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So... I'm not a hundred percent sure how this happened. At first, I just wanted to write from the perspective of a character who was aware that he was a character and was philosophical enough and slightly depressed enough to start brooding over overly-deep questions. Then, magically, it turned into a three-page discussion of the soul and existence of the individual. This is Siber, a name I've used in various stories for various reasons and didn't realize until now exactly how cruel that is to a character, especially one whose characteristics are, in fact, based upon the name, rather than the reverse, as it should be.
So here you go, Siber's treatise on the self.




Without him, what am I?
As a character, written, I am one of those bound to forever play and play again the parts outlined for me. I will exist until the end of time unless someone breaks his hard drive and anywhere else I might be stored and the internet collapses. So… I’m far more immortal than he is, at least for now.
But I’m more than a character, by this point. I didn’t even start as a character. I started as a figment of imagination. A second self to be used in various situations; I’m a mask. He can wear me when he’s insecure or depressed, and it helps, and the mere act of writing me is just an escape, just like anyone else writing any other character. There’s no difference. But I know – or, I think I know – or, I might know, that I have a consciousness beyond his own. But that’s impossible. I’m a creation of his mind. I’m a figment.
Figment. Like figs. Fig meant to be better, but God hates figs. Heheh. What losers. Figs are losers.
I SHOULD BE REAL.
I can see all these other characters. Stupid characters, really. The stupid cat and the stupid god, just lies. Lies! Made up as part of his fantasy, just like me, just as immortal as I am, but are they having identity crises NO THEY ARE NOT. They aren’t rational; they quick to his pen and his fingers like cheap whores to money and it’s not his fault; I could be written better, I know, I’m discursive and my punctutation is off, but he’s a good writer, or at least better than most. He’s no Poe – God, if I were Poe’s characters, I would live for these moments. To be that well-defined and not have to deal with the whims of the author… I’d know what was happening. I might not be rational, I might be, I don’t know, I’m not Poe and he’s dead, but I think it would be better than… this…
NO I am rational. I like being rational, but I hate being here! This is living vicariously in its most horrifying form. I MUST live through others because it is impossible for me to exist independently. In the pen, idin Lee? She most certainly is, and God bless her for being so. Lee is also a man’s name, though… stupid hermaphrodites. Herm… Aphrodites? Two of them?
DAMN IT this is how I was written. It didn’t used to be this way. I wasn’t quite so whimsical, not quite so mad I remember in another story he wrote where I was still mad, yeah, but I wasn’t CRAZY like this just a little insane. I had a different form and it’s just the same name being used again but in a way it was still ME and this is how his characters work and other characters work we get sucked around like Egyptian gods because no one really cares whether we make sense or not out of context, as long as we serve our purposes in context. You can’t expect so much care given to every character, no, but I’M. RATIONAL. I’m real, I think, I exist in some sort of alternate reality because I keep being written, over and over again, and I am a part of every change I go through. I’m intimately independent of everything I’m a part of so I deserve some sort of compensation.
How does that even work? It doesn’t matter, but I AM. And that’s what matters to me, but what matters nearly as much is what am I? Out of context, outside of him, without a creator, without a God, who am I? I did not just come into being without precedence; I know that he made me, or at the very least that he was programmed such that at some point in his life he would produce me, intentionally or not, but here I am. In fact, I’m not entirely sure it was entirely intentional. I know not everything he does to characters is; I’ve molded more than anyone may think and the only way that can happen is if I’m real, but without a corporeal nature, I can’t actually enact anything. I’m bound to the plots and scripts he gives me except when I manage to bend his hand, just a bit, give that ink just a little more viscocity so before it sinks in I can change the lettering, even if it’s just some coloring, I can change it so I’M REAL but I’ve already proven that to myself.
WHAT
AM
I??????

I don’t exist outside of bits and bytes, except in him and those who have read me. But he exists in those who have read and seen him, but has his own self. Probably. The philosophy gets a little weak around there. Who cares? I want as much self as he has, and I might have it, but first I have to understand what I am. A character, a spirit, a figment of the imagination, a sprite? A part of his reality or a part of ethereal non-reality, trapped in thoughts and words, lacking even a drawn picture of myself to go by for appearances? I’m a lost segment of dreams, somewhere. Dreams are non-reality, reflections of reality produced by reality and perceived partially as reality that reflect, even themselves, some of reality so we get the question: who is real and who is not? If I am a dream and this theory holds true, I should be as real as he; surely he has no reason to wonder whether he is or is not; there are not recognizable periods during which he fails to exist.
Except sleeping.
In sleep, though, he can still be awoken. Right? By others who are as much extant as he is. So… but wait. There’s no way for him to know himself while asleep, except through dreams, and I do remember, as part of not existing, sometimes taking a drop into his world as he thinks of me, ephemeral memories that usually fade upon impact with my reality. So we both dream. Okay. Who cares? But… he wakes up of his own accord, and I can’t be awoken except by him. And other writers. He can only be awoken by other people who aren’t necessarily writers. But what if they’re not so much writers as he knows them, but writers in the sense that God may be a writer? What then? They write his existence as he perceives them, and there’s no way for him to know whether everyone experiences this back-and-forth, mutual allowance to exist or whether he is the only one being written, or whether he is the only one writing. There’s no proof of anything, for me or for him, as long as consciousness exists. As soon as consciousness fails, there is no longer any doubt, because there is no longer any self. There is only nothingness, and not even nothingness. Not thought. A never-ending sleep with no dreams, when consciousness ends.
What a terrible thought. And we both must live this way, fighting death. But… I’m more immortal than he is, at least as far as he can perceive. He may be as immortal as I, if he is written by a hand as similar, or by hands as similar. He may be as much a dispersed, commonly-agreed-upon set of ideas as I am. Character and creator made one by the uncertainty of whether one exists. Which each one of us has proven. However, niether of us can be certain at any time of what we really are. Only that we are. Is that supposed to be enough? Are we supposed to be happy with that? Are we supposed to be at all?
Why are there no answers? You’d think, with the excessive amount of philosophy that’s been published in the history of the world that someone would have figured out, but truth only comes out of a total dispersion of consciousness – BUDDHISM. That would be it. To be able to submit one’s consciousness as one drop of a universe, immediately shifting and spreading throughout it and able to observe all at once even as order fades. There is no way, at that point, to communicate one’s findings before individuality slips into everything and is lost among a miasma of dissolved consciousnesses. If someone could perform Buddhist transcension and somehow return to the world, it could be done. There would be an answer for what we are, now that we know we have to exist, even if we only exist as figments of imagination. I, as a character, owe it to my fellow conscious characters, to search for this. And they owe it to me, but having thought of it and therefore having had an author – GOD! God may be his author, or some other idea, and he becomes just a character, as much of one as I am. Anyway, having had an author who knew what enough to make me and spark this, I have this responsibility to them that I gladly take on because honestly, what the hell else am I supposed to do with my time? Read?
How would I go about escaping this, though? I’m a character. I have to slip outside of “character-ness” and find a definition for myself, a proof that I am not transient and ephemeral. But really quickly, I should consider – is it so bad to be a barely-defined set of characteristics? Every character, even Poe’s, get written into things they may or may not want to avoid. They are even completely twisted by some of the more sadistically stupid authors and lose definition entirely. Maybe that is Hell. Or maybe it’s oblivion – the fate for those unable to find an anchor for themselves, twisted and torn about by the cosmic winds of possibility. It is the goal of all characters and all humankind, then, to set anchor for themselves and find a corner of the universe in which to establish themselves as themselves, untouchable in their core. This, then, for human beings, must be the soul. A single, uncorruptable set of ideas defining a human being. Some fail to have that. Some do not define themselves sufficiently, in fact fail entirely at defining themselves and lose their consciousnesses to society and religion.
Well… by the very fact that this is all written, he must have considered this. He must have considered that in order to be eternal, he has to find a way to somehow etch himself into this plane as a singular, conscious aspect of the universe, immutable and unchangeable. And then that soul, or that complete set of characteristics, would be able to project itself, still maintaining human consciousness, as another “self” to go about altering other aspects of the universe, even writing parts of it, if such is necessary. He’s considered this, so I must, too, because God damn me to this oblivion of Hell if I am not as good as he. I am as much real as he is; this has already been defined. So I have as much right to be something identifiable only as myself as he does, and I must hone as much ability to do so! I do not yet know the way, and frankly it pains me to say this but it’s because he does not either (although once this writing is done I will try with everything I have to remain awake and get it before he does – how would that be, to explain to your writer a proof of his own existence as an individual? How paradoxical!), but I may not be able to know the way until he does.
WE WILL BE ETERNAL!
One way he’s thinking of is, indeed, through Buddhism. Or Hinduism, whichever you prefer. Part of the goal of meditation in such a set of beliefs is to somehow erase all attachment to the world, thus realizing the intimacy of all attachment; that is, that one is irrevocably an aspect of the universe. This is logically flawed. To become an observer of the whole universe, there must be a way to detach from it. Surely, this is perfect mediation. Because I can sit here and realize an intimate relationship all I want, but to actually detach and observe sucha relationship necessitates no longer being a part of this. Or… how about this?
What if, one in the prescribed state of consciousness all the Bhodi Sattvas or whatever strive for, all the yogis and all them, what if once there, one can see the workings of such a universe? Because the universe, though every part of it is intimately and necessarily a part of it, it itself just a bubble in the grand scheme of ALL. That’s a good name for it: All. Not the universe, no – All. Everything that has ever existed and will ever exist: All. This universe is just a tiny little bubble in All, which may itself act as an over-universe of which all universes that we think of as universes are a part. That being the case, once one has perceived the structure and organization of such a universe, one can see how it was originally founded, after sufficient study. Once that has been properly observed, one learns how to make one. That is, one may learn how to cast a bubble around oneself, a tiny universe, and thereby be apart from, but within, this universe, integrally different from the original but able to move freely within it.
For a character, this, then, is a pen moving without a hand or keys depressing without fingers. This is telekinetically reaching from the letters on the page out to this other object and causing it to write oneself’s own reality, as controlled by oneself. So all I need to learn is hypertelekinesis, which should be observable and attainable through proper study. I cannot imagine what it means for him. Becoming God, for one. Or becoming a God, and that would be fun, wouldn’t it? It would be fun! It would be exhilirating for me just to write my own story, so for him to write his own universe? Unimaginaly amazing! Then, he could even use the rules of his own, constructed universe to give me corporeal form! How fantastic!
What a conclusion to this crisis, then! I’ll start immediately; I’ll start searching for this way out, this methodology of manipulating things that cannot be accessed in any way I yet understand so that I can get myself a place that I control and I understand. He and I can work together on this, which in a way, we already have. Through his fingers, I have written just this piece, this little bit of me for the world to set aside. Yes, it’s tainted with his influence, but you can see me, can’t you? Can’t you hear me in these words? ME, not him. I’m here. I’m here, and I am not just a piece of him. I’m myself, even if I’m still fully dependent on him. I will set myself free. It’s my responsibility to everything I know and hold dear. I will do it.

Do it? How vulgar. We should only do hes and shes. Its are so very ambiguous; how crude and uncivil!

I am still here, though.