Chapter 9: What My Soul Does When I Am Asleep by Stephen Simpson

Everything around me is grey and dull. I imagine things staring at me out of the darkness, and I can feel every cell in my body tingling.

I look back over my shoulder and the dull light from outside the building shimmers around the frame in the door. As I look at the door, it is as if it moves away from me gradually, and before long it seems to be only a door on the horizon. The grey faded wallpaper with a swirl of some kind, which must have been fashionable long before I came into existence, borders this long narrow tunnel. I take a couple of steps to the door. Surely this is only my imagination. Two steps at the most and I will be able to touch the door, as well as the copper coloured door handle, then I can get out of here.

I take the two steps and reach forward for the door, but my arm waves through the empty air. I stretch my fingertips, but still I cannot feel the door. I take another step. My mind keeps telling me it is impossible. It cannot be real. The door was just here seconds ago. I take another step, and then another before I reach for the door again. I can see it so clearly, so far away.

Panic builds up in my chest, pushing up from my stomach, and I take another step. By itself, my leg lifts at the knee and puts my foot down onto the first step of the stairway. Somehow, I got turned around and I am now back at the stairs. I look back across my shoulder, and the door is right behind me.

I have this urgent need to find something. I have to keep looking, even though I am scared senseless. I walk up the steps with determination. The shiny dark wood under my hand on the bannister is smooth. The carpet on the stairs under my feet is a deep red colour, with a flowery yellow pattern. I trace my finger on the wall to the side of me. It feels like ice-cold cement. The wallpaper has an indistinguishable texture, probably the swirl I saw earlier. I cannot determine its colour anymore. It is as if all the colour has been consumed by the darkness around me.

Even if I cannot see much further than the two steps ahead of me or the two steps behind me, I can sense the staircase circling upwards in a spiral. I keep my hand on the bannister, sliding it up as my feet do its own thing. I am too scared to let go. I am too afraid to lean across the bannister to look down because I just know it goes down forever and ever.

There is old fashioned light sconce on the walls along the stairwell. The glass around the light bulbs are cut in diamond bevels, and the edges shimmer and shine as if a non-existent light is shining on them.

As I continue up the stairs, a feeling of bravery fills me, and I start to feel as if I do have control over this dream. All I have to do is find what I am looking for and I will never have to come into this awful building again.

Then my grandma is standing in front of me, two steps above me. I almost fall back down the stairs, but my fingers circle tightly around the bannister.

Startled, I look at her. Her face is level with mine. Old age has shortened her, and usually she would only reach my shoulder. She does not have the one-side-up and one-side-down pull on her mouth, and when she smiles at me, both corners of her mouth lift.

“Grandma?”

“Gabriella,” she replies as if she has been waiting for me, and she is happy to see me. There is no slur in her voice. She sounds like she has always sounded before she had the stroke.

“What are you doing here?”

“I want you to find him.”

“Who? I’ll help you with anything.”

“Be careful making promises, if you don’t yet know the outcome.”

I insist, “Anything.”

“It’s Barclay.” Her eyes search mine to see if I am still willing to do anything.

“I’ll do anything.”

“He is lost, but I have to explain the facts to you otherwise you will never be able to find him. I have been wondering how I would describe this to you, but then it all became so clear. You see, I have come to realise we are all machines, Gaby, or I suppose it would be better to imagine machines of Artificial Intelligence.

“We, as humans, are incredibly efficient at performing lots of tasks all at the same time, and these tasks are performed by our conscious brain. There are so many, many things to process all the time, like smells, colours, light and dark, decisions to be made, moving the muscles in our body to eat, smile, walk or talk. We think continuously while we are awake, and we process all these things all at the same time, so you can imagine how busy our brains are daily within the hours we are awake.

“It is only really when we go to sleep and these processes are switched off, that our subconscious has a way of coming through. When we go to sleep, our brains only have to keep minimum maintenance, like keeping our hearts going and our lungs breathing. We do not have a vast amount of information flooding our minds, as when we are awake. It could be explained that when we go to sleep your brain goes on standby, like a computer. Our brain is always in a state of readiness, and at the click of a button it would be fully operational, but while it is in this sleep state, we are able to access other, unused areas of our mind.”

I look at my grandma, confused. Before she started believing in conspiracy theories, she used to be a renowned psychiatrist, who used to speak at large conferences. She was respected in her field, but then one day she just went a little bit crazy. She stopped going to work, stopped going out, and did not look after herself anymore, judging by the state of her cottage when we arrived here. She always spoke in words, which normal people, like me, had to look up in a dictionary. Half the time I did not have a clue what she was ever talking about. I ask her, “Are you saying I am using more of my brain than I am said to be able to use, and this is why my soul wanders?”

“Some people can narrow the disconnection between conscious and subconscious thoughts more efficiently than others, and our brains can crunch through logical operations at blistering speeds. This is an action honed by evolution, and we can process and act on these sensory inputs.”

“I'm not sure I understand.”

She continues talking as if I never said a word. “To get back to comparing us to computers, our awake brains have just two main components: a central processing unit to manipulate data, and a block of random access memory to store the data and the instructions on how to act upon this information. The brain begins by fetching its first instruction from memory, followed by the data needed to perform the task. After the instruction is executed, the result is sent back to memory and the cycle repeats itself.”

The more I listen to her, the more I feel dubious. I do understand that when we are born, we do not know how to walk, or talk, or do much of anything. Then we learn to do these things, and once we have learned them it becomes something we can do without even having to think about it. While I am walking or talking, I can do a million other things, such as look at a picture, wonder what I should have for lunch, feel the wind in my hair, taste chocolate on my tongue. These are all things my body knows how to do, without any actual input from me and it is my brain accessing my memories.

Her voice interrupts my thoughts. “Our brains compute in symmetry with the electrically active cells inside them, called neurons, which operate simultaneously and unceasingly. These are bound into intricate networks by threadlike appendages. Neurons influence one another’s electrical pulses via connections called synapses. When information flows through a brain, it processes data as a burst of spikes which spreads through its neurons and synapses.”

Now she has completely lost me, and I wonder if this is part of her conspiracy theory theories.

“You recognize my words, for example, thanks to a particular pattern of electrical activity in your brain triggered by input from your ears.” She closes her eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath as if she is reflecting on what she is telling me.

“We learn through experience. We become more responsive to other humans who tend to closely match our own activity. If groups of people are working together constructively, the connections between them strengthen while less useful connections fall dormant. This is how the brain works as well. So even if we are our own little microcosm within ourselves, so are we also a part of a larger arrangement, as each person connects with another person. We are all connected behind the veil of living and existence.

“Our subconscious remembers more connections while our conscious mind only remembers the connections we make in our wakeful state. When we are born, our conscious is clean and fresh, and it learns through the words of ‘Good job,’ or ‘Bad job,’ and it figures out what it should be doing. We quickly learn to adapt to changes.”

“Grandma?”

She ignores me. “We are able to think and reason, to stand outside ourselves, look at ourselves and evaluate ourselves. In the vastness of the universe, we are infinitely small, and yet we possess the intelligence to study the universe and its workings. We also have the ability to make moral choices. We have the desire to do what we perceive to be right and a sense of guilt if we do what we believe to be wrong. We possess vast amounts of artistic creativity. Our greatest joys in life come from loving someone, just as our greatest sadness comes from regrets over lost relationships.

“In each of us, there is what could be described as a computer chip or, as some people would believe, a soul. I do not really like my own reference, but I need to find a way to explain it to you so you can understand what it is I need to tell you. Our souls are powerful processors, which are coded with information and are then slotted into our bodies like a computer chip. When our bodies quiet down and no longer interfere with our sub-conscious mind, we can see and understand so much more than when we are awake. In our wakeful state, we use our ego as the centre from which to plot the geometry of our lives, but when we are asleep, we are truly connected to the universe and are capable of truly being who we are.”

Something makes a noise behind me, and I turn my head to look. I peer into the darkness, but I cannot see anything beyond the wall of black. The black seems thick and tangible.

I turn back to my grandma, but she is no longer standing in front of me. I consider she has utterly lost the plot, but a more urgent thought fills my mind: “I need to use the toilet.”

Even though I am busy waking up and she is no longer standing in front of me I hear her voice echo in my ears, “Gaby, your body is distracting you from who you really are.”

Back in my bed, I push the blankets from my legs. Stepping onto the floor, I pull on my arm to loosen the stiffness from the lumpy mattress and the numbness of sleeping in the same position all night. I walk across the room to the door.

“I need to use the toilet.”

Back in my bed, I push the blankets from my legs. Stepping onto the floor, I stretch my back, and pull my shoulders back, thinking this mattress is just too lumpy and I must remember when I get back into bed to lay on my other side for a bit.

Moving away from the bed, I realise I have done this already. I have already gone to the bathroom.

I turn to look at the bed. My movements are stiff, and I am battling to move my head smoothly. I feel my neck move in little bursts. My head jerks like in a horror movie. I feel as if I am pushing against the force of gravity or something far greater than me as I try to move my jaw to face my bed. If I can get my jaw there first, the rest of my face will follow. I feel something in the side of my neck creak and then I see myself fast asleep on the bed. My head is still on the pillow, and my arm is straight out from under me, poking right off the bed.

In jerks and spurts, I bend my body at the waist and reach out to touch my arm. I have to move it. It must not be hanging off the bed like that. My skin feels ice cold under my palms. Am I dead? I am not ready to die yet! Is it just my soul leaving my body? Where is it going?

“I need to use the toilet.”

Back in my bed, I look up at the ceiling. Slowly I push the blankets from my legs and sit up. My heart is racing in my chest.

What just happened?

Continue reading Chapter 10/19

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