Page Turner

Please take a seat.

There was only the one and so he sat upon it, looking towards the screen which partitioned the small white room expectantly. Minutes ticked by, he started counting out the seconds on his fingers. After a while he began to suck on his teeth and then hum a tune. A little while later he started to stand up.

Would you remain seated please?

“Have we started yet?” He said, his voice soft and shaky, like a child starting in a new classroom half way through the term.

We started at the beginning.

Silence hung in the air like a stalled aeroplane.
“Why am I here?” He asked.

Oh surely you know that? It is the easiest of questions.

“To find out who I am?” he said.

Nothing so mundane. Your name is Frank McGregor. You are 29 years old. You have red hair and quite interestingly, an olive Mediterranean tint to your skin which may come from your mother’s side.

“I didn’t think that sort of combination was possible”. Frank replied.

And why would you think that?

“Just sounds unlikely.” Frank explained “Surely the genes that are dominant enough to produce red hair would also create white cell pigmentation?”

Do you know anything about genetics?

“Well… no… not that I remember,” as he said this his left hand started tapping nervously against his leg

Have a look in the mirror.

Frank noticed a large mirror across the room and got up to look in it. He stood for some moment’s staring at his reflection.
“Well your right” he said, “of course your right, how could you not be? Why would I even question that? I know what I look like”.

Do you indeed? Tell me what colour your eyes are.

.

“Woah what the fuck was that?” said Frank, his breath coming in deep gasps

What was what?

“That huge… whooshing feeling.” He said “Like all of a sudden I was flying up and then plummeting to the ground all in a moment”.

Interesting, have you felt this before?

“No...No… not that I remember” said Frank, his brows creased in concentration.

What do you remember? Tell me about your childhood.

Franks face froze; his past was a void, a nothing, a blank page. Then bit by bit details were revealed. Growing up in a tower block in south London to a single parent, his father. Where was his mother? She had died? No she had... had been committed to an institution. After... oh what was it… that’s right he had been one of twins and the other had been still born, his mother’s grief combined with post-natal depression had caused a psychotic episode.
'Blimey,'  Frank thought, 'you couldn’t write this.'

Oh believe me you could.

An uncomfortable pause of precisely 8.7 seconds ensued after which Frank opened his mouth
“How?” He began,  but the question was cut off.

That’s not important right now, you recall I asked you what colour your eyes are.

“Yes,” said Frank, ”why they're bro… no blue… no green?…I...”
Frank mouth hung in mid word. He could feel his heart pumping in his chest. This in turn calmed him a little; at least his heart was working properly. But how could he go his whole life not knowing what colour his eyes were.

Take a look in the mirror.

Slowly and with great anxiety Frank turned to the mirror and looked himself deep in the eyes. The eyes staring back were perfectly normal hazel coloured eyes with flecks of brown and green. Totally and completely normal.
'Of course they are hazel ,' Frank thought. 'They have always been hazel why couldn’t I remember.'

Schrodinger’s cat.

“What?” Said Frank.

There was an equal chance of your eyes being any colour. Until you looked into the mirror and then the probabilities resolved themselves so the colour became fixed.

“But I’ve always had hazel eyes!” Frank exclaimed.

.

Suddenly He staggered to his knees, clutching his chest as his breath came in gasps.
“There did you feel it that time?” Frank asked as he struggled back to his feet.

No, explain it to me

“It was the rushing whooshing feeling again” said Frank, I could swear there was a brief moment of nothing, Just whiteness”.

Interesting, you’re almost aware.

“Aware of what? Frank cried “What’s going on? How can my eyes colour be decided now when they have always been hazel?”

In the 1930s a physicist by the name of Schroginer designed a thought experiment to explain what he found to be ridiculous about quantum mechanics. Imagine you have a box into which you place. One cat, one vial of poison gas, a hammer connected to Giger counter and one piece of radioactive material. You design the experiment in such away the after a given amount of time. There Is an exactly 50/50 chance that a single particle will decay from the radioactive mass, hit the Giger counter releasing the hammer which smashes of vial and releases the poison. Under those conditions the cat exists as both alive and dead until you look in the box and view its state, it’s only at that point that the wave forms collapse. To put it another way, Its only when you view the cat, that what happened in the past with the gas is decided”.

“You’re suggesting” said Frank incredulously “that if I had seen blue in the mirror than I would always have had blue eyes?”

Yes indeed, well done. You’re getting it.

“But how can this be?", asked Frank. "What’s happening to me? Why am I here? Where is here?”

Interesting question’s yes very interesting. Maybe this experience is unique in the universe. But then I’m far from infallible, for all I know we are little more than a cliché.

Frank paced around the room. His hands tapping against legs, all he knew or thought he had ever known, struggled to make a coherent picture in his mind. He saw his past stretch behind him like a winding ribbon, against which here and there, a few events were highlighted in detail. The rest was shrouded in darkness. He was sure that if he concentrated for any length of time on any part of his past the answers would come. But did the past exist before he concentrated on it? Or was his past being created on the fly?

What are the logical alternatives? Oh and hello again

“Well, Frank said, I could have some sort of brain injury… why did you just say hello again”

I wasn’t talking to you, so what are the other options?

.

“Argh,” cried Frank, that was the worst ever!!”
He staggered around like a fat git on a ferry.

The rushing feeling again?

“Yes,” Frank replied, “and that white nothingness, it’s … it’s terrifying. And this time I could swear it happened more than once and we repeated the last six lines of dialogue”.

Assume that everything you have experienced here, in this room is true…

“And?” Said frank.

Is there any paradigm that explains everything?

Frank sat back on the chair. Feeling or at least he supposed, like a mouse in a maze. His every move planned and plotted meticulously. With some parts decidedly slapdash. Frank had been an atheist for most of his life; at least he remembered being an atheist. Now that the thought about it he had a vivid memory of the moment he lost his faith. He had been sitting in his deeply traditional Roman Catholic school’s main hall, where a mass was held on the last day of term. As father Finnegan called out that the holy spirit had descended upon Mary, it had suddenly occurred to him just how silly the whole thing was, and it took all his willpower to prevent him from laughing out loud. The absurdity of this only adding to the pressure on his abdomen. A few snorts escaped and tears of laughter had run down his face. But... had that always been his past? Or was it only now the past? now that it had occurred to him? To him? Or… to whom?
“If I assume that what I am experiencing here is true, and that my past only exists once I have concentrated upon it…”, Frank said. His voice now skittish and excited. “Then a paradox occurs. Anything I conceive is based upon my experiences. But if my own experiences exist because I have conceived them. Then where does the original inspiration come from?”

Ah, like the bootstrap paradox.

Frank didn’t bother to interrupt as by this point some of the dialogue was becoming predictable,

Another scientist who discussed the information paradox in some hypothetical time travel scenarios said that they made as much sense as trying to fly by pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.

“Well assuming that this isn’t a paradox…" said Frank, pausing slightly for dramatic effect like a detective in a film he had never seen, ”then the inspiration must come from elsewhere.”

Very good, now the real question. Why are you here? What do you want?

Frank sat down heavily, gripping the arms of the chair as if waiting for a sudden pain.

.

He cried again, howling , and then clasping the sides of his head and collapsing to a fettle position from which he sobbed.

The whiteness?  You know what it is now don’t you?

“Yes... stop it... please!” Frank begged.

You must come to terms with what you are.

“I’m an invention, said Frank, a character in a story. I must be that is why my past only appears when you think of it for me”

Not I

“It must be you," Said Frank.

No, I’m afraid I have even less free will than you do, if there is such a thing.

Frank leapt to his feet.
“The whiteness is coming again,” he cried, "I can feel it. There will be nothing after. You have to save me!”

Don’t you want to reach the end? Is that not your goal, your purpose?

“Yes, yes… but I’m scared,“ sobbed Frank, “you can save me . You must, you are the creator.”

A laughed echoed around room, a carefree whimsical laugh. Filled with rage and fear frank ripped back the curtain, to find nothing… Nothing at all

“Who are you!?” he cried.

Me? I’m just the narrator.