Guilty by Design

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I had the strangest dream last night. It was scary and prevented me from going back to sleep for a hour, but not like there were monsters chasing me. It was scary in a much more subtle way, causing me to doubt my sanity throughout the situation.

Somehow I had obtained a book. This book was, basically, the story “The Fly” (and more along the lines of the movie version). Scientist invents teleporter, many tests and revisions that fail, finally some that work, attempts to teleport himself, but there is a fly in the chamber, scientist gets gene-spliced with fly, scientist slowly goes crazy and starts gaining attributes of the fly, until finally he is a monster.

Yeah, anyway, you probably already know the story. This particular implementation of the story was written first person, and kind of like a diary. It was the same size as a slightly-oversize paperback, only it had this weird thick plastic hardcover, with some circular shapes indented in it (four on the front, near the corners, likewise on the back).

So, I start reading the book. (Oh–a little background info: I tend to mark up books. I usually have a black pen that I use to underline quotes that I like or to occasionally writes notes in the margins.) At several places, it started to get a little confusing, so I had to backtrack a page or two to look up something that I might have missed. At that point, I started noticed notes in the book. These notes had a very demented quality and were written in a crazy style in crayon. They were also written in first-person perspective, as if the scientist (the one that “wrote the book,” which was also in first person) had written them. But I had to have written them. After all, I recently got a big box of crayons. I never would have written in crayon in a book, I would have used pen, and I really didn’t remember writing them.

This happened all throughout my reading of the book, probably over several days or a week. The whole time, crayon scrawls appeared. Had I written them? Did I not remember? Did I think I was the scientist? Was I really the scientist? Did I have some unknown alternative personality floating around?

Most of the dream took place somewhere that reminded me of my parent’s house. They and my sister were there. I accused her several times of doing this while I was not looking. The only problem with that is that it occurred while I was looking. I would turn a page, only to go back a page and find the childish scrawling crazy words. It never happened when I looked for it, only when I happened to turn back the page while not really thinking about it.

Eventually, I started looking more closely at the book. Nothing out of the ordinary on the front or back cover (other than they were weird molded plastic). Some fine print was found at the bottom of the title page suggested that it is an exciting book. It said that it was best to read it in as few sittings as possible–over a few nights–and that the ideal reading environment was at night, in the dark, with a flashlight.

Something about the way it was worded suggested to me that the pages were photosensitive. There was some kind of reappearing ink embedded on the pages. Once a page hits light, full face, it probably has a few minutes before the ink appears. How had I gotten the book? I vaguely remember it being sealed in a foil wrapper. Maybe that was it?

That is where I woke up. I was not able to confirm or deny the reappearing ink theory. It was only my initial thought after reading the couple of sentences about reading it at night (the light would expose the page you are reading and not accidentally expose any other pages). I still don’t know if I wrote it, or if I was trying to come up with rational-sounding explanations for dementia. (Wait…how rational is it that an entire book has been printed both with normal print, but also with photosensitive ink?!).

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