fabrecation | 017 [Voice]

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017 [Voice]

[It's rather late at night when the journal clicks on. Luke had waited until he had calmed down from the nightmare he had to make the post, and good thing, too. Otherwise it'd catch the tremor he surely had in his voice.

Instead, he merely sounds subdued, and maybe a little hesitant.]

Does anyone have any good stories to tell?

Or... any advice on how to get back to sleep? [Nothing he usually does is working right now.]

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Okay!

[Gonna clear her throat and--]

What is consciousness, anyway? As William James said about consciousness, "Its meaning we know so long as no one asks us to define it." We might define consciousness as the subjective experience of perceiving oneself and one's surroundings. This definition is only marginally useful, however, as it relies on the undefined phrase "subjective experience."

[...8D]

[... Yup, Luke stopped paying attention pretty quickly into that. He looks away from the journal and stares ahead instead, letting her voice make his mind drift a little. Sad to say, it bores him so much that he's actually starting to drift.

It's way too short, though, and when she stops speaking, Luke slowly snaps out of it and looks at the journal again. There's a slight, sleepy sounding chuckle to his voice when he speaks.]

What kind of story was that? I don't think I understood any of it.

Edited 2011-08-16 18:01 (UTC)

[She smirks.]

The kind that normally gets people to sleep.

[She moves the book closer to the camera, so it's easier to see exactly what it is. The 'story' she was telling Luke was actually a chapter from a psychology textbook.]

... A textbook?

[He can't help grinning at the camera.]

You're reading me a textbook? No wonder I almost nodded off!

Well, you did say you wanted to get some sleep. These usually put people to bed right away.

No kidding. I try reading stuff like that at home and can't even get past the first paragraph.

[He gets out of the camera's range again, to rest his head on the pillow.] Could you read more? [Luke pauses, glancing towards the door. It's okay to tell her this, at least...] I... had another nightmare. That's why it's so hard...

Bad dreams, huh. It happens sometimes, but don't worry about it. You can't let them stop you from sleeping and I can't read you textbook nonsense every night.

[She says with a smirk, flipping back to the textbook pages. She'll begin reading once again a few moments later.]

For practical purposes, researchers use the operational definition that "you are conscious of something if you can report it in words." This definition works only for people who speak. One year olds do not talk, but we don't assume they are unconscious. Similarly, nonhuman animals--

[And she'll keep going from there, unless he interrupts her at any point.]

[There's a soft, yet humored chuckle at that, and then she starts to read.

She won't be getting interrupted, because jeez, this is one good method. He was mostly kept awake due to his thoughts being so... dark, and focusing on someone's voice helps alleviate them. And this is a boring subject, too.

Luke's drifting off, a little. It's still hard to sleep, because even without something else to think of, every time he closes his eyes he sees an ugly flash in his head - blood or that hideous purple color or - ]

How do you even read that stuff... [It's quiet, as if he really doesn't expect a response. He barely even realizes he mumbled it out loud.]

[She pauses in the monotonous reading of the textbook, when she hears the quiet question.]

Well, it helps that I have an interest in this stuff. Hm, maybe if I skip over to another part you can find it easier to rest. [The sound of page flips can be heard softly coming from the audio, before she gets to the part she wants and begins reading again.]

"Why we sleep." We would not have evolved a mechanism that forces us to spend one third of our lives sleeping unless sleep did us some good. But what good does it do? Scientists have identified several benefits. The simplest explanation is that sleep saves energy. When NASA sent a robot to explore Mars, they programmed it to shut down at nights, when exploration would only waste energy. Presumably, our ancient ancestors evolved sleep--

[Once more, she'll continue on with the hopes that he'll go to sleep. at least she isn't reading him this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weGZcfh8pxY).]

[That was a little interesting at first.

But then the monotonous tone gets to him, and he realizes that he's really not interested in the intricacies of sleep and why it's good for the body. He just wants sleep.

So he just listens to her voice drone on, and soon enough, his eyelids start to droop, and her voice is starting to fade into white noise. And some time after that, he doesn't hear it at all, because he's drifted off to sleep.

GREAT SUCCESS!!]

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017 [Voice]

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