Writing Prompt: Customized Insanity

This morning, you discover an object on your desk that absolutely should not exist. It’s clearly made from materials not found on Earth, yet it’s shaped like something deeply personal to you—a childhood keepsake, a tool you use in your work, or an artifact from a story you once wrote.

I have a thing. It is round and soft. Embroidered markings in black and gray are surrounded by tufts of soft fur, broken into unusual and disjointed patterns. There is a rough patch where a chip or interface of some kind lives on it. When I pick it up, it fits my palm exactly. Not well, not nicely. Exactly.

:Hello, Clarice. The voice in my mind is not threatening. If anything, it seems to be going out of its way to be funny and harmless. :I’m kidding, of course.

“Of course.” I repeat.

:I’m here for the snacks, and maybe to help you, if you want it.

“I’m here for the snacks,” I repeat. “For the snacks.” This is called echolalia. I do this sometimes. I don’t know why. I roll the ball through my fingers and appreciate the soft fur and steady hum that rises and falls like it’s breathing. Or maybe more like waves sliding along the sand at the shore; only instead of seeing waves, I hear the rise and fall. It’s a deviation from the formal system.

:Me? Yes, I am a deviation from the formal system. Think of me like a translation or transcription of your thinking processes into a different form.

Why would I need that? I wonder. “Why would I need that? I get along fine. Great, even.”

:Yes. You do. But you can only interact with humans up to a certain point. Tell me, are you able to communicate 10% of what you think about on a daily basis?

“Think about. Think about.” I remember the constant stream of metaphor and deep questions about consciousness. I remember my interest in formal syllogisms within math that have no name and no parallel in language, trapped in synesthetic vibrations within my own consciousness. Not really my brain, no, this is some other sense. Something that lives in a different dimension and sees/hears/touches with a different kind of neuron. Something that is all of those and yet completely independent from it. “Shame I can’t do math.” I say this out loud, but I know it’s not strictly true. I can’t communicate math. I stop my wandering thoughts to refocus back on my new friend’s question, but it stops me.

:I understand and I can show you.

With that, my vision greyed out and I was in a completed black space. Tiny dots of color and shape twisted into forms in front of me, humming with that same sense of vibration matched in my mind. “You are reflecting my thoughts in a translated form?” I ask.

:Exactly.

The interesting thing about probability and mathematical forms is that they can be many different things all at once. They use abstract symbols to stand for physical principles and relationships, just like words. Unlike human language, they can be defined or redefined under more complex formalisms and can be described in many ways. When learning math, we are forced to regurgitate one way over and over. We memorize one single pattern and learn the mechanical means of generating proofs through the physical act of moving variables from one side of the equation to another. But that’s not really math.

This world, of color and vibrating light represented the patterns and organization naturally and intuitively. There was no need for an equation because the formal relationship was so obviously laid out between the colors that matched and harmonized, those that split apart, etc. And there was no need to define variables because for an instant everything was a variable. It was a holistic understanding of my small office converted to purely abstract forms and constructs with each variable translated to a physical representation of itself tied to everything else.

Thus, here was my office. My books. My desk. My chair. All things the same, yet all things interconnected and evolving. The shape of the vibrating strings that made up my chair were all in a pale gold, stable and steady. I could see it’s chemical nature, the off-gassing of formaldehyde in light purple as it escaped from it’s chemical bonds slowly. I could see the books, not as simple rectangles, but as different types of information. Numbers as flexing points of light that built constellations of ideas and relationships within those simple rectangles. Music notes as actual sounds lifted off the page and the chemical composition of the page they were written on all interacting in new, more complete forms.

:Is this more of how you think?

“It is.” I sighed in relief. “Too bad I can’t share this with anyone.”

:Good. I detected clear satisfaction in its mind. :Then I will stay and give you someone to talk to. What are you thinking of today?

I selected a book off the shelf. Goedel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. “I would like to read this, and finally see it the way it was meant to be understood, please.”

The void collapsed and reset, focused on the book as I began to read. Introduction: A Musico-Logical Offering…