Read Solipsis: Escape from the Comatorium for Free Online

listens. After a long silence, there is a
sickening thump. Gwen proceeds carefully down the stairs and the
noise gets louder. She finds a trail of blood leading to the kitchen.
Gwen tentatively steps around the corner, and reluctantly allows her
eyes to follow the blood trail.
    Renee
stands in the kitchen, hacking at her left arm with a meat cleaver in
her right hand. She chops at it again, the lower limb is barely
attached but clings on by a few stubborn tendons and strips of flesh.
She gets the arm free, then drops it into the center of the kitchen
where there is a pile of a dozen body parts resting in a pool of
blood. Renee steps into the televator in the corner, and comes
immediately back out with both her arms in perfect condition. Renee
puts her arm back on the edge of the counter and prepares to hack off
another arm, but stops as she notices Gwen standing in the doorway,
horrified.

    Nellie
performs a vivisection along with two aides. A nurse runs in and
interrupts, “Nellie, you've got a problem.” Nellie runs
to a televator and Percival emerges in the kitchen, finding Gwen and
Medved in a stand-off with Renee.
    “ What's
going on?” Percival asks. Renee throws a stray foot from the
pile at Percival's head. The cold, stiff foot skitters across the
dining room table.
    “ Renee,
this is not healthy,” Percival says.
    “ So
what are you gonna do? Ground me? Oh no, I can't go outside!?”
    “ Please,
just put the knife down, take a deep breath, let's talk about this.”
Renee doesn't drop the knife, but merely stares at Percival coldly.
“Please.” Renee reluctantly drops the knife, it plants
itself upright in a copy of her leg. “Thank you.”
Percival takes a few steps toward Renee.
    “ Don't
fucking touch me,” Renee says coldly.
    “ I'm
sorry that you couldn't live on Earth, but this world is just as
good,” Percival says, walking closer.
    “ I
said stop!” Renee flings a knife at Percival, hitting him in
the arm. It slices him and falls to the ground. Percival flinches and
backs away with blood spurting down his arm. Renee stares at Percival
recoiling in pain. Feeling overcome by existential rage, she
collapses to the bloody ground.
    Medved's
furry paws soak up blood as he approaches timidly. Renee looks up at
her teddy bear with the watery eyes of a child. Medved scoops her up
in a bear hug and carries her away to her room.

    Renee
stays alone in her room for weeks. She barricades the door and lives
without food or water since she knows her sensations of hunger and
thirst aren't based on real needs. No amount of pleading would bring
her out. She would sit, legs crossed, eyes closed, meditating for
days on end.

    I'm
a higher being. I mean, consciousness evolved as just a means of
seeking food, avoiding predators, etc. Once little creatures evolved
locomotion, once they had somewhere to go, they needed a driver. All
of our emotions and feelings are just data. Hunger
is data that I interpret to mean that I need food. Love, loneliness,
anger, they're just data. Information giving me, the pilot, a better
idea of where to steer this body, how to keep it operating, fueled,
to get it to procreate.
    But
I don't have a body. I don't need to be afraid of anything. I don't
need to eat or drink.
    So
what use are these feelings anymore? It seems that the meaning of
life is just to try to keep alive, procreate, and placate these needs
we feel. There's not necessarily any truth to any of these concepts.
Humans feel love about as strongly as evolutionarily predicted. When
you have a species with a long and difficult gestation period,
combined with a small litter, helpless young, etc., you expect to
find love, or at least an approximation of monogamy. The creatures
that have no trouble procreating at all, the ones who lay a thousand
eggs and get on with it don't have any kind of love. Why would they
need it? But creatures with very difficult reproduction, like
penguins and whales, where having both parents around