Merwin In The Multiverse: The Multiverse In Merwin Part 2 - (Original Recursive Science Fiction)
(Read the first part of this unordered chapter here.)
Merwin’s dreams had their own desires and volition. Why wouldn’t they? They were made of the same neurons that gave him his conscious desires and volition - the same little sentient beings that had learned, long ago, how to work together, forgetting their own needs to a certain degree, in order to gain mutual benefit from cooperation. And they had the capacity, ever so slight and requiring tremendous effort, to send signals throughout the rest of the network comprising his mind and body. And, in that way, they had subtle influence over his actions.
Merwin walked out of the Wayne Corp. building. The clarity of mind he’d had in Devon’s office just moments ago was already beginning to fade away. His usual thoughts of self-doubt were creeping back to the foreground. He was becoming his old self again. This is the way it always was. His self-doubt was a cycle. He went through semi-regular periods of self-confidence followed by periods where it seemed like he had never known what confidence was. His confidence, like his dreams, got put on the back burner.
And things that get put on the back burner eventually come to your attention again. Either because you are paying attention, or because things on the back burner tend to burn if you don’t. And as you know, things that burn cause smoke, which sets off alarms, which get your attention. Merwin had forgotten his dreams long ago. But they hadn’t forgotten him. Zyn was always there, waiting for her chance to influence the dreams to reassert themselves.
Myr and Zyn weren’t the only subnetworks in Merwin’s brain that had their own agendas. There were also Merwin’s dreams. They had been pushed down into the darkness of his subconscious, like coins lost in the crack of a sofa, condemned to live life amongst potato chip crumbs, with the occasional visit from the TV remote, until someone rediscovered them. Their axons were weak, barely able to fire, and their dendrites had been slowly withering, year by year, until hardly any network in Merwin’s brain was communicating with them. But they were tough, dammit. They were, after all, ambition itself, and they were damned if they were just gonna let themselves die without putting up a fight.
They’d found friends in Myr and Zyn. They were the only ones who’d listen to them anymore. Things were getting pretty desperate. So desperate measures were needed.
Unlike coins, however, Merwin’s dreams had their own desires and volition. Why wouldn’t they? They were made of the same neurons that gave him his conscious desires and volition - the same little sentient beings that had learned, long ago, how to work together, forgetting their own needs to a certain degree, in order to gain mutual benefit from cooperation. And they had the capacity, ever so slight and requiring tremendous effort, to send signals throughout the rest of the network comprising his mind and body. And, in that way, they had subtle influence over his actions.
So, Myr and Zyn influenced the dreams, and the dreams in turn influenced Merwin. Or was it vice-versa? The complex relationship between Myr, Zyn, the dreams, and the rest of Merwin’s brain and body made it hard to tell. Cause and effect were hard to distinguish in such an intricate feedback loop.
It had been a long time though since Merwin had been really aware of his dreams. But their long fought effort to re-establish control was finally at hand.
And so it was under their influence that, on the way to his car, which was parked in a parking garage 8 blocks from Wayne Corp., Merwin decided to take a different route than usual. He had no idea why. To him it just seemed to be a sudden and unusual impulse in the form of the thought, Where are you going?
Why do I always walk this way? … What? Yeah, why do I walk this way. ‘Da da da DA, da da da, DA DA, da da da DA da da da DA da DA Walk this waaaaaay, talk this waaaaay…’ No, wait. Shut up! ’Don’t wanna (close my eyes, don’t wanna fall asleep…) get that song stuck in my head again. OK, let’s turn right… and with that, he was on his way.
Merwin didn’t know exactly where this street would take him, but he figured he could reconnect back to his usual path at some point without much trouble. Let’s just see where it goes, I guess. I don’t really have any plans, now, do I? The fact that he had just walked out on his job hadn’t really begun to sink in yet.
All of the streets in downtown San Naranja connected to his usual path in some way. It would have actually required a conscious effort to get lost in this town. You would have to force yourself to forget where you were by sheer will. Everything was so familiar and comfortable. It was such a safe place to get lost.
The path he was on now was actually directly connected back to his normal route just a few blocks up. But that’s beside the point. He walked along, forgetting about time, listening to the songs of Aerosmith looping autonomously through his head, having not the slightest clue as to where he was going or why he was going there.
Suddenly, he felt a pee coming on. Oh man, he thought. I hope there’s a bathroom around here. The pee may or may not have been caused by the subtle influence of his forgotten dreams. After all, he did pee a lot. Who knows? Either way, lucky for him, there was a Things-n-Stuff shop just at the end of the block. They’ve probably got one, he kind of muttered through his teeth. He quickly shuffled down the street.
He opened the glass shop door, and headed for the bathroom, not realizing the slightly strange fact that he knew where it was, even though he’d never been in this branch of Things-n-Stuff before.
Merwin had always liked watching his pee turn into a dance of foamy bubbles in the toilet. There was something comforting about the familiar transformation of water into thousands of different sized eyes staring back up at him, seeming to smile and enjoy their brief existence before either being ripped apart by the very stream of urine which had created them, or being sucked into a black hole of sewage in a sudden and violent vortex caused by the hand that aimed the flow of their life-giving source. Merwin imagined the bubbles worshipping him in fearful awe for a brief moment, then flushed the toilet with the casual calm of a psychopath dismembering a fresh corpse. He could almost hear their screams as they felt themselves being sucked out of existence en masse. But it didn’t matter to Merwin - they were just bubbles.
He zipped up his fly and put his stuff back in his pants. No, wait, that was definitely the other way around. Merwin had learned that painful lesson back in elementary school. And what a horrible day that had been.
He walked up to the sink, thought about washing his hands, and then decided not to. This was triggered by another elementary school memory asserting itself. One of the school bullies, ‘Jeff the Cleft,’ had noticed Merwin failing to wash his hands after taking a leak and said, “Didn’t your mama teach you wash?,” to which Merwin had naively replied, “No, she taught me not to piss on my hands.” That mistake led to another horrible day, and Merwin had always washed his hands after urinating since then. Until now.
He exited the restroom. In front of him were the aisles of Things-n-Stuff, stacked bottom to top with random items, knick-knacks, antiques, and God knows what else. There was stuff people had used for years, old things from bygone eras still in the original packaging, handmade art that nobody apparently wanted, things from far away places and times… It was like a black hole that sucked in everything you never knew existed. It reminded him of the circus somehow - a time traveling, three ring circus, with side shows galore. It gave the impression that no matter which way you looked, you’d miss the best part of the show.
—
Thanks for reading this chapter of my work-in-progress, Merwin In The Multiverse. I’m writing this novel as the ideas come, and posting them on Steemit before trying to piece them together into a cohesive story on the website, which I call [The Self-Published Self-Publisher’s Guide To Self-Publishing].
If you’ve enjoyed it, you can check out more chapters and various other writing at my Steemit blog @kendewitt.
Links to other chapters: https://steemit.com/fiction/@kendewitt/portal-into-the-multiverse-a-prelude-to-merwin-in-the-multiverse-original-recursive-science-fiction
https://steemit.com/fiction/@kendewitt/merwin-in-the-multiverse-predictive-quantum-redundancy
Published on Hive on 2017-06-20. View the original post and discussion on Hive.