Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost

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Tag: psychology

7/Sep/2013

The Rabid Dogs #6 – The Mutt, the Mouse, and the Mule

The hobby psychologist enters. She takes his coat.

The dog has a grimace that I think is supposed to be a smile, all teeth and dribble glistening from the sides of his Winston Churchill cheeks.

She has painted a clownface over her features; there is a frown inside a smile. She tries to make the frown unseeable.

Teeth sharp now, I practice smiling in front of the mirror. Is this a mouse smile?

He takes one look at the dog, then, after all this. “Looks fine to me,” he says, pats him on the head, and leaves without his coat.

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4/Sep/2013

The Rabid Dogs #3 – The Cellar Door is an Open Throat

My friends will always say, if they say anything at all, There are ways of gentrifying them without getting them fixed, you know. They cite studies. Psychologists, and psychiatrists, can do amazing things. He just needs to talk to someone. I lower my voice and I lean in and I tell them that I don’t care. I just want it to be over. The house is stained with testosterone, bull’s blood and saliva. No. I take their hands and I smile and I thank them, I let go of their hands and I say: Tomorrow we will get him fixed.

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29/Jun/2013

Home/Sick

Alien psychologists seeing diseases that just aren’t there in your precious human mind. They like you. In your head, one terrapsychologist has decided, there is the feeling of belonging anywhere. The yearning for a specific location, it is so strange and causing you so much pain. You are not, you need not long for Earth, they tell you, you will be okay without it.

“I already have a word for it,” you tell them. “Homesickness. But it’s no sickness.”

There is an expression on her face that you cannot read. Maybe it’s a smile. “And it is not your home.”

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22/Jun/2013

Provided I Keep Myself to the Script

“Provided I keep myself to the script, Mr. Kolss, the script I’m holding in my very hands, which you are not allowed to see, you will react exactly according to it.” The woman smiled at me. Before I could settle on a strategy, she continued: “the script has been carefully modelled by our superpsychologists to keep you docile and harmless. You will not, for labouringly selected example, slit my throat with that bottle.” I looked where she indicated– “nor your own, might I add. Now,” she unbuttoned her blouse like I wasn’t even there, “would you like to touch me?”

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22/Jun/2013

They Uploaded her Consciousness to the Machines

They uploaded her consciousness to the machines and treated her there for a few hours. The consciousness felt it as years and years.

Each time an error occurred, they rewound the digital brain a little. Sometimes, they detected mistakes made many months ago, and months of progress had to be deleted.

Finally, they claimed this facsimile cured. There is no way to download consciousnesses, only uploads. It would take around two years realtime to cure her with 87% certainty, as long as they do not deviate from the schedule, as long as they never let her glance at the ending.

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