Like something I wrote?
I write this journal entry in a state of panic, in the aim of documenting what is happening to me whilst also warning whoever might find this journal to not read on unless you are somehow confident you can safeguard yourself or your organisation against the dangers.
Before I get ahead of myself, or indeed put you, the reader, in any kind of danger, perhaps I should introduce myself. My name is Elliot. I live in a cosy cabin ("cosy" in the most optimistic sense of the word). Until recently I was a medical research assistant at a local university in this less-than-desirable, frozen-all-year-round town. Unfortunately I was made to depart from that occupation due to a lack of reliablity on my part. Admittedly, working life has never suited me well. But enough about me; on to the topic at hand.
You see, not everything we take in with our eyes is truly "real". I don't mean that in any philosophical or metaphysical way, but in a purely bio-mechanical way. You likely know about the concept of 'perceptual completion' even if you don't know it by that name. In short, it refers to the phenomenon in which our brains fill in small areas of our peripheral vision; a constantly running process to make our environment make sense despite the imperfect hardware of the human body; it is a simultaneously crude and yet brilliant method.
For those who are unfamiliar, allow me to present the classic demonstration of this: simply close one eye and focus the other firmly on the cross. Then adjust your distance from the diagram until one of the dots disappears.
What I now want to emphasise to you is this process never ceases. Our brains do it any time our eyes are not closed. Call me eccentric, but there is one aspect of this process that fascinates me deeply. Specifically I am interested in the implication I mentioned before; that the things our eyes take in, at all hours of the day, are not completely real. When you stop and think about the process in reverse, it is my notion that what our body is actually doing is essentially 'papering over' reality; placing a mirage over what is real, if only in small sections of our blind spots.
It is now that I must relate, dear reader, for the past three days I have been experiencing strange phenomena which I believe to be an adaptation (or evolution) of this process.
Continue to Chapter Two →