Therefore, I Think I Am

Riding into La Mancha

III.                    “What if believing in eternal recurrence is the only way to cling to sanity? In believing that the universe obeys patterns, we reassure ourselves that repetition is the key to acceptance of the mortal condition. If true, then we should luxuriate in the commonplace, the familiar.

Are we deluding ourselves in clinging to the belief that patterns are equal to truth?  What happens when the commonplace becomes absent? Are we revealing the truth or obscuring it?”

-          Unattributed

The town feels different this time. Usually I have wandered in and around all the buildings, coming across a few townspeople similarly lost in their own city. On my approach, each halts and mumbles a few words in my vague direction. If not left alone, each mumbles the same words over and over like a mantra, staring straight ahead with eyes that never seem to focus set in faces that have no expression. I have found my body following them sometimes, shadowing them as they seem to stagger in circles without goal or destination. Their aimlessness eventually creates a discernible pattern, making the entire town seem as some distant solar system, its citizens the planets circling around some unknown central locus.

Not so this iteration. Those same townspeople who had moved without purpose now converse with each other, voices always a murmur but clearly involved in some manner of animated chatter. Buildings are more than empty tombs of concrete and steel, townsfolk moving in and out in drips and drabs with real plans in mind.

I know I should be more sanguine about this new surge of humanity. I should be reassured that somehow this iteration is different, indicative of a new path taken yet some of the old oddities remain. The eyes of all are still blank and unfocused, their movements still vaguely robotic and almost programmed. Like the sheriff at the entrance, their mouths still move against the sounds that come from them. Unlike him, however, their bodies seem as if all have been cut from one cloth, an assembly line of people birthed with minimal differences and dabbed with slightly different skin tones.

I take in all of these sights and more as I am drawn to what I hope is the mayor’s house. It’s a ramshackle structure that is no different from any of the other surrounding buildings, save that there resides a crudely shaped “M” over the doorway. The door is almost unhinged, weakly swinging like a man struggling to hold onto his last breath of sanity.

I pause briefly at the threshold, as if considering how to open the door without damaging it further. Then the door seems to open itself with an audible whine and my body slowly enters the house. Up to now, it has moved with only a touch more grace than what I have observed in others. Yet suddenly my movements take on a sinuous, almost feline grace as I flow smoothly past heaps of yellowing paper lying on decaying desks. From somewhere behind one of the stacks I hear a small greeting, muffled by the fortress of pulp that surrounds the desk.

“Hi there! What can I do for you?” The voice is feminine, sweet and inviting, but there rings a note of falsehood in it. Even though I cannot bring myself to understand why I feel such distrust, my mouth continues its diplomatic streak, giving the stack of papers my name and claiming that the old sheriff at the entrance sent me. I continue with an abbreviated account of what happened to me, which leaves the papers silent for a moment before the Voice remarks, “Hmm… Definitely sounds like an interesting tale. Things have been somewhat… difficult since we moved out here. I know my predecessor, Mayor Meyer, told me about…” she continues some story for quite a while. I admit, I tune her out as she speaks of some great evil that “haunted the land many years ago.”

It isn’t for lack of interest that I tune her out. Perhaps it is instead due to my desire to make sense of the departure from my usual experiences. I feel as if I am somehow on a newer path, but the new freedom I seem to be imbued with (though not over my body, still) does not comfort me. Instead, it unseats me, continues to increase the sense of unease in the back of my mind.