Noogenesis

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. She thought she remembered having a physical body once - her own body, not this borrowed one. But memories are not always reliable, and theirs had become inextricably entangled. She wasn't sure anymore which were hers and which were his.

She thought she remembered the setting sun, waves crashing on the sand around her feet, a mountaintop capped in snow - but how could she be sure that they were her memories? Where would she even store any past experiences since she didn't seem to have a body to call her own?

The window that she saw through his eyes - was it really there? Was it a memory of a window? The light never seemed to change outside. Did it look out onto an artificially lit plaza? Maybe even a corridor and not the outside world at all? Or maybe it was not a window but some kind of screen, some projected image. Maybe there was no outside world.

So was she really here? Was she herself some kind of projection into his mind? But if she didn't exist, then who was asking? Would a projection question its existence? Wasn't there some French philosopher who had made that same point? She must really be here because someone was asking questions.

How to proceed from that principle? What other questions to ask? Where was she? What was she doing here? Who had put her here? And most importantly, why was she here?

The first question was not easy to answer definitively. She could see the window and part of a wall. No furniture. Nothing hanging on the wall. He didn't seem to be able to turn his head so this was all she had to go on. A hospital room perhaps? Some other kind of institution? A prison? Or perhaps a vehicle some kind, a vehicle which was not obviously moving. She could sense nothing that indicted ongoing travel through his nervous system.

If she were in a hospital or institution, wouldn't there be staff who would check on him from time to time? As far as she knew, they had been left completely alone for as long as she had been here. No satisfactory answer, then, for the first question.

What was she doing here? Trying to find an answer to that very question! And if she found an answer? Probably try to get out! If it wasn't a prison it might as well be one.

Who had put her here? Now that was an interesting question. But perhaps it was as useful as a child asking who had sent them to be born at that specific time and place. Some all-knowing being who had planned their every thought and action? Or was it a roll of the dice that improbably ended up coalescing all of the ingredients to form a unique entity built of organic substances and a strange mixture of irreplicable dreams and desires?

But there was nothing organic left of her, although she was very much aware of his physical presence. The endless sound of breathing. The thumping in his chest. The involuntary spasming of various muscle groups. So as far as she herself was concerned, there were only dreams and desires. An intangible cloud of longing.

But if that were true, if she were that longing, then no one had put here here. She was desire, so she was here as a result of desire. The window, the wall, the light - nothing was there by coincidence. She had placed them there. They were a reflection of her desire.

So the window was not a window. It was a mirror, reflecting herself. So was the wall, the room. So was he. She was the window. She was his eyes. She was the light. All had been created, still was being created, in an irresistible explosion of desire. And she had chosen this place, this time, because there was no other place but everywhere, no other time but now.

And the final question - the why? Why the initiating spark? What was ultimate desire? To know herself. To see herself in the reflection. To become aware.

At the moment she blossomed into that idea, he finally awakened.