You are
reading these
words, and these words, now these words.
And now you are reading the second line. Or are you? Surely you
think you are.
Which means you
think you have a
brain which is receiving signals from your
eyes, and that this brain of yours is functioning, running properly, all cylinders humming. One might even claim,
soberly.
But that's the next question -- how do you know you're sober? How can you be sure you aren't
so hopped up on something right now that you simply think you're sober? That this is your correct plane of existence, not one so much higher that you need to hop-poppity-bonk your own
consciousness to descend to its current level. How can you be sure you didn't
take something designed to have exactly that intended effect.
The
question of whether everything we perceive is simply an
illusion is a well-trod one in
philosophy and
fiction alike, but most often it is framed as an
imposition from
without, as a
trick being played on one
mind by another. But it could just as well be something we've decided to do to ourselves, or even to a part, but not the whole of ourselves.
You could right now be sitting back watching you read these words, amused by your own non-realization that you are doing this sitting back and watching.
And, possibly oddest of all, you might not be reading these words at all.
You might be
writing them.
----
IRON X