Posted on August 28, 2008

Karaoke Quintessence: Chapter 3: Synesthesia

The culture box. He stared at the words, tiny letters in an instant messenger window. They shimmered, colors flowing out in a writhing penumbra from the white text, bleeding away into the program’s black background. He’d never seen that before.

The synesthesia had been with him for as long as he could remember and now, twenty two years into his life, he’d come across a word—a phrase—whose color was wholly new. And so he stared at it.

The culture box. Danny had no idea what it meant and, under most circumstances, he’d have ignored it. The IM window was open to a chat bot, an artificial intelligence program designed to mimic the responses of a real person. He’d been playing with it for ten minutes, mostly asking it questions about sex to see how faux offended he could make it, when it wrote:

“You must find the culture box, Danny Weeks.”

That it knew his name wasn’t startling. The program might have run a look up on his IM profile. The information was public. And the weirdness of the statement was to be expected from a chincy, web accessible AI. But the colors of those two words was startling.

Danny was diagnosed with synesthesia at the age of four. He’d been an early reader and his parents grew concerned when he said things like, “I know that says ‘cat’ because ‘cat’ is blue.” The family didn’t have a cat and, if they did, the chances of it being blue were slight. Statements of this sort continued and eventually they took him to a specialist, who told them about the hiccup going on in his brain, about how he associated different words with different colors and that it was all nothing to worry about. The synesthesia just made their son unique. It made Danny special.

To Danny, however, the words and colors were just the nature of the world. To have it be otherwise was akin to flavors not having taste or sounds void of pitch. Language and hue were inseparable in his experience. That was why, when some new color came along, he took notice. And the colors of “culture box” were as new as any he’d ever seen.

He typed back: “What’s the culture box?”

The program responded: “Why don’t you tell me what is the culture box?”

He rephrased the question, tried again. And again. But the chat bot had settled into the endless loop of non-logic meant to mislead the user into thinking the program understood input about which it was wholly clueless.

He switched to a web browser window and typed “culture box” into the search prompt. The results were as useless as the chat bot’s responses. Techno music. A tourist information site for London’s South End. Danny poked around for ten minutes, reading sites, trying other search engines. He gave up. No other mention of “the culture box,” even when he found that exact phrase, shimmered the way those words did in the chat window.

Danny switched back to it and stared. He leaned in close to the LCD until he could see the individual pixels. The colors blurred over and between these, unbound by the limits of the screen’s technology. This was expected, of course, since the colors weren’t actually there, weren’t a genuine product of the computer’s display, but instead a construct of his mind.

He stared, unfocusing his eyes. He let his attention wander. This was a technique he’d learned years ago, one that, on occasion, made the colors go away. The effect was always temporary, but Danny wanted to try it here. He wanted to see if getting rid of them in this particular case—and then letting them come back—would effectively reboot his brain. The shimmer might only be a random misfiring. Danny knew the first thing you always do when something stops working is turn it off and then back on again.

It was working. The colors faded. The double image of the screen warped and shifted—and then went blank. Danny snapped his vision back into focus. His hands were on the keyboard and, without being aware he was doing it, Danny had turned the display all the way down to black. Weird, but it was a weird kind of moment he was having. He thumbed the brightness up again.

But the image that came in was not the browser windows and other applications he’d had open before. The image that came in was only three words, the letters tall and narrow so the text filled the whole of his screen, the colors muted, but still swimming between hues. “FIND IT NOW,” they read.

Danny flinched away and slammed the computer shut. The points just under the skin of his temples screamed. He shook his head, pressing his palms to his ears, and shut his eyes against the threat of those words. He was losing it. His goddamn mind had turned against him. He wanted to drink something, anything, even if it was just water. He wanted to flush his system.

He slid the laptop all the way to the back of the desk and stood up. The pain in his head was fading and there wasn’t any sign of the words. It’s nothing. He breathed. It’s nothing but staying up too late and staring at a screen too much. He had to limit himself to just a few hours a night from now on, maybe even use the time to focus back on his studies. His parents were only letting him live at home as long as he was a full time—and fully successful—student, and nine hour sessions of World of Warcraft had brought him awfully close to being kicked out of the house.

The words were gone. He didn’t dare open the computer to be sure, but he’d let the assumption stand for now. No use checking.

Jesus. He sat down on his bed, propping his elbows on his knees and putting his head in his hands. Jesus Christ. It was just the pain, really. That’s what had him so freaked out. He was used to seeing things, it was the nature of his condition. Some words—even crazy ones, even ones that weren’t supposed to be there—shouldn’t have his heart pounding. Maybe it was only a migraine. He’d never had one before, but who knew if those kinds of things can just start up out of nowhere? Wouldn’t be any stranger than seeing words in color. The pain from the headache had fried his nerves, which lead directly to this fit. It made sense. And the headache could’ve been coming on before he even noticed it. In fact, the words might have been the first indication.

He stood up. He’d get that drink of water and watch television for a while. Danny pushed the pillows around on his bed, a pointless task to clear his mind, and then walked around the piles of books and papers that cluttered the floor of his room. He twisted the knob and pushed, but stopped when he saw the green squiggles on the dry erase board hung on the inside of the door. Danny didn’t remember drawing them, but right in the middle, clear as the after image on the computer screen, was written, “FIND IT FOR ME.”