Read Personae for Free Online Page B

there was no definitive debunking.
     
    LUDWIG: None.
     
    ADAM: Of what? Where are we? Or, fine, who are we? Why? Are we.
     
    CHARLES: We’re brains in a vat.
     
    NESTOR: That has not been established!
     
    ADAM: The hell’s a vat?
     
    CHARLES: A vat is like a, you know, vat-like structure where, like, brains, mostly of a certain philosophical bent, are held and then… what do I know I’m just a brain in a vat!
     
    LUDWIG: He’s got you there.
     
    CLARISSA: You know those things called books Adam? It helps if you crack one open occasionally. Brains in a vat refers to the notion that while we believe ourselves to be corporeal beings moving through a physical world and experiencing heat, cold, pain…
     
    CHARLES: Desolate loneliness.
     
    CLARISSA: . . . in truth we are merely disembodied brains being stimulated in a manner that creates these illusions.
     
    LUDWIG: By an evil genius.
     
    CLARISSA: Not really a necessary component.
     
    LUDWIG: Who else would engage in such a stimulation?
     
    CHARLES: Is it me then or is the evil genius making it a bit cold in here?
     
    ALL: It’s you.
     
    CHARLES: It is me isn’t it? After all this, the ups the downs, the ins and outs, it’s just me I’m left with and what I’m left with is not the greatest notion of who exactly it is I am.
     
    ADAM: Well it was nice meeting you all but I’m afraid I’m going to be leaving now.
     
    LUDWIG: You should be afraid, that’s the first thing you’ve said since you got here made any sense.
     
    ADAM: I’m leaving. Goodbye.
     
    ( He doesn’t move. )
     
    CLARISSA: So long Adam.
     
    CHARLES: Sooo long.
     
    NESTOR: Long enough, certainly.
     
    ADAM: I’ll stay… a bit longer I think.
     
    (The rest all look at each other, not the slightest bit surprised.)
     
    CHARLES: Don’t worry folks I remember who I am now.
     
    LUDWIG: And the news is?
     
    CHARLES: Good I think. When I was sixteen, at considerable risk to myself, I pulled a drowning child from a seriously turbulent river. I’m not even claiming it was selfless but I so enjoyed the feeling that following the Marines I did swift water rescue for a dozen years until my body stopped letting me.
     
    CLARISSA: Bodies will do that. You zig one way, they zag the other.
     
    LUDWIG: Tyrannical is what they are.
     
    CHARLES: Wait until you’re dealing with one like this.
     
    NESTOR: Never will. I plan to exhaust mine until it quits suddenly. There will be none of this… mechanical extension.
     
    CLARISSA: That’s good news Charles. Who you were, are .
     
    CHARLES: I used to say that Nestor. I never wanted to be hooked up to this stuff. I used to talk tough man. Problem is the moment comes and it’s hook up or check out. You know what? You hook up.
     
    NESTOR: I find that when people tell me how I’m going to react to a given situation, they’re invariably wrong.
     
    CLARISSA: Never mind him Charles, you did the right thing hooking up.
     
    NESTOR: Not when there’s nothing can be done!
     
    LUDWIG: What are you talking about? There’s always something can be done. There’s respirators, ventilators…
     
    CLARISSA: Refrigerators.
     
    LUDWIG: Defibrillators, fibrillators as well obviously. Elevators, alligators…
     
    CLARISSA: Incinerators.
     
    ADAM: Impetuators.
     
    NESTOR: Okay, that’s not a word.
     
    CHARLES: My wife, many years, used to say that she would die, I would die, but we would never die.
     
    NESTOR: Why doesn’t she say things like that anymore?
     
    CHARLES: She died.
     
    NESTOR: As will you and as did the plural you at the time of your wife’s.
     
    LUDWIG: You don’t know that.
     
    NESTOR: Oh I don’t?
     
    LUDWIG: No, not know .
     
    NESTOR: No?
     
    LUDWIG: A military hospital ICU Adam. To answer your question.
     
    NESTOR: Where’d you get military from?
     
    CLARISSA: Military’s your objection? Where’d he get any of it from? Who says it’s an ICU at all?
     
    LUDWIG: You don’t feel the care we’re getting in