“I’ve been feeling off for the last few months. Depressed. I feel like something’s wrong with me.”

“So what?”

“Can you… help?”

“You want Adderall?”

“Already got that.”

“Ah. Let me explain, then. Are you comfortable?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Our main problem, as phil- as doctors, is that of consciousness. Not the easy problem; the hard one. How strange it is to be anything at all, right? Now, we usually answer this by taking an assumption and evaluating the absurdity of its conclusions. Idealism is one solution: the universe is made out of physical stuff and conscious stuff, and some physical beings tap into some conscious stuff. One of the MCAT questions requires you to disavow this, so we’re left with physicalism: mind-ness is an emergent property of physical matter in the right configuration. Sure it’s weird, and it doesn’t make sense on DMT or before eight in the morning, but it’s what we have. You following?”

“I think so.”

“Great. Usually the weirdest physicalist entailment we can get at is the idea that with any Turing machine, say, one made out of rocks, and enough time, we could make some conscious Being spring forth. Hard to wrap your head around, but in a way it’s exactly what happened to you—twenty-five miserable years ago. But I’m convinced there’s a weirder conclusion. Want to know what it is?”

“Um. Yeah?”

“So being-ness, minds, consciousness as a phenomena don’t take up any ‘space’ save for the computer that’s powering them. There can be a lot of them. Your mind thinks, therefore you are. But it does not follow that your computer thinks, therefore it is only you. Why do we assume we’re the only mind occupying our body? For any grouping of discrete computational processes, there could be an emergent mind embodying them.”

“I don’t understand. I know I’m me because I have access to a unified, unchanging set of sensory experiences.”

“Yes, and so do the others. They might have more or less, actually. Ever wonder why you don’t control your breathing? Someone else does. Experiences it, more accurately. ‘Control’ is just a euphemism for consciousness. Inside of you, there are most likely a near-infinite number of minds running in parallel, with differing levels of access to sensory data, and different methods for integrating them. I’m talking to an audience of millions as we speak, and your response will be controlled, or rather felt, by millions.”

“I don’t see how this helps me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with your body. It’s working. But you’re clearly in the wrong continuous manifestation of its consciousness. Maybe you’re the mind enlisted to worry a lot and feel like shit. If it makes you feel any better, there’s surely a mind inside you doing worse.”

“Well. Thank you for your time, I guess.”

“Ketamine?”

“Already snorted a line in the parking lot.”

“Ah.”