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Chad had majored in Philosophy, after having decided that Marketing didn’t suit him, after having decided that Business was too boring, after having decided that Engineering was too hard, after having decided that Mathematics was too esoteric.
To the surprise of his advisors, friends, and sister, he’d finally managed to graduate, but cramming 4 years of school into 7 had taken its toll on him.
Academia, he’d decided, was not for him, and the day he walked across that stage and traded a handshake for a diploma, was the day he committed fully to the post-grad chapter of his life: aimlessly bumming around delivering pizzas for beer money and crashing parties on campus.
On account of his grandmother’s severely deteriorated mental state, and the fact that all the cousins lived out of state, it was his sister who’d been the usual one to ask if he was happy with the direction of his life, if he felt fulfilled, if he was content putting his degree to no use at all.
Chad would say “yes.”
On occasion he would take the time to considered her questions more deeply, to really think them over, try to decide how he, in fact, felt. On those days he would again, invariably—after a slightly longer pause—answer “yes.”
And after his sister would abruptly hang up—or during their rarer face-to-face talks: storm off—he would sit with his thoughts a bit more. And he always came to the same conclusion: he didn’t really know if he felt content, or restless, happy or sad, motivated or apathetic. In those rare moments of deep introspection, he would sometimes come to suspect that maybe he couldn’t, in fact, feel anything, not in the sense that his sister, friends, acquaintances—ordinary people—meant.
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When he was hungry, he’d eat. When he was tired, he’d sleep. When he was horny, he’d fuck.
When he had an urge, he would be compelled to sate it. But whether he felt compelled to sate urges arising out of anything beyond immediate biological necessity, he couldn’t say.
He figured he must, to some degree. If he were purely a stimulus-response automaton, then why should the lights be on? Why should it be like something to be him? He could just as easily—perhaps more easily—process environmental inputs, maximize fitness payoffs, spread his genetic material, etc. unencumbered by the epiphenomenon of consciousness.
He’d fall down that internal rabbit hole of self-reflection, until, finally, he’d snap out of it, consoling himself with the fact that he wasn’t a sociopath, he couldn’t be. When he really really had to take a shit and couldn’t—due to traffic, long lines, locked doors, etc.—it felt bad. He didn’t like that feeling, and he could project his little gut-clenching, cramp-addled homunculus self into the place of another, someone else with mere seconds to make it to the bathroom doomed not to. Someone prevented from doing so. Someone who felt bad—and perhaps embarrassed—from the resulting carnage.
Chad wished a warm, comfortable, private, toilet for every such person. He felt that deserved for anyone who desperately needed to empty the contents of their bowels. Maybe he couldn’t quite grasp the feeling of embarrassment—not like ordinary folk—but at least he could imagine the displeasure of wiping backsplash from one’s cheeks and thighs and raw, burning asshole in a cramped gas station lavatory with pants bunched around ankles sponging up puddles of semi-coagulated piss.
He could imagine all that, and he didn’t much like the feeling.
And he would, too, that no one else had to feel such feelings.
No, he couldn’t be a sociopath. He might not’ve been normal. He might not’ve achieved the potential his sister insisted he possessed. He might not’ve had the job, the car, the money, or the status expected of one his age. But he wasn’t a sociopath. He wasn’t bad.
And that was enough for him.
After a few years of going out every night to drown his maybe-not-sorrows and dull his maybe-not-feelings, he’d eased back on the drink. In large part at the behest of his sister when she took on the mantle of sole surviving family matriarch.
Though Chad hadn’t been thrilled at the prospect of going through withdrawals, a cold cost-benefit analysis convinced him of the advantages of quitting the bottle. It was also around that time, perhaps precipitated by that newfound clearheadedness, that he began to notice that the voices—the ones that had so worried his mother, the ones he’d grown so accustomed to hearing over the course of his life—hadn’t surfaced since before he’d graduated.
His familiars from the aether hadn’t come to say hello in so very, very long.
And he felt lonely.
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