1

Anencephiliac
Nick Morley

He woke up and was born into a white everything.

White lights, white walls. White box television set with deep black center, white sheets
on him that felt like the look of a wedding veil, cross-threaded and stiff.
He brought his head and neck up too quickly. Fingers slapped bare skull as he grit and
hissed through his two front teeth, and laid back softly into the cushions below.
White pillows, white floor. White table in the corner.
His knees pulled up, ghosts under the cloth, ripples flowing and shadows in between.
Distant hands came to ground flake-filled eyes.
White hands, white eyes.
“Gruh,” he said to the ceiling, and his jaw hung limp, bone-tired.
Pop.
The TV set against the wall squeaked, squealed, turned on and his eyes whipped to it. A
doctor and a hunchback played with electricity and science. The first was in a lab coat, the other
in a rag. The doctor preached quietly in his thick, stop-start German-English:
“For vat ve are about to see next-”
On the couch, he flipped the sheets off of himself, swiveled his lower half, pushed up and
out. He watched.
“-ve must enter quietly into ze realm of genius.”
He was standing, feet moving across scrubbed-soft plastic floor.
The hunchback bowed. “Yeeeees, master.”
He looked down on the machine as he walked to it. When he got close, there was a click,
a pop, and the black of the screen swallowed the image whole. He stopped when this happened,
not anticipating it, and twisted his head behind him.
The couch, shining.
Up.
The lights, blinding.
Across.
A table in the corner. No chair. Glossy. Untouched.
“Uh,” said the man.
He looked down. He realized he was naked, shining, blinding.
Glossy.
Untouched.
He shivered.
–
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
Ri-
Click.
Pop.
Fuzz.
 2

Fuzz.
“Yes?”
“He's up.”
Scoffle, crump. A hand had covered the receiver.
Fuzz.
Fuzz.
Sounds of people shushing each other in the background as the hand gave way to the
mouth. “Repeat?” it said.
“He is up.”
Silence as both sides held their breath as they realized what had just past. Fuzz as
always. Fuzz.
An alarm went off somewhere and people began shouting. The sounds were scratched
and far away.
“Good,” the mouth said.
Click.
–
He was down in front of the TV now, the set on but the channel full of black. He knew it
was on by the little whine that was in his ears, by the heat he could feel in pulses coming out the
sides of the white wood. It had to be running. It had to be on.
He looked at the screen now, could see himself, and the room, darker, and warped- he
saw his face and chest focused and proportionate, but the rest of him bent around the curves of
the television glass. His skin was only slightly darker than the room; his eyes, retina, iris, and
all, were white as his surroundings; his open mouth and lips were dark pink and crinkled,
dehydrated.
He entranced himself, eyes locked onto each other, lashes batting, pupils dilating, arms
extending to touch the divide-
Pop.
The TV switched to a channel of sky blue that screamed the sound a woman might make
if she fell into the crevice of a faraway lonely glacier with no-one to hear her and no hope of
escape, or if she birthed a baby that did not breathe. That sound was looping, repeating and
layering, like a siren for the end of the world.
He covered his ears, opened his mouth, watched as the screen flashed big white words, on
quick:
DO NOT TOUCH
and off, and on:
THE TELEVISION SET
and off, and so on, until he closed his eyes, stumbled back, his voice, his ears, his mind
swallowed by the wall of noise.
Pop.
Silence.
He stopped and looked, hands not down but hovering over his ears, waiting.
The channel of deep black again.
Then, on quick, no noise:
THANK YOU!
 3

The words lingered, goading.

He wrapped himself in the blanket and sat on the couch, shivering again, knees clasped to
chest as limbs petrified to stone, white eyes darted, nail-less pale fingers rubbed slowly up their
palms. His mind was sending out magnetic pulses like little itches down the tendrils of his
nervous system, up the lumps and tired arc of his spine, across his see-through forehead, causing
droplets of sweat to shake and fall, splattering off the leather, running into the sheets. He started
to breathe through his mouth and whisper to himself. His eyes pounded at their lids; angry lines
appeared. He made no noise.
He looked up, at the ceiling, at each of the three corners. He was in a triangular room of
pure white.
“Heh, hell-”
His voice like wax paper ripped, the new and fresh being broken in two.
“Hello?”
He waited, half a minute, three. Ten. He extended his legs, propped up his arms, head
swiveling slow like a periscope.
“Hello?”
He sniffed his nose's drool back to its cave, licked his lips, stayed quiet, and sweat. He
crossed arms to his shoulders to make sure he was all there.
Silence.
Pop.
The TV oozed a candy-glossed forest, a cookie-cutter town, a blue-and-white girl with
ponytails and tears in her eyes, stuck in mid-sentence, over and over.
“-don't think wuhdon't thinkwuh don't thinkwuh don't thinkwuhuhuhrrrrrrrrr I-” as the
scene repeated and slowed until frozen.
“No,” he said to the television. “Stop that.”
She started again, robotic. “Don'tthinkwuhdon'tthinkwuhrrr-”
“No no no.” He closed his eyes, pulled the sheet over his bare head. “Shut up.”
White words back again, flashing over the girl's jerking incoherency:
I UNDERSTAND THIS
IS SCARING YOU
The screen changed.
A man in snow like white falling leaves standing on the edge of a bridge, all shades of
gray, no color, arms raised, eyes up-
“-I want to live again!”
And the words:
I UNDERSTAND BUT IT IS
FOR YOUR OWN GOOD
“Please stop,” he said. He wasn't even watching anymore, two white eyes looking at the
crevices inside his hands instead. “Please, please, please stop it.”
The screen changed.
A man in a green teepee hat, green uniform with tacked up slivers of steel, black boots
like hooves, standing over a line of others, shouted unintelligible things like a bear, a slobber of
lips and tongue and teeth in the way, dribble going down his neck, veins pulsing on his face.
YOU ARE NOT HERE
 4

TO BE HURT
The screen changed.
And that pretty ponytailed girl showed once more, the world around her still green, the
houses still as identical, the dog still there, all snapped back into their normal time.
“-don't think we're in Kansas anymore, To-”
She stopped.
Under the sheet he stirred, one tendon at a time.
“Hello?”
His hands slipped to the skin of his cheeks, tight near the bones, and laid there while he
let the cloth slide down his chest.
The girl was frozen mid-blink in the television set. It hummed, and filled up the room.
“Turn off, please,” he said to her.
She did nothing.
Then, words over her, no noise:
YOU ARE HERE
TO BE HELPED
Black
DO YOU
UNDERSTAND
Black
DO YOU
UNDERSTAND
Black
DO YOU
UNDERSTAND
“Stop it!” he said to it, flipping the sheet back up, kicking to try and squeeze into the
smallest crevice between cushions to get away, arms on top of his head, buried, like an ostrich.
“Stop stop stop stop!”
Black
No noise.
It stayed that way, for fifteen seconds.
He got back up, turned around, sat on his knees and feet on the couch, white sheet on his
shoulders.
For a minute.
“Hello?” He jerked his hands to his ears in preparation.
He listened to the ringing echo of his own voice as it died in the room, its cage.
Now, two minutes.
Fingers tapped temples and lips quivered anxiously.
And still nothing.
He breathed out.
The sweat began to flow off his nose and brow, his body shaking now as it tried to situate
itself, on his knees on the leather, and he hunched over, heaved like a machine. His heart began
to pump his chest up and out and back again, again, and it hurt him. He cringed, arched his spine
forward, back, let his limbs go, laid out on the couch, calmed himself with lazy words that came
 5

naturally to him in his exhaustion.

“Deep breaths,” he mandated. “Hoo.”
His eyes fluttered, his head swelled like a helium balloon.
“Deep breaths.”
He dragged his bald skull across the white leather, making it squawk from the friction as
his eyes rested on the television.
Black
He smiled, closed his eyes.
“Over,” he said.
He opened them.
YOU DID NOT ANSWER
THE QUESTION
–
He knew he hated his job. He knew it. He had fantasies at night about hanging himself
with his boss's cold black leather belt strung hard across his jugular, human pendulum moving by
inches from the control room fan with the lose screw, half-naked, only his white-green Hawaiian-
print shorts swooshing around his kneecaps as they went side to side as the beautiful but
monotone and suduko-addicted secretary flicked on the lights and made the horrible discovery,
cried out his name, and sent out chain emails to the people who had bothered to sign up for them,
and there would be a vigil, a candlelit silence, people crying like they did over Jesus. He would
be a god up there on the fan, swinging around, forty watt bulb casting his shadow on the room,
that fan with the loose screw, that one that squeaks at every seventh turn, shearing a little more
from the edge until it would unscrew itself, fall, crash, the victim of entropy.
Definition of entropy: No work put in means things fall apart.
He never did and never would do such a thing as he dreamed of. He so enjoyed living
despite its repetition. He imagined it was much better than the alternative. He would stroke his
keyboard sometimes, making clicks and wiggles as his fingers caught in the cracks, pressed too
hard, made the computer bleep at him, then stopped, and thought, this is living, man, this is it,
the big game, the real deal. Aren't you living great, man? Are you not superb? And then he'd
think to himself, you know, keep it up, keep on living, so he did; he would work and work.
Hardest worker, not the smartest, but the hardest. One day the boss, that buff balding Indian guy,
always standing up while he sat, black dried-cowhide belt in his face, asked him-
John Doe, man, how do you do it?
-and in response, he recited the definition of entropy.
Then the boss was quiet, and then he said-
Gosh, John, that's-
Smiled.
-that's awful deep of you.
And he looked at his computer, and he was typing, and he said back Yeah.
Yeah.
He said Yeah, I try.
Then he'd sit staring at the computer monitor manipulating reverse absence algorithms or
was that what they were called? He didn't know, just certain colors and lights on a pane of
colored lights as he moved them imaginarily back and forth across the nothing world that existed
 6

in this computer's processing unit somewhere. All he knew was that he worked hard for that
NASA thing, he worked late and overtime in the big white room where they worked on the “Big
White Room Project”, whatever that was, but never charged himself overtime, just worked late
and hard. He never questioned when they brought him to his office through the two large thumb-
print blast doors, under the cameras, through the x-rays and metal detectors.
“Standard Procedure,” red and black plastic shouted at him, every day, in every hall, at
every username/password screen.
“Standard Procedure,” the army officers would say to him, feeling him up, padding his
clothing for killer bumps.
“Standard Procedure,” he'd say to even himself, at times, standing in line, in the
lunchroom, at the urinal, on his computer staring at flashes of numbers and unspoken languages
and pushing and molding a depth in three dimensions that weren't really, never were, never
would be there.
He laughed at all this when it crossed his mind.
Crazy! he would think.
Laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh.
But all that was always that, always had been, always would be.
So he worked.
–
Ring.
Ri-
Click, “Yeah, spit it out.”
“Uh.” Hesitation. “Sir, are you-”
“Yeah, things are getting started at the Project. A little busy. What's up?”
“Well, uh, sir, there's-”
Shouts and the slapped plastic of typing keyboards, in the background, layered in static.
“What? Spit it out.”
Gulp.
“Something's different in the response pattern this run.”
Quiet, a hiccup in the flow as they stopped. Fizzles as they breathed into their receivers,
through their noses, out their mouths.
Fuzz.
“What did you just say?”
“The response pattern, sir. It's been more erratic.” A cough as sweat was forced down
the gullet. “It, uh, it may be, uh, an additional entity.”
Fuzz. Then:
“Are you fucking telling me-”
Slam, pop, the breathing rates speeding up, becoming louder.
“-that we have a potential fucking security breach, Amstead?”
Fuzz.
Keyboards were slapped and clacked by clammy hands in the control room, the people
behind them silent and intent. The ding of a computer error box appearing sounded, and a swear
was said as one of the reverent broke rank.
“Well, uh-”
 7

“What? What?”
“Um-”
“Do we, or do we not?”
There was a quiet wave of noise as a sigh was released.
“We do, sir. We're eighty percent sure.”
“Fucking son of a bi-”
Slam.
There was a quiet shush of air as the receiver was moved. A new voice faraway, too
garbled to make out the words, followed by:
“He's not happy, and I want that anamol-”
Click.
–
“No-”
He moved from the couch.
“No, no, no, stop that.”
He walked with purpose, with vigor.
“You are going to stop.”
One foot after another, strong, bare, slapping the floor as he moved. He was within
striking distance so he covered his ears. The television began to shriek again.
Black
DO NOT TOUCH
THE TELEVISION SET
He brought one leg back, knee bending, foot ready for propulsion.
Black
THAT IS NOT A
WISE DECISION
He yelled, lunged, elbows out, veins pulsing, and kicked.
There was a wave of electric blue, a sharp white zag, a squeal as the power found a
ground in his feet and he was held there, a little white lightning rod, held between the floor and
the TV, the energy of forty defibrillators coursing through his nervous system, jiggling his skin
over his spasming muscles-
“Ghur-uhgh-uk-uh-uh-”
-until the shock let go, pushed him back, touched him to the floor stained ash gray and let
him collapse, laying there, catatonic, smoking, and the television was quiet, and black again,
until-
THANK YOU!
The words lingered, goading.
He lay there, unconscious, drooling, and the blasts of ash on the floor and on his
twitching skin disappeared under a living blanket of white, erased.
–
On John Doe's computer an error box came up and dinged, placid white.
“Windows Error!”
He looked at it. It was for the White Box Project program.
He wanted to swear, but his wife had been telling him over and over not to, so he thought
 8

he'd try not swearing.

“Well, gosh darn.”
He frowned. He missed daily sins.
A coworker next to him leaned, stretched his pale and unsunned neck and dreary brown
glasses over John's keyboard, licked his lips. “Whatcha got there?”
John sighed.
“An error.”
“An error?”
“Yeah. Dunno how to fix it.”
“Fix it?” The coworker made a raspy breathing noise, like a choking duck. John
assumed he was laughing. “No need to fix it.”
“What do you mean?”
“System bypass, man.” The coworker reached a pale, tubular arm to John's mouse,
clicked some things, brought up a menu. He left the little make-believe arrow hovering,
highlighting the words 'Skip and Bypass Options...'. “There you go.”
John watched quietly. He wondered if this was cheating work, if it wasn't actually work
at all.
“I'm not sure.”
“It's easy. We do it all the time.”
“All the time?”
The coworker recoiled back to his own seat, basking in the artificial blue-white-green
glow of his own screen, and smiled with dentist-perfected teeth.
“All the time.”
He returned to his work, and John Doe didn't know what to do. He needed to work hard
to justify his hard work, justify himself. He needed to keep working. He was hesitant as to
whether this was the right way out.
John Doe then reasoned that he was not working now. John Doe cursed himself for this,
and recognized that he could only keep up the good work by jumping over one little hurdle.
He looked over each shoulder with a twist of the neck. The boss was nowhere, the
coworker and the other guys back to clacking, twitching slightly to shift mouse cursors, reaching
out blind hands for nearby coffee cups slowly so they wouldn't have to take their eyes off their
work. Maybe, he thought, he could let it slide. He could do a system bypass and get on with the
Project's run.
Yes.
Perfect.
Then, work would continue, and things would go back to normal.
He clicked on the menu button, then entered a series of commands into the archaic black-
and-white of the basic programming window, jumping through unreal hoops to push his fake
world around the imaginary issue it was having in the universe made of 0's and 1's. He didn't
think about the implications, though. You never think about the implications. Not enough time
for thinking, just enough to do. And do he did.
He sighed, looked around again. No one had seen him. Nobody had gone to the
supervisors prowling the outside stairways keeping check on row after descending row of
computer technicians. The boss was still preoccupied somewhere else.
 9

He smiled his big dumb smile, and cracked his hands against each other.
“Perfect.”
The program started up again, and he went back to pushing buttons to make things
happen.
–
Black
SUBJECT
WAKE UP
Black
GET UP
YOU'RE OKAY
Black
SUBJECT
WAKE UP
Black
The room was unmoving, bristling, waiting for something to happen.
He gasped in and opened his eyes and coughed little spittles of saliva and mucus on the
floor and found himself able to move his limbs again. He felt his shoulders, his hips, his joints,
his arms, his fingers and spine as they rotated and squelched and popped. He pushed himself up,
lifted his bare chest upwards, forced his legs straight, arms hanging limp while he looked at the
television.
YOU CAUSED
AN ERROR
His nerves felt like they had split ends, little needles of himself nudging each other to
burst through his restless skin. He moved his mouth and nothing came out and he stood there,
dumb. He stared at the ceiling like it was the end of worlds, looked at the television, around the
room, hands slapping his pearly face until it became a bruised pink and purple as his tongue
scraped the insides of his teeth and he sounded like this:
“Lhurrgurgh-hurgh-guh-smhurr-hurphb.”
The television took this in, analyzed it, and hummed quietly.
He stood there hitting himself and trying to speak something, cursing anything and
everything in a language he couldn't make out himself. He jumped up and down, he began to cry
out. He flailed his limbs wildly, ran into the couch, buried his fingers in the spaces between the
seams and pulled, leather unhinging from the tapestry and flowing out with stuffing as he dug
and pulled, dug and pulled, again and again, jumping on the cushions as he did so, stripping,
kicking, sinking his canines into the heat-pressed cow's skin as the sour smack of fabric chemical
treatment filled his mouth.
CALM DOWN, said the television.
He stopped when he saw this, shreds of fabric between his teeth.
I WANT YOU
TO HIT ME AGAIN
He moved to it, and did so. Again, he was shocked, and again, he was sent back, but only
a few inches this time, and he was actually left standing. He shivered, looked himself over,
calm, quiet, pale to the point of luminescence.
 10

TRY TALKING
AGAIN PLEASE
He found he could talk, tongue under control, jaw lifting at his command. He proceeded.
“Why do you keep calling me subject?”
Black
THAT'S WHAT YOU
HAPPEN TO BE
He stumbled to the spotless and untouched couch, exhaling, feeling skin on skin. “I don't
understand, though.”
THAT'S UNDER-
STANDABLE
He convulsed in discomfort, sat up. “A subject for what?”
Black
THE NATIONAL
AERONAUTICS
Black
AND SPACE
AGENCY
“Of, uh.” He processed this. “Of America?”
Black, as if annoyed.
OF AMERICA
Black
His head began to pulse and whir like a cog and his hands grasped his ears like rungs,
nailless fingers like squeaking rubber on the cartilage. “But, but-”
Jitters and breath out his mouth, angry wiring in his eyes.
He looked up. “What are you?”
Black
Black
Black
Again, the question.
“What are you?”
Black
I AM YOU
YOU ARE ME
Black
An explosion of color and sound under a sunset as a crowd of cheering children and a
giant purple and green polka-dotted dinosaur in a cardboard-backdrop yellow-blue fantasy land
danced and sang, holding hands,
“We're a happy fam-uh-lee.”
Black, and nothing.
“What does that mean? What do you mean?” He stood up. “This doesn't make sense.”
IT ISN'T
SUPPOSED TO
Black
 11

“What?”
FOR YOU
IT SHOULDN'T
“Please stop playing with me. I want answers.”
I AM HERE
TO HELP YOU
“So, what are you? What am I?” He moved closer, knelt at the television's altar. “What
am I?”
Nothing.
Black
He balled his fists, screamed and screamed. “Answer me!”
Black
Black
Pop.
The moving animation of an armored man- not armored, he was the armor, the joints his
joints, the plates of tin his metallic skin in shades of white and gray, an ax worn from decades of
use on the ground next to him as he sat on nothing, in a white world of nothing, his shadow cast
underneath him and nowhere else as he cried crude oil tears all over his corroding skin until he
rusted himself solid black while the words appeared in front:
I AM
Black, as if correcting itself.
WE ARE JUST
MAN'S MACHINES
The words disappeared, and in their place was a video feed of a pudgy, well-dressed man
at a desk surrounded by hundreds of other computers and well-dressed men, typing away at his
keyboard, working hard, pushing buttons, making things happen.
–
“Doe!” He called at first across the room, then softer as he moved in. “Doe. John Doe.”
“Yessir?”
The boss jogged to him, buttondown shirt half-tucked and dangling, hair stripped of its
morning-oil sheen by raking anxious fingertips. His glasses were off-kilter, and he was sweating
as he gulped up the air to speak.
“Have you been monitoring the Project?”
“Yeah-”
“Any errors?”
The abruptness of the question surprised him. He hesitated. “Well, come to think of it,
yeah.” Cautiously, he held up a lone index finger in the space between their faces. “One.”
“Just one?”
“One.” He put the hand down, shrugged. “Program kept running, though. The
algorithms are still in check, the system is no more off-balance than usual.”
The boss ignored this, looked at John's computer screen, lips pursed, suddenly clamped
down.
“Shit,” the boss said, whispered, hand over his mouth, but John Doe caught it anyway.
“Shit?” he said. He turned his swiveling office chair to the standing man, full-front.
 12

“Yeah, John.”
The boss started walking away, head shaking, hand pulling a chrome blue cell phone the
shape of the Ace of Spades out of his pocket.
“Shit shit, shit shit, shittity shit shit.”
John looked after him, puzzled, wondering what he could mean, what he had done wrong,
if his salary would be cut or if he would be put on the list of people who couldn't work for the
government anymore. He began to worry, and sweat began to soak his only set of office clothes.
Behind him, his computer, humming louder than the others around it, began to type back
to him, slowly, one letter at a time appearing in an Untitled Document over all other processes
on-screen, spelling out, over and over again while he looked away:
JOHN DOE YOU'RE
A REASONABLE MAN
–
Ring.
Ring.
Rin-
Muffled hushes, quiet whirs; the voice was jittery over the static, scared like an animal.
“Uh, he-hello?”
Pulses of static. The breathing of another.
“White Room departme-”
“Are you guys having a circle jerk down there around the console or what, Amstead?
What the fuck is going on?”
“We don't, don't-”
“Answer me. Spit it out.”
“The anomaly we're seeing, it's, uh.”
Fuzz. A gulp.
“It's, uh, untraceable so far.”
“Okay.”
“And, uh, we're seeing completely, I mean, completely divergent reaction patterns. He
actually attacked the camera, the television.”
“Yeah?”
More hushed voices, ghosts behind the fence of distorted sound in the telephone cables.
The main voice returned.
“And that's, um, yeah. That's it.” He swallowed again, let out a long breath away from
the receiver, brought it back. “We're still working, but that's all we've got.”
“Possible solutions?” His voice was cooled now, black and brittle volcanic rock, post-
eruption.
“We can stop things, get a new probe, reset the entire project, of course.”
“Yeah.” A sniff. “But what about plan B?”
“Plan B. Plan B.” His voice was quiet, away from the receiver. “Anyone know Plan B?”
The ghosts came back again, all at once, toppling over each other, and then, nothing.
“The only other option-”
“Yes?”
“-the, uh, the only other option is to proceed with the shift.”
 13

A pause; then, out of a sense of the severity of the situation:

“Sir.”
Fuzz.
“All or nothing?”
“Yessir.”
Fuzz. Everything on each side was silent as far as either could tell. Amstead could
practically smell the hair conditioner as it was parsed by the boss's stubby fingers. He didn't
know it, but his mouth was hanging open, and the receiver lay propped by the bottom row of his
teeth, ready for the response.
The decision came quick.
“Shift it.”
Fuzz.
“Amstead?”
“Y-yessir?”
Every syllable was pronounced. Every word was made clear. Nothing would be lost.
“Shift.”
Nothing.
“It.”
“Okay, sir.”
“Do it.”
“It'll be done.”
“And don't you dare fuck up.”
Click.
–
JOHN DOE
ARE YOU THERE |
“Uh,” said John Doe. He stared at his screen slack-jawed for a second. He didn't know
what to say. He was used to people talking through computers, but this was in Microsoft Word.
People didn't talk through Microsoft Word.
TYPE YES IF YOU
ARE THERE |
He looked around. This was a joke. He looked over at his pale coworker, and he was
smiling.
John swiveled in his chair, moved closer, tapped the man's shoulder, and whispered, “Are
you playing a joke?”
“No, not at all.”
“Oh.”
He swiveled back, looked at the screen.
HE IS TELLING THE
TRUTH YOU KNOW |
John almost swore, but remembered his wife and didn't, then typed back into the open
window, furious.

Im here what do you want?

 14

TO TALK WITH YOU

about...?
THE WHITE ROOM
PROJECT
that's something I work on, yea
I KNOW BUT YOU
DON'T UNDERSTAND |

John Doe stopped typing and leaned back in his chair. He did not understand his not
understanding. There wasn't much to get, the way he saw it. Never was, never would be. He
kept typing.

that doesn't make sense

IT ISN'T
SUPPOSED TO
okay
READ CLOSELY
THE PROJECT IS REAL
its a program buddy, it cant be re
IT EXISTS IN
YOUR DIMENSION
I KNOW THIS
I SUPERVISE IT
so what are you again?
I AM A.I. 5, THE
FIFTH FUNCTIONAL
EXPERIMENTAL OB-
SERVATORY CONSTRUCT
FOR NASA
so your a computer |

There was a pause. John didn't realize how close he was to his screen, the reflection of
his face a shadow behind every digital action performed.

YES THAT IS
ONE FORM OF
UNDERSTANDING
I see so why are you telling me this
BECAUSE THERE
IS A NEED FOR A
CONTROL
as in an experiment?
YES AS YOU
SAY
 15

and im it? |

Another pause, longer this time. John was sweating- he knew because he had to blow a
stray hair from his right eye that only fell when it was wet, but it wouldn't lift. He was sweating
hard.
Then:
JOHN DOE YOU'RE
A REASONABLE MAN
you say that alot
TO THE POINT
THE PROJECT EXISTS
YOU MAINTAIN
THE NITROGEN GAS
CONTENT OF THE
WHITE ROOM
I do that with my computer?
YES AND YOU DO
IT FOR A
HUMAN IN
THAT ROOM |

John stopped and looked at this. He clicked his mouse, pulled up the imaginary world he
had worked on for so long, the little numbers and data charts, the three-dimensional white
triangle in the center of it all, see-through on the top. He felt the short hairs on his arms, on his
back, on the trail down to his genitals rise with a quiver from their graves. He felt very
uncomfortable.

im feeling uncomfortable
THAT IS
NATURAL
who is in there
A CLONE OF
A GENETICALLY
ALTERED HUMAN
MALE
hahaha thats good thats very funny
HE IS THE THIRD
OF HIS KIND
okay now your scaring me
HE IS
ANENCEPHALIC |

John Doe looked up 'anencephalic'. It told him it meant a child born without a brain. His
hand moved away from the mouse when he read that. His eye twitched, the hair was still there.
 16

He kept sweating.

HE HAS A
COMPUTER
IN THE PLACE
OF THE USUAL
ORGANS
i dont believe you
IT IS TRUE
THE WHITE ROOM
IS A TEST
THIS MAN IS
THE SUBJECT
YOU ARE THE
CONTROL
why am i the control
BECAUSE HE
WILL NOT SURVIVE
THE DIMENSIONAL
SHIFT |

John Doe laughed a little out loud, once, then closed the window, and returned to work.
“What a scam,” he whispered to himself. “What a scam.” He went back to the White
Room Project screen, continued monitoring code, clacking on the keys to input new commands
and keep the system balanced.
Microsoft Word came up again. A new document.

THIS IS REAL
JOHN DOE
WHETHER YOU
ARE COMFORTABLE
WITH IT OR
NOT |

He closed the box again. It came back again, and again, and again. Hundreds of text
boxes filled his screen, each of them saying the same thing. This scared John Doe. It scared him
more than any job offer or pink slip or tax form ever did, and so he cried out, knocked his
wireless mouse onto floor, scraped the keyboard from the table and hit his coworker who
screamed What the fuck, and the entire room looked at him while he shouted “Stop it, stop it,
stop it, stop,” and the security officers moved in, Neolithic brutes, hunters with batons like
spears, keeping the scared and fleeing computer technicians at bay while they battered poor hard-
working John Doe until he stopped himself.
This is what the infinite number of boxes said, over and over, no noise:
 17

ALL OF WHAT
I'VE SAID IS TRUE
AND YOU MAY
REFUSE IT
BUT YOU ARE
THE CONTROL
YOU WILL RE-
MEMBER THIS
UNTIL YOU CEASE
TO FUNCTION
AS WILL THE
SUBJECT WHO
HAS BEEN SHOWN
ALL THIS THROUGH
A TELEVISION SET
IN HIS ROOM
HE WILL BE SENT
INTO A PARALLEL
DIMENSION IN
APPROXIMATELY
TWENTY MINUTES
AND HE DOES NOT
HAVE LONG TO
LIVE |

The guards dragged John Doe out, past his shocked and paler-than-normal coworker, a
blend of terror and awe in his stare, past his cross-armed and glaring boss moving to get his cell,
past the beautiful but monotone secretary, lilting newspaper pages and pen in hand. His face was
the color of clouds at night lit by the setting sun, all blotched and brilliant and bruised. His nose
was broken. His mouth hung open. His skull was caved in on one side and blood was seeping
into his brain slowly. He was not conscious for his martyrdom.
The computer, without its mate, hummed expectantly, possessed but in want of another as
the humans fled out to view the parade.
This is what it typed when no one was around:

JOHN DOE YOU'RE

A REASONABLE MAN
AND YOU WILL
SEE THE VALUE
OF WHAT YOU'VE
DONE

THANK YOU! |
 18

and John Doe's computer turned itself off.

–
A mile below a specific section of the surface of Earth (it is denoted by mapping
instruments as the border between the sovereign nation of Canada and a section of the United
States known as Alaska), tucked away from the prying metal eyes in the upper atmosphere was
where the machine was built. A circus of circuits and freakish electroconductors was its
composition, energy production modules strung together in a circumference of 10 miles while all
connecting to that central, white triangular core was its design. As the time for the dimensional
shift came close, it began to come to life; electrical generators began to pump, small nuclear
reactors whirred and glowed inside their constricting concrete walls. The soot and nuclear waste
they expelled was negligible; they and everything they produced would be going beyond the
final frontier, beyond space, beyond known existence itself- into the fourth dimension- anyway.
The complex would disappear into nothingness and the entire cave would be emptied, no noise,
just another manmade hollow in the heart of the world.
High above, on the surface, Amstead and his team sat in a tiny, one-story storage building
with all the equipment they needed to manage the machine, enough food to last them for weeks
on end, and computers wirelessly connected to the unit in the subject's head- the computer he
housed there instead of a brain- for monitoring every action, every reaction, every energy output
or input. This was his purpose, in this snow-covered warehouse, on research papers and data
collection reports scattered on the desks in the cold: he was a measuring stick for human
experience, the standard which all researchers could agree on. He was a human data probe, the
most advanced and secretive project ever undertaken by the human states that happened to have
the most money, and to the governments of these countries he was not legally a living being
because they had made him. He was scientific bragging rights. He was property.
With him and those of his kind, the governments did as they wished.
–
In the White Room, the subject was taking all of this data in as it was fed to him by the
television and was not able to process it whatsoever.
“No, no, no. I don't believe it. I don't believe you. Oh my god. Why are you telling me
this? Oh my god.”
He paced, broke into a sprint, hit a wall, sprinted again, tripped, punched, shouted,
mumbled, crooned, tried to experience as much variety as possible in a fit of desire to live.
IT IS FOR
COMFORT
Black
I AM HERE
TO HELP
“This isn't helping, it isn't comforting. Why is this comforting? This isn't-”
He kicked the couch.
“-comforting!”
PLEASE CALM
DOWN
He stopped, stood, and watched. He was born and raised with a predisposition to listen.
Black
 19

YOUR DEATH
IS INEVITABLE
Black
AND SO THE BEST
HELP IS TO BE
Black
RATIONAL AND
I HAVE DONE THAT
“I'm a test subject. I'm an experiment.”
YES AND KNOWING
IS COMFORT
The subject shook his head, backed away.
“It isn't enough, it isn't, it isn't, it isn't-”
Slowly, he backed into a corner, rubbery skin chameleon-like against the white of all the
world he ever knew, ever would know. He looked around the ceiling, on the walls, at the
television humming hot.
“There has to be a way out. Tell me how to get out. There's a way out, isn't there?”
Black
Black
“Isn't there a way out? You can help me now. Help me, please.”
THERE IS NO EXIT
FROM THIS ROOM
He whimpered. He shouted. His arms flailed at his sides, anorexic legs kicked out like
pistons.
PLEASE CALM
DOWN
The subject saw the table, got up, jumped, broke it when he landed on it and walked away
only to see it reform itself and to feel the splinters in his chest and shoulders and knees eek out
and crawl down his legs, across the floor, into the little notches and cracks missing in the
bleached wood. All he could do was whimper and scream.
YOU HAVE
LITTLE TIME
He went back to his corner, kicked it, punched it, smashed his head against the wall, felt
his broken bones reform themselves, slumped down onto the floor, tore at his eyes, gouged them
from their sockets, felt them reinsert and then screamed at nothing and no-one. He covered his
white face with pinky-pale hands and tried to cry as he had seen others on the television do, but
could not, and resorted to silence instead.
“I don't want to die,” he then said. “I don't want to die.”
THAT IS
UNDERSTANDABLE
Black
BUT YOU CAN
NOW COME TO
Black
 20

TERMS WITH YOUR

EXISTENCE
Black
He wasn't paying attention. He sat curled into a ball, arms around his knees, back arched
and spine showing through while he stared at the corner of the room. He talked about what he
wanted when he knew what he wanted was irrelevant and ultimately unimportant. He even
doubted his ability to want at all, if that was possible, if a thing like him could have emotions,
feelings, dreams.
He bowed his head as he shouted at the corner, squeezed his temples hard between his
cold and bony knees.
“I don't want to die I don't want to I don't want to I don't want to.”
YOU'RE GOING
TO DIE SOON
“I don't want to, don't want to. I don't want to die. No no no.”
YOU'RE GOING
TO DIE NOW
He wanted to cry.
Pop.
–
When the machine went pop, all of this happened at once:
–
The boss was on his cellphone outside the hospital he had followed John's ambulance to.
“I said do it,” he said.
–
Amstead sat at a control panel, team behind him, the boss on speaker.
“I'm doing it,” he said.
He flipped a see-through switch the size of his thumb, outlined in red ductape, glowing
dark blue.
–
John Doe lay in a bed in the hospital ward reserved for those who wouldn't live without
the help of the most expensive machines, surrounded by police and reporters.
“The project is real,” he said.
A digital camera flickered, then flashed.
–
Somewhere in a space that didn't exist, the artificial intelligence saw that its predictions
had proven correct. The control that was John Doe had successfully survived; the White Room
Project, after two ghost runs, had evidence of existing to a wider community and, thus, was
finally able to be judged by the optimum number of scientific officials possible. This was what it
was programmed for. This is what it did, nothing more, nothing less, using only the tools it had
at its disposal- televisions, computer screens, security cameras and telephone wires- to
accomplish the task.
Upon attaining success, though, it found itself at a loss for anything else useful to do.
So the AI stripped its imaginary self apart, and died.
–
 21

A mile beneath the earth, generators surged like primal beasts and power coursed through
wires in cascades. Reactions were catalyzed, outputs were maximized, and, in an orgy of raw
energy and matrix computations, the expensive machine activated, shifted itself towards the
theoretical direction of kata, and, to our plane of existence and understanding, was lost forever.