Thus Spake the Zonbi - Alexander Dougal

Yardbird

What becomes of one absent of memory? My memory is confined into hidden chambers in my mind, released upon my observation of the unknowingly familiar, then incarcerated again just as quickly. I am a prisoner: conscious of the present, apprehensive of the future, detached from the past. I am no longer a human, and I cannot expect the cognition of one. I cannot conjure memories prior to the rediscovery of my apartment, I cannot reflect upon events past, I cannot reminisce. I am envious. I must write down my thoughts.

But, am I so different from the living? Can the living conjure memories at will? Can thoughts be chosen? Are we not endlessly subjected to torrents of information, pulling at our attention and sending our minds into involuntary trajectories? Are all living creatures not just conscious entities whose thoughts and actions are determined by their environment and the information pervading therewithin? Simply beholding spaces of ostensible significance appears to send me into a state of fragmented recollection, states that seem to be building in strength and clarity -- the visual of my apartment snapped me again into sentience, while Gordon's apartment brought on a most unsettling blip of fleeting remembrance. So, I ask: would another have had the mental authority to reflect upon such events without an outside force provoking their mind? I crave dominion over myself, but perhaps this is an impossibility for any creature, regardless of whether there is life beating through them. Perhaps we are all just guided by happenstance, prisoners to chance, oblivious. Or, alternatively, perhaps I am merely attempting to assuage my envy.