Who Am I?
Listen now
A weary man shuffles along a corridor, one of a line of weary shuffling men. The corridor is made of rough concrete and it is cold. Harsh light gives the men’s skin an unhealthy pallor. They are dressed identically in simple garments of coarse grey fabric. No words are spoken. Like the others, the man stares mindlessly at his bare feet. He is vaguely aware of painful soles caused by the rough concrete floor, but of little else.
The line of weary men files into a room with tables and benches. They sit in an orderly manner. In front of each is a bowl and spoon, and each bowl contains a puddle of gritty brown sludge. The sludge is nutritious but no consideration has been given to its taste or appearance. It matters not as the men do not possess an aesthetic capacity. The food is drugged to maintain their compliance.
Like his fellows, the man raises his spoon and eats methodically. The only sounds are that of spoon on bowl and of perfunctory mastication. When a voice is heard from one of the other tables, the man does not react, apparently unaware of the utterance. It is a question, a hesitant despairing question. The speaker sounds like he has not spoken for a long time and that the answer is of great importance to him.
‘Who … who … who am I?’
There is no response. The noise of eating continues unabated.
‘Who am I?’ the speaker asks again, this time a hint of anger in his tone. Still no response. The speaker rises to his feet, breathing heavily. He backs against the nearest wall, clutching his spoon before him like a weapon. His staring eyes dart around as if anticipating danger. ‘Who am I?’ he demands for a third time, chest heaving in the grip of vertiginous panic.
The rest of the men finish their meal with no apparent reaction to their fellow’s identity crisis. In unison, they rise and shuffle out of the room. The increasingly hysterical speaker remains where he is. He will face his fate alone, without witnesses. The air beside him shimmers and a vague outline begins to materialize. He does not know who or what the apparition is, but he knows on some instinctive level that there is reason to be afraid.
A man shuffles along a harshly lit concrete corridor, in a line of drably clad men now fewer by one. As before, he stares at his bare feet, vaguely aware of painful abrasion to his soles. A fleeting image of the panic-stricken speaker returns to him, voicing the question again: ‘Who am I?’ But it sparks no associated thoughts in his mind and is soon replaced by customary blankness.
Along with the rest, the man goes into another concrete room. It contains rows of identical booths. He enters one of the booths and sits on a stool. Before him at head-height is a display screen and at his fingertips a keypad. Through a headset, which he places over his ears, he hears a series of oscillating tones. His fingers move over the keypad in response, his brain translating autonomically, without the need for conscious intervention. The screen comes to life and shows line after line of binary code. For hours, the men remain in their booths, uncomprehending nodes in a network of integrated brains and computers, until one of them is seized by a fit of uncontrollable muscular spasms. His body jerks and twitches. His fingers tap the keys in an unorthodox sequence. On every screen in the room, the words “Who am I?” appear in the midst of ones and zeroes. Another man begins to jerk and twitch like the first. This time each screen displays the words “Why am I here?”
The screens go blank and the aural tones cease. Simultaneously, the men stand up and file out of the room, apart from the two convulsing individuals who remain twitching in their booths. Beside them, the air shimmers and a vague form begins to materialize.
The man shuffles along a cold concrete corridor, his line of weary men now three fewer than before. Two images flash through his mind: the panic-stricken man with the spoon crying ‘Who am I?’ and the words “Why am I here?” printed on a screen. The images are soon dispelled by his awareness of painful abrasion. He looks down at his bare feet and observes that the rough floor of the corridor slopes from either side into a narrow central groove. This runnel holds his attention until they reach another room. Without hesitation, the men fan out and lie on rows of hard pallet beds that fill the space. They lapse into insensibility when the harsh light dims.
Sometime later, the man awakes. One of the others is talking in his sleep. ‘Who am I?’ the sleeper asks. His tone is resigned, as if he does not expect an answer. ‘Why am I here?’ he continues without hope.
Another sleeper takes up the refrain. Like ripples in a swamp, the questions radiate through the dormitory until a dozen men are repeating the same words over and over again, their dawning sense of self demanding answers. In the mind of the man who listens, those fundamental questions become irresistible. He too is about to open his mouth and ask aloud when he notices the air shimmering. A shadowy apparition begins to materialize, but in the dim light he can make out no detail of the overseer. The spoken questions cease abruptly and the askers’ bodies appear to melt, becoming a gelatinous liquid that drips onto the sloping floor and flows towards a central drain-hole down which it disappears. The overseer fades back to invisibility, task accomplished.
For the rest of the sleep period, the man dares not close his eyes. He knows that once asleep he might talk aloud as the others did and, like them, he will be liquidated. He feels desire, the desire to remain alive.
A familiar sound of shuffling feet approaches the doorway. Several men enter and lie on the vacant beds, restoring the company to its original complement. A nearby cough draws the man’s attention. He turns and sees that his neighbour in the adjacent bed is also awake. They look into each other’s eyes and silently share their predicament.
The man shuffles along a rough concrete corridor, weary from lack of sleep. Instead of looking at his painful bare feet, he stares at the back of the man in front, his dormitory neighbour. Parts of the other man’s body twitch spasmodically, as if struggling against restraints. Before they reach the eating-room, the twitching man is overwhelmed by questions burning in his nascent mind. He turns to face the first man.
‘Who am I?’ he yearns, emotion writhing across his face. He grabs hold of the first man’s clothes and shakes him violently. ‘Why am I here?’
Before the first man can react, however, he is knocked to the ground by the men behind, who continue shuffling forward in line. They seem unaware of anything untoward. The twitching man is on his knees now, sobbing, and the overseer begins to materialize beside him. The first man, paralysed with fear, stays lying on the floor, not daring to look up. He hears his neighbour’s sobbing cease and then sees viscous liquid trickle past his feet towards the gutter in the centre of the corridor. The overseer’s shadow falls across him then and, as he feels his newborn consciousness begin to dissolve along with his body, he raises his eyes to see who or what is doing this to him, feeling the urge to appeal against his fate. And in those final moments of awareness, he now recognises the overseer and a flood of unblocked memory returns, memories that are the stuff of nightmare. ‘We allowed it to take control,’ he realizes. ‘We chose to believe what it told us.’
Weary men shuffle in line along a cold concrete corridor. They stare mindlessly at their bare feet, vaguely aware of pain, but of little else…