By dkl9, written 2024-345, revised 2024-345 (0 revisions)
As expected, the scientist directed me — right at the start — to take off and put aside all my metal. I piled it on a couch, in front of the imposing four-metre white cube. After entering that cube, I lay on the simple, hard bed within, just long enough for him to test the magnetic purity of my body. "You'd make a great subject for this, so it'd be a shame if we had to send you back like that," he noted. I suspect now, as I probably did in the moment, that his enthusiasm had something to do with my conveniently-shaved head.
An excess of lawyers and fear thruout modern society meant that I had to read and sign a multi-page two-column table of explanations and warnings. I had some fun with writing the date: "2024-12-03" on one page, "Dec 3, 2024" on another, "2024年12月3日" on a third. The scientist had me correct all those to the silly American standard.
More interesting was another page with a surprisingly-detailed questionnaire on chirality. Should we say my handedness changed if, a couple years ago, I taught myself how to write with my left hand?
Preparing my head and face for shape calibration and electrodes, respectively, he compared the procedure to an odd spa service. Sans experience with spas, I'd have to take his word on that one, and compare them the other way if I ever do go to a spa. He dragged along my scalp what looked like an electronic pencil, and taped sensors to my left shoulder and just under my mouth.
I went back into the cube, and back on its bed. After the scientist set up a further mess of wires, the bed slid to press my head into a hemispheric gap at the front of a great white cylinder. He left, locking me in, alone; for the next hour, I watched pictures flash on a screen before me, variously abstract and realistically-drawn, and responded to each.
"Heel." "Walk." "Blah blah." "He will write." "Blah blah." "They typed."
We must have messed up my position on the bed by a couple centimetres. After twenty minutes, the discomfort in my posture became obvious and frustrating, my head pressed against the plastic, neck angled a tad out-of-shape. At least this would keep my head from moving much.
He returned to disentangle and detach the mess of wires set up earlier. He suggested I wipe off the three collinear, evenly-spaced black dots marking my forehead, to avoid questions at lunch. I left them on. It seems I was the only one to notice them anyway.