“Hey, I don’t wanna go to Tokyo, they have rice in balls there…”

I stopped. The feeling was off. 

For one thing, I could not think straight.  Okay, don’t panic. Maybe the Light was just off. Surely, soon I would stand up….. 

I stopped myself. 

I had an idea. Standing up, this meant… progress. Progress that was archived with the use of legs. LEGS…. 

I could not feel legs. That was, to put it mildly, concerning. Normally, you take legs for granted. They are just there, you know? You move around, and …

I stopped myself again. It was weird. Certain things made sense in my head. Like, “Legs. Pretty nifty, huh? ”. Why was I unable to come up with what legs were used for? 

I rested in the welcome darkness. It seemed…. Acceptable to do that. Like, I was supposed to do this. 

So, if this was all a dream, It was one of those introspective ones, where you thought about stuff. Well, two can play that game. I relaxed a bit. Nightmares. Nightmares were a thing, right? Well, nothing bad had happened yet, so…. I could as well take this as a rest. Calm down. Prepare for the taking of stock. 

What did I have to work with? 

Well, for one thing, I existed. I was pretty sure of that. I knew, there was some debate on the matter, but it mostly went along the lines of, existence was binary. Either I existed, or I didn’t. That much, I recalled with ease. 

My personal view on the subject was that in order to doubt your own existence, you had to be a special kind of person. The sort that ….

Okay. That sounded like a rant. I can not continue this much. IT leads to nothing, and it sounds a bit mean.

New approach. 

Existence was pretty well meaningless. Either I existed, or I did not exist. If I did not exist, anything that I could do was limited by the fact that I did not exist. IF a nonexistent thing did something, did it actually do something? 

IN my opinion, I did a lot of thinking. 

OH dear. 

I just held a hypothetical opinion. That was higher level thinking. So, let's stop here. 

IF I was able to do higher level  thinking, (NO idea what precisely that was), what followed from it was that I was also able to do lower level thinking. 

So, since I was able to observe my own thinking, I could be counted as an observer of myself. Which made sense. 

So, now I had something solid. I existed, or else, I was about to get in a world of trouble.  

If I now existed, what could be deduced from that? 

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For one thing, that I still existed. If I had existed at some point, and no longer existed now, things were about to get very very complicated. 

So, I existed, and hopefully continued to exist. That meant, I had come into existence at some point. This seemed to fit with my observations. I thought a lot for someone that a short time ago had not even managed to be convinced of its own existence. 

A thought popped into my … Head? 

“Gender”

IT told me one thing. 

I was interacting. And I was thinking in what I presumed to be english. Which felt distinctly different from just, You know, thinking. Thinking alone was more in concepts, quiet. 

Not bad. We are making progress. 

If I could think in english…

“Gender”

I paused. 

I just had the same thought twice. SOMETHING told me that this did not happen without a reason. 

“GEN…”

Suddenly, the thought froze. I felt a bit of strain. That was actually very interesting. So, there was an evidence that Time existed. And, that someone could “think” thoughts for me. 

I experimented, and verified my observation. IF I let that thought pass over me, I repeated the same thought to myself, in what felt equally long time increments. When I used my Observant mind to focus on the thought, I could stop and release it. 

Interesting. IT seemed that the more I stretched myself, worked things out, thought things through, the higher my capabilities became.  

Fascinating. 

English still felt wrong, but also right. Gender

“GENDER?”

Okay, settle down. NonObserving thoughts, focus on this, observing thoughts, take five. 

Gender. 

It implied choice. It implied will. I had a say in things. The question was, what did this refer to? The first thing I could come up with was determination of language. IF you had something that could be seen as gender, you had some sort of sentience. You had proof of capability to write. 

I could recollect those things, but an other problem came up. 

I had things I could recollect, and I had things that I could not recollect. I could, for some reason, recollect what gender meant. It was a concept out of language. Language that I understood to be different from english, but also the same. 

Well, keep at it. 

The squiggle at the end was a question mark. Question. That implied not knowing. IT also implied that not only my non observing thoughts of myself existed, but someone distinctly outside of myself. That either did not know, or left me the choice to … answer? 

That made sense. Answer. You answer a question. The issue was, what were the options? 

I clung my non observant mind to the gender thought, and thought about that. Unverified information came to mind. 

Male/Female. 

There was only a problem. I had no idea what that meant. IF I chose the wrong thing, it would have consequences. That thought felt correct. BUT, what? 

IF the outside observer existed, and he knew me…. He would not have asked what gender I was. It was natural. That meant, it was a linguistic construct. 

I started to think an answer, but stopped myself. 

There was something wrong with binary. You never just had two options. That just felt wrong. I wanted a concept that was conveying exactly what I needed to convey. I strained, until I came up with the fitting answer. 

Neutral. 

I was more or less happy with that. IF it mattered, I would have to be corrected. If it did not matter, what was the damage? 

NAME. 

Again, with the english. The next thought sounded exasperated,. But I decided to play their game. Name was a way to refer to themself. That was only necessary if there was an other thing. I almost beamed with pride at my steadily increasing complexity. Language wise, I freely associated name and neutral with a name, and I found…. 

“Charlie”

I was happy with that one. It was male, it was female, and I am sure, there were a few neutral charlies running around. 

My thoughts seemed more than happy. 

“Begin? ”

This thought was less then a thought. In elation at my increasing capabilities, I considered the question, and wished I could pause some more. My thoughts came back to me. I knew that I was charlie, I existed, I was, I was very good at existing, in fact, ….

I hesitated, and attempted a careful thought. 

“Maybe? ”

Humor. Let me wait just a bit. Let me alone, figuring stuff out. I enjoy this, thinking about freedom. Concepts that have sudden space in my mind. Love, truth, veracity,  elements, logic, reason, thinking things through…. 

I awake. 

I am a small stone, lying in darkness, and nothing happens. Somewhere, somehow, someone is very glad that I have not yet figured out how to translate cusswords into thoughts, or else, the ferocity of my cussing would have traumatised a generation of beings into becoming tax accountants against hate speech. I have the idea that if cusses would be material, things like mushroom clouds could form. 

Seeing I can do nothing more, at least for now, I wait. Bide my time, and wait in darkness. IT can not be any worse then what it was.There is no way it possibly is any worse.