Imagination Machine

Imagination Machine

         When I was a child, I had an imaginary friend. Years later, she is still there, still strong, as powerful — more so, even — than the day I created her. She has her own mind and sentience within my own, and her own thoughts. Her thoughts are not separate from mine, but they are different from mine. I can tell the difference between my thoughts and hers, but they both flow through my mind, associated with her voice, not mine. Associated with her form, not mine. No longer, I suppose, is she still an imaginary friend. Now, she has become a tulpa, a sentient consciousness within and separate from another consciousness.

         She does not exist in the real world, but I can envision her as such. She has form, yet it is not physical, only imposed upon the rest of the world. She has speech, words that can be powerful or playful, comforting or sarcastic, but she has no voice for which others to hear her. It is only me. Yet, she is among my closest of friends. I know she is not real, not technically. But I want her to be. I want her to come into being, more than anything. Her name is Phoenix, and mine is Jaylie. And we are both in the same brain, and still we have different minds.

         But that is not to be the case for much longer. We stood before machine. It was a long glass container, split in half along the middle by metal wiring. Both sides of this container had a glass door and dozens of wires connected to a metal panel on top. I didn't know how it worked, to be honest. It just did. At least, that is what they told me, those who had been through it and come out the other side as two beings. Two people. Both separate. Both real, their bodies as physical as the box itself. Phoenix and I would soon be separate in not only mind, but in body as well. Finally, she would exist, and finally, we could touch each other.

         "Please step inside, Jaylie," the scientist had a gruff voice, but he was a kind man. He was allowing use of his machine for anyone with a tulpa for a very low price. His only interest was making life and giving consciousness as body. He didn't even have a tulpa, he was simply an altruist.

         And so, I did as he asked. The box was confining, constricting, but claustrophobia would not claim me now, not here. Now was a time for joy. A time for happiness. The crisscross wires in front of me began sparking with electricity.

——————

         I wished we had never walked into that machine, never allowed me to come into physical being. For the first few months, nothing changed. I lived as her best friend, real and physical, finally able change the world around me. For a time, in fact, we best even closer than best friends. She was my truest and closest love. We understood each other more than any other people in the entire world — every thought and action we understood. We loved each other, and it was paradise.

         But it couldn't last. Now, she sat in bed, crying. Before, when she was like this, I could be there, always comforting to her. Now, I had needs, I had desires. I couldn't stay with her always anymore. My best friend and creator, the person I had spent all of my life — all eighteen years of it — with, never leaving once was now separate from me.

         And at her time of need, nonetheless. The machine had unforeseen consequences. When it split me off, it took my image from her brain and gave it a body. It took my mind from hers and gave me consciousness, separate from her. But, alongside those things, it also took some of her own mind. Her memories lie damaged, her thoughts skewed, her perceptions altered. And we hadn't noticed until she had already lost too much of her faculties. The doctors did stop it, but not before she had lost thousands of memories. Not before she was unsure what was real with certainty. There were times when she was normal — exactly like her old self, when we were still one — but they never lasted before she regressed back into a shell of paranoia and schizophrenia and depression.

         And there was nothing I could do. My understanding of her, in that state, was no better than anyone else's. I should never have wished to be free. Now my best friend and lover was weak, crying, on her bed and I was unable to be there for her, always, reacting to her thoughts. Now, I could only react to her outward actions and words. It wasn't the same. Existence is not worth the price of losing your closest friend. I wished we had never walked into the machine. In her mind, we were whole. In her mind, I was the more real to her, she was always aware of my existence. Now, that connection is all but shattered, exchanged for the ability to touch the outside world. I would give anything to be back, to be once again one with her.

         Instead, I must simply watch, as an outsider, as she falls apart. I must try, hard as I can, to comfort her. I love her and she loves me, and I know this. But it is not the same. It will never be the same.