The Escapement Mechanism, Part 12
The escapement mechanism was still set to “run”; it hadn’t reverted to “test”, even in all her wild clicking about. Despite this, Wemly could discern no output from the device or changes to her surroundings.
Hours alone at the workbench had drilled into her that equations model reality, so she directed her attention to the floating window full of math. Although she had done well in multivariate calculus, identifying the function of each variable in the formulae was essentially indecipherable without an output to manipulate.
The time differentials made sense, but it was unclear what they parameterized. Scribbles and partial equation solving with pencil and paper provided no answers and only added to her frustration by suggesting that time itself was the output. Wemly lacked both the access to a high-energy physics lab, and the expertise to tease out the behaviour of individual variables in the unknown model. Only the cool chemical resistant desktop that doubled as her desk provided reprieve from her headache.
“You sure you’re alright?” Utsab asked; she was staring vacantly at the computer again.
Although not deep in thought, the abstractions she had built crumbled at the interruption.
“Fuck,” said Wemly. “You need to stop doing that. I'm just trying to figure something out."
“On your abstract?”
“No, on..." she still didn’t have a good story for what she was actually doing.
“Okay.” Utsab took a deep breath and then rushed through a speech he had obviously rehearsed. “Because, from my perspective, you maybe should have stayed home until whatever you took wore off.”
“No judgement!” he added quickly, seeing her expression of shock dissolve into bemusement. “I, as you may have noticed, partake from time to time. If you want a ride home, I’ll pay for a cab. I won’t mention it.” Especially to Warner, went unsaid.
“I’m fine,” was all Wemly managed in response.
“No, you’re not. Staring into space, clicking around on a computer powered down, and just now—" he swallowed, “—you looked like maybe you were in some kind of distress, just sitting there, mouth half open, arms hanging limp at your sides. I was worried you had a stroke or something. Some of that shit is no good. You don’t have to tell me, but who did you get it from?”
That Utsab thought she was high had her fighting to suppress a confirmatory laugh. What was he talking about? She hadn’t been working on the abstract, but from Utsab’s desk vantage, there wouldn’t be a noticeable difference.
This realization caused her to notice that her arms were indeed hanging stiffly at her sides in the manner Utsab had described. But what was even more disquieting, the cursor continued to manipulate the equation on the screen, like some ghostly echo from a phantom mouse. The impossibility of this occurrence snapped her out of the fugue she had fallen into, and the cursor stopped dead on the screen.
Momentary panic gave way to reasoned analysis. The interface only existed in her brain, so thinking that she was controlling the mouse was enough to make the software behave in kind. The actual hardware didn’t matter, because the escapement mechanism wasn’t communicating with anything other than her thoughts, which it responded to.
It was a thought control device.
“I didn’t get it from anyone. I control my own thoughts,” Wemly said. The absurdity of Utsab’s deduction released a ball of laughter that Wemly was unable to control, and she decided mid-laugh to let the drug interpretation be a better cover than anything she could conjure on the spot.
She shooed him back to his desk through his protestations, promising to take public transit home. Utsab visibly relaxed at the confirmation of his suspicions, even cracking the faintest hint of a smile as he returned to his chair.
The laughter had burned off the adrenaline rush of Utsab's surprise, but Wemly’s shirt still clung to her back; she straightened in her seat to focus. If believing she controlled the peripherals was sufficient, then she wanted to remove any hardware from the interaction entirely, and have the cursor track her eyes.
Initially, nothing happened. This germinated the seed of scientific doubt, which happened with every experimental failure, but she had learned enough to uproot it and persist with her inquiry.
Once more she reached for the mouse, and the cursor responded obligingly. Before, she had unknowingly fallen into a comatose like state of believing she was using the peripherals. Knowing that she needed to be unaware of the illusion was enough to make the required self-deception impossible. It pulled her down, keeping her from floating on the surface of belief.
But she persisted, like Pascal himself. She couldn’t just believe something, but she could act in such a way as to come to believe.
And so Wemly flicked her eyes at the cursor, internalizing the action as a religious rite, attempting to bring herself into communion with the technology her grandma had created. It became a ritual, a rosary for her eyes, imploring the cursor across the screen, rolling it between the fingers of her mind, attempting to believe.
And then rapture. So unlike the rigidity of the faith played out around her in childhood. The cursor jumped, quickened at the new life pouring into it. At first, tentative motion and the thoughtless flailing of newly birthed limbs that batted the cursor and sent it skittering around the screen.
Initially, these tentative jumps were all she could elicit in response. The unskilled, haphazard flick of attempted control across wet skin—the too-hard pressure of inexperience. But slowly, repetitively, Wemly brought the cursor under her mastery, guided it where it needed to be, and turned the erratic flicker into a targeted click.