CHAPTER 8 We are merely physical beings? I should point out that the thought flashed through my brain that school dreams were definitely near the top of my most-dreaded-dreams list. Getting through school wasn't half as bad as having to be dragged back there for years afterwards in my sleep. And in my pajamas, no less! "What the heck are we doing here?" I demanded, turning to Bo. "I hate school dreams." Faces turned and stared at us. I swallowed nervously, and tried to shrink in my chair. But Bo jolted me to attention when he yelled at the top of his lungs, "It's your damn fault!" "Huh?" I gasped. Every face in the room was now fixed on us. "Shhh. Bo, be quiet..." "You couldn't just pick something from the menu. 'You have to taste all the possibilities'," he sneered. "Thanks a lot. I'll bet you anything we're going to have to go through all the stupid chapters now, one by one. Where are we? I'll tell you where we are! Chapter Ei...." Bo's declaration was interrupted by a ruler that came crashing out of nowhere, hitting him square across the knuckles. His mouth fell open. He swallowed, turned white as a ghost, and sank into his chair. "That is correct, Mr. DiSatva," a voice growled behind my ear. I turned slowly to face the bulldog teacher. "And you, Mr. Allmen..." the bulldog barked at me. Obviously it must be my name, although it didn't exactly ring a bell. "You may assist me at the front of the class while your compatriot here reads Chapter 8 from the textbook." She dragged me by the ear, down the aisle of staring faces, to her desk, where a box sat ominously. "Chapter 8," Bo began. "WE ARE NOTHING MORE THAN PHYSICAL BEINGS. We are nothing more than physical beings, living in a totally physical universe. Through an evolutionary process, organisms developed from simpler to more complex creatures in their never-ending struggle for survival." The teacher finally let go of my ear, and I fell to the floor. "But what about consciousness?" I mumbled to the polished wood beneath my face. "Consciousness!" the bulldog snapped. "Yes, consciousness," I insisted as I pulled myself up, and brushed the scuff marks off my forehead. "There's no mystery about consciousness. All organisms have consciousness. Read on Mr. DiSatva!" "Er...In their struggle to survive, organisms developed greater and greater abilities to perceive, influence and control the environment around them. At first these abilities were focused mainly on physical abilities, such as speed and strength. But, further up the evolutionary ladder, mental abilities of analyzing and comparing and other cognitive decision-making tactics were perfected, allowing a heightened and sharpened sense of consciousness, that ultimately led to self-reflection, and the false assumption that there was something more and deeper in the organism than the physical organism itself." "But there is something more and deeper in me!" I insisted. "Nonsense," the teacher laughed. "Your precious consciousness is nothing more than evolutionarily programmed neurons." I opened my mouth to comment, but she stuck her foot in it and continued her discourse. "If you compare a newborn child and a newborn chimpanzee, you would find their mental development remarkably similar, until about a year of age. The child's development continues, but the chimp's does not. Its mental circuitry does not allow it to learn any more." I tried to bite her foot, but the shoe must have been steel tipped because I hardly dented it. "Living things are remarkably complex," she continued. "The simplest bacterium contains instructions encoded in its DNA that would fill the pages of an entire library. And yet, its consciousness is very limited. The human brain however, is capable of a vast array of amazing feats. Every thought, every action is the result of electro-chemical signals traveling along specific pathways made up of individual neurons. These pathways form a complicated network that is beyond comprehension. There are more possible pathways in a single human brain than there are grains of sand in all the beaches of the world. Yet all of these pathways are localized in a single general area -- hence billions upon billions of individual "consciousness" are united, arising in the false assumption that there is an inner consciousness unique and separate from the organism." "Ern, yorn, gron gurn..." I grumbled. "In fact, if humans could ever construct a super-computer with as many inter-connections as there are in our brains, and supply it with an internal power system, and a super-artificial intelligence program that allowed it to learn from every action it made, it would progress through stages, just like a child passing from infancy to adulthood. That computer would ultimately claim, just like you, that it had a deeper identity as well. But, as I think you will agree, there's nothing spiritual in any way about a silicon-chip computer." The teacher removed her foot, and I tried to think of some argument, but my brain was a blank. It was like I was a computer and someone had switched my brain off. The teacher leaned down and turned the switch on my forehead back on, and the room came back into a fuzzy focus. "Now, Mr. Allmen. If you will please begin taking out the pieces from the box." "Uh, huh," I muttered absently, as if there were a bug in my program that was sending my thoughts in aimless loops. I reached into the box and began pulling the parts out, setting them carefully on the floor. Meanwhile, the teacher dragged Bo up to help me, and he was apparently putting the parts together. I pulled out another part. Somewhere in my brain the word "hand" flashed across some neurons. But it didn't click anywhere. I pulled out another part. "Leg." "Foot." "Torso." The box was empty. I looked blankly over at the teacher. She was holding something. "Head" flashed through my brain. She walked over and placed it on top of the structure Bo had put together. "And now I will place the computer chip inside, like this," the bulldog instructed. The head's blue eyes opened, looked around the room, and landed on me. The head's mouth opened. "Jack!" the head gasped. The sound of the voice overloaded the circuits in my brain. That was Jill's voice. And...and that was Jill standing naked in front of the class. Everyone clapped. The teacher pulled the computer chip out, and my beloved's eyes went lifeless. Our heartless instructor began to unscrew the parts. "JILL!" I screamed. "Now, here's your homework assignment," the teacher was saying, and a hundred million pages fell down on Bo and me, burying us into oblivion. Table of Contents | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter