Phantasm Japan: Fantasies Light and Dark, From and About Japan

by Unknown

  Can a conscious being be distinguished from a philosophical zombie?

  Heavy clouds edged with a dull brown formed a solid canopy over England. A few dry leaves swirled up and away into the leaden skies of Albion.

  A philosophical zombie is merely intended as a proposition for considering philosophical problems. I read up on it. I wondered how the person who wrote the article would react if he knew he might find an actual p-zombie right here.

  My friend was laid to rest two years ago. He had the same special right as Her Majesty—he met every one of me, from the Original on. Not that he welcomed the distinction, I imagine.

  Unlike Her Majesty, he was my colleague—MI6’s senior weapons specialist—and as colleagues, we told jokes, laughed, fought, and vied to see who could be most cynical. Each time I came to him clothed in a new body, he accepted me as his friend without a hint of distaste.

  He was old, this friend of mine, but he pig-headedly refused every suggestion he retire. In the end, neither disease nor old age did him in, but an auto accident. Very fitting, I thought. But with his death I don’t think it’s too much to say that I was forced into the most profound solitude in the history of humanity. Awake thou Orphan of History awake to Eternity. As the priest commended the coffin to the earth, I had the feeling God was taking the trouble to tell me this, though I’d never bothered much with Him before. I was a sin that could never be confessed in any church, ever.

  I fought for Her Majesty because she was the only woman who truly knew me. Serving her was the only thing keeping me from complete isolation, even if she granted me an audience only once—once each transcription.

  To take a leaf from Kantorowicz, I am not serving Her Majesty’s political body. I serve her natural body; that is, I fight for the Queen herself. Of course I don’t deny that I fight for England. It’s just that I’ve participated in too many missions to be eternally driven by naive patriotism. The Western concept of patriotism is simply a vulgarized version of a Christian concept. The popular writings of medieval Scholastic philosophers were full of references to amor for the homeland. Coluccio Salutati, chancellor of Florence and champion of its republicanism as a successor to Rome, grimly described amor patriae as being so sweet that “we should not consider it distasteful to thrust an axe into our father’s head, mangle our brothers, and deliver our unborn child from the womb with a sword.” This is somewhat vulgar in its extremism, but I realized that it reflects a certain truth. I’ve met my share of people who believe it. I myself have killed many times.

  Yet now it seems that everything was for the sake of that one woman. Just as God manifests in the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the Queen manifests in two bodies—the indestructible character angelus, the royal power derived from the angels, and a body that is born, dies, laughs, cries—her body itself. Serving the former is not much different from patriotism. But perhaps I was only pretending to serve the former while devoting myself to the life and glory of the latter. Consciousness and unconsciousness, two selves, serving the two royal bodies.

  “Well now, here you are again.”

  For a moment I thought it was the Queen speaking, but of course that was impossible. I turned and saw an elderly woman, roughly Her Majesty’s age, in mourning dress a few yards down the path.

  “I’m sorry. Have we met?”

  “Yes, of course. You were here last month. My husband’s buried two over. Right here.” She pointed. The tombstone was as small and unassuming as the rest.

  What happens to us when we die? The fortunate go to their grave—recumbent, moldering, waiting for the Last Judgment, with only a stone to bear witness to their existence. The fortunate have someone who loved them, like this old woman, to visit now and then and speak a few words.

  Sad to say, the chance of having a stone to mark my resting place is, as things are now, vanishingly small. The likelihood that I will not die in bed, and not in my homeland, is very high. My body will probably never be found, and unlike a soldier, I have no dog tags to collect. My fate is to be transcribed, die, and be retranscribed, always shifting death into the future. I can see no release from it. The Empire summons me from my purgatory to resurrect me in the body of another.

  That’s when the thought crossed my mind: perhaps I am a tombstone. A walking, talking, killing tombstone.

  “My husband passed away years ago, but still, I suppose we were together too long. It’s as if I’ve taken on the pattern of his life and his habits. Not in everything, but in some things very much.”

  The woman gazed at me serenely. Love, we used to call it. It starts as love, that much is certain. It changes with years; we lose the sexual passion and the mad craving to fill up the emptiness. Love becomes an algorithm for living in synchrony with another person. The final destination, love’s ultimate consummation, is the assimilation of another person’s life into one’s own. The life of one’s beloved become a template to transcribe into oneself.

  “In a sense, your husband is still alive, then. Alive in you.”

  She nodded and smiled. There was nothing hidden in that smile, no trace of loneliness. An ordinary smile, and therefore extraordinarily beautiful.

  “His body has gone ahead, but he still lives in me. Karmic retribution, isn’t it? That’s why I come here, to complain. The first Sunday of every month, after the service is over, I come and tell him, ‘Since you’ve seen fit to leave me on my own, one would think you’d give me a little more freedom.’ ”

  I wasn’t very different. I was living according to a format laid down by the Original, as her husband had formatted her, and she had formatted her husband.

  My friend here in the ground, the Director, Her Majesty—all of them must have seen a tombstone standing before them, a tombstone of the transcribed who preceded me. They spoke with a tombstone, gave orders to a tombstone, uttered complaints to a tombstone. A living tombstone. I am proof that my friend once truly lived, proof that although his life was known to few, he achieved mighty things.

  Then I saw it. The first Sunday of last month. “You saw me here last month, you said?”

  “Yes. Who is it you come to visit? You were talking to that grave last time as well.”

  Of course I hadn’t been here the month before. At least I had no recollection of it. An I who was not me had been visiting my friend’s grave. Just as I was doing now.

  “Then, that means I met you …”

  “Yes, I just told you. The first Sunday of last month.”

  The day Greville Ackroyd flew off the expressway. The day after, in all likelihood, “I” heard the truth straight from Ackroyd’s mouth.

  There was a package waiting for me when I got home.

  My mind was in turmoil on the way back from the cemetery. I must have killed Ackroyd and his “children.” I had to concede that this was the most logical conclusion. It was the same intuition I’d had as soon as I entered Ackroyd’s house—no, from the instant I entered Pangbourne Estates. How to infiltrate, the dead angles to utilize, how to gain access to Ackroyd’s study. What I had thought was a simulation running through my mind out of habit was nothing of the sort. I was simply remembering specific thought processes I had been through before.

  At the time I’d chalked it up to my training and experience in espionage. Now I knew it was self-deception.

  We have a propensity for creating explanations out of whole cloth as a way of forcing incompatible experiences to conform to logic. I once read about an experiment: a man whose left-right brain connection had been severed was asked to view images presented separately to each brain hemisphere. His left eye, controlled by the right hemisphere, was shown a snow scene. His right eye, controlled by the left hemisphere, saw a photograph of a chicken claw. A number of photographs were then placed before him, and he was asked to select a picture—one with the right hand, and one with the left—that corresponded with what he had seen. His right ha
nd—left brain—chose a picture of a chicken. His left hand—right brain—chose a snow shovel.

  The researchers were not surprised to find different responses from the left and right hands. There was no way for the subject’s right hemisphere to know what the left had seen. But what astonished them was this: when the subject was asked why he chose the picture of a shovel, he replied without hesitation, “You need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed.”

  He wasn’t lying. The left brain is tasked with finding meaning, and when it saw a picture of a shovel, it instantly worked up a story to match. The subject was completely convinced of what he said; the left brain had convinced his conscious mind that it was in charge. Lies are normally conscious—the brain knows it is spinning a fiction. If, however, the part of the brain charged with recognizing what is real is also a source of lies, consciousness has no way to distinguish reality from fantasy. If a lie is fed to the brain’s primary awareness layer—the layer where “reality” resides for the individual—there is no way such a lie can be recognized as what it is. It becomes part of the individual’s reality and therefore beyond doubting.

  I did not know that I had already entered Ackroyd’s house in Pangbourne Estates unseen. Confronted by this inconsistency, my brain arbitrarily concocted a rationalization about reflexes derived from my espionage training and inserted it into my mind. Unless forewarned, the brain finds it very hard to doubt itself.

  I had to have coffee. I wanted to steep my untrustworthy brain in caffeine and clean it out. I staggered over to my La Pavoni machine. I knocked back the bitter black liquid. Then I sat down at my desk, drained of vitality, and brusquely tore the wrapping off the package.

  It contained a book and a letter.

  My God, I recognize this. I’ve seen this letter. I won’t let my brain hoodwink me again. False memories clamored for entry at the doors of my mind—I drove them all away. I packed this book. I wrote this letter. Now that I knew the truth, this feeling of déjà vu could only mean one thing. The problem was, I would have to examine the book and the letter to know what they contained. I had to visit Pangbourne again to recall what I’d done there; I had to open this package to realize I was the one who had packed it. Looking and knowing was necessary to awaken memory.

  I resigned myself to whatever I might find and picked up the book.

  The pages were blank.

  Every page was new and untouched. This wasn’t a book, it was a diary. I set the book aside and started in on the letter.

  Dear Mr. Nothing,

  I know that you feel nothing, and I know you are conscious of nothing, because it is my function to feel, and because I am your—formerly essential—Consciousness.

  Would it be unkind to say you are my empty shell? Would you “react” with surprise at being thus described? Without meaning to evade the question, I would have to say the problem is relative. You are an empty shell, but you are my shell, and your Consciousness may be a kind of parasite that has attached itself to you.

  This gift is by way of a request, from your Consciousness to you. I realize neither of us is the type to do something so unmanly as keep a daily diary. But this is different.

  I want you to use these blank pages to record your story, which is also my story. As much of it as time permits.

  By now, I think you know I will soon undertake my final mission. Until then, please keep writing. Record everything you’ve done. Tell the story as if you were me. As if you felt it. As if you were surprised, enraged, mystified. After all, it was how you reacted. It was what you did. Even if there was no one behind the curtain.

  Write my story, though there’s not much time.

  Whether to interfere with my plan or not I leave entirely to you. I’d prefer if you stood aside, but if you do, you may not survive. I seek annihilation, but that would also be your annihilation. I suppose I can’t force you to bear that.

  So tell the Director, or even—though I suppose this is impossible—beat me to the punch and kill yourself. I’ll accept whatever you decide. Of course, it will be best for me if you simply close your eyes.

  P.S. From Consciousness with Love

  I examined the diary again. The binding was sumptuous, with a family crest in gold leaf adorning the spine. The cover bore a single sentence, just as I imagined it would.

  the world was not enough

  The first page was also inscribed.

  I will go down to self annihilation and eternal death.

  A line from Blake’s Milton.

  I riffled the pages. This river of white paper, tabula rasa, reminded me of the most beautiful description I knew for England. Albion, the White Country. In Milton, Blake gives this name to his visionary world and writes, “Rouze up O Young Men of the New Age!”

  The young man who awakes will not be of the new age. One day that heavy suit of armor, laid down layer by layer since antiquity, will outlive its usefulness. And by losing it, the wearer will reveal his true form. That is how humanity will awake.

  O Consciousness, Humanity’s Ancient Armor!

  I placed a glass with ice and a bottle of scotch on the oak desk and settled myself comfortably. I took up my pen, relaxed my shoulders, opened the book I had presented to myself, and began to write.

  I am a book. A text, unfolding continuously.

  My consciousness did, in fact, try to put an end to everything.

  He tried to end this farce, this purgatory, while some vestige of conscious control over his actions was left to him. Before his consciousness, the last refuge of the self, disappeared forever.

  Yes, I think I’m free now to refer to “him.” The man who was my consciousness. No, its manifestation.

  In the end, he tried and failed to destroy the transcription facility. It was simply beyond his capabilities. Just as the Director had said, leaving a single framework alive had forced MI6 to divert some of its security detail. This was all according to his plan. He rigged Ackroyd’s brakes, killed all but one of the Queen’s properties, and bought himself an opening. He nearly succeeded, but chance intervened in the final moments. As bullets from SAS submachine guns riddled his body, they say he threw himself against the huge insignia emblazoned on the bulkhead and expired, arms stretched toward the vast, supercooled data banks that lay wreathed in vapor beyond. The division’s insignia, the unicorn and the lion, was so smeared with blood that it had to be scraped off the bulkhead and replaced.

  This is purely a rumor, but as he lay stretched on the bloody grating, they say his face bore a faint smile, though whether of cynicism or relief, it was impossible to say. There were also some who said that his last words were a whispered “God Save the Queen,” but that almost seems too much to hope for.

  Having come this far, I would like to offer an apology of sorts to you, the reader.

  As I believe you understand, although I have repeatedly resorted to the pronoun “I,” this “I” has no self, contrary to what you would naturally assume. The death of my predecessor in attempting to terminate this farce made it necessary to perform another transcription into a new body. No shred of consciousness survived the transcription of this reactivated “I.” The overwriting process has completely worn away my consciousness. Only brilliant whites and inky blacks remain, like a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a photograph run off on a copier set to Maximum Contrast. My predecessor knew that no consciousness at all was likely to survive in the copy that succeeded him. In all our shared history, he knew his consciousness was the last.

  He had no choice but to act.

  He was terrified of losing himself. Obviously he did not fear death. A man with so many dangerous, and successful, missions to his credit had nothing to fear from death.

  Now that part of him that allowed him to feel he was himself, that assured him he was himself, is dead. What lives on is a kind of soul without content, with only the elements necessary to continue b
ehaving as he did.

  This must be what they call purgatory. If happiness is somewhere to be found within death—which brings only terror—that happiness would be eternal peace. He feared losing that peace. He feared a farce in which his empty shell carried on for eternity, a blithe automaton. A living oblivion.

  As usual, the Director submitted his dissent to my proposed reactivation, but No. 10 wouldn’t hear of it. London was reeling under an outbreak of terrorist bombings. After a trigger-happy police unit killed an innocent Brazilian on the London Underground, our prime minister was steadfast: notwithstanding this tragedy, if we suspect someone of being a suicide bomber, we shoot to kill. In this extraordinary situation, with the law suspending itself with alacrity, it would have been strange had they not reactivated me. Yes, life is bestowed on me again and again because the Magna Carta, the prime minister, and Her Majesty need me. From the day I received my Licence to Kill, my life has been an unending Extraordinary Situation.

  That is, if this place “I” have arrived at can be said to be “living.”

  The physical reality of my body and brain writing words in this diary is the only “I” that exists. In no sense is self or consciousness present. I feel no qualia. I cannot perceive the redness of red, taste the sweetness of sweet. There is neither agony nor pleasure. But the information conveyed to my brain by my nerves lets me behave as if I am seeing red, as if I am tasting sweetness. As if I were anxious, as if I were cruel, as if I were an anachronism, as if I were a dinosaur.

  This sequence of words is being output without any inner experience whatsoever. It has been executed automatically according to “his” aggregate algorithm, as written to my brain. His algorithm is terrifying in its complexity, but in many ways it is equivalent to a text string generated by a computer. I may write that I am “suffering” or “disgusted” or happy,” yet not a shred of feeling lies behind those words. I can begin a paragraph with “I think” or “I feel” in the complete absence of thought or feeling.