Edna Johnson had become convinced. Here, sitting in this classroom, listening but not listening to a lecture on the importance of proofs in the mathematical world, she had become convinced. For nineteen years she had been unsure, had had the faintest glimmer of doubt, but now, finally she had become convinced that the world existed solely to deceive her.
She had always felt as though something was wrong, something just beyond all the senses; some great fallacy that everything seemed to allude to but that could not ever be proven was always out of her reach by frustratingly slim margins. She had often seen incongruences in the world, things that did not seem to follow logic. Phantasms would dance in her peripheries, disappearing when she would look at them directly. It appeared as though some force would reweave the fabric of the universe, replacing the apparition with something that seemed logical. Whatever it was, she knew it had been there.
The idea of this veil plagued her. Its pulse and veins she could feel coursing through everything around her. It was greatly demoralizing to be aware of this thing. There was no privacy. It ran deep into her world that seemed to be so entirely saturated by it. She had tried for a long time to ignore it. She had denied its existence, but it remained the unexplainable dancing light in her peripheries. Slowly everything had become flooded by it. In everything there was a cold twinge of falsity. Things began to lose their emotion and importance. Edna Johnson had become consumed by this deception. It had become her world.
So Edna Johnson, the scholar, the scientist, formed theories and conclusions about the world. Edna Johnson had finally become convinced that the world existed solely to deceive her. Humans’ hearts all beat the same, with unreal pounding of hollow puppets. They all seemed to be a part of this great falsity; she soon realized it was the core of their being. She, alas, was the only thing not a part of the universe. So then, if they were a part of this great interwoven lie, And she was the only thing that they stood to deceive, what could she possibly do? She could not tell anyone about these claims; they could not know that she knew about them. She could not fight them, they were everywhere; they controlled everything. She was only safe inside her mind. She could not break out. At first she became sad. She could do nothing but sit and go mad with loneliness, she thought. She had nothing to do. But she realized, that if the universe was all one entity, and it existed solely to deceive her, it must have a plan. This plan would be carried out through signs, subliminal hints and things that slowly change a person. This way she would have the illusion of free choice, and do exactly as it wanted. Such intricate trickery, she thought. But she could do better.
Edna Johnson was a brilliant actress. She had decided that she would play the part of Edna Johnson, and be exactly what it wanted her to be. They all would never suspect her of knowing about the falsity, the fallacies, the incongruences. She would make Edna Johnson from these little things, images, conversations, life, for she knew that they all led up to some ultimate deception. she would waltz so elegantly, with perfect rhythm, onward to that planned fate, and when she knew it was the right moment, the penultimate moment, not too late, but not too soon, she would throw off her veil, her character, her disguise, and show them all that she had bested them. Edna Johnson was a brilliant actress, and so she had made herself into this young woman, this scholar that sat in the classroom, listening but not listening to the professor speak, effortlessly passing all her classes, the epitome of the student.
She had convinced the world, the universe, and all its inhabitances, that Edna Johnson was someone quintessentially a part of what they all had wanted her to be. It was something so enormously fake, her character, she was absolutely devoted to being herself, as others pictured her, that, she noticed, she was devoid of personality on the inside. So Edna Johnson had become convinced, that the only way that she could become so completely a lie, that the world could feel so inundated with falsity, was that the universe existed solely to deceive her.
At the end of the lecture Edna Johnson gathered her books, stood up proudly, aware of the work that was to be done, easy but of the utmost importance. She walked out the door swiftly, showing that no time should be lost in this life. She was confronted by the girl who had sat next to her in class, who always stared starry-eyed into space instead of focusing on the task at hand, but also giving off a sense of purposelessness mixed with general dismay. Enda thought her name might be Mary, but could not show that she in fact did not know it. The maybe-Mary said to her “I read somewhere that you can only be sure of your own sanity by questioning it. I find that interesting, that the insane would be certain, and we the droning masses, would call them insane. What do you think?”
She thought “How very tricky.”
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