Tales From The Ridge

Thursday, January 05, 2006

All I have is

"Who am I? This is not my body, my body was younger than this! What have you done with my body?"
"You were in a coma. You have been in a coma for ten years. See? Look at these photographs."
"That looks somewhat like me, but it can't be. I have no memories of it. I don't remember that bed, or all those tubes, or that machine."
"Nonetheless, that is where you have been. Don't you remember the accident?"
"I remember the accident, and then I remember talking to you. There is nothing in between."
"Like I said, a coma."
"I don't believe you. You doctors must have placed my brain in the body of an old man."
"Don't be ridiculous."
"You took my brain and put it into an old man's body, and you converted my body into one of those mechs."
"There are laws against such actions!"
"All right then, prove that I am me."
"What?"
"Prove I am who I am."
"I have watched over you for ten years - I know that you are you!"
"I have no recollection of lying here."
"You saw the photographs."
"They don't look like me."
"Yes they do, just without the grey hair and wrinkles."
"Exactly. This body has grey hair, the man in that picture does not."
"It changed!"
"Nonetheless, the man in that picture is not me. Or rather, he is me, and I am now in someone else's body."
"Listen, you're being irrational. You've been lying here every day for ten years. You may not remember, but I've seen you with my own eyes."
"But existence is not physical, it is memorial. If a man lives alone his whole life, away from everyone, when he dies can he really be said to have existed? If no-one knows he was there, was he ever there at all? You are not the same person as you were ten years ago, but you at least have ten years of memories to bridge the gap between that man and you."
"But I know you were there. You existed there for ten years, even if you don't believe it."
"Perhaps, but I'm not sure I trust you. If you would switch my brain to another body, then what qualms would you have in lying to me? How can you prove to me that I have been lying here unconscious for ten years?"
"I suppose I can't."
"So I am awoken into...what? Chuang Tzu said that he dreamed that he was a butterfly, and that when he awoke he was no longer sure whether he was a man who had dreamed of being a butterfly or a butterfly who was dreaming of being a man. Perhaps I am simply dreaming. Perhaps I will awake tomorrow back in my body."