The Keeper

There's nothing that says everything I post here has to be a RECENT composition. (Of course, there's nothing that says ANYTHING, obviously. I make the rules, along with Janet).

So today, I'm posting something I wrote just about 15 years ago. I went through a short stint of writing short stories. They weren't very good (looking back on them now, I mean) in the sense that my writing skills weren't as developed as I hope they are today. I'm not entirely sure when I wrote it, the last revision was made in 1991, but I'm pretty sure my writing stint was in the 1986-1988 timeframe.

In this one (one of the better ones) I was thinking about the nature of reality, and whether sanity might actually be in the eye of the beholder. I hope you enjoy it. As always, please leave comments if so inclined. If the response is positive (or of course if I feel like it), maybe later I'll post some of the other stories from that timeframe.

--Liam


THE KEEPER

Permit me if you will to introduce myself in the only manner I can. I am the keeper. Some will say 'Why surely you have a REAL name!' No. In fact, there is no need. I have only just invented the title of keeper for your benefit. 'But what is it that you keep?' others will surely ask. I keep you. All of you. Or perhaps you keep me. Can never be sure, can we?

In point of fact I am only interacting with you through this journal because you are getting maddeningly close to the truth anyway. I know you will never comprehend the full truth of it, just as I know you will never comprehend or even acknowledge this journal, but I had to try. I have known the truth for most of always. But then, always is subjective. Reality as you perceive it has only existed for what you would call 30 years, as if time had any meaning at all.

The key to it all is DNA. Some of you have correctly suggested that the DNA strand is a map of your entire body replicated in each and every cell. Actually, it is far more. It is the diagram of your whole life. Every word, every action, every sensation, every single moment is contained millions of times over in your body in the ultimate of redundant systems.

I first became aware of the true nature of man when I was in college. Yes, like you I was once fully human. I would notice...peculiarities. At first they were quite small, the larger ones still quite invisible to me. Things like time references in two ajoining rooms would be off by a small amount and yet each would be correct. People walking alone on city streets talking to themselves. Sure, we've all seen then, but I would notice them. They had been inadequately woven in, I thought.

Later, the discrepancies I saw became larger. Two people would walk by having a conversation, only one would be significantly ahead of the other. Ahead not only in space but in time as well, and yet each was gesturing, indicating empty space where their partner either had been or would be. They called me crazy and placed me in this home where you now house me.

Soon I began to see gaps in the presumed intertwinedness of things. People walking on a calm day as if in a great wind. Two people shaking hands would, on further examination, prove to be two distinct and unrelated events, seeming to be a single one only by virtue of coincidence of location and time. I began to realize that if either party were removed from the scene, the other would nevertheless continue the act, oblivious to the absence.

I began to notice occasions of multiple people in a room all seemingly convinced that they were the sole occupant. One day the orderly came into my room and went through his normal routine of changing the sheets on my bed, but I'd moved the bed to the opposite wall. He never noticed. He simply moved around the area where my bed had been, appearing for all the world to be making an invisible bed. This was my first journey outside my prescribed role. I had successfully done something not provided for by my DNA programming. This led to another startling discovery.

Later that day, successfully back aligned with my program, I was talking with the doctor and I began to tell him what I'd discovered. I could not do so. Any time I would change the subject to this, he would behave as if I had said something else.

My first clue that perhaps I was not entirely outside my program after all was the day I first DID manage to discuss this with my doctor. Of course he told me I was experiencing delusions. This did not bother me nearly so much as the implication: if I was interacting with him on this topic, supposedly outside the program, perhaps I was actually within my program all along and was INTENDED to go outside. I have since determined that this was the result of a hasty re-programming of my doctor to delude me into BELIEVING I was still in-program.

The day after the successful communication, the doctor stopped in my room. The bed had been moved somehow back to it's previous location, although I hadn't consciously registered that fact. The doctor asked me where it was. Actually, he asked me where I THOUGHT it was. So I moved it. The re-programming had been done such that he saw me but did not see the bed move. This was probably just done to confuse me.

Anyway, the doctor insisted on walking through the bed's new location and sitting on the old one. I thus discovered that the program in the DNA was even more complete than I had dreamed. It included all the physical laws which would act and not act upon bodies. The doctor passed directly through my bed and sat floating above the floor where it had been. The next morning I awoke in the bed to discover it was again back where it had been.

The process of my awakening continued for months until I could see every even as distinct and seperate. The choreography in a simple bar fight was amazing. One person would punch and the other would contort violently, and yet each was seperate and there had been no cause and effect between them.

Seen this way, there was a total lack of reason in this incredibly ordered machine that was the world. With no cause and effect, there was no longer any logical reason for the progression of a body (for by this point I ceased considering you people) from one action to the next except to be in the proper alignment for the next apparent interaction. The whole thing was not unlike the huge domino patterns laid out on a floor. Each taken seperately, the dominoes falling over were quite mundane and boring, but together they formed a complex dance of almost magical proportions. If the next domino were not in the line, the whole thing would seem rather pointless, but all together it was beautiful.

So it was with the world. Taken singly each person was behaving in a mad fashion. Put together, timed ever so intricately, each piece interacting with the next in precisely the right order and with the right timing, the whole becomes indistinguishable from a cause and effect world.

I took to searching the world for others who could see as I could. Of course the doctors and interns and all in their programs still saw me in this place, but I was not there. For ages I traveled, leaving signs marking my presence that would not be seen by those in program. Never did I come upon another of my kind.

Which brought me to the logical conclusion that this whole incredible piece of intertwining artistry was built for me. Which led to the next logical conclusion that it was a puzzle, and my task was to find the way out.

This task is one which I have not yet managed to figure out, but I believe I am close, and something compels me to write this adventure down for you. Perhaps in some perverse moment of irony I shall re-program you to percieve it. For even as I am your keeper, I am my own. Part of why I believe I am nearing the end of this puzzle is my recent determination that this great piece of independent yet interdependent artwork was designed by myself.

It seems clear now that when some part of me I can not discern tires of a particular session of this little game, I tire physically within it and go to sleep. During those sleep hours, I am myself again outside, making adjustments to the game to make it more challenging during play sessions and more beautiful overall.

For I am all. I am everything there is. If I do not go to extreme measures to entertain myself, I shall be fully alone and completely bored for all of eternity, as if time had any meaning at all.

Yes, I think I will modify you to be able to perceive this. It will amuse me, and appeal to the vainer parts of me that would like some outside approval for my efforts. You are not truly outside, for you came from me, and you are not truly alive, but as you are as close as I can find, I think I shall alter the DNA to allow this story to pass among you. It should be good for a few years amusement.

And so, as I said, I am the keeper. I keep you. Or perhaps you keep me. Every one of you sees me as a lunatic in an asylum. Every single one of you. Hard to say who's right.

Post Copyright (c) 2005 by Liam Johnson. http://www.liamjohnson.net
Story Copyright (c) circa 1991 by Liam Johnson