Imagination Machine

There was a woman in a long dress and boots in a stranger’s living room, unloading a large crate full of electronics and starting to hook some of them up to the wall. She heard and was almost startled out of her work by another nearby saying softly, as though not to interrupt her:
“Ada, could you explain again exactly what your machine does, please, but slow it down for me.”
She sighed and continued putting together her equipment while saying, “It reads imagination. So, you could imagine memory, imagine thought, imagine the past or future, just as within the imagination and mind. My machinery measures and records the precise incident of mental event in imagery and sound.” She said slowly, almost absent-mindedly: no big deal.
“And how exactly do you do this? Isn’t actual record of mental imagery a long way off?” William said, hesitating in his own home, looking on this stranger making herself too comfortable with his outlets.
“Snowflakes.” She said simply, then grinned and continued, “I measure imagination happening in the shapeliness of vaporized water caught in chambers to expose shapes: it almost looks like snowflakes.”
“How beautiful,” He said, looking around his living room at all he was about to partake in.
“And how did you hear about me again?” Asked Ada kindly.
“It was on a flyer I saw at the bar down on Main Street.” he said honestly, looking now at his desk in the corner for the artifact, which was still there. He crossed the room and showed it to her: bright letters exclaiming that record of imagination was possible, having to step over a few of her chords strewn around in the process. She looked worried and said,
“Careful, if you unplug that it’ll take me an hour to find the right plugs again.”
“Oh, sorry,” He said, as he stumbled back over to the other side of the room.
“And what do you do for a living, William?” She said, almost to cover her annoyance at his nonchalance with her equipment.
“I’m a librarian, but also work part time at a bar…”
“On Main Street?” She interrupted. He smiled and affirmed her suspicion.
“I also like to write.” He said furtively, almost assessing himself before her. She just smiled. They were both tall and attractive people. There was a moment of awkward silence, after which he finally asked what exactly she did for a living, to which she simply replied:
“You’re lookin’ at it.”
“So, you operate a thought machine?” He offered.
“More like an imagination machine,” She corrected.
There was another long pause in which she seemed to be hooking up the last of her equipment, finally saying something along the lines of, “finished” before turning to William and saying, “Let’s get started.”
William was asked to sit in his upright chair, facing his living room window “As comfortably as possible,” and to put his feet up. She was then attaching something to his scalp over his mess of heavy black hair: small round cold plastic and metal being attached with cold glue, while he watched their reflection in the window showing the evening sky. Finally, she asked him to watch a screen that she handed him and he suddenly couldn’t believe his eyes. It was playing his memories, showing his thoughts, even letting him imagine the future or possible outcomes within minutes. After what felt like an excruciatingly short time, she took the screen from him and started pulling off the attachments, aware of his exclamations but ignoring them.
“What an amazing thing!” He said, still thinking over and trying to recount every memory he had accidently shared with a machine, every part he had taken for his own thoughts, every instance that he had been led to believe he could perceive his future, it rattled him to his core. He sat, sadly smiling, reminiscing and concentrating on what facts there were to what he had seen as he watched her putting her equipment away quickly and quietly, not uttering more than the occasional, “Hmmm” or “Mmhhmm” to his remembrances and intensities.
Finally, Ada had finished packing up and was starting to leave as he said surprised, “Don’t I owe you anything?”
“My services are free.” She said simply, and hurried to leave, dragging her crate on wheels behind her.
The next day, William started to notice some after effects of being attached to the machine. When he tried to recall exactly what had come up on that little screen, he suddenly drew a blank, and every instance that he had even recounted just yesterday seemed gone somehow, though most of his other memories seemed intact. He also couldn’t help but imagining that he was still attached somehow, that once in a while he would have a thought or memory that was close enough to what had possibly shown up on the machine that it really did show up there on that machine, and so also disappeared from his memory. At least, that’s the way in which he had rationalized it with himself. He started calling it aliasing bias, and worrying that parts of his imagination (containing memories and thoughts too) were being recorded and stored somehow beyond his will. That this machine was causing amnesia at least was obvious to him, and he continued thinking of the possibilities of his thoughts being continually transferred to the thing.
For weeks, he tried calling Ada, finally giving up and resorting to looking her up himself. She was difficult to find, but not impossible. He found her address and decided to knock at her door to no avail. He would never understand why, but he then tried the doorknob to find that it was unlocked. He stepped into the house to find that there was a small beautifully decorated entranceway leading to a kitchen and living room, but also veering off to the left underneath a staircase. He decided to go around the stairs toward a strange sound he was hearing and found a door to underneath the stairs, which he opened toward himself. He looked in and stood back in shock to recognize parts of his own memory showing up on a very large screen. He stifled a scream and just kept staring as every part of a recent book he had read was being dissected by the machine. He just kept staring while the screen changed.
“It’s a Brave New World
Do As You Will
The Doors Of Perception
are like Heaven and Hell”
Had shown up suddenly in bright red letters, and he recognized Aldous Huxley immediately. He had been reading one of them over the past week and had been watching just now as the machine took it apart when his sight somehow changed what the machine was doing. He wondered at the machinery and how it could manifest such things from his memory, from his own thoughts and imagination. He couldn’t stand to look anymore and finally ran out of the house, leaving the door wide open to the elements.
Weeks went by while he weighed the possible scenarios and reliability of what he had seen and experienced. Somehow, the machine had caused him to forget even which book he had read and seen show up, but he still remembered the poem somehow, though none of his other memories or memory of the event of being attached to the machine itself had come back at all. He had no way to prove to anyone that it was his imagination, memory or thought, even if he could remember it. He was stuck and decided to contact an old friend from the Navy to help him out with the investigation.
After hellos, He quickly told his friend about his struggles over the past few weeks and about the flyer that he had responded to. His friend Wayne informed him over the phone that Ada ‘Babb’ had been selling and making fortunes off of meta for quite some time now, and had a lot of followers online.
“Meta?” William said, confused.
“Data. Any data.” Said Wayne, confident in his skill and assessment.
“This is going to sound crazy to you, but I think she’s recording and selling people’s imagination or imaginary space.” He said, aware of just how far fetched that seemed.
“Hmm, actual record of imaginary space is something that she’s boasted of online more than once…” He said, presumably still looking it up on the other end of the telephone. “But she says it’s all hers to have, and all hers to sell, to put it simply.”
“What can I do to stop her?” he said, stubborn and intent.
“How could you possibly prove that it’s yours, and especially if it is as you’re sayin’ and you can’t even remember exactly what of your mind may have shown up to a screen?”
“It’s impossible, but we’ve got to get her to stop somehow.”
“We? You’re the one who let that stranger with a flyer into your brains, not me.” Wayne said defensively.
“True. Thank you for your help, I appreciate your time and efforts,” William said curtly as he hung up the phone. He turned back to face his full living room, where he had been standing on the phone, and tried again to slow down and remember just exactly what had shown up on that screen. He imagined her hooking up her machinery, telling him to be careful of it when he crossed the room, he even remembered the way his reflection looked in the glass of his living room window as he watched her attach parts of a machine to his body, but still couldn’t for the life of him recall exactly what had shown up on that screen. It was maddening.
He finally decided to get ahold of her by pretending to be someone else, as all efforts to contact her as himself had completely failed. When he chose a destination as a public place, she said it couldn’t be done and must be, “from the comfort of your own home.” Finally, frustrated, he talked her into a hotel room off of Main Street where they could meet. She agreed and he sat in the hotel room waiting for hours before she finally showed up, lugging around the same large crate and easy smile. She hesitated upon seeing him and decided to play it cool, asking if he had wanted to have the procedure done again. He simply replied no and continued to stare at her for a moment, stuck in the entrance of the hotel room, barely inside the door. He got up and closed the door behind her.
“I have some questions for you, about your machine,” He said plainly, almost angry. She sensed his anger and paused, waiting for another reaction to start talking. He sat down on one of the beds and continued:
“I would like to know how it is you are still able to get information from my private space?” He said finally, after weighing his words over and over again.
“How are you ever going to prove that?” She said, easily and without hesitation.
“I see how you get away with this. Do you usually pick the low lives, few prospects, those with nothing to lose?”
“The fact that the few who allow me to test them are a rare and usually high bunch of folks isn’t really my fault, and very few people beyond those who have experienced my machinery even believe me, much less would ever question where I get my data from.” She said, offended and almost winded, rolling her eyes in defense.
“It’s a Brave New World
Do As You Will
The Doors of Perception
Are like Heaven and Hell” William said, suddenly remembering the only thing he could recall from what had shown up of him on the machinery. She just sighed and picked at her fingernails, saying:
“That’s my poem now, and how will you prove that it came from you?” She said, easily with a careful and greasy smile.
“I had written it down! Long before it showed up on your screen!” William said, defensively.
“Well, I had it typed first, now didn’t I?” She said, easily.
“What a nightmare,” he said, resolutely. She turned to leave and he yelled, “Wait!”
She grabbed the handle of the door and shuffled through quickly, William perfectly still sitting on the edge of the bed closest to the door, just watching in disbelief as she left the room. He was finally getting up to close the door in defeat just after she left when he heard a horrible crash and loud scream. He ran down the outdoor hallway to see a figure that had obviously fallen down the stairs and been crushed by a large crate. He didn’t need to get any closer to understand.
A few weeks later he was scrolling through some corner of the internet on his phone sitting in his living room when he came upon an interesting video. It was someone that looked just like him, in clothes he wore not even a few years ago, doing something that he couldn’t remember doing at a bar. It baffled him and he remembered Ada Babb and realized that she would never really be stopped, even in death. It saddened him and turned him to a resolution at the same time: what’s done was done and any connection he still had to any amount of thought machinery at least wasn’t as direct. He was hopeful that someday he could report it or be recognized but realized these dreams were far-fetched and a long ways off. He did his best to forget about it, as he sat in his upright chair, put down his phone and opened a volume of Aldous Huxley, the evening showing his reflection in the windows of his living room.

[2021]