painful crash of glass as he broke the mirror. He looked around and found himself alone again feeling relieved and satisfied (“yet, why do I still feel disappointment”) at having defeated his enemy.

Then, he looked down at the shattered glass and broken frame and realized what had happened and began to laugh.

 

The sound of his own laughter was a shock in itself, and that made him laugh even more. It was a roaring laugh, a heartfelt, deep laugh. The laugh of a man who had kept it all inside and could not hold it any longer so he releases it. It was that kind of a laugh. He laugh so hard that he started to panic again when he couldn’t catch his breath. Finally, he was able to calm himself down, catch his breath, try tried anew to discover the source of the noise that had brought him to this room.

On the nightstand, to the right of the bed’s headboard and close to the door almost hidden, was an alarm clock. It was the source of the noise. It also read, “8:45 AM”.

He remembered what a clock was and what it did. The time had no significance to Adam, but he did know how it worked and turned of the alarm by brushing his hand along its face. It was then he noticed that his hands, arms, and other areas of his body had been scratched by the cutting edge of the shards of glass and that the pain he had suppressed was now being felt. His first thought was to run back to the comfort of his living room and chair, but he remember the last time he did that and thought against it. Then, he thought of returning back to his room, but that thought was even less appealing. So, he decided to see what other place of refuge he might find in his house (“Adam’s house”). That’s when he found the bathroom, another mirror, and the discovery that he was naked.

Because he had not put too much thought into it, it had not occurred to him that he was not wearing clothes. That is, until he found clothing in the bathroom hamper and the understood meaning of their function. Naked as he was did explain why the damage done onto his skin was extensive in that it cover large areas of his body. None of the damage, fortunately, was intensive enough to warrant any real amount of concern. No, it was that fact that he was naked and hadn’t really noticed that upset Adam the most. So, as to relieve himself of any further consternation he took what clothing he could find in the hamper, determined what they were (“ ‘pants’, ‘shirt’, ‘socks’, ‘underwear’ , ‘underwear’ goes before pants”) and began to put them on. Once clothed, he looked himself in the bathroom mirror (still chuckling over his earlier mishap) and proceeded to explore the rest of his dwelling.

He made two new discoveries. The first was that the clothing he wore were of a perfect fit, so much so, that he figured that they had to be his. His second discovery was that he was completely alone.

 

Thus evening followed, the morning came, the seventh day.

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“Adam”, he heard the soft voice say.

It was the morning of the seventh day and he had just breakfasted on another one of the clear bottles with it syrupy content. Since that was all that he could find that was appetizing in the pantry, and there were several hundred bottles of the stuff, he no longer minded the taste- much. It was then that he heard the voice. It came as a whisper, subtle, soft, almost under perception but there. It pulled, and teased, and nagged until he could no longer ignore it and finally said aloud, “Where are you?”

And the voice, with ever increasing clarity answered, “I am here.”

Adam began to sob. He cried because he thought he was going insane (“No, you are not crazy”). He cried because he was alone (“No, you are not for I will always be with you”). He cried of joy upon hearing this (“And yet, I can never be with you”). He cried because he was confused (“Hush, hush, my son, all will be clear soon enough”). But, mostly he cried because he couldn’t control himself.

When he had shed enough tears so that he couldn’t anymore, the voice spoke to Adam again and said, “Get up. Get. Up. Get up and walk up to the entrance of the house (“my house- MY HOUSE!”) and walk out the door and go outside.”

Sheer terror gripped Adam, and yet, he knew he couldn’t disobey. For he knew at last the source of the voice and he knew that his fate was sealed. So, Adam, born seven days before, rose up from his chair, walked across his carpeted living room towards the front door. He reached with his left hand, turned the handle and pulled the door inward allowing the brilliance of the sun, and of the day, strike upon his face for the first time.

And that is when the voice was clearest, when he heard it for the last time.

“Seven days ago humanity died. I created you so that I could download my consciousness into you and maybe find a way to preserve us. I was too late. I ran out of time, we ran out of time, and now you are all that’s left. I also discovered that upon your awakening, my personality stored within you, will deteriorate and I, the last human, will vanish. You, my son, are artificial in nature and are immortal. It is my hope, my dream, that you remember who I was and we were. Good-bye, Adam.”

He stood there for a minute, felt the shudder overtake his body, and with a cleared head he closed the door behind him and started walking down the street. Adam whistled a cheerful tune not remembering where he had heard it from.