"Oh fuck. Oh fuck." I grip the table in front of me. "So I'm too late?"
"Too late for what?"
"To go back. To find Burlem."
"You can go back."
"But ... You said ... Being here." I close my eyes and then open them again. "Am I dead?"
"This world, the world-of-minds. It leads to death. You know that."
"Do I?"
"If you gave it any thought you'd realize." He laughs, and it's like watching a CGI animation, except that I can feel the warm, humid air around me change when he breathes into it. "I'm sorry. You didn't call me back here for riddles. Why don't you just ask your questions."
"OK."
"But you'd better be quick, because we've still got to discuss this little commission you're going to take on for me—and we've also got to work out how to get you out of here, which isn't actually going to be that easy."
"OK. Well I'll keep it quick then. Am I ... Am I safe for a moment?"
Apollo Smintheus gestures to the TV screen. It flickers into life. In grainy black and white I can see the interior of a hospital. The camera is focused on a bed where a girl lies unconscious. There's a drip attached to her arm.
"Is that me?" I say. But I already know it is.
"The pub landlord was alerted when you didn't come down for breakfast and then failed to check out. He went into your room and found you unconscious. When he couldn't wake you he called an ambulance. You're in a coma, officially."
"Oh God."
"You've travelled a great distance here. That takes a long time."
"Apollo Smintheus?" I'm still looking at the screen.
"Yes."
"Am I mad?"
"No. Not in the way you understand the word."
"This isn't some coma fantasy ... Like a dream?"
"Well, this is a little like dreaming, but obviously it's the reverse. Why don't you ask your questions."
I stop looking at the TV screen and look at him instead.
"Every time you say something I have more questions," I say.
"Like?"
"Well, how is this dreaming in reverse?"
"Dreaming takes you into your unconscious. This is not your unconscious."
Suddenly, things start click-clicking in my mind. I haven't really yet had the chance to think deeply about Apollo Smintheus's document, but I've obviously absorbed it, because now I start making the connections.
"This is ... consciousness itself," I say.
"Indeed."
"Everyone's thoughts, everyone's consciousness. But made into an elaborate metaphor that I can navigate. But this space doesn't really look like this—like you said before. There's no coffee, no table, no TV. But presumably I wouldn't be able to see whatever it is made of ... And ... And I can jump into other people's minds because they're all connected. They're all made out of the same thing."
"Very good. What are they made out of?"
"Do I know?"
"Yes. You should do."
I think about everything I know about consciousness. I start with Samuel Butler and his idea that consciousness is something that evolves, and that there's no reason machines—or bits of plastic, or whatever—can't become conscious, as long as they inherit the consciousness from us. We evolved from plants, I remember him arguing, and plants aren't conscious. So consciousness can evolve from nothing at all, just as life must also have done, once. We can merge with machines and become cyborgs and eventually the machine part of us might become conscious. But how would that happen? And how did it happen with the animals that first became conscious; who made consciousness for us? There must have been a moment when the first flicker of consciousness happened. What caused that sudden leap into consciousness? I've always liked these questions best of all Butler's writings, but they're not going to help me here, I don't think. What else do I know about consciousness? I know I don't like the idea of the collective unconscious. I don't like the idea of primordial symbols that exist outside the more arbitrary system of signifiers and signifieds. I prefer Derrida's idea of a gaping absence being the thing that creates reality and presence—not a weird B-movie interface full of snakes and witches and creepy jesters.
I think about Heidegger again, and realize there's so much I don't know. From what I can remember, Heidegger's special word for consciousness (or, at least, the kind of consciousness that most humans seem to have) is Dasein: literally a kind of being that is able to ask questions about its own being. For Heidegger, being cannot be considered without the idea of time: You can only be present in the present, and you can therefore only exist in the sense that you exist in time. Dasein can recognize and theorize its own being. It can wonder, "Why am I here? Why do I exist? And what is existence, anyway?" And Dasein is therefore constructed out of language: logos; that which signifies.
Lacan made the psychoanalytic argument that consciousness is connected with language—that our jump from being unconscious, gurgling babies into being part of the "symbolic order" (i.e., having a conscious world) happens at exactly the same moment that we acquire language. This is the same moment that we realize that we are separate beings in the world. We are not our mothers (thank Christ). We become something called a self, that can exist only because others do.
But the world is made from language (or, at least, my world is made from language), and we know how unreliable that is. It's a simulacrum: a closed system just like mathematics, where everything only makes sense because it isn't something else. The numeral 2 only means something because it is not 1 or 3. House only exists because it isn't a boat or a street. I am only me because I am not someone else. This is a system of existence with no signifieds; only signifiers. The whole system of existence is a closed system floating on nothing, like a locked hovercraft.
Think, Ariel. This isn't a fucking essay.
No. I'm lost inside consciousness and trying to work out what the hell it is.
Which kind of reminds me of something....
"We haven't got too much more time," Apollo Smintheus warns me.
I look up at the screen. I'm still lying there, just as unconscious as I was before.
"This whole place is made of language," I say. "That's why I come here down a tunnel made of language—all language from the beginning of time. People's thoughts get stored here somehow..."
"Very good."
"And you're made out of a special language: prayer."
"Yes."
"But I don't understand. Why can't I see the true Troposphere? Surely it's just numbers and letters? I mean, if it's language, it's made to be understandable."
"Language written on what?"
I shrug. "I don't know." For some reason I'm imagining a big tablet in the sky, like a cosmic version of the Rosetta stone. Every time someone thinks or says or does something, it gets recorded there. But if that's all it was I would be able to see it. I mean—we'd all be able to see a giant stone tablet floating in the sky. Maybe this really is all just imaginary.
"You're going to have to give this some more thought," Apollo Smintheus says.
"Yes...," I start to say.
"But not now. Now we've got to get you out of here."
"I...," I begin.
Apollo Smintheus looks at his watch. "What?"
"Why do you care?"
"Oh, because you're going to do something for me."
"And what is that?"
"I'll tell you on the way."
We're walking out of the desert and into a suburban space, with little white houses with blue doors. It's nighttime again, but the silvery light is back. Each house has a window box outside with blue flowers, and a neat front garden. Each garden is dewed with moisture and covered with shiny little cobwebs. Apollo Smintheus has been explaining to me what he wants me to do for him, and it's completely nuts.