In the days that followed, we went further and further into the subconscious realm. Although we tried other portals, we ended up settling on the original mirror portal as our main entry point. The problem was that every portal took you to a completely different part of the subconscious realm. Unlike normal TC space, however, you couldn’t simply transport between locations. If you tried, Sophie told us, it was completely unpredictable. You would end up in some unknown part of this place, with no way of getting back to where you’d come from. That was not a prospect any of us wanted to test, as escaping from a new part of the subconscious would require finding a new portal out. We simply didn’t know how difficult that could be, and no portals had yet been discovered from within the subconscious itself. Sophie assured us that it was possible, but at this point it was only theory.
The subconscious environ also proved difficult to manipulate. You couldn’t make and sustain new environs, because as soon as you cast new elements they would quickly revert back to whatever had been there before. The subconscious processes of the human mind were, apparently, hardwired to stay put. It was a whole new set of rules down here.
Beyond the garden outside of the mirror (we called it New Genesis), there was a whole new world to be discovered, and we took plenty of time to explore neighbouring environs. You did have to travel “by foot”, because if you flew like in normal TC space, the thought-scape could shift beneath you without warning. That presented a similar challenge to teleporting, because it could leave you lost in an entirely unrecognisable part of the subconscious realm. Again, nobody wanted that particular scenario.
As we started experimenting with the subconscious, we tried to push and ultimately transcend the normal boundaries of thought-casting. We made attempts to split our consciousness. Could a person simultaneously exist in two locations? You can split your avatar easily enough, and create a “physical” echo of yourself, you could even transfer your consciousness between avatars, or change your original avatar into something else, but split consciousness proved far more difficult.
We tried mind merging, although people were generally too afraid to commit on this one. Nobody particularly wanted to expose their inner thought life to others.
We tried manipulating our sense of time, and tinkered with consciousness transfer. We created copy avatars of ourselves, and attempted to “imprint” and duplicate our consciousness. In this we thought we succeeded at first (and let me tell you, having a conversation with yourself is kind of creepy). But in the end it was nothing but AI mimicry. Our imprints were not truly sentient, they didn’t resist dissolution, and you couldn’t dissolve someone else’s consciousness as you could a construct anyway.
The great question, of course, was if it would be possible to cross a mind-body divide. If you could find a way to subsist in this realm, or “detach” from your body, then that would be a genuine step toward transcendence. Regardless, we hadn’t been able to come up with any real ideas on the problem that didn’t involve the obvious risk of bodily death. Not a leap we were willing to take at this point, even if we did know how to do it.
For my part, I was starting to believe that the whole thing was a fool’s errand.
“We’re hitting a wall because we’re not pushing in to what this place is capable of doing. We need to start experimenting with partial ego dissolution” Sophie said.
“Right” Ross scoffed. “Let’s start wiping out our identities and hope for enlightenment in the wreckage. No thanks.”
“It doesn’t have to be deconstruction, Ross” Winsford countered. “Loosening our grip on something we already have might be a pathway to something new.”
“Loosening our grip on the ego might be a pathway to turning your mind into mush” Chen countered.
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“But that’s just the point,” Sophie replied. “Dissolution has been a key vector in transcendence literature for centuries. Zen, Advaita, the mystic traditions –
“All of which involved human bodies and human brains” I interjected. “We’re not just meditating here. We’re plunging into the subconscious while jacked into an unstable system we don’t understand. That’s not transcendence. That’s Russian roulette with neurons.”
“Thank you. Good to see someone’s still tethered to the ship” Ross said.
“Then perhaps we’re going about this backwards. We keep talking about escaping the self. But what if we went the other way?” said Winsford.
“Meaning?”
“Unity. Mind-body-environment integration. Full coherence and synchronisity with the environ.”
I frowned.
“We’ve already tried merging awareness with the environment. It ended up being nothing but a futile exercise in avatar transformation. The AI fed us with enough impressions to make us believe something could be happening, but ultimately it’s just a boring version of game-casting.” I paused for a moment.
“Maybe we’re asking the wrong question altogether” I said.
“Meaning what?” Chen said.
“Maybe it’s not about transcending anything. Maybe the mind isn’t supposed to be unbound. Maybe there’s a reason these walls are here. A reason they won’t break.”
“That sounds a lot like quitting, Peterson” Winsford said.
“We don’t need to quit” said Ross. “Ego death is off the table, and tree-hugging enlightenment is a long shot. We need to start playing this like a boss. What we really need to do is to divide and conquer. Map this place out and own it. Subconscious realm or not, it has rules. And if it has rules, we can beat them and break them.”
“Transcendence by conquest?” Sophie asked.
“Maybe” Ross said, “It’s not like we’re coming up with better ideas at the moment.”
“There is another thing that we haven’t tried yet” Sophie said, softly. We all turned to look at her.
“There is a way to go… deeper.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The pre-conscious, or unconscious mind” she said. “There is another layer, a deeper layer than the subconscious. The pre-conscious mind is a realm of instincts and impressions. It is the memory of human evolution hard wired into our system. It’s pre-personal, a layer of being that we have no conscious access to in normal life.”
“Think of it this way” she said, getting more animated now, “It’s an operating system underneath thought. In ordinary life, we never sense the preconscious mind directly, but we do feel it’s influence. Like when we flinch before we even think, or feel scared in the dark. Some call it the shadow of evolutionary memory, shaped by things we’ve forgotten as a species. It’s not personal. Perhaps it’s not even fully human. It’s a layer of the mind we’re not meant to step into consciously.”
“Winsford and I believe that here, in the world of thought-casting, we might be able to breach it. Not metaphorically, but literally.”
We all looked at each other, not really knowing what to think. At least, I didn’t.
Simon raised an eyebrow, his tone dry. “So we’re talking about diving into the basement of being, without a torch, and… what? Hoping the floor holds?”
“Well…” Sophie said. “Possibly. But if transcendence means escaping the limitations of consciousness, this might be the key. Maybe we need to rewrite, or – using Ross’ image – conquer, the preconscious mind”
“Finally, something I can relate to” said Ross. “If this is the key, then I say let’s go break the door down. What’s this actually going to look like, Sophie?”
“Well, it’s a lot like entering the subconscious. You find a portal, and you go down.”
“And how do we know this?”
“Because we found one of the portals” Sophie replied.
We all looked at each other, no one really knowing what to say at that point.
“Ok.” Ross said. “Let’s take a look.”
Would you go down into the preconscious mind?
