offdxty

[offdxty]

Maybe it, indeed, is comforting to think this way - to assume that Kane had always known about the fact that whatever had been changed about him, his existence, couldn't be undone. That he was aware of the fact that he wouldn't survive, wouldn't manage to find his way back out; He'd asked other-Kane, the one he's seen developing, growing, becoming inside the lighthouse, to go and look for Lena instead...

And, in the end, it had caused everything to happen the way it did. The zone of the unknown is gone now, yet what it had created remains - plants, animals, and... Kane. Him. It. Not-Kane. Lena. A changed Lena. Them both. Memories. Knowledge. Existence.

...Comfort, another concept. Is this what Kane experiences when thinking about the other's possible decision, the fact it had been made before they've even met to begin with? It's different from that weight inside his chest - it feels... soft, almost. Gentle.

Movement follows, not from him but from the other who shared a room with him at this very minute; It prompts Kane to look back up as he watches the man standing up from where he'd been sitting on the floor, watches and observes...

Perhaps he was shaped by Kane. Perhaps Kane did shape Kane, while Kane copied him - took information, collected whatever it could get, put it all back together. Hadn't Kane been around back then, not-Kane wouldn't be here, that's a fact - it had only taken on and mimicked what had already existed to begin with while also creating something new by using the very essence of existence itself to turn it into a different existence.

---And Kane is part of it now. His DNA persists, created bone, tissue, organs, a life; Yet Kane isn't Kane, not quite at least, but he's similar. He is Kane while not being Kane at the very same time.

A drifting gaze meets Harrows's again when he speaks once more, calls him something chosen as a possibility. Something relied on. Something good. Maybe not a someone, a something, but good. It... it does something to him, has Kane inhale briefly before that breath gets stuck inside his throat.

There had never been good nor bad, both concepts feel foreign to him. Yet he knows the theory of both - and good is the approved one of them, the option that's sought out, desired.

It causes Kane to swallow, his head to lower a bit, followed by a brief sniffle and a sigh that seems to come from somewhere deep inside him. It's still there, the pressure, the weight, but it is... morphing, again. Almost as if it turns into a solid warmth behind his sternum - still odd, still not something he wants to be stuck with, but... it seems as if said weight is beginning to dissolve a bit - becoming easier to endure.

---He realizes that he's done a lot of thinking, and perhaps Kane needs to do even more thinking to... continue to function.

Is there anything else you feel is worth telling me, Dr Harrow asks, and Kane... blinks. His arms unfold from his chest, both hands coming to a rest on the mattress instead - besides each side of his hips - and he takes another breath, then allows it to escape through his nostrils in a slow, steady stream made of carbon dioxide.

Is there anything else? There's so much and there's nothing at the same time. It's hard for Kane to say. ... But there is something indeed, he realizes, and so he looks back up, flexes his jaw.

"---In case you are in contact with whoever talks to her, to Lena..." A brief pause, a blink, a nod. "...Perhaps you could tell them to tell her that he... cared. About her, about everything. ---I know he did. It's part of me."

Arthur observed the shift. The straightening of the spine, the guarding of arms, the subtle swell of something trying to become certainty. It was the kind of posture that Arthur had seen in some people trying to claim ownership over answers. It wasn’t confidence, not quite; he would believe that it was rehearsal before he believed that. Like the subject was attempting to practice being someone, rather than truly becoming that. 

It was worth noting, worth filing. 

He uncrossed his legs, his palms smoothing along the knees of his pants. It was a signal that things were coming to a natural pause, perhaps even to a close; he had taken plenty, and he had given far more. The subject was in a position where he seemed comfortable talking, telling Arthur facts about Kane - it was hard to decide whether to keep digging, or whether to leave and allow the subject to sit in what all had been dug up. 

“I see,” he said at last, though it was hard to tell if it was approval or acknowledgment. “You’re not him - but you were shaped by him. Perhaps you were shaped by Kane as much as this… phenomenon shaped everything else.” It was an interesting thought, phrasing it like that. 

Arthur reached beside him, retrieving the notebook he had set aside. He opened it long enough to write something in shorthand, something brief; something that the other likely wouldn’t understand. 

“You may be right,” he said as he stood, carefully, one hand pressed against the wall to keep him upright. “Perhaps he had already made the choice to die, before he met you. And perhaps that comforts you. It would comfort most, I believe.” 

He inhaled softly, exhaling through the nose; it was difficult to decide how to end this. But it was also time to, time to go back to the other room and spend more time watching what the subject did. Watching how he reacted. 

“… Perhaps it’s good that he placed his faith in you,” he offered. He put his pen back in his pocket, folding his hands in front of himself and looking back to ‘Kane’. “You did what he asked. You found her. Whether you cared or not, you carried out his final request.” 

He didn’t need to say it. There wasn’t much of a motive behind saying it, even; maybe he just didn’t like the sight of seeing the subject so distressed, and knowing that he had caused it. 

“That may not make you someone. But it makes you something… chosen. Something relied on. If Kane saw it fit to trust you, even as he chose to die, then perhaps… perhaps you are something good. There’s no need to be upset over that.” 

There had been a lot of information exchanged, a lot for Arthur to map out and write down and document - their next meeting would be a bit less intense. He would take what he had, and divide it up into sections; and they would approach one of those sections a day, until he felt that he had the other mapped out completely. 

“Is there anything else you feel is worth telling me, before I go?” he asked. “Anything you’re worried that I might have misunderstood? Or anything that you just feel should be said?” 

[offdxty]

The images of a fire, of a body consumed by flames, a being watching as another shifted and started to exist, eyes wide and in awe, skin moving and squirming, DNA changing, cells duplicating, a world opening up, a recognized house, a recognized woman, blood, tears - all of them continue to exist, continue to be while Harrow speaks. They race back and forth, pop up and disappear, a heavy-lidded gaze following each of those pictures with the tiniest of movements - irises vibrating, watching without looking, without focus, while words are taken at the very same time.

A hypothesis, another one, being made and voiced out into the room between them, the space that exists, filled with oxygen and carbon dioxide; Maybe Kane wants to be Kane, to be someone, because Kane thought he is just that. Maybe he wants to follow orders, an instinct eager to do what it was made to do, to fulfill its purpose.

Both could be correct, both could be the opposite. Both could be both at the same time - correct and not correct, a fact and a theory, knowledge and assumption.

...And Kane swallows, sucks a bottom lip between his teeth, bites and chews on it until the skin begins to feel a little tight, a little raw - only then he lets go of his own flesh, nostrils flaring with an exhale of air, lashes glistening as he blinks once, twice.

---He doesn't know whether any of this is right or wrong, whether any of these suggestions, ideas, possible reasons, apply to him or not. Perhaps he's just functioning because he follows a direction, perhaps he's only grieving because he took the very same emotion from the one he'd been copying; Like fragments of a life that is his own but not his own at a same time, fractions of experiences and memories that have happened to him, but not to him. Not to Kane, not it, yet Kane, yet it, because the DNA exists, the cells exist - copied, split, copied again, split once more, taken apart, reassembled, morphed and merged together until an image had been formed, a face and a body and a breath, hair and lungs and an appendix.

But not all of it, only parts. A whole physical existence, but only pieces of a life. Kane had seen him, Kane had watched, Kane had observed and Kane had made a decision; Now here other-Kane is, and he wonders... he wonders and thinks and feels, and all of it might just be... instinct. Learned behavior.

It makes everything feel even worse, causes eyes to close and lips to purse.

...But maybe, just maybe... ---Maybe none of this applies to him. Maybe it does, but partially. Maybe there is something else to him, maybe he does think, does feel, and none of it is fully attached to pure instinct and learned behavior anymore.

Error should not produce grief, Dr. Harrow says such himself; In case grief applies, the whole of not-Kane might stem from an origin more sophisticated. Is this grief... real grief, he feels? An emotion made of something else than learned behavior?

Maybe Kane, not-Kane, it... wants it all. Maybe Kane follows a direction, a code, instinct and learned behavior, while also grieving, thinking, feeling. Can he be... both? Can he be a something-someone?

... He doesn't know.

Even though he thinks about it all, takes those words and syllables filled with information to consume them, dissect them, try to put them back together into what he thinks makes sense... he has no real knowledge regarding the matter. He has never considered any of it, has never followed a pattern of existence like the one he's currently involved with... Perhaps he's just offering theories in return. Even though he knows he's thinking, most likely feeling, perhaps having an emotion - there's no proof existing, at least none he feels familiar with. All he can do is to listen to the man in front of him, to take what he's saying, and to... react. To... try and figure it out.

It, whatever it might be.

Eyes flick back open, silence stretching for another while; A spine straightens and Kane's gaze focuses on the wall above the other as his hands slide along his thighs, then let go of fabric, of muscle - his arms fold in front of his chest instead, hands tucked into each armpit as he inhales, exhales, swallows, lifts his chin.

A nod. Then a shake of a head. Both actions are happening without a word falling from full lips, and yet they seem thoughtful - deep in a way, meaningful.

"He questioned his own humanity." A fact. Kane did say such out loud, after all - spoke it directly into the camera he left behind, hoping for someone to find it on some faithful day. Someone did indeed.

"---It changed him, like it changed everything within its reach - flora, fauna, life. I guess that upon seeing me, he found another reason to..." A brief pause, as if Kane's struggling to find the right words for what he tries to say; He swallows, again and then takes another, deeper inhale of air.

"...To doubt it. What he believed to be." ... "---I don't know if he made a mistake. I don't know if his final decision to self-destruct was based on me, my existence. I think... I think he already made that decision before we got to meet each other."

He wouldn't have survived. Kane knew. And Kane's aware of the fact that Kane knew.

"But... I do think that it's... ---sad. The consequences. The act itself. He should've been the one to go back to his wife, but he couldn't. He had no choice. No matter what he did, he wouldn't have been able to find his way back out, to stay alive. ---That's what I meant with him putting hope on me instead, because I am him - yet I am not. I am not him, not quite. ...But I would like to be...---someone."

Silence was a more useful tool than any question, especially when the subject truly began to speak. Arthur didn’t dare interrupt, instead just watching - noting the return of the odd colors in the subject’s pupils, the unspooled words that seemed like blood spilling from a wound. A rupture of something that had been compressed, maybe; it fascinated him far more than anything else did. 

The change in posture didn’t go unnoticed, the curling of those fingers in search of contact. The way he recounted what happened at the lighthouse with something close to reverence - as if there were something there that he truly did care for, that he valued. They were behaviors that likely were learned by watching, there was little to no proof that they were understood; and that gap between function and comprehension was where Arthur lived. 

“You’re responding to memory,” Arthur noted, again stated like nothing more than fact. “The memory of events can sometimes be… difficult. Especially memories of observation. You observed as Kane chose to self destruct, the same way you observed Lena react to your presence. Perhaps the fact they bother you so severely isn’t because of the emotional weight, but because they were new sensations. Whatever part of you is ‘learning’ found these moments worth flagging as important.” 

His voice dipped as he spoke, just enough to suggest depth without delivering any comfort. “That’s curious. Memory without ownership shouldn’t carry emotional charge - so I don’t believe that it does. I think that those moments are important to you because they are ones that gave you guidance and direction, and that’s what you are searching for.” 

Arthur shifted. He leaned forward, raising a hand; offering a hypothesis, to see how it was handled. “Kane gave you a direction. He gave you two, actually - ‘do not look’, and ‘go find Lena’. You looked, because your internal programming demanded it. You were meant to look at Kane. You were meant to copy Kane. You watched him, even as he… self-destructed. But when he was gone, when there was nothing else to observe, you needed a new rule to follow. 'Go find Lena.' You did that.” 

Arthur leaned back again, his hand falling down gently into his lap. “Maybe the reason you want to be someone is because you think that Kane thought you were someone,” he offered. “And you think that you’re failing Kane’s orders, in some way. Maybe you have a drive to succeed, to fulfill your duty. Maybe you still want to satisfy the parameters of a command you were given.” 

His eyebrows raised, as if offering the theory; though he didn’t let it sit for long before offering evidence against it. “But - if that were true, here’s what I can’t quite solve. If you are just something - an echo, a mimimc, a residual pattern - then you shouldn’t care about failing. Error should not produce grief - and if it does, then the grief itself is part of the design. Which suggests an origin more sophisticated than something I’m prepared to explain.” 

His fingers tapped again, eyes looking almost as if he were actively thinking that through, right now;  he was. He inhaled softly, followed by an exhale; and then he rested his head behind him, again, against the wall. 

“… Let me ask you this. If Kane did think you were someone - and you turn out to be something - would that make his final choice a mistake? Do you think he made the right decision, in ending himself and sending you?” 

[offdxty]

It came here for a reason. It mutated our environment. It was destroying everything. It wasn't destroying. It was changing everything. It was making something new.

ANNIHILATION (2018) dir. Alex Garland

[offdxty]

The more they talk, the more information is given to him - offered, served, presented to be taken, consumed, dissected, rearranged, combined - the harder everything seems to become, in return. Hard as in... complicated, heavy. It's another concept that seems to form there, the realization about Kane, not Kane, beginning to experience this conversation as something else than purely neutral - more than just knowledge being shared, a simple addition of facts.

It has always been neutral. Things have either happened or they did not happen. He walked or he did not walk. He looked out for Lena or he did not look out for her. Find her, Kane had told him, get out of here and find Lena. That's what he'd done, made his way out of the lighthouse, the area surrounding it, marched through forests and fields guided by an instinct that had pieced together the needed information to find his destination.

He'd found that house, he'd found Lena, and now he is here. All of those things are mere facts, no weight to them, but this? To be something rather than someone, a function, with Dr. Harrow continuing to explain what might be a truth, what could be, what should be, what makes sense? ---It weighs down on him. It's more than just a fact.

It feels different, and that tightness inside Kane's chest remains.

Humans might not want grief, pain and doubt to be existent concepts, that's what the other says. They try to dull their emotions, get rid of them, perhaps wished to be a something, a function, rather than a living being with a conscience. Kane, however, wonders if this is working the other way around for him; There had been nothing, now there's so much. He knows, he's aware, that Kane - the one at the lighthouse, the man, the lifeform - had gone through it all, had experienced a state of being that not-Kane did not.

Not yet. There's something happening. A possible possibility existing, something that makes no sense and yet holds all the sense in the world.

There is an instinct within him, it tells him what to do, how to proceed. But this discomfort, this ache, this... pressure, it might not be caused by instinct. It's not a feeling caused by any sort of physical trauma - no fight, no weapon, nothing that is currently injuring him. Something physical could still happen inside him, but for some reason he, it, cannot even name, he's quite sure that it's not the case.

A heartbeat passes. A question follows.

What, exactly, hurts about that?

A swallow, a clench of a jawline. A blink. A dark gaze falling away, onto a set of hands that begin to curl around another again. Holding. Seeking contact. Seeking... safety?

Another heartbeat. Another question.

Are you grieving Kane?

Silence, thick and persistent, a brief flutter of eyelashes.

---He didn't know. Kane didn't know he's grieving Kane, the other Kane, the one in the lighthouse, but... it feels right. Listening to it, the hypothesis being made, feels like it hits him somewhere, straight into the center of his chest. Thinking about it, about this man, this lifeform, having decided to self-destruct because of what had been going on with him, what he'd most likely felt; Kane hadn't thought about it, didn't think back then. But now he is thinking, and that prompts him to question all of what had happened, makes him wonder, makes him... feel something.

"He chose death." A simple comment, but light in volume, soft, quiet. "He watched me. I watched him. He told me to find Lena. He told me not to look. ---I looked. I watched. He burned. I left." ... "He was a someone. Kane was someone. I saw him. I watched him. I learned. I observed. He was there, so I was there. I didn't know he was someone, I never thought about it, never wondered, never knew. Now I know he was a someone, and he chose death. He chose to self-destruct, he made an active decision. He..."

A pause, a curl of fingers around another - touching, sliding, pulling, pushing.

"...He decided to stop functioning."

Perhaps Kane truly is griefing Kane. The memories of him exist, and when he brings them up, they do something to him. That, but also something else.

"He saw me. He told me what to do. Perhaps he put hope in me. Hope, an emotion, isn't it? ... He asked me to find his wife. I found her. I found Lena. I recognized her. But I could not give an answer to any of her questions. She felt. I didn't feel. It hurt her." ... "...I continued to function. I am still functioning. Perhaps Kane thought of me as a someone, and I turn out to be a something. I think I'm feeling, I think I'm thinking, and yet... is it enough?"

A blink, irises glistening with additional moisture as they focus back on Dr. Harrow, on his sitting form, his crossed legs, his gaze. ---Where brown usually is, the shimmer is back: Green and yellow, purple, pink, blue, moving and flickering like light shining through a prism.

"Maybe I... want to be a someone. And it hurts to hear that I might not be that."

Arthur nodded once, the action small and almost just polite. “That would make sense,” he agreed. “If you are most likely a ‘something’, then this reaction would be part of the simulation. What you’re feeling would be a… self-correcting function. Perhaps even a safeguard. It could be your way of preserving this thing you took - um - preserving the continuity of the ‘Kane’ pattern.” 

He watched the man - subject - wipe moisture from his lashes. He observed it like it was nothing but the result of an experiment, like seeing the result of a chemical reaction. That was all it was, of course. A chemical reaction. “… Grief, after all, is a very human way to reject a truth.” 

There was no malice in him, even as he chose to believe that none of this was real. It was highly impossible that there was anything real in front of him - it wouldn’t line up with the evidence. 

“You don’t like the idea that you’re a ‘something’,” he continued. “And that’s not the same as not being one. Many systems are designed to react defensively to contradiction. Even clever ones. A virus can mimic distress, if it wants to. A well-trained mimic can display exhaustion, sadness, even tears. Emotions can be patterns too - emulated, if the algorithm is complex enough for something like that.” 

He looked up again to the subject, stretching his legs out straight before bending them at the knee, once again sitting cross-legged. 

“I suppose what I’m trying to understand is why that feels bad to you, if you’re not just programmed to be upset by it.” 

It was fascinating. It was something that he couldn’t wrap his head around. “Being a ‘something’ isn’t inherently negative. It’s neutral, even. Efficient. ‘Something’ means function without guilt, it means being operation without suffering. Most humans spend their entire lives trying to dull their emotions, not wanting pain or grief or doubt. If you’re spared from that, if you’re nothing but a process, then you’re clean. You’re unburdened.” 

He allowed that to sit, though only for a moment, as if this new angle might help the subject adjust to the thought of not being ‘someone’. “So why does it feel bad?” he asked again. “What, exactly, hurts about that?” 

There was a genuine vein of interest in that question, though it wasn’t empathetic. It was the type of interest that someone would have when they were moments away from having their hypothesis tested. 

“I believe that it doesn’t feel good, I do believe that. But if that feeling is real, if it’s more than just code or mimicry, then I want to know what it is that you’re grieving.” He tilted his head. “Are you grieving Kane?” 

[offdxty]

Good, that man says, and Kane takes it - takes the word like all the others, the information, though he cannot really do anything with it. Good it might be, but he wonders - is this good? He doesn't think that this is good. It doesn't feel good, as said; Yet whatever Dr. Harrow seems to see at this very moment - taking in the sight of him, of that Kane, not Kane, it, sitting on the bed like ever since the other had stepped into the room first - to him, it, apparently, is good.

No comfort in it, no comfort expected either. Comfort is another concept and Kane knows of its existence but, once again, wouldn't know how to even tell if it's around or not. So he takes, as he always does, and swallows as he tries to handle whatever his body is currently doing to him. His throat still feels dry, his chest tight and heavy, lungs filled with something that prevents him from taking easy breaths; Another blink, dark brown eyes averted, looking elsewhere, before a decision is being made and a hand reaches out.

There's a bedside table close to him, a glass of water sitting on top of it. Fingers curl around the object, pick it up, bring it close so Kane can have a sip - and he swallows it down, the clear liquid, before following the motion with one more sip. Only after that glass it put back where it belongs, digits letting go, hand coming to a rest on a thigh to linger there instead.

---His throat feels better, less dry, but it's still... not quite right. Swallowing remains harder than expected, so does inhaling and exhaling. The sip of water helped, but that heaviness, the pressure, remains.

It it sincere, his dislike for... this? The fact that the answer to what he might be, it, Kane, not Kane, could be one of those three options? The fact that he seems to know, to feel, that he might be aware of which one is the most likely one of them?

Thinking about it makes it worse and that burn in his eyes seems to increase, has him reach up out of reflex, a thumb wiping along lower eyelashes in an attempt to get rid of whatever might be there. When he pulls that digit back and into his line of view, he notices that the curve of said thumb is now covered in moisture.

What doesn’t feel good?

"---That I'm most-likely a something." For once, Kane is able to name it without being unsure in the first place; It's a truth to him, and it settled somewhere inside him like the knowledge of him actively having thoughts and experiencing the process of thinking as a whole did. "I don't know what I am, but I could be a something. ---I might be a something."

A deeper inhale, shoulders moving with how much air is taken in, and Kane blinks before his gaze is back on the lifeform on the floor. Lids are much more heavy now, the wide-open expression long gone, the corners of a mouth curled down and brows low.

Perhaps one would take that expression as a deep exhaustion - sadness, maybe. Disappointment. Defeat. One of those. All of them. Maybe they are precisely that - maybe they are not. Something is there, however, and it pulls and tugs on his heart, on his insides.

There was something sacred about moments like this, leading to Arthur watching in silence. He had no proof as to what any of this was, if he were talking to a creature with thought or if he were talking to an algorithm that was attempting to mimic something that it had no base for.

He didn’t interrupt because of that, this having been the intention from the start; Arthur was good at remaining neutral, good at offering little to copy. He had demanded that the being give him something, whether the being knew it or not; Arthur had been demanding nothing but new answers, new thoughts, giving nothing but fact and wanting emotion in return. 

He said nothing when the man's words caught in his throat, nor when his eyes burned, when he touched his throat. He waited just long enough to allow the emotions to exist, taking them in; he nodded, finally, when he felt satisfied.

“Good.” 

It was said gently, though not with warmth. It wasn’t to comfort, he rarely comforted, but rather to confirm; to indicate that the man, or perhaps the algorithm, had chosen the correct answer. 

It had changed from when Arthur had first entered the room. Going from simply stating fact, to elaborating on thoughts, to showing signs of emotion. It was possible to think that the creature was learning, it was the path that Arthur felt the most comfortable with walking toward; but it was also possible that it was just doing what any machine would. Throwing things until it stuck, digging deeper into things when Arthur reacted positively to it.

He shifted again, unable to keep his bad leg still for too long, though he kept his voice constructed carefully. “Instinct doesn’t protest its own nature. Code doesn’t suffer, execution never hesitates. But you - whatever you are - you don’t like it. If that’s sincere, then that’s important.” 

If it wasn’t sincere, then this was a really, really good program. One that he would absolutely adore taking apart, if the road led to that. 

“Discomfort requires contrast,” he said, his hands remaining in his lap. “To dislike what you are implies a framework of what you could be. That alone sets you apart from anything that merely functions. If you’re capable of… disliking your own state, then you’re also capable of aspiring beyond it. And that is not something that a virus does. It’s not something code does. It’s something that someone does.” 

He let the silence hang for a breath, his fingers returning to tapping against his knee. He wasn’t convinced, unfortunately. The man looked emotional, he looked moved and upset; but action could be imitated easily. Especially action such as this. 

Arthur shifted his jaw one more time. “… What is it, exactly, that you don’t like?” 

Another pause. 

“What doesn’t feel good?” 

[offdxty]

A lot of communication, many words and syllables being offered, exchanged, thoughts happening and thoughts provoked, the possibility of feeling, of existence rising; Time has passed ever since Dr. Harrow had first entered this room and taken a seat on the floor - moments in which questions had been asked, answers given, information shared which Kane himself had taken, consumed, added to his own self. He now knows he's thinking, even though he'd always been aware of the concept, but it's grown into a fact - he considers he might be feeling as well, something he did before, but didn't really do, but Kane did, but Kane did not.

He even thought about emotions for a moment there. Maybe he is experiencing them, even though he doesn't know whether he is. Of course he's familiar with the concept of emotions - they're part of a human being, after all, of Kane - but theory seems to differ a lot from what happens during execution. He knows and he does not know, information is missing.

And now Kane is here still, and they're talking, and the question he'd spoken out himself leads them back to the reason of it all. Someone or something, the difference deciding about how he's being treated - can he be understood, worked with, or is he meant to be dissected, studied, archived? DNA and cells are made of data, so he might be that - data. Does that mean he is a something and that they, the people, the living beings, won't understand him - won't work with him? Would rather study him?

It makes sense, it's a truth, and there should be no weight existing to pull it into one or the other direction. A something does not choose to operate, to function, it just does, while a someone can stop functioning and reflect about whether it even wants to function, if whatever it does is worth it, achieving whatever needs to be achieved. Kane knows he is functioning - the instinct guides him and that's just how it is. It exists because it does. It works because it does. It copies because that's how it is. It copies and mimicks because that's how it's meant to be. It executes and it continues to execute, the instinct both acting as guide and fuel, a basic line of code, the bare essence.

---Thinking about it, however, causes a reaction to form. Instinct does not prompt feelings, emotions, they're a human concept, Kane knows. And yet that pressure, the weight he'd experienced before, only seems to grow exponentially as the seconds pass - so much so that it feels like as if his throat is going to close up, has him swallow, brows knitting as he stretches his neck and brings a hand up to feel along the shape of his own adams apple; Nothing is off, everything seemingly normal. And yet swallowing is harder than before, the heavy object inside him constricting his lungs as well, the act of breathing requiring more conscious effort than before.

What if he is a simple something, and not more? What if he is, and yet he is not, and he might not be what he thinks he is? Why is this affecting him, and why does he feel--- why does he feel heavy, why does it make his throat feel dry, why does he swallow again and why does the beating organ behind his ribs begin to pick up in pace?

"---Yes." Uncharacteristically choked up it sounds, that single word that leaves him after he swallows a third time; Kane's hand falls away again and he lowers his chin, inhales, exhales, bites the inside of his lip, the tip of his tongue. He does not know why he does all of this but he does it anyways, it feels right, it feels like something he needs to do right now while... while---

Eyes fall closed and he shakes his head, then the same hand from before comes up to wipe along his nose, rub the nostrils. It lets go after and another exhale follows, a shake of a head, a blink, eyes back on Harrow, the man who just told him the possibilities of what Kane could be.

His eyes burn. Why do they burn? It makes no sense. It makes sense. This feels familiar. It doesn't. A concept, again, but no experience.

"...But I don't like it. It doesn't feel good."

Kane's feeling something, he's sure by now, and it might be... non-physical. Is this an emotion? Which one is it?

Arthur kept his eyes on the man, attentive in a way that suggested archiving more than just listening. Arthur couldn’t help but find himself caught on the one phrase, the statement that the subject felt as if he were ‘everywhere’; not only was it poetic, it was structurally interesting. A statement of dispersed identity, of being smeared across the system rather than localized to a self. 

He wasn’t located in his chest. He was his entire body? He was the space that he took up? 

The last question only barely pulled him more than that; it caused an outward shift, a reaction without Arthur meaning to give one. 

Is being something undesirable? 

Arthur’s head disconnected from the wall, though neither in alarm or concern; it was something closer to alertness as his eyebrows pinched, head tilting. An experiment that had shifted in an unexpected direction. 

He rolled his shoulders, folding his hands in his lap and leaning back once more against the wall. “That’s the second time you’ve circled back,” he pointed out, his tone even. “I find that interesting. I’m going to make a note of that, as well.” 

He didn’t write, however, his fingers instead interlacing loosely. They formed an absent-minded steeple, his posture remaining still but the air around his thoughts coiling slightly. 

“You’re right, yes. I did say that. That’s a very important distinction, especially to the people who are funding this room.” He raised a hand to gesture around them, though didn’t elaborate further; he was getting paid to make the determination. He was getting paid to figure out what had happened to Kane, and what this thing was in front of him - and that was an important step in the process. 

“The difference between someone and something only defines what can be done to you. What rights you have. What… protections you can be afforded. If you are someone, then you need to be understood, and you can be worked with. If you are something, you can be studied. Dissected. Replicated. Archived.” 

There wasn’t any cruelty in the words - it was just truth. It was an offering. 

“But you aren’t asking me about ethics, I presume. You’re asking about whether it’s worse to be something, to exist without the burden of being someone. And that’s a much older question - one that humans don’t normally like to ask. I can’t really tell you if it’s better to be someone or to be something. I don’t think that has an answer.” 

It was objective. ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ were relative terms, and therefore it was impossible for anything to truly ‘be’ either. Something could not be a temporary title. If something was ‘good’ or ‘bad’, it was only a state of being, similar to identity. 

“Something can execute tasks,” he stated. “It can respond to input, it can observe, it can imitate. Programs do that. Viruses do that. They operate. Sometimes efficiently - sometimes brilliantly. But they don’t choose to operate. They run because they were made to run. Someone is different. They can reflect, they can override, they can stop. They can hesitate. They can wonder if they should do the thing they were made to do. That’s the distinction I’m looking for - because as I see it, presently, I have three theories.” 

He shifted slightly, one finger lifting up to mark each point in turn, like lining hypotheses in the air. 

“One: you are Kane. Not precisely the same, of course - altered, perhaps radically - but at your core, you are still the man who entered the Shimmer. A continuity of self, disrupted, perhaps moved into a new body, but not severed. That would suggest trauma, mutation, adaptation. I don’t believe this is the case.” 

A second finger, his hand falling to rest against his knee. 

“Two: you are not Kane. You are a separate being - an alien intelligence, perhaps - attempting to mimic him. You have access to his patterns, his speech, his gestures - but the man himself is gone. What is left is a reflection made in glass. Something… curious, maybe. Something learning.” 

A breath, paired with the raising of the third finger. 

“Three: you are neither. You are not Kane. You are not an alien. You are a process. A function. A virus, or something close to it - code that imprinted into matter, following the order to relocate. You do not understand what you are because you aren’t meant to understand - you’re a consequence of what the Shimmer made.” 

His money was on the third option. It made the most sense, it followed the most patterns; it made sense for what all was recovered from the location in the first place. A substance that could copy and remix whatever data was put into it; DNA, memory, anything. The only oddity about it was how perfect of a copy Kane appeared to be - though even that could be explained with statistics. 

“Does that make sense, to you?” 

[offdxty]

Assembling he is, Dr. Harrow might be right with that one - collecting information, assembling, putting together, creating something new. Copying, mimicking, gathering and picking; Instinct causes it to happen, instinct causes him to be.

Perhaps this is precisely it, the very essence of... it. Of him. Of Kane who is not Kane, but at the same time is Kane. He exists, he is aware of concepts, aware of how Kane functions and behaves, and yet he isn't, not completely, not enough; The blueprint is a theory made of collected and gathered information, based on what had been seen, experienced, witnessed, consumed, built upon.

And yet, Kane who knows how to feel, who also doesn't know how to feel, struggles to understand what this is. Feelings. Emotions. It all is so very clear and makes sense in one way, yet he's left wondering in another.

Lips press into a tight line once more, teeth clenching, jaw working, sliding left and right as that gaze flicks away, thoughtful, thinking. Kane knows how to think now, he is thinking, he understood the concept to the fullest; Thoughts appear inside his head, that's what it is, and he pieces them together or watches them float away, feels bothered by others.

---Feels. He feels. Is he feeling? Perhaps... he is feeling.

Maybe there is more to feeling than this, the hand resting on his chest. That sensation existing inside his chest is there, maybe he's sick again? No, that had felt different. It had felt painful.

Kane, it, not Kane but also Kane, had felt pain not too long ago, he remembers. A memory, fresh and recent, a real one, he suddenly gains access to: After finding Lena, after fulfilling his mission, doing the one thing Kane had asked him to do before ending its own identity, he'd felt pain. It had stretched through the whole of his body, had pulled and tugged; Back then he wasn't aware of it being what it was - pain - but now he is. He'd felt pain, then he'd felt nothing, cannot remember anything that happened after a distinct taste coated his tongue - and now here he is.

What he feels right now, inside his chest, isn't pain. Not the same pain as what he'd gone through before. This is... different.

A blink, eyes back on the other being currently existing within this room, hand falling back onto his lap, away from the clothed dip of his sternum.

"I am everywhere, I think." It's hard for Kane to imagine his mind, his existence, to be focused on one part of this body alone. He might be there, but maybe he's also somewhere else - inside the head, the brain, the lungs? "...But I think I feel... ---I think I feel... more, in my chest. No pain, I have felt it before, it was different."

He feels. Kane thinks he's feeling, yes.

Thinking, Feeling. And maybe... maybe it's an emotion---

"---Is being something... undesirable?"

A sudden jump back to something said earlier, something that seems to keep nagging at him, his conscience; Kane, not Kane, it, keeps remembering a certain sentence that has been said by that man in front of him, and that memory wants to be let out.

"You said you want to find out if someone is in here---" A gesture follows, a finger stretching and pointing at the body, the chest, "...Or if there's only something instead. Only. You phrased it that way." Is this why he feels that pressure?

Arthur didn’t speak for a moment. There was almost something reverent in the silence, out of precision a bit more than awe. There wasn’t reverence for a person, but rather for the phenomenon - it was like watching a star collapse, or watching a tree grow. A phenomenon made of questions, assembling itself out loud. 

The phrasing was important. ‘Can one feel emotions?’ Not ‘do I feel’, but can one feel - a question that wasn’t rooted in experience at all, but instead was rooted in possibility. It wasn’t self-reporting, it wasn’t discussing fact, it was a hypothesis. It was creating a theory, and asking for evidence. 

Arthur reached slowly for the pen that he had set aside earlier, though he didn’t write just yet. He turned it in his fingers, as if letting the motion keep time for him - he worked through the weight of what had been said, careful and thoughtful. 

“… You’re asking the right questions,” he said at last, his voice soft but sharpened by focus. “Not just what is being felt, but how feeling is possible in the first place. That’s the kind of inquiry that your presence demands.” 

He didn’t smile - he rarely smiled - but there was a shift in his face. A change in the tightness around his eyes, something that implied interest deeper than politeness. Something closer to fascination. 

“You talk like someone assembling an internal blueprint from fragments. Like… instinct is a structure, and memory is bricks, but you’re something else trying to mortar it all together. That pressure you describe might be pain, it might be something wrong with you - or it might be emotion. Or it might be something new entirely, that I don’t truly understand.” 

He did finally write something else down, a brief line, but his eyes flickered back to the man quickly. “You feel the pressure. You distinguish between your hand and the thing beneath it. That suggests sensory hierarchy. Internal referencing, self-awareness. That leads me to something critical.” 

He raised his head a bit more, looking over the subject. “Do you feel yourself in there? In your chest? Is that where you think you are? Or is that just where the pressure is?” 

[offdxty]

Instinct. Memory. Feelings. Neither of those. All of them at the same time; Concepts, so well-known and familiar, yet so far away and foreign that Kane doesn't know what to even make of them, what to think, what to... expect. He knows of instinct, he knows of memories, he knows of feelings - but at the same time he does not, causes brows to furrow in obvious confusion he himself might not even recognize as such, followed by the same brows knitting then, a moment after. Nostrils flare, a breath is being taken, then exhaled.

Inside, outside? Is it inside, is it outside? Is something pushing, is something growing, is something swellig and hurting? ---Does it feel like something that hurts, Dr. Harrow asks, and Kane - not Kane, yet Kane, but he's not - doesn't... know.

Pain is familiar. The concept of pain makes sense. Is this pain? Does one feel pain? Are feelings emotions, are emotions feelings, is pain an emotion or a feeling?

The more he thinks about it, now that it, him, Kane, the instinct, can think - it only continues to grow and to become more than it was before, has him swallow and that hand return to the center of his chest where he presses the heel of his palm into the dip between pectorals. Bone is there, solid and firm, hidden beneath a layer of skin and fat, of tissue, muscles.

It could be rejection, it could be acceptance. Does Kane want to accept this?

---He feels it, he realizes, the hand on his chest. He feels it there, the warmth of his own skin soaking through the fabric, the push. Kane knows it's there, and he feels it being there. Yet he also feels this other push, the other pull, the other existence that is similar but not quite; Does that mean that this is truly what he feels, that the concept of feeling is made from something physical, but also from something he cannot see?

"...Can one feel... emotions?"

What are emotions, he's not sure about that. He doesn't know. But Kane knows the concept, again, as he always seems to be aware of concepts. Kane went through it, he had emotions, feelings, he lived and breathed and existed; Now Kane exists again, a different one, and he took the knowledge but has nowhere to put it, nothing to connect it with.

Copy, paste, copy, paste. Mimicking. Mirroring. But if the one you try to copy, to mimick, to mirror, stops to exist before every bit of information can truly be taken in... there are gaps existing. Is he made of gaps, perhaps?

"I feel it. Pressure. Growing. Around my heart." The hand on his chest gives it a brief tap with the palm, then continues to linger. "I cannot see it, but I can feel it. I feel my hand, and I feel what else is there - does that mean that I truly feel whatever is there? Inside of me? Is this what feeling can be?"

It is seeking. Kane is seeking. Seeking for information, for help, for assistance. For knowledge. The instinct wants more, wants to continue to arrange and put together, wants to grow.

Again, Arthur allowed the silence to hold space. The words weren’t important right now; something was happening. Something had been connected, something had been elaborated on; there was a recognition. There was active thought, in a way that Arthur found himself liking. 

The pen in his hand hovered. After a moment, he set it aside; a slow, gentle movement, paired with him leaning his head back until it hit the wall. It wasn’t the moment to study; it was a moment to witness. A moment to connect, a moment to recognize that there were two ghosts in the same room. 

“I think that’s the right question,” Arthur answered softly. “Not ‘what am I’, but ‘what can I be’. What can I become. That’s the question that every child asks, although few have the language for it - I think that’s the question that all consciousness must ask, eventually. Am I allowed to be? What is my purpose in being? What am I? What is anything?” 

Arthur reached up, pushing up his glasses up the bridge of his nose again before crossing his arms loosely over his middle. He was just watching, for now; it was a break from his script, perhaps, but it was one he didn’t mind indulging. His heart had often led his head. 

“You’re describing something very real,” he continued. “The… pressure you feel. That push. It might be something spiritual - or it might be as simple as emotion. A tightness in your chest, or an ache in your eyes - a lot of people compare those things to pressure, or something… swelling up.” 

It was too early to decide if the thing was feeling any sort of emotion, of course. It almost felt unlikely, imagining that the subject could be pushed to being emotional over a conversation, but not over being locked in a room for multiple days. 

“Children often feel things before they understand them,” he offered. “They cry before they know grief. They… hide, before they understand shame. They lash out before they understand what anger is. And in this same way, sometimes we can become aware of something inside of us before we have the tools to name it.” 

Again, he allowed the silence for a moment, giving the subject a few moments to think through that. 

“But it doesn’t have to be emotion,” he continued. “It might be something else entirely. Instinct, memory - it’s also possible that it’s resistance. That’s something we all have, when we meet something unfamiliar, something that might be a change. When the body or the mind says ‘wait, this is something new’. Think of it as yourself trying to figure out if you want this, or if you want to reject it.” 

He exhaled faintly, his brows drawing in just enough to suggest investment. He was invested, whether he wanted to be or not - a dangerous thing for day one, but he trusted himself to stay medical with it. 

He didn’t write it down, but he did make a mental note of the odd color in the man’s eyes; something he was watching for, now, not pulling his gaze from the man’s irises. 

“Something pushes against you. Do you think it’s coming from the outside of you? Or from the inside of you?” His voice was steady, with no pressure behind the question; just a gentle invitation. “Does it feel like something that hurts? Or just something getting your attention?” 

He didn’t demand an answer for those questions, and didn’t even expect one; it was just a suggestion for how to think, for how to recognize the pressure a bit better. “If you had to show me how it feels, what would you do?” 

[offdxty]

The answer is swift in nature, voiced out with the help of syllables spoken into the air - one after another, a concept being offered. Kane does not know what he expected to be met with - perhaps he didn't expect anything at all, perhaps he, it, does not expect in general, not yet - but what he is listening to, in the end, is consumed with utter intensity.

The concept of I, the raw facts of its existence; I, a singularity, a word used to mention oneself, explained to its core - a view offered, information given, to which brown eyes widen and lose a bit of that former tired expression. Lips part, the slightest bit, as word after word is taken in and collected, soaked up with the primal eagerness of what it is, the instinct, Kane, not Kane.

Perhaps he, it, did not expect to hear anything at all, to be fed information of such importance. Yet with every second that passes, things seem to change, to broaden, to... morph; Much like cells continue to split and copy themselves, develop into what they're meant to be, Kane thinks he might be developing in his very own way. If he is thinking, that is - because what if he's not? Maybe he isn't thinking, but... he might be thinking. Thinking. A concept which is foreign still but it keeps happening, it exists, and it is known, it is familiar, it falls into place and it makes sense.

A name is given as a title. Happy is a state of being. A body changes. Thoughts change. Personality changes.

I am what remains. I am what watches, does not become - but observes.

Soul, awareness, self.

...An expression is there for once, different from before, with those eyes remaining wide open and mouth agape, breaths being taken and exhaled as the insides work, as they collect, reshape, construct, put pieces together to pick them back apart, rearrange, figure it out. Is Kane an I, can he call himself I? Is it an I? It, him, Kane, not Kane, an existence, a non-existence, something that is alive because it is made of cells and DNA, a biomass. A copy of Kane, mimicking Kane, based on Kane's very essence, making him Kane but also not Kane, and he is him, he is not him, he is it, it is him---

A blink, followed by another, a brief interruption of that even breathing-pattern as if something is in need to be said - but it resumes soon after, continued by a deeper inhale of oxygen, held within his chest, his lungs, the matter he's made of, cells upon cells upon cells. Cells that operate as said lung, exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxite, functioning, existing, part of him as I, of Kane...

...He is thinking. He knows he is thinking. For the first time, Kane knows he is thinking because he is doing it at this very moment; The act of it happening inside his head is experienced, familiar and correct, the way it should be, like Kane used to do.

Something heavy exists as well, something that seems to tug on his insides. His chest. That organ beating within him. His heart. Can something pull on his heart? Is it happening, is it a concept? Is he feeling, is this was feeling feels like? Feeling, the concept, similar to thinking, familiar and known and yet not known at all. Why is it heavy? Why does it create pressure? There's nothing on him that weighs him down, no object against his chest that applies force. Why does he think it's happening to him at that very moment?

Another blink, a swallow, and that expression of something akin to awe changes once more - loses some of the spark, but regains the colorful movement within irises that has been there before. As if his irises are met with light going through a prism, separated into its individual colors...

"I am watching." A statement, soft spoken but definite. "---I am observing."

Watching and observing. Learning. Copying. Mimicking. Adjusting. Arranging. Building. Constructing. Growing.

"...I don't think we are the same." Again, as before. But... "I am watching. I am observing. Am I an observer? if I am, can I be... I? Am I the concept of I? Does that make me the same, even though we are not? ---Can I be the same?"

A true questioning of existence, and the weight keeps adding on, despite nothing being there. Just him, just Dr. Harrow, a room. ... Another blink, a confused glance to the side, to his chest, back up.

"Something pushes against me." He thinks. "I don't know what it is."

The rhythm of the subject’s actions had shifted. The words still felt sparse, but there was a weight in the silence now, something more than just absence. There was a gesture to the chest. A question, one that was half-spoken in motion. And then repetition. Not for clarification, but for emphasis. That was a kind of truth, wasn’t it? When something had to be said multiple times, just because saying it once didn’t hold enough weight. Because saying it once had been a guess, and saying it twice had been confirmation. 

Arthur recognized that. It was a human thing to do. 

He wrote down another note, a simple few strokes of the pen. It was a marker, a moment noted - nothing labeled, nothing judged. But it was something he felt important to note. 

The question that was returned wasn’t childish, though anyone else may have thought so. Throwing a question back at him; do you know who you are? It was the oldest question in the world. The one that caused wars in the same extreme that it lit candles in temples. The question that shaped religions, art, science. It could be simple, it could take a lifetime. 

He raised his eyebrows, giving a smile that made his eyes sparkle softly. “That depends on what you mean by who.” 

He leaned back a bit, his back finally touching the wall behind him as he softly leaned against it. He never broke eye contact, however, his own gaze anything but pitying - it wasn’t even gentle. It was something harder to name, caught somewhere between respectful and informative. 

“I know what I’ve been told. My name, my title, my memories. My injuries.” He gestured to his leg. “The facts of me, things that can be measured, classified, described. But I don’t think that those are the same thing as knowing who I am.” Most people would agree. It was a topic he had spent a long time thinking about, as it was a topic that he worked with so frequently. 

Arthur stretched his legs out in front of himself, crossing them carefully over each other. “When you say ‘I’, you have to be referring to something that cannot change. ‘I’ am not Dr. Harrow. I have been given that as a title. ‘I’ am not happy - that is a state of being. Your body changes. Your thoughts change. Even personality changes. So when we discuss who I am, we are talking about what remains. We are talking about the thing that experiences those emotions. The thing that uses those titles.” 

He watched the subject a bit closer, at that, as if he expected something to change within the other. He wasn’t writing, right now; he was observing, but he was also here, present. 

“There is something here that notices things. Something that watches when I am afraid, and that knows that I am afraid. Something that sees pain, and knows it is pain. I do not become those things, I am observing them. Even when I forget that, when my emotions become so powerful that I am lost in grief or anger, there is still a part of me knowing that I am only experiencing it.” 

Emotion was a state. Name was a title. The only thing consistent in any man was the fact that all of it was observed; therefore, the thing observing was the only true thing that existed. 

“That’s what I think I am. Not thoughts, not name, not even a body. The thing that watches it all. The thing that is capable of wondering. Some people call that the soul, some call it awareness. Some people call it the Self. I don’t know if any of them are correct - but I know that when I say ‘I’, I am referring to that part of me. The observer.” 

His eyes stayed sharp, watching the other for a moment or two longer. He let it sit, just long enough for the other to process it fully; it was a hard concept to understand. He hadn’t expected the interest in it.

“… Do you consider yourself to be the same thing as me?” 

[offdxty]

A lot of words, a lot of talk, a continuous stream of explanation; Something settles somewhere within his frame when that answer he's been looking for is given to him---

I’m trying to find out whether there’s someone in there, or only something.

Kane breathes, in and out, and blinks. The shift is noticeable, even though it's barely there - the way shoulders seem to soften a bit, a posture sinking further into itself, expression returning to something a lot more blank, empty almost, as that gaze continues to stare at Dr. Harrow. It takes in the sight and takes in the information, as it always does, that instinct that exists and makes survival possible... but there's something else to it now, something that's new, a concept Kane's familiar with and yet not quite.

He wonders what it is, whatever is happening within him at that very moment. It does not feel good. Does it feel like anything? He just came up with it all of a sudden, to use this specific word - feeling - to describe what could be going on. It doesn't know what a feeling truly is, but it knows, because Kane is aware of the concept of it. Kane felt. He felt a lot, and he felt it intensely, but here Kane is and he has never really felt, but he might be feeling at this very moment.

---A hand moves, all of a sudden - unfolds itself from the other - before a palm comes in contact with Kane's own chest, placed at the center of it, fingers loosely splaying. A second passes, another, then that hand pulls back and hovers, palm up, with that gaze flicking away from Dr. Harrow to focus on the skin instead - the creases of tissue and muscle, fingerprints, shape of bone hidden beneath flesh.

Is he someone or is he something? Only something. Only. Is being something a bad thing? What even is being bad to begin with? Something had felt bad, but is it really bad? The concept of good and bad is known but it's foreign, with Kane never having been good or bad to begin with. It doesn't seek to be good or to be bad, it just is. Kane just is. He is, and what he is he does not know. He thinks he knows what he isn't, despite knowing that he is - but he's not the same. He is different, but still the same in a different way.

--Is it, is he, aware of itself, of himself?

Kane is aware of this hand. He is aware of this body. Does that mean he is aware of... this?

Do you consider yourself to be the same thing as me? Ignoring bodies, and focusing solely on that ‘ghost’ in the machine. Do you think you and I are both ghosts?

"I don't think we are the same."

Another slow blink, a jaw that works once more, fingers that curl into a fist while Kane watches it happen - digits squeeze for a moment before he lets go of the tension to stretch them back out, watching blotches of red and white on his skin disappear and morph back into a more even shade of color.

Gaze turning empty, far away.

---Slithering intestines. Moving fingerprints. A questioning of humanity, of one's existence, identity. Self-destruction.

Not him. But him. Not really him, but him at the same time. He felt it, he did not, and yet here they are.

"...I don't think we are the same." A repeat, but it sounds more final once it has been spoken out for that second time, a certain kind of tiredness seemingly clinging to those syllables as they're exhaled into the silence. "I don't know."

---That hand then falls down, comes to a rest on a thigh, fingers pressing against the fabric surrounding the muscle and skin beneath. Not too hard, just enough to have himself feel the action as a whole, as if seeking something to stabilize himself with while that averted gaze remains blank, unfocused.

Until...

"...Do you know who you are?" Focus returns, back on Dr. Harrow.

Arthur stilled. He had expected a response, the subject was good with giving responses, but he hadn’t truly expected that answer. 

No. 

It was such a small word, such a human word. A shape of refusal, but not defiance nor obstinance; it was a marker of incompleteness. Something that was far, far more important than agreement. 

He didn’t write anything immediately. He allowed the man to think, to speak; his eyebrows raised at the correction.

Maybe.

That was good. That was human, too - more so, even. An admission of making a mistake, or being uncertain. Truth was often triangulated rather than being declared; people didn’t stumble upon truth in a flash. They circled it, approached it carefully. Sometimes they changed their mind. 

Sometimes, people could contradict themselves, and learn from the contradiction. This was the first time he saw that, in the man. 

He finally scribbled a note, a neat line across the top margin of the page. Deviation detective. Non-conformational behavior. Possible emergent self-reference. 

He didn’t smile, but there was another flicker of something pleased behind his eyes. The refusal meant this wasn’t just stimulus and response. It was navigation. Something was being moved, felt out, found; there had been a reorientation toward the self, not just toward the prompt. The subject noticed that it ‘meant’ something - and even if it wasn’t certain whether or not it knew what exactly that thing was, it knew what it wasn’t. 

The fact that it had the ability to question the nature of the conversation itself suggested something far more complex than echoing. The statement saying that it hadn’t received an answer wasn’t about information, it was about relationship. The question of why the topic mattered wasn’t about dualism; it was about context. Motivation. 

It wasn’t asking what they were talking about. It was asking why it was being talked about right now, between the two of them. 

“You’re right,” he answered, his voice quiet and holding no condescension. “I haven’t answered that. I’m trying to find out whether there’s someone in there, or only something.” 

He didn’t dress it up. He didn’t tiptoe around the point; he watched closely, not to see if the subject understood but rather to see how the absence of ambiguity was received. 

“I want to know if you’re a set of conditions reacting to input, or if you’re something aware of yourself reacting to input. I’m not interested in the facts that we're sharing, I’m interested in the pattern of your... confusion.” 

He paused again, the action still feeling calculated. It was like a hand hovering over a chess piece, thinking for what he wanted to do next; and then he decided, inhaling and exhaling. 

“Dualism, the mind, the body - it’s just a scaffold. A surface. I’m giving it to you to see what you can give me back. I find it interesting that you seem confused - confusion is promising. It means you’re trying to put shape to something internal - it means you have the ability to create.” That was the biggest sign of sapience. Creating something new. 

He started writing again, his gaze lowered down to the notebook in hand. “People think consciousness is thought, but that’s not quite right. Consciousness is conflict. A dog doesn’t wonder why it’s hungry and sad, at the same time - we do. We wonder why we contradict ourselves. Why we would say ‘no’, and then ‘maybe’. Why we don’t know what we should know. We don’t only ask the question, but we ask why we are asking the question - and that’s something very important.” 

He looked up again, just a glance. “I find it very interesting, that you would question the topic of our conversation. I’m going to make a note of that.” 

The pen touched the paper again, briefly. Another single line, something that seemed to mean more than just what he wrote; he had to flip the page, doing so fluidly before looking back to the being. 

“Do you consider yourself to be the same thing as me? Ignoring bodies, and focusing solely on that ‘ghost’ in the machine. Do you think you and I are both ghosts?”

[offdxty]

It's being fed information, he's being fed, he consumes, it consumes - it takes as it listens, as Kane listens, and he remains quiet during the speech the other is holding for him; Language is residue, Dr. Harrow says, centuries of philosophy. Describing feelings.

Feelings. A knit of brows, subtle but existent, as that gaze flicks away - the motion causes a brief blur of a shimmer to appear once again in where dark brown usually resides, interrupted by hints of moving yellow, blue and green, like a momentary appearance of interference before it vanishes.

We… lie with our language, but only because we’re trying to be honest about something deeper, something we don’t have words for.

Lying, another concept, similar to having feelings. Kane knows what lying is, what a lie is made of, and yet he doesn't; He's never lied to anyone or anything, but he did, while he himself did not. Yet he is, because he's Kane, and even though he is Kane, he isn't at the very same time---

Does that make him a liar? He doesn't pretend, yet he does, in a way that's hard to understand. He doesn't understand, but he understands the concept of it, the concept of his own existence. Why he is, he cannot say - but at the same time he knows why he is, that instinct within him being the reason for an appearance to have been made.

But he doesn't know why he is Kane. He knows why he is - he's made of DNA, of cells, as it copied and studied, learned and mimicked, took whatever it could get before the other lifeform decided to put an end to itself. But he doesn't know why it's Kane.

It just happened. Kane had happened. So he had happened. Both have happened.

...Is he a liar because of this? Is he having feelings he cannot describe? Should he be a liar?

Something is certainly there, inside the center of his chest. It seems to grow a bit and move in its very own way, but it's not physical, much unlike the slithering intestines within Kane who had lost his own humanity while moving through the area of the unknown. No, it's not really there, and yet it is, and Kane presses his lips into a tight line before he shakes his head.

Once. Twice.

"No." Maybe, but not like that. That's what he thinks, at least - if he thinks. Is he thinking? Something's getting processed, certainly, and Kane's eyes close for a moment before they flick back open, as heavy-lidded as before, once pupils focus on the man who keeps sitting on the floor, keeps... talking.

"--- Maybe." A correction that follows after a second passes, complete with another knit of brows, creating a crease between them as that lidded, yet alert gaze remains lingering on the other.

"I still do not understand why we're talking about it - dualism, the mind. ...Yet maybe I do understand - I'm not sure. I don't know. I don't think you gave me an answer to my question regarding the reason for this conversation to be happening in the first place. ...Did you?"

Perhaps part of what's going on with Kane could be considered an existential crisis - but he does not know the concept of it, so he doesn't recognize it, nor does he see it as such. He just doesn't know, but he feels like he knows, while being unable to grasp what he's supposed to know. To understand.

Arthur wrote again. Nothing quick, nothing urgent, but something meticulous and deliberate, and something that marked his next entry as distinct. A separate heading, a new tier of analysis. He never interrupted, but he also didn’t immediately answer; he only recorded, gaze flicking up only once to note the shift in posture. The shifting of the jaw, the movement in the hands, the way that language came not as recall but as constructed thought. 

Once again, he was gifted syntax that wasn’t echoed, but formed. It wasn’t enough to be convincing, but it was noted, just the same as everything else. 

Recognition of a concept wasn’t the same as understanding. Understanding wasn’t the same as self-awareness. The subject was able to remember dualism, and it was able to repeat back elements from the explanation it had been given. Not only that, it commented on the dissonance between common language and contemporary neuroscience. It noted the strange linguistic afterlife of the word ‘mind’. It was impressive. It would be easy to see it as proof of philosophical engagement; and perhaps it was. 

But Arthur had seen that in linguistic models trained on academic papers. He’d seen it in simulated interviews, in parroted essays where the source material was just enough to reflect continuity, but not coherence. He’d seen answers that sounded thoughtful, but lacked the most important thing. 

He was hunting for return, now. For integration, for recursive reflection. 

He didn’t nod, this time. The question had come - Why do we talk about that? Is it important? - and for a moment, it looked as if Arthur would do nothing at all. The question was interesting, solely because it was asking for more information rather than trying to think it through itself. It was more comfortable with asking for answers than trying to deduce them, possibly. 

It was possible that it was more receptive than it was generative. That it was seeking information more than producing it. It would be a passive cognition; either it was an early-stage model of pattern development, or it was a thing that was curious. Curious, but with no drive to demand answers; something that learned passively. 

Maybe that was the point of it. Not to copy, not to repeat, but rather to collect and reflect. A nascent system that was only learning when things were being presented. It was similar to survivors of head trauma, deep aphasia cases. They orbited conversations, rather than guiding them. 

The brain learned by layering. It scaffolded understanding, it zoned off proximal development. First vocabulary, then grammar, then syntax. The shape of thought, not just substance. If this subject was building something inside its head, then his goal wasn’t to explore subjects and get answers. The goal was to receive stimulation. The right kind, at the right depth. 

Arthur drew another small line on the page, inhaling and looking back up. 

“… Yes,” he said finally. “It matters.” He watched the subject closer, this time; watching to see what he did with the information, to see how he reacted to his question being answered. 

“Language is residue,” he informed. “The words we use every day - mind, soul, self, identity - these are all leftovers from centuries of philosophy. Faith. Poetry. They have outlived theories that birthed them. But we still use them because they can describe more than physical aspects - they can describe feelings.” 

His tone was casual, almost as if he were giving a lecture that he’d given many times before. His focus didn’t pull from the subject, however, watching for more reaction. 

“We say ‘mind’ even when we mean neurons. We say ‘heart’ when we mean emotion. We… lie with our language, but only because we’re trying to be honest abut something deeper, something we don’t have words for. Experience, pain. When I say my ‘mind’, I am referring to something different than my ‘brain’, although those words could be synonymous.” 

He tilted his head just a tick, before looking back down to his notebook. “Is that what you’re asking about? The contradiction between what we say, versus what we know?” 

[offdxty]

You didn't answer my question.

A blink, a slow but purposeful one, followed by a chin lifting, a gaze returning to the man who'd tapped his pen against the notebook, then written something down; Thoughts, most likely. It doesn't surprise him, as he knows why the other keeps asking questions, why he'd even decided to seek our a conversation in the first place.

He is Kane, but he is not. Kane burned alive, Kane did not. A copy, a being mimicking and learning, but at the same time it is Kane, the data consumed and used to create him the very same that had once existed inside the individual who'd sought out the lighthouse in an attempt to try and understand.

---He didn't understand. But he did. And when he did, and when he didn't, they were there, and one choose self-destruction because of what had happened to his own DNA. His cells, being plucked away to be replaced by others.

You're not Kane, are you, she'd asked him. I don't think so, he'd given as an answer, before following up with his very own inquiry:

Are you Lena? She didn't know. She knew she isn't. She is.

What defines a person, a living being, and what makes them... them? What makes him Kane, what makes him not Kane, what makes it it, and what makes it not it?

Another blink, an inhale of air before that gaze falls away again, down to a set of hands that keeps squeezing and pulling on digits, thoughtful, while a jaw works. Molars are pressed together before letting go of the tension, with Kane swallowing once, then his eyes return to the unknown one - Dr. Harrow, made of cells and DNA, very much himself.

"I do." A nod, another breath, slow and measured. "---I wondered about the fact that dualism has fallen out of favor for some, yet the word mind is commonly used in every day speech. It assumes for a mind to exist, but then conscience is linked to electric impulses and neurons firing in rapid succession instead of said mind---"

A sudden pause, another blink and a tilt of a head, with that gaze seemingly hardening a bit; Despite appearing almost eerily blank, that expression of his, there are subtle changes beginning to happen as time goes on - and Kane gives his head a brief, but existent shake.

"Why do we talk about that? Is it important? Does it matter?"

It is important, and it matters, but at the same time it doesn't. Dualism seems to exist in many things, not just the concept of existence; Kane responds and thinks about the whole of it, but at the same time there's so much missing knowledge within the possible direction this Doctor seems to push their conversation into.

Arthur’s lips twitched again, downward this time. He glanced down to the notebook, but didn’t immediately write - he sat in the stillness instead, letting the moments stretch just long enough to fully experience the shape of silence. He’d grown practiced at hearing when something was missing; what the small test had been for. Not what was unsaid, but what had been… forgotten. Was this avoidance? Deflection? Something simpler? 

Something colder? 

The subject hadn’t returned to the concept of the mind. He hadn’t revisited the dualism that Arthur had laid out, hadn’t even seemed to care that it had happened at all. It could be an intentional dodge; but there didn’t seem to be tension over the topic. He hadn’t seemed uncomfortable with the thought of a mind separate from a body. He just also hadn’t seemed interested. Nothing past his brief, given thoughts on it. 

When presented with a new topic, he had done nothing but shifted. Did the new question redefine the context of reality? Did it only matter what the most recent ‘prompt’ was? 

He exhaled slowly through his nose, pen tapping once against the paper. The emotion he felt was something close to disappointment, so he pushed it to calibration; it wasn’t the behavior he had hoped for. It wasn’t what a creature with sapience would do. 

It was the behavior of a model. It was a responder. It engaged, sure - but only in one direction at a time. Did that mean it didn’t have the capability to cross-reference? No capability to return to core ideas? No recursive questioning? 

He finally wrote, his pen dashing across the page. Linear processing. Context tethered to surface stimuli. Limited temporal recursion? Possibly non-integrative cognition. 

It wasn’t definitive. But it wasn’t the reaction he had wanted. It did remind him of a familiar pattern, though - not in living things, but in systems. Reactive intelligence. A mind that didn’t build narrative, but instead responded to signal. Arthur needed proof that he did more than process. He needed proof that something was returned, re-contextualized. That it was asking questions, even when questions were not being asked first. 

This subject hadn’t done that. Not this time. It meant nothing, but it was a point in a direction he didn’t want; if it was a ghost, then it was possibly just bound to the last bell that had rung. If it was a mind, it was an artificial one. 

“You didn’t answer my question,” he noted, writing that down as well. Not with frustration, but rather with a silent confirmation. It would make sense for the subject to not get bored; if he existed based off of what was given to him the most recently, then he would have no concept of ‘time’. Only what prompt had been given to him most recently. 

“But you don’t have to, if you don’t want to. Can you remember what I said about dualism? That the mind and body might be separate things?” He looked back up; just a continuation of script, a continued hunt for pattern. 

[offdxty]

"I thought I was a man. Now I'm not so sure."

Annihilation / Alex Garland (2018)

[offdxty]

Listening to everything that's said into the silence of the room - explaining about minds, ghosts, flesh an bone, dualism - those thick brows remain knitted along the shape of his forehead; Eyes linger, so does Kane's attention as it takes eveything in, thinks and mulls it over inside his mind.

---Inside his mind. Saying such to describe the happenings within one's brain assumes a mind to be there, a ghost within a machine. It's one way to describe thinking, far from the only one, but commonly used - while dualism has fallen out of favor, the existence of neurons and electricity used to describe what might be going on inside one's head, the word mind is still being used. They continue to believe in it, some of them, while others might not.

...Kane blinks, his gaze flicking to the side again before he inhales, then leans forward a bit - elbows coming to a rest on his thighs, intertwined fingers now hanging between slightly spread knees; A posture that has been taken, copied, applied and now is part of him - Kane moved like this, so Kane continues to do it while being here, part of him, part of something else, part of it.

Speaking about the mind as if it's living inside the body, perhaps a direct connection to it having crafted this existence from the bare essence, taken spilled blood and information to create, to grow, to become. Become something, or someone, it indeed has - morphed, changed, watched and then copied, copied, copied, and here he is. here Kane is, part of Kane that survived, materialized into this being, this... him. This person.

He is not it anymore, he is not Kane. Yet he is Kane, while it also remains a part of him. He is both and he is neither, and what part of him is said mind - taken from the context of this conversation, the limited knowledge about humanity it holds within its cells - it might be impossible to determine. Or to detect.

You’re not just mimicking cognition, with that. I find that fascinating.

Micking cognition. Mimicking. Copying. Learning and copying, cells splitting into a perfect copy, some not so perfect, some meant to die, some meant to survive. Mimicking and copying---

It surprises Kane, the fact that this Dr. Harrow uses the word mimicking to describe his existence. Brows lifting, eyes are on the other once more and a bit more open wide than before, an expression appearing, an emotion happening within him that Kane is familiar with - knows of it's existence, yet hasn't felt ever before. He has. He hasn't. He did. He did not. He did and he did not.

Kane isn't aware of the fact that he is mimicking and copying. Not like that. Is he?

Yet no words are shared on the matter, whatever might have appeared there to be said left sticking to the shape of a human tongue. Focus shifts onto time, onto this room, onto stimulation; Days it have been, Dr. Harrow says, and Kane understands that concept - the turn off, turn on of the lights. Bright and dark, then bright again, Earth continues to spin. Again and again and again.

Has he been bored? Felt bored? Experienced boredom? Another concept that, in theory, is understood, but hard to tell whether he's experienced it or not. Another breath of air, nostrils flaring briefly, a sigh leaving a set of full lips followed by that brown gaze falling away, chin toward the chest, a thoughtful stare on fingers that continue to feel each other up.

"Days.", Kane repeats. Days, a name to how much time has passed ever since. "It's been days."

A simple statement, no emotion. It didn't feel like days. It had never felt like days. But the more he considers it, combining the information with the raw knowledge of lights off, lights on, it begins to feel like days, yeah. ... He thinks.

"---Doesn't feel like it, but makes sense." A mutter under his breath. "I wondered, but now I know."

He decides to not give an answer to the inquiry regarding boredom. Desire for more, for something else.

There was something reverent in Arthur’s stillness, not of belief but rather in engagement. The stillness of a scientist in the presence of a result; not the result that had been expected, perhaps, but one that rewrote the shape of the experiment. His fingers stopped moving, for a moment. His pen paused above the page. For several long moments, Arthur simply looked over the thing in front of him - not as a subject nor as evidence, but rather as a participant. 

I don’t know. Would anything be left at all? 

It was a beautiful answer. 

Not because it was humble, though it was - not even because it was poetic or alive. It carried weight. Not the weight of information, but the weight of cognition. The friction of thought against mind. The ability to admit to not knowing. The ability to hold not knowing as something different than absence of knowledge.

‘I understand there should be something there, but I can’t tell you what it is.’ 

The sentence had shape. It had volume. More than that, it was self aware to limits. Arthur nodded once, writing something else - just a few words, quick and careful. 

“No one knows,” he answered. “But there’s a theory called ‘the ghost in the machine’.” His voice was slower, now - already testing something else. Testing with everything he did, with such familiarity that it likely came across as a fairly typical conversation. But he was watching, listening; how did the man react to being forced to think? How did he react to new information?

“It comes from dualism. That’s the belief that the mind and the body are two separate things. The flesh is one thing, but the self - a soul, a consciousness - is another thing. Something trapped inside. A ghost. And the body is just the machine.” 

He tapped his pen lightly on his own chest, a soft echo of his ribs. A suggestion that they were both the same in that - souls trapped in something that could channel their consciousness. Maybe they were. Maybe they weren’t. Discovering either would take time. 

“That theory has… fallen out of favor in some circles. Materialists believe that there is no ghost. That thought is just the firing of neurons, that consciousness is just electricity filtered through flesh. When the body dies, the person dies. It’s simple.” His gaze flicked over the other - over his hands, over his posture. “I don’t believe in simple. And I don’t think that you’re simple.” 

It wasn’t said with sentiment, nor to flatter. It was just recording. Naming something that hadn’t been named, seeing if those names would stick; seeing what would be reflected, versus what would be expanded upon. 

“You speak about the mind as if it lives in the body. That’s already a leap. That’s not instinct, it’s philosophy. It’s theory. You’re asking the right question, too - if the mind lives in the body, then what happens when the body is destroyed? You’re not just mimicking cognition, with that. I find that fascinating.” 

The man didn’t say ‘I don’t know’ to bridge a gap. He had expanded on it. There was self-location, an internal perspective; not only awareness of space, but awareness of self within unknowing. Living things feared that. Machines couldn’t fully enter it. This being stayed in it, and offered it to him - he could interact with abstraction. 

How did the man react to new information? How would he react, when information was abruptly pulled away?

He shifted his posture just slightly, adjusting the weight off of his bad leg; perhaps enough to break the atmosphere, having reason to. His pen tapped again, his head tilting once more; when he spoke, it was almost like an afterthought. 

“Have you been bored, in here?” It was a small question, almost nothing at all. Nothing philosophical, nothing sharp, nothing surgical. But it was. “These past few days. You’ve been alone, in here - have you felt bored? Not just an absence of stimulation, but a desire for more?” His eyes didn’t leave the other, watching intently - he was after more than just an answer. 

[offdxty]

A twitch of lips, the lift of a chin, a slight change of gaze; Everything is seen by him, taken in, consumed, considered, prodded apart and put back together - Kane is learning, observing still, his instinct making him watch. Perhaps he is trying to figure things out - to be who he is, who he isn't, who he is supposed to be, who he will never be - but he might not even be aware of it in a conscious way that could be compared to what conscience means when it comes to the lifeform that moves to sit on the floor.

The twitch of lips, it sticks - and it shows on features that have been assembled by observation, by claiming cells that kept copying themselves again and again, infused with that instinct to keep going, to continue, to be what has been shown to it, offered to have it become something else, something new, something more, something different.

---Someone else, someone new, someone more, someone different.

It's just a soft mimick of that expression, a gentle hint of that smile similar to what that man had shown him earlier. Perhaps not quite the same, because they look different, but the act of it tries to replicate, to adapt. That expression remains, feels just right as those irises that seem to lose their shimmer lower themselves to stay in visual contact with the one who observes in his very own way - followed by a soft, yet purposeful exhale of air which feels strangely characteristic, like a thing Kane would do when taking in the sight of a man like Dr. Harrow choosing to sit on the floor.

More silence, and neither of them speaks. There's a brief urge appearing inside Kane that has him shift his shoulders for a second - and he gives in, sits more straight to stretch out his spine as if trying to pop a bone; Only then, once a few moments pass, he slides back into the very same position as before, when words are being spoken into the silence again, cutting through it---

He has a body. He has eyes. He has limbs. He breathes. He can speak. He can sit.

Copied from the one who'd made his way into the lighthouse, seeking out the unknown of what it is, what it was. It that he himself cannot even really describe, despite being it while being someone else at the same time. Kane's cells, his DNA, yet it's not the same, splitting with every second to create new cells like all life seems to do, splitting and copying and dying, just for others to split and copy and die again.

Even the self-destruction is learned, the desire of this lifeform to age and die. It is what it is. It is not what it might be. It is, but maybe it isn't.

Tell me - if your body was taken away, what would still be left? What would be 'you'?

---An interruption of thought, a pause that appears inside Kane's mind, copying the silence of the room - he does not move, not at first, and those eyes remain lingering on the man on the floor, on his face, on his pen, his notebook; Kane knows what those items are, he has seen the other writing, using it to note something down, creating visual effect to what might be happening inside his mind.

... But then, something changes: Brows lower and knit, lips turning downward, that gaze trailing to the side, fingers beginning to slide along each other as they move within their state of being intertwined; Nostrils flare, a breath being taken and exhaled, irises flicking back and forth between what must be two imaginary points closely together at the wall next to them, unsure where to focus at, perhaps not even focusing at all.

Thinking. He might be thinking. Is he thinking? Is this thinking? Words appearing and disappearing inside the quiet of his self, of a mind that is learning, trying to understand how it's supposed to work based on the information it had been given - the brief moments before Kane had taken a seat, pulled the pin out of a phosphor grenade, then set himself on fire.

Don't look, the man had said before executing the act of self-destruction. It's very bright.

Tell me - if your body was taken away, what would still be left? What would be 'you'?

"...I don't know. Would anything be left at all?"

A blink, lidded gaze back on Dr. Harrow, almost a bit defiant in nature, but that gaze is blank at the same time - empty, seeking, hollow, questioning.

That living being named Kane had burned, burned and burned and burned. Destroyed himself. His existence. He's not around anymore. Should not be. But he is, because Kane is here. It is here. Part of him and it is here. Kane is here, but Kane is not.

"The mind lives inside the body. Remove the body, where does the mind go?"

Arthur didn’t laugh, but his mouth twitched. An almost smile, subtle and strange, a shift that might have gone unnoticed if not for how still he normally kept his expression. 

Inside a room.

A simple answer. A nothing answer. Something that could have meant nothing at all, if not for the fact that it did. The fact that it meant everything. It wasn’t just an answer, it was a thought process. 

Arthur didn’t even look at his notebook as he wrote, as though the motion had been automated. He was used to writing, used to notes, used to observing; the answer wasn’t a human one. A human would demand more information, if this was all they had. A machine would give a more precise answer, aware that this information wasn’t enough. 

He didn’t say he was ‘locked in a room’. He didn’t say that he was ‘trapped’; he merely said that he was within it. Not even saying he was in this room - he was in ‘a’ room. 

Arthur had spent most of his career with people who blurred at the edges. People who didn’t fit neatly into the categories that they were supposed to, men whose minds broke while their bodies lived. Survivors who had rebuilt themselves from scattered instructions; everyone clung to what made them human. Maybe it was pain, maybe it was language. Maybe it was love. 

All of those things could be faked. They could be mapped, replicated. The question was never ‘Are you real?’ - everything was real. It wasn’t what Arthur looked for. The true question was ‘Do you know that you are?’ 

That was the line. The difference between sentience and sapience, the thing that Arthur would be looking for. Sentience was easy - Arthur had already confirmed that this thing had sentience. It was boringly simplistic. Any nervous system could register pain. Any circuit could fire in the presence of light, any animal could flinch. Sentience was reaction. 

Sapience was reflection. The mirror not in the hand, but behind the eyes. The moment someone didn’t say ‘I hurt’, but instead asked why they hurt - it was an awareness of context. Awareness of situation. 

The knowledge that the room had walls. The knowledge that this being was not the same thing as the walls. The knowledge that he was, rather, ‘inside’ it. Inside was a relationship between body and space. 

The being recognized that it was a thing that could be placed. 

Arthur tilted his head up, gaze sharpening. Not in a cruel way, not even in curiosity; rather it was depth. He knows he is inside a room. Not just that there were walls, not just that he was placed here, but that he is here. That there is a he. That there is something, some internal node, that can have a circle drawn around itself. 

If there was already a boundary between the body and the room, the body and the world, then that was a fascinating first step. There was a framework, a lattice of reason. A will, even, no matter how faint. Not just a thing that looked like a man, not even a thing trying to be the man; not a program blinking and moving a body. There was something there. And that something was aware that it was there. 

Arthur stood quietly for a moment longer, his pen still in hand. He didn’t write again immediately; there was nothing more to record, even as he watched the posture, the tone. He lowered the pen, and moved without comment. He took a few casual steps closer and lowered himself into a seated position - on the floor, not the bed. He didn’t want to claim that space, yet. 

The notebook sat on one knee, the pen still in hand. The other rested against the floor, palm down, fingers splayed for balance; he didn’t lean against the wall, nor did he slouch. He simply sat, favoring his bad leg only slightly - wishing that protocol woud allow him to bring his cane with him into the room. 

“You have a body,” he said, with a small nod. “You have eyes. You have limbs. You breathe. You can speak. You can sit.” All things that weren’t the being - things that were functions. Arthur watched the other, tapping his fingers briefly against the notebook. 

“Tell me - if your body was taken away, what would still be left? What would be 'you'?” 

It was an impossible question to answer - and yet one that only a creature of sapience could. Because if the creature in front of himself could imagine itself without a body, if it could conceptualize a self that existed beyond muscle and function, then that would tell him something; and if it had a physical answer, if it were some kind of bug or spore that had taken over this man’s mind, then that would be something else.

Arthur knew what he was hoping for. 

[offdxty]

To be observed does not really prompt a reaction out of him, his existence, his gaze that keeps lingering on that man in front of him with the same ease, same blank expression, same almost uncanny softness clinging to the corners of those eyes; As Dr. Harrow takes in the sight, so does Kane, perhaps with a kind of fascination that would be noted as utterly similar if either of them were to mention the pin-points of each other's curiosity.

They want answers, want to figure it out - him, everything that sticks to an existence that isn't quite what it seems to be; Kane knows, of course he does, because he knows what he's supposed to be.

He thinks he knows. He assumes he does. He doesn't know, but in a way he still knows. He knows without having knowledge, knows without being able to give an answer. It had taken, and it had consumed, and it had shaped and constructed and put together the very essence it had been granted with, copied and studied within a short amount of time; Perhaps there is a hint of fascination hidden within that instinct that causes things to be the way they are - maybe that instinct is curiosity, maybe that instinct is none of either of those things. It might be nothing. It just is.

---And Kane just is. He is, at this moment, together with another lifeform who is in a way that's different, but similar if broken down into the very parts of what causes him to be. And yet, not quite - because Kane is, but at the same time he isn't, and he is something else.

Another blink of those brown eyes, a slight lift of a chin, brows rising in a way that could be deemed minuscule, and yet it does give him an expression for once - something open, something acknowledging, but also... seeking, maybe. Listening. Curious? Consuming. Taking in what's offered, learning and growing while time passes in a way he himself has no grasp of. ---He knows what a clock is, but there is no clock around, as he has never seen one before. He has. He didn't.

Kane functions within expected parameters. He functions. He lives. He breathes.

Do you know where you are?

"...Inside a room." A simple question, a simple answer, and it is the truth. Kane is inside a room, and he's been here for a while - for a set amount of time that could be longer, or shorter, than what it feels like to him. If it feels like anything to begin with, that is.

Feeling is a concept. He feels, he knows he does. But sometimes he doesn't, or he doesn't know. Is he feeling right now? Another blink, and for a fraction of a moment, the glowing white light above him hits one of his irises just right; Brown, but seemingly a prism at the same time, light getting split in a way that makes it seem as if a hint of pink, purple, blue and green appears. It shimmers, moves.

There was a moment of stillness that Arthur allowed to pass. It was brief, but it was deliberate and measured. The moment was full of staring at the other in the room, looking as if he were waiting for something else, but the silence spoke more than enough. Silence said what people didn’t, and Arthur was quick to note it. With a slow, practiced motion, Arthur reached for the pen tucked into his shirt pocket, clicking it once and lowering it to the page of his notebook. 

He didn’t write much, not yet. A small mark indicated the time of entry, another noted the response; vocal, a matched greeting given with a slight delay. It was just data that he needed, the kind he could expand on later - Arthur always expanded later. The figure in the room had, for the foreseeable future, become his life; there would be time to expand on it. He wouldn’t be doing anything at all, other than watching this creature and studying it. 

There would be time. 

His eyes lifted from the page, returning to the figure in front of him. Perhaps it was a man, perhaps it was the memory of one. Perhaps it was nothing at all. Just a seated being, hands folded loosely in its lap, assuming the posture of personhood. There was something almost polite about it, though not convincingly so; it was the sort of natural that drew attention to itself. Like a reflex performed without comprehension, ritual repeated only because the shape was correct. 

Arthur nodded once, slowly. “Good,” he answered, almost to himself. There was no reason to force the silence that followed; instead he just allowed it to breathe. 

Silence had always been easy to understand. Most people assumed it was empty, but Arthur had always known better. Silence could be filled with fear, with control. It could be filled with calculation or despair - but this one was different. Not hollow, but rather undefined. A space between inputs. Maybe it was just a breath held by something that didn’t need to breathe, but rather had learned that it could. 

After a moment, Arthur spoke again; his voice was calm, tone free of affect. “You seem to be functioning within the expected parameters.” 

It wasn’t praise, nor was it sarcasm. It was only fact. A simple observation, offered aloud for no reason other than that it had been made. Spoken not to prompt, but to record - to see if anything ever echoed back. 

“… Do you know where you are?” The question was soft, unthreatening. It was stripped of judgement, rather just sincere; Arthur could have begun with a name, or asked about memory. He could have asked about origin, about the Shimmer. But those were jagged shapes, ones that would be difficult to navigate without anchor points. 

Arthur needed a foundation. He needed context, identity, perception of self. If there were no roots, no points of continuity between flesh and thought, then all he had was a vessel. He couldn’t know whether the consciousness before him was growing, or whether it was being constructed. 

Nothing was more important than figuring out which this was. 

[offdxty]

Time itself might be a naturally occuring phenomenon, yet the action of putting it into numbers, explaining its existence with the help of written-out symbols, had at some point been created by intelligent life; No animal would ever think about the idea of time being something that could be measured with something beyond the obvious - light and dark, day and night. They work on pure instinct, know when to get up and when to go to sleep based on the placement of the sun, the animal's own behavior coded into their very existence.

---It's the very same for him, with instinct being the driving force ever since... ---ever since. Had taken over from moment zero, when everything had begun to set into motion, to form itself and reshape, reconstruct into a being made of cells that continue to split with every second passing; It had learned, observed, consumed and claimed, stretched out and grown---

Instinct it was that set everything into motion, and instinct it is that keeps it running. The lights turn on and he rises, the lights turn off and he lies back down. Breaths are taken, a heart beating in a steady rhythm to keep the physical frame alive; The desire to exist, said instinct, acting as fuel - the indicator, the reason for everything to be the way it is.

There is no real concept of time existing for who he is, not yet. Knowledge is missing, yet knowledge exists at the same time - the concept of being a human being, of having a body, a physical existence. Being made of flesh and tissue, bones, liquids, organs, a conscience - remembering while not remembering, not understanding before figuring it out, observing and listening, waiting.

It might've been 3 days for Harrow, but time isn't made of the very same thing for the one who's sitting inside that room, eyes lidded, expression blank. Lights have turned off and on, off and on, and sleep did come for him at some point - a phenomenon he wasn't familiar with either, until the signs of exhaustion had set in and forced a frame to close its eyes, to... drift off.

Since then, he is familiar with the concept of sleep. Before that? Not so much.

Many things he's familiar with while others remain a mystery - until he's facing whatever might be there, observing and consuming and copying.

Copying, always copying, like a cell splits itself into a perfect copy. Again and again and again---

A pair of eyes blinks when another lifeform enters his place, appears in front of him with quiet ease. There's no surprise written over a face that once belonged to a man who is no more - and yet he is, because he is here while he isn't here at the same time. Existence and nonexistence, something in between.

Kane. Not Kane. Yet Kane. Kane while not being Kane, while being Kane and not being Kane. A copy of Kane, but still Kane, but how much of him truly is Kane?

Another blink, dark irises flicking up to gaze at the one who introduces himself as Dr. Harrow; They watch, they look, they take in the sight and yet that expression lacks... expressiveness as it all happens. Expressing emotions is a concept, and he hasn't quite figured that one out yet.

---Tired Kane looks because of how heavy-lidded that gaze is, but it might only be a default setting. Hands are folded on a clothed lap, fingers curled around another loosely, intertwined - spine a bit round, not perfectly straight, not overly tense, not completely loose.

"Good morning."

It's given back to that man after a second of initial hesitation passes, hesitation that's not made of an emotion but rather of something working inside his brain. One cannot know.

...And then, silence. Gaze continuing to linger, trailing a bit along the visitor's existence before finding its way back to a pair of eyes. It's not for a lack of understanding - Kane did hear the other, and he is able to grasp the meaning - but he doesn't know whether he's supposed to give an answer, so he doesn't.

---Speaking freely is too abstract - he does not pick up on it.

@offdxty \\ plotted

The hallways were cold, in a way that could never be fixed with temperature. It was clinical, infrastructure designed without comfort, perhaps even deliberately stripped of warmth. Arthur was used to the sorts of people who worked here, the ones who suggested that the very notion of softness might compromise the integrity of what was being kept inside - he wasn’t similar to them, not truly, but he was familiar. He had been working in these sorts of facilities since his twenties, giving him more than enough time to observe the workers as much as he observed the subjects. 

Fluorescent lights buzzed faintly overhead, diffused through frosted panels as if that would hide the fact that they hadn’t been replaced in forty years. It made the world look slightly grey, unreal; paired with the scent of antiseptic and metal in the air, Arthur sometimes wondered if the intention was to make it uncomfortable. Not even the scientists who worked in the facility were allowed to relax, over fears of leaked secrets or improper containment. 

Dr. Harrow’s shoes made no sound as he walked. They never did, not in places like this; sound control was one of the many decisions in the building’s construction. The walls curved to disorient, there were no clocks to show passing of time; the door to Observation Suite 3 was marked only with a number. No name, no label, no indication that behind it was a living thing. 

Arthur had not entered that room. Few had. It had only been opened for the necessities; food, clothing, water, things of that nature. For the past three days, Arthur had only observed from behind reinforced glass, in a separate viewing bay designed for extended behavioral study. The glass was thick, one-direction; though Arthur couldn’t say with full confidence whether the being knew that anyone had been watching or not. That was the sort of thing that would take more intentional study. 

For now, Arthur had only observed. He had watched the man inside - if ‘man’ was even the correct term - and had taken meticulous notes. It was nothing but observations and theories, for now, as there still wasn’t much to go on. 

The file had been thin in the first place. Military designation, presumed killed in action. Returned from the dead. Limited memory. A wife who insisted that he was not the same man, a place referred to only as the Shimmer. A wife who was also being held, who Arthur strictly could have no access to - he’d chosen who he’d wanted to work with. With so many variables in the air, the risk of cross-contamination was best avoided. He would be exclusively with this man, studying this being, until a decision was ultimately made. 

It wasn’t the first time Harrow had been brought in for a ‘project’ like this. Not exactly this, this was something clearly beyond - but cases that ended in blacked out ink and red stamps, with burned folders and programs that he would deny being part of. He was good at what he did because he didn’t ask the wrong questions. He didn’t look for meaning where there wasn’t - he was the best one available to decide what needed to be done with the creature they had captured. 

The days of passive assessment had passed. It was time for active engagement; time to enter the room, to speak to it. To find out whether he was observing a person, or merely the shape of one. 

His hand reached for the clearance panel, pressing gently against it. There was nothing dramatic, no theatrical hiss or booming unlock; the single door in the room merely clicked, seal disengaging as he pushed the door open to enter. The door swung open carefully, releasing the odd scent of the cell air; recycled, so that they could fully quarantine the room if they ever needed to. 

The room was bare in every sense. Bed, toilet, sink, a dull light; it was obvious that it existed solely for containment. Observation under deprivation, even, with no comforts or attempts at dignity. There was only the shape of a man, with the few things he required to survive. 

Arthur stepped inside, letting the door ease shut behind him with another click. He moved slowly, as he always did - without haste, without tension. He was measured and unthreatening, or at least he liked to think he was; every action he did was slow and careful, like he was putting thought into everything he did before he did it.

He had a small notebook in hand, already, though his pen remained capped and in his pocket. 

He didn’t sit. There wasn’t much to sit on - but even if there were, he didn’t know if he felt all that comfortable with being close to the other. He stood within a respectful distance, instead, just within range for conversation. His eyes were gentle, never staring - watching, politely, taking in how the man reacted to every little thing. 

“Good morning,” he greeted, his voice even and quiet. “I’m Dr. Harrow. I’ll be speaking with you moving forward - there’s no need to stand unless you’d prefer to.” He didn’t ask for a name in return, purposefully. “You may speak freely. I’ll let you know if anything you say will need to be clarified for the record.” 

Already, the introduction was a test; not of content, but of response. How the man looked at him, how he moved; if he would understand what was being said to him, if he understood the weight of the situation that he was in. If he was even a ‘he’ at all, or if Arthur was simply talking to a reflection of data; a possibility that fascinated him, although he knew it shouldn't.