Day 105: Word Training 3

Day 105:  Word Training 3

“What do you see?”
“You keep asking me that.”
“You continue to not answer.”
“Saying that I don't see anything is a perfectly good answer.”
“If it were the truth, you would be correct.”
“Then let me correct myself, and be more accurate for the truth's sake.  I see darkness.”
“And what do you see,” she presses, and I try to restrain myself from the urge to pinpoint where her voice is coming from so that I can do something ungentlemanly.

I refrain from pointing out any of the numerous blinking lights or shapes swimming in my vision.  They've been there since a half hour into day one of this session, and saying that I saw them only got me asked if I didn't feel up to continuing.  Answering that I saw dozens of ponies running through a field only evoked a response of ten minutes' angry silence.  Asking if there actually was a correct answer to this interminable line of questioning made her call it a day.

“I see nothing.  Still.”
“I'm not sure how you could be any more wrong than with that one answer,” she says, testily.
I perk up.  “Oh good, a hint.  Then I see everything.  Is that it?”
She's silent for a moment, before saying “I see a smartass.”

The silence that follows these little rows are almost as uncomfortable as the last training session.  It hardly matters how little I think any harm could possibly come to me; the thought that there's an armed person within ten feet of me, whom I can't see or hear, has been driving me up the wall this entire session.  I turn back, facing the ceiling I can't see as I lay on my cot.  There's no reason to get up, after all, save to go through my forms and try not to bump into the walls as I do.

“What don't you see?”
“The point,” I answer immediately.
“Then you're more blind than I've given you credit for.”
“Would that also work, if I convinced you that I was right?  Because that'd probably save us both some time.”
“What will save us time is if you try harder, and think through the questions.”

I close my eyes shut tightly as I sigh.  Every now and then I go back through the same trains of thought.  The things I'm not present to see, that I'm not physically capable of seeing, or that are simply obscured by the dark have almost all been ruled out.  When I'd offered that I couldn't see my own intestines she seemed to smile as she said “I should hope not.”  The list of things that I could see was much smaller, and ran the gamut from colors to concepts to the sunburst patterns of light where my brain hallucinated in order to handle the boredom.

“What do you see?”
“I wonder if I hallucinated a monster, if my purity of sight would make it look like a hallucination of a humanoid pile of bloody vomit and cheese.”
“I can give you some time if you need to think through the questions more.”
“It's been,” I start, before realizing that I don't know how long I've been laying here.  “I think I've had more than enough time to think them through.  If I was going to come up with an answer, I probably would have by now.”
“Then you're giving up?”
“I'll be dead in this cot before I give up.  I just don't think that time is gonna solve this.”  I reach up and scratch an itch on my forehead.  “I need to think in a way that I haven't before.”
“Oh?”

“Yeah.  That's unfortunate for us, though.  I think I might be an idiot.”