1 ₪ [VIDEO]

[themuse]

[The video feed comes on, showing a woman with an extremely foul expression on her face. She looks lost somewhere between completely confused and totally pissed off.]

So I'm supposed to believe that I used to be a fictional character and now I'm not a fictional character and I have to learn how to not be a fictional character because my fictional life is somehow different from not having a fictional life?

[Kate takes a breath.]

I have a headache. Anyone who is not completely insane wanna tell me what the hell is going on?

Comments

[notdogmatic]

There are approximately one hundred and twenty of us who were told the same story, and fifteen thousand human inhabitants of the island who were not.

As for what is actually going on, are you aware that this is a philosophical question of great complexity? Humankind commonly seeks such questions, but the results of their searches are often inconclusive or unsatisfying due to an inability to recognize or accept valid answers.

[themuse]

I don't spend a lot of time concerned with questions; I'm a lot more interested in answers. And I'm not exactly the type to accept an answer without some proof to back it up.

[notdogmatic]

Then I will be unable to help you.

[themuse]

[She sighs.]

Just tell me what you know. You believe them?

[notdogmatic]

I agree cosmologically, but I am uncertain if they are ontologically correct.

[themuse]

Right. Complex. I get it.

[notdogmatic]

Yes.

[themuse]

I feel real enough. I'm just not buying it.

[notdogmatic]

That is a common reaction.

[themuse]

Okay, fine, then tell me this: if we aren't real, and we really are just fictional characters then where the hell did we come from? Did I just now blink into existence with all of these memories in my head about things that never really happened? And if I didn't... If I was existing somewhere else anyway, doesn't that still make me real?

[notdogmatic]

Those are not the kind of questions which can be easily answered from outside of one's own experience. In what way could I be certain that the same truths apply to both of us? Now that we have been given cause to doubt the consistency of reality between one mode of existence and another; and it has been shown that we may be transported between them in one way, how could we validate one another's memories? It is possible that one of us is real or the other fictional; that both are real, or both are fictional, but our own testimony is the only support we have for such things.

[themuse]

Which is exactly my point. How can anyone expect us to believe we're not real if they can't give us solid proof one way or another? That's why I want evidence. I'm not going to believe something someone tells me just because they might be right.

[notdogmatic]

It is interesting that they have made very little attempt to present evidence.

[themuse]

Right. Which makes me think they are either lying or they're covering something else up. Besides, even if we are fictional... Why bring us here and not the rest of the people we know? What makes us so special that we get to be "real"?

I can already tell this is going to piss me off.

[notdogmatic]

Selection criteria appears random, although there are demographic patterns, such as a disproportionate number of males between fifteen and forty.

There is, however, a large range, with arrivals as young as three and as old as nine hundred confirmed.

[themuse]

And do we know anything about the people who run this place? Is there a government or any type of ruling structure?

[notdogmatic]

They seem to be the same scientists operating the Visitor's Center and the Hospital. Or at least, the government mutually employs such people. However, as with any scientist conducting a social experiment, their protocols insist on a certain objective distance from daily affairs.

[themuse]

So they don't interact with us much. Great. I feel like a bug under glass.

[She looks around, suddenly paranoid.]

[notdogmatic]

An ant farm would be an excellent metaphor for our current situation.

I believe that if there was a discrete selection criteria for transportation to the island it would most likely be that we were calculated to have the most interesting or idiosyncratic reactions to stress.

However, this is an ungrounded hypothesis.

[themuse]

I have a lot of reactions to stress but I never thought anyone would have called it interesting.

At least it's a hypothesis. It's a place to start, though I'm not sure how much further I'm hoping to get.