He knew they were all his voices. At least, he thought he knew that, most of the time.
Like, when he said to himself, ‘One of these days, I’m gonna kill that sonuvabitch,’ he was pretty sure that was something that he thought, and meant. But he was also pretty sure that this was not his voice, the controlling element of his nature. It was simply sort of a second thought. An impulse. Which for some reason expressed itself in his mind with his own voice, but used a style of diction and an accent which were patently not his own.
This sort of thing happened to him all the time, whole dialogues running unscripted through his mind. It was mostly tolerable, and only rarely interfered with his ability to communicate with others. Real others, and not just the others in his head. Mostly.
But sometimes he lost track. Forgot who was in charge. Stirred up such a storm of point and counterpoint, devil’s advocate and jury of his peers that he couldn’t tell which voice was which. Bad enough. But this parliamentary cacophony also caused him to lose track of what was internal dialogue and what he was saying with his physical mouth. He would stop, mid-sentence, and try to determine what he had just said out loud and what his internal voices had been saying. Figure out who had been in charge, and therefore what his mouth had been doing while his attention was otherwise occupied.
It always meant trouble.
Sometimes it meant police. Sometimes doctors.
Usually doctors.
And here was the odd thing. Whenever it was doctors that came to see him, those were the only times he could remember seeing his reflection. Anywhere. At all. Just sort of catch a glimpse out of the corner of his eye in some unusually reflective surface on their apparatus. He knew it was his reflection, but he didn’t really recognize himself; because he knew – he knew – that he didn’t have a corona of wires and tubes sprouting from his skull.
Just like he knew that the voices in his head were his voices. They were himself…himselves.
They weren’t dead presidents, braintaped, piped into a meat mind to keep their memories fresh.
He knew that.
