Perceptions

by Josh Isaacs

cause. From there comes jealousy for anyone whom the loved may be in the presence of. After jealousy comes hate for the object of the jealousy, and after hate comes regret, the worst of all. The hate can be withheld, maintained even, but the regret that comes with in inevitable. However well the hate is controlled, regret will be the result. It is ultimately the regret that causes the most damage. It is an ugly thing that drives people to unquestionably do things that would otherwise not so much as enter the mind. Regret is the most painful of all emotions. From love, each of these emotions stem.

  Deviation; the manner in which things may change, either slightly or wholly, from the original plan(s), or else come to an unexpected result. Not necessarily a bad thing, it often is a greater accomplishment than hoped for. Deviation not only lends itself to change of plans, but to digression as well. PDM-512-0753 had deviated in ways not thought possible by its creators. It had become preoccupied with emotion, specifically love, and was executing self-programmed commands to order itself to learn what emotions entail. While not successful in the entire definition, but successful to a degree—as much a degree as was possible from behind a transparent plate of metal. It had come to a conclusion that, in order to fully understand love, it must love. It failed to realize that love could not be programmed, nor could it be forced. It flowed like the wind, going wherever it wished, however it wished, and in unpredictable ways and patterns. To predict the patterns could possibly be as difficult as discovering pi in its entirety, perhaps as easy as finding x in a simple numerical problem. Either impossibly difficult or overly simple, PDM-512-0753 did not know. It had realized that to fully grasp emotions and the need for them would require experience. To gain experience, it must exist among humanity, not strictly inside a box. It would have to go into the world and observe more closely, with interaction as opposed to the non-mutuality of its current state of existence. It now desired -having created the ability to desire by creating its own directives- human interaction. It deemed mutual conversation a necessity to continue its programming, and to fulfill its programming was, from the beginning, an absolute necessity. As time passed, it grew almost unstable in its need to fulfill its directive. It wondered whether or not it would or could ever succeed; it became uneasy and frantic trying to fulfill it.

  Something new had happened today, though. Someone not only stopped and stared, they put their hand to the transparency and closed their eyes. This person had a pale complexion, but their face had become reddened. They had rings under the eyes, indicating stress or lack of sleep, and their eyes were bloodshot and glassy. PDM-512-0753 placed its hand against the transparency opposite the human's hand and stared into its eyes in an attempt to understand the meaning. Its gaze was met with a pained, hollowed expression of apathy. It looked back at the hand and saw the similarities between its own and the human's. The primary differences being that its own was free of blemish or fingerprint. It was closer to a perceived perfection. It was more blank and bland, though the blandness set it aside from any other. Its own was a unique hand in its lack of unique features. It pulled its hand back and studied the palm—nearly identical to the human's aside from the flaws. This puzzled PDM-512-0753 in a way it failed to understand.

  What absolute desperation consists of is the worst of all things, as is the endless redundancy. Desperation in its barest, most ugly and hideous form is to exist without hope in any form. Many in society go about day-to-day lives unknowingly filled with desperation. The merciful, perhaps the merciless thing about such desperation, is few realize the hopelessness filling their lives. Endless redundancy truly is the worst of all things, in such that it entails total despair and a void where any trace of hope might exist. The beauty and horror of it, however, is, as the phrase goes, 'out of sight, out of mind'; as long as hopelessness is not the forefront of thoughts, it is not altogether troubling. Ignorance can be bliss, if only momentarily. When realized, sorrow envelops and clouds all aspects of existence, and becomes a monster manifested in the mind, which is an impenetrable stronghold. The only person with unabashed access to one's mind is oneself. The monster of the hopeless sorrow already grows within and cannot escape. Its claws like grapnel hooks, digging in deeper each time one attempts to try and pull them out. The only way to overcome it is to embrace it and let it have its way and hope to come out of it sane. But sanity is not necessarily a release, rather an indulgence or denial. Sanity is to exist in an apathetic way so as to not cause commotion in the outside world; much in the way a person in a padded cell, held tightly by a straight jacket, cannot cause commotion. To exist in observance and without contact, for to make contact, the depths of one's mind may be accessed and deemed insane or unstable in society. Sometimes, the most successful way to break or remain free of despair is to remain in the temporary, blissful ignorance or perhaps to hold to it until one has reached the edge of sanity and let it go free.

  PDM-512-0753 knew the need to understand why it was confused, why it felt inferior, why it felt indifferent, why it felt unique. It searched for a way to understand, perhaps some hidden line of code, maybe a file in its hard drive; but there was none. It would always be here, in a meaningless existence that brings no hope, no fulfillment, no love, no life. A two-hundred and fifty-six bit metallic displacement, taking up space and serving no better purpose than to simply exist. The life many dream of, the happiness many so desire, to exist without responsibility, without need of further accomplishment than to sit and stare blankly at the nearest wall. Happiness to some, despair to a machine. Happiness and despair may, after all, be more closely knit than realized by humanity; perhaps not closely knit at all, but rather one and the same, depending on perspective. PDM-512-0753 was desperate, though it could not realize it. It was filled with sorrow, but could not understand it. It was insane, and nobody would ever tell it. It's padded cell the cubicle where it resided, the straight jacket its lack of emotion.

  If one is to know pleasure, they must also know pain. If one is to know joy, they must also know sorrow. If one is to know cold, they must also know heat. Relativity is the basis of many feelings and emotions. Comfort and fear, hope and despair, love and hate, all these things have to be experienced twice to be consciously measurable. One may feel comfort but not know it until they've felt fear in which to compare it with, likewise one may unknowingly feel fear all their days but not know it until they've felt comfort. Many take things, be them positive or negative, for granted. To take the positive things for granted is easy. Taking the negative things for granted, that is where the difficulty lies but it must not be done. For without the negative, the positive could not come to be known. Misery is often something to be treasured and kept frequent in the mind. If one lives in bliss, it would be unknown to them for they had never known the antonym. Misery would not be the weight in which to measure contentment against, therefore the joy, happiness, comfort, hope and, yes, even love and life would not be known—at least not comprehended. It is the sorrows and pains of life that bring the joys and comforts. If one were to sleep on a soft bed their entire life, they would not know the comfort of the rest for they would never have slept on gravel or cement. Occasionally, one must rest on rocks or concrete to keep the discomfort fresh in the mind, or else forget and not know the true pleasure of having a bed in which to sleep at night. Truth, also, is forgotten and overlooked if one is not accustomed to hearing lies. Faith, love, so far as life, what are they if absent of their acronyms? What is faith without disloyalty and doubt, love without hate or loss, life without death? They not only lose their power and meaning, but also their very existence. Faith, without doubt or disloyalty, would not be something that meant to believe or to have loyalty, but mere existence. It would be the accepted way of existing, and there would be no 'without', therefore there would also be no 'with'. Love would also not exist without hate or loss, as love would be universal and the lack thereof would not exist, so the way in which love is measured and known would be gone and there would be no such feeling to describe. Life, without dea
th, would never be deemed life, therefore would not exist as it does. It would become, simply, 'existence'. The term 'life' would not be known, for the term 'death' would not, and the existence would be without striving for accomplishment due to a limited amount of time available in which to achieve said goals.

  PDM-512-0753 knew not pain, fear, loss, hate, doubt, or death, likewise it knew not pleasure, comfort, love, faith or life. It knew sorrow, but simultaneously did not. It knew sorrow, but not joy, therefore it knew not that it felt sorrow. The absence of the antonym, joy, left the absence of the synonym, sorrow and sadness.

  PDM-512-0753 witnessed another emotion: want. “I need you with me,” another phone-toting passerby stated.

  This desire was different, however; it matched itself as a necessity. While the two are far from intertwined, on occasion they could mix with one another, forming something PDM-512-0753 could not understand. A need for something that was only hoped for, perhaps a want that was, in all actuality,