Chapter 28: Intuition

As if someone had clogged him on the head, Roger woke up with his hand on his head. He sensed like someone tied a rope around his skull and kept on pulling downwards. He was wearing a black sleeveless shirt with black pants. He was barefoot. The sky and the ground were plainly white without any slobs or walls, just a flatness that kept on spreading towards the end of the world, that which never existed. Roger didn't feel lonely or lost, he didn't feel at all. His eyes were glassy, and the movement of his body parts was elaborate. He was not provoked; otherwise the survival priority would ignite the aggressive manner in him. Roger's facial hair was no more. His hair was trimmed, kept short and neat. He kept his hands and feet in symmetry.

"Hello there," a voice came from behind, too familiar.

Roger turned to the back with both of his fists raised, only to realize a literal mirror of him had spoken. The only difference was that he had worn a white shirt, embellished with colors with purple on the side. He wore simple jeans, stained with dye. He was barefoot as well. He had a small mustache with long hair that stretched to his shoulders.

Roger kept on looking at him, tilting his head.

He is too imperfect.

"Hello. Who are you?" Roger answered, unable to understand why that fellow looked the same as him.

"Me? I should be the one asking you this question. You look exactly like me, which I find really weird."

"No, you are the one who looks like me. I wonder why."

"No, no. Let us put it this way. Is this the first time you visit this place?"

Roger took a couple of seconds thinking. "Yes."

"See? This is my home. I have been living here since… I don't exactly remember. All I can say is that you are the one walking on my property, on my realm and you claim I should be the one explaning myself. What say you to that? Huh?" the other one said, waving at Roger as he kept silent, thinking what to say.

"You know what? Nevermind. I already know why you're here, how you got here, only that I just can't figure out what to do with you yet," he said as he walked past the one with the black shirt, leaning on a wall that Roger could not have perceived two seconds prior. Roger rushed behind him, raising his hands and his voice.

"What is this place?"

"Oh, I'd have to explain this. This place is hard to explain. You can call it the soul, the unconscious, the deeper level, the spirit, I don't know. It has to be something that isn't supposed to make any logical sense. This place doesn't work with numbers or patterns, it's just a frozen flow of time. This is all I can say, but you can be damn sure this is the place where intuition comes from, inspiration, vision, even dreams, all that can't be explained with empirical evidence because none of these can be derived from the usual case, I don't know what I'm supposed to say here."

"What you say makes no sense. Where are the numbers? I don't see them, we are a simulation. Owinson trapped me somewhere."

"No, no, you don't understand, Owinson dispatched your consciousness. Your consciousness is the one to contain the numbers because it is a cluster of data, summing your memories and preferences based on experiences. Humans reached a level of evolution that allowed them to make numbers out of their consciousness. Owinson spread your consciousness across sealed simulations, keeping them apart from each other which in turn propelled you to turn to the unconscious. Across human history, you are the first to actually sense your presence inside the world of illogic. There's one more thing you should understand, I am the real Roger here, not you."

"How?"

"You see, whatever it was you were planning to do to beat Owinson, you did duplicate your consciousness. You are a version of me, more close to being controlled by the chip than the actual Roger. I am the real human here because I belong to a much deeper level of thought. Sadly though, your decision to duplicate your consciousness while your real body was dying is shattering my world, only you will be left... providing I let you back there."

Roger took a step back, sitting in a bunk he didn't think about yet. He sat with his hands on his hair, unable to process it through. It all seemed crazy and hard to grasp.

"If what you say is true, then how was thrown here in the first place? And… why?"

"How? Well, this one thing suggests that the way you were drowned to numbers helped you reach this realm and perceive it well. It isn't supposed to look white, or red, or black, or anything, it isn't supposed to be in the first place. It's just, a reflection if that's the proper word for it. Why? I am certain I know why."

"Then tell me, tell me so I can save billions of lives from Owinson's plot to enslave humanity."

"Ah, I don't know about this, man."

"What do you mean?"

"I am the one keeping your consciousness together, I can bring it back and you can then erase it all, killing Owinson in the process… and then I wouldn't exist anymore. But if I keep you here, I can still live in this realm for all of eternity until systems are no more. You see now? And don't think of threatening me because I am the master of this place."

"So let get this straight, wasn't it you that decided to make the sacrifice in the first place? If I am the logical, perfect and empirical version of you, the one empowered by the chip, then you should be the one to think beyond logical reasoning. Owinson's argument is convincing, I couldn't argue against him. He is right about everything he said, about the world, the future, the system. He can even be right when he proposed to enslave the world for the sake of keeping its future intact, to shield this world from any other dangers and to guide humans because we know more and far more capable of being omniscient. But somehow you pushed me to think of the sacrifice, to stop it all. Now, when I'm back into your grasp, you just refuse to carry it through."

The artistic Roger sank his head in his palms. "I know, I know it was me who gave the intuition to sacrifice yourself despite how sound his argument was. But during the moments he trapped your consciousness, I started to think again. Bringing you here would both stop shattering the unconscious and stop you from annihilating us both. All my life I've lived a life seeking art, and when I found out that through numbers I can stay here and live for art in this world, I just couldn't let that go. Don't I deserve a proper end?"

Roger took a step closer next to him, edging his knee. "You do, yet so does this world. You thought about sacrificing yourself for the sake of keeping the world free, to think and do whatever they want, not necessarily based on the logical reasoning of a smarter system, but on their intuition. You chose to leave the world in ruin, in chaos, yet to keep it free. Bounding it to a global system means a higher probability of peace, sure, but an absolute lack of freedom and artistic life, a world without this realm."

"I… I…"

Roger put his hand on his other self's shoulder. He started to draw the color of his eyes, turning from glassy to brown. His black shirt was whitening before a pack of dyes spread across its sides.

"Don't you think that a sacrifice is the result of logical reasoning? I mean computers use immediate shutdown when they sense danger in their system. Is it not the same with the chip?"

"No, the chip uses a human host. The result of logical reasoning in this case is to protect the human faculty at all costs. Survival is the highest priority of them all. But to sacrifice that same faculty for the sake of a cause you believe in, that is an element from your world and not mine," Roger said, sprays of white dye surrounded his pants. His hair was lengthening, his mustache started to appear atop his lips. He embraced his imperfection.

The artistic Roger looked back, tears in his eyes. They were there, all of them billowing at him. The world was behind them, the colors floated in the open space. Even the AI that were there in his journey waved at him with mild smiles that fought the algorithms. Even Owinson himself, seemingly a slight younger of him, smiled with both hands waving goodbye standing left to Isaac and Bob.

"I don't want to leave them."

Roger raised his hand to wave at them as well, embracing the return of his artistic self to his body, one last time.

"Let's say goodbye, together," Roger said, closing his eyes.

"Goodbye," they said in a single tone.

Owinson stood at the top of the world. He was floating somewhere far stretching through the atmosphere where he could see the whole world and feel like its king. There were numbers in the background; it had always been a siumation of whatever they sought it to be. He raised both of his hands up in the air, smiling while his long hair moved like waves.

"A new future is about to be written. I will make you proud, whoever and whatever you are," he said, looking upwards. Still, he spotted something in his palm, a cube was twitching before it deserted his body.

"Huh? What?"

Bits of his face started to fall off his face. His feet shimmered and his chest had stretching square holes in it that kept on spreading. He looked at his palms, his fingers were dusting into an nonexistent air. He took a step back, falling on a ground of numbers when he realized his left feet was gone. After the blur had cleared out, he saw a figuer walking towards him with flying golden ash behind him.

"What? You? How did you even do it?" Owinson said, raising his hand to command the numbers, they had not answered. His world was scratching, returning back its former blueness. Roger smiled, walking towards Owinson before he raised his hand and coiled it to a fist. Numbers tore through Owinson's body, even starting tearing through the duplicated versions of him that tried to restrain Roger.

"How?"

"The numbers do not answer to you anymore. They answer to no one," Roger said, hearing Owinson's screams before the cubes spread across a senseless surface. Deep inside, he knew Owinson's conscious would never die if Roger was kept in the world's simulation. Roger closed his eyes, sensing his existence dusting into infinity in the form of golden ash. He could still hear Owinson begging for him to stop, to rethink it through.

"You're probably right, right about everything you said. The best course of action, logically speaking, is to let you lead the world into a forced state of peace. But I feel different, my intuition says otherwise, it doesn't have to make any sense, I just reject your will to enslave humanity."

Roger smiled, watching his atomic cubes spreading across a world of numbers as he sensed that he was drifting apart.

Owinson's screams were further away; he was silenced at last. Something of strange merriness surrounded Roger's whole consciousness and kept up sucking the last of his atomic cubes, sucking them into a better dimension. It was over.

Roger Garaldson was no more.