93

Hmmm. A regular smorgasbord of the wounded human psyche is what we have here, he thinks. And I have to choose one of these poor schmucks or schmuckettes to execute. I wonder whether the word "execute" means "to kill" in this fucked up place as it does in the world that I come from. And, as he ponders this question, his mind, his own dear, pathological mind, itself now a wonder of human psychosis, returns to the dull, tiresome ache of a question that had previously been dogging it: was there a world from which I have come previous to this one? What is the existential puzzle -- am I a man dreaming that I was a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I was a man? Well, I'm sure as hell not a butterfly, am I? He has only managed to get into the minds of about half, maybe a little fewer than half, of the committee members. This is wearing me out. How do psychologists do it? Maybe that's what he is: a virtual world psychologist. But I have no answers, he thinks. I have no therapeutic abilities. I just view it all, just feel it all, as though looking at some huge mental 3-D smell-o-vision. Except for the fact that he doesn't smell anything in the viewings of the minds. But the analogy still fits nicely, he thinks. And, as for the smell-o-vision, well... little does he know how soon he will be wishing that he had no nose, so horrid are the odors he is about to encounter with the next group of committee folk he will be examining.