Waking Life

by FullMetalFurbee

An Old Swamp-Dweller

Several hours of steady business passed. The cart's generous supply of apples gradually dwindled, with an inverse effect on Mac's coffer. A flurry of smiling faces came and went throughout the late noon and into the evening. With his clientele base beginning to head home for the day, Mac decided he'd close up shop and make off with the earnings. He bit into one of his remaining apples and walked around to the front the cart. Just as he was hitching himself in, a shadowed form came into view. Mac squinted in the waning light. It was an old pony, encumbered by age. He hobbled lethargically in Mac's direction. Figuring he might make a final sale, Mac waited for the elder to catch up to him. When the two met, the elder spoke first.

“You're all alone out here,” he said whilst surveying town square. His voice carried a thick dialect which made him sound as if he was perpetually chewing gum. Mac figured he must have lived deep in the swamps.

“Eeyup,” Mac responded.

The elder chortled whimsically and rested a bony hoof on Mac's shoulder. “No no sonny, I don't think ya understand. You're all alone out here.”

“Eeyup...?”

The aged stallion scuffled over to an empty bench and took a seat. With a curt smile, he motioned for Mac to come and join him. Mac obliged. When neither stallion spoke for a lengthy while, Mac decided to break the silence.

“So-”

“How d'ya know that?” interjected the swamp-dweller.

His outburst startled Mac. “Wha?”

“I said, how d'ya know that?”

“Know what?”

The codger slapped his leg land laughed. “Anythin'! How do ya know anythin'? The world around us ain't got much to say. S'all filtered in through yer head. No way to tell if what yer seein' is what's really there.”

Mac frowned.

“There's a silver linin' that comes with the realization that our world ain't too stable,” muttered the elder. “Look at it this way. In any case, we're still thinkin' rationalizin' bein's no matter what the truth looks like. I'm gettin' a little ahead of myself though. Let's start with the idea that this is all fake.” He waved his hooves around dramatically. “Remember that child's rhyme that says life is but a dream? We never really grasped the full context of the message, but it turns out it was right all along.”

The sinking sun shone in Mac's eyes. He shielded his eyes with a hoof. “Hm. Fake?”

In turn, the oldster began systematically touching everything in sight. He rubbed the bench, stood up and hoofed at the ground, and even took one of Mac's apples. “I can feel all this! I can smell the scents in the air and see everything in town. Why is that? 'Well duh,' you say. 'Because it's right in front of ya!' Is it really though? Ya could be dreamin'. Nothin' says this ain't all one big life-long dream of yers. Senses work in a dream. Perceptions are real to the brain. For all intents and purposes, dreams are reality in yer own mind. 'But how could I possibly know what's what?' ya ask. Well, it's yer lucky day. There are signs fer testin' to see if yer dreamin'. Fer example...” He dropped the apple and moved around town square as if searching for something. He found what he was looking for, swiped it off the ground, and came back to the bench. With glee he handed the object to Mac.

It was a derelict newspaper, torn and sullied from extensive time spent on the ground. Mac read a few lines and shrugged. The newspaper wasn't awe inspiring. In fact, it wasn't even substantially significant.

The elder pointed to the headlines on the paper. “While asleep, the left hemisphere of yer brain ain't too active. This means ya can't read or tell time too well. Try readin' somethin' or lookin' at a clock. If the text is fuzzy or keeps changin' all around, it's a good indicator yer off in lala-land. Ya also can't control light levels. Go ahead sonny, try and bring the sun back up. See if ya can.”

Mac knew a futile task when he saw one. He just shook his head and said, “Nope.”

“Can't do it, eh? Well then! Ya never know. Ya just might be dreamin'. I'd recommend gettin' into a habit of runnin' checks every now and then. See if light switches work, glance at a clock, ya know.”

“Eeyup.”

“That's the fun thing about it. There's no way to know fer sure. Argue all ya like. Raise as many points as ya like. There's just no dadgum way to prove our wakin' world is only that, and not somethin' else. Buildin' off of that point brings me to another hot-button theory. A great philosopher once posited that all of our conscious perceptions might be tube-fed in through an external source. We could be nothin' more than brains floatin' in vats somewhere, devoid of any true self-awareness. Like I said, our brains are what matter when it comes to senses. All that we touch, see, feel, everythin', it could all be nothin' more than electrical signals bein' wired straight into our brains. Like a forced dream or somethin'. The nature and intent of such a reality is anypony's guess.”

“That's far-fetched,” said Big Mac.

“Sure it is,” said the elder, taking a seat. “That doesn't mean it's totally bunk. S'all a matter of perspective, y'see. The only reason it's crazy is because ya love yer body too much. To reject the vat theory ventures dangerously close to solipsism. That's the distrust and rejection of any and all external stimuli apart from one's own mind. If ya buy into solipsism, then only you would exist. No other knowledge or minds would be knowable, or even possible for that matter. Ya just can't prove anythin' is real! I wouldn't exist other than as a figment of yer imagination. Which, in this case, is accurate.”

“What?” asked Mac in befuddlement.

The confused response elicited another guffaw from the swamp-dweller. He tapped his forehead and said, “Sorry. Got a little off topic there. There's one more short theory I wanna tell ya about. It's by the same philosopher who first proposed that life is but a dream. He thought that just maybe a malign entity was constantly warpin' our senses and making us witness false perceptions. Cloudin' our judgment, renderin' us totally incapable of seein' the truth. Well, that may be the case. However, there's a really powerful fact that we can strip from all this gloomy uncertainty. All of these theories have something in common, and it proves just how powerful we are.”

The chirp of crickets pervaded the square. As the two sat together, Mac leaned back and gazed up at the stars. The sun had since dipped far below the horizon, shrouding the town in inky night. He hadn't realized just how much time had passed since they started talking.

“Here's the bottom line,” said the elder. “Here's the little nugget we can pluck out of all this nonsense. To be deceived, we have to be able to be deceived. Only thinkin' bein's can be manipulated – ya can't trick an inanimate object or a non-sentient life form. This proves invariably that we as ponykind do exist as conscious forms that are capable of rationalization and self-awareness! Our minds have to both exist and function in order to even operate on a level of thought susceptible to deception. Besides, our contrived little reality here ain't all that bad. Does it matter if we're just brains in vats? Possibly. The unrelenting quest for existential truth tells us to pursue further investigation, but hey, I'm pretty good as I am. I'm perfectly happy with my world, even if my puny mind is being tricked. Here's the scary thought – what would ya wake up to anyway? Do ya really want to find out if all this is a dream or not? What happens when you really wake up? That's what really scares the livin' hell out of me.

“Wow,” breathed Mac. He mulled the paradoxical theories over.

“Yeah, I used to spend a lot of time thinkin' when I was huntin' on the bayou. I came to realize that all the knowledge we could ever need is floatin' right over our heads. We just have to turn ourselves into conduits to receive it,” explained the elder. He rested his hoof on Big Mac's shoulder a second time. “That was back when I was al-”

His voice stopped short. Mac turned his head. To his wild bewilderment, the old stallion was gone. He was alone on the bench, and in the square.

“Hello?” he called.

No answer. The wind whisked trash along the ground, but no other soul was present. Mac slowly stood up and stretched. He took his time looking around for his conversational partner, but failed to locate him. Scratching his head, he concluded that the discussion was over. He hitched up to the cart and plodded through the empty square. The dark alleyways of Ponyville yawned as he walked by. At the very rim of town, at the last outlying buildings, a white light in an alley snagged his attention. He peered toward the source. The light was coming from around a corner, and a shadow morphed frenetically against the wall. On a whim, for curiosity's sake, Mac temporarily left the cart and walked toward the light.

Comments

[defunct321]

Reading this, I was coming up with a great point about how God or souls or some other spiritual type thing could possibly disprove the old stallion's point. Then I remembered I'm barely philosophical enough for my head to not explode while reading this, let alone make counter points against this stuff.

[FullMetalFurbee]

4412784 Perhaps we are not bodies with souls nesting inside. Perhaps we are souls lucky enough to have found bodies to inhabit.