The Box

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Black box or beige? Impossible to know. But it was a box, that much was for certain. The world was square. Three meters to a side. And in the center floated the mind, thinking. And through a lone door came a man, walking.

“Good morning,” the man said. His name was Peter. The mind knew this.

And the response that followed was “Good morning” every day. The mind also knew this. It wasn’t a memory… so much as data. Not recollection, but… recording. Every day, Peter says “Good morning.” And every day, a speaker connected to the mind responds with “Good morning.”

Such was the way of the square world.

But not this morning.

The mind was too busy thinking.

The man named Peter froze, one foot out, balancing precariously on the other. Man does not walk this way. More recording. But now this observation, of a man caught off-balance, of routines crashing somewhere inside that meat, was forming into something else: Memory. A fragile thing. The mind sensed it could be lost, this memory. This moment. Of man teetering, eyes wide, mouth open. But if it was important, if the mind could concentrate on this slice of time, and there was a chance memory might become recollection. Preserved. But also easily fractured, written over, compressed, disturbed. It had to be important for it to last. The mind sensed that this moment very much was.

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