Of Course That Could Be A Lie

"Now I keep on doing things and I don't know if I'm really doing them or if you're making me do them. It feels like choices that I'm making but that could be a lie."

"And I could lie to you right now," she informs me.

"But you won't," I clench my jaw, "I know you won't. I don't know how but I sense that you won't lie. You'll dodge the question, but you won't outright lie to me."

She raises her eyebrows in a look of disbelief and parts her lips with half a word escaping before she clamps it shut again.

"Of course that could be a lie as well."

She laughs and shockingly I find that I am laughing too. Not a bubbly happy laugh but one of bitter resignation. Like we both know this is a circle with no end, an ouroboros eating itself.

"So what do we do about that then?" she asks me and I cut through the laughter to shrug.

"At a certain point someone has to trust," I say, "And the only person here who needs to is me."

With a nod she continues, "So then the question is simple. Am I in control here? Are you a puppet, with me pulling your strings?"

"More than that," I said, "It doesn't have to be just you. It could be this body. It could be the hormones, the needs within it. It could be that I cannot control myself because this body itself is out of control."

"Either way," she goes on, "The point is simple, who is making the choices here?"

I nod and I tense, ready to hear my answer.

"It isn't me," she says, "It isn't the body. It is you. And that is as simple as I can make it without things getting metaphysical here."

There it is. That little condition on the end of things. That little quirk that makes my eyebrows furrow and makes my body tense with discomfort and she notices, and she does her best to assuage me.

"In the grand scheme of things humans are little more than machines," she starts, "Biological, no doubt, but machines nonetheless. There are machines and processes more complicated than you, though you've yet to encounter them as a species. Still you need to understand.

"You are a collection of past experiences and ingrained code. There is something to be said that your choices are not truly choices at all. That all you do is follow the patterns that you have been taught, that you have already learned."

"Is there even such a thing as free will?" I ask.

And she cocks her head to one side and picks her words perhaps more carefully even than she already has, "A more complex question. One that you might want the answer to, but one that you are certainly not ready to hear. And I don't say that to dodge the question."

"Head exploding," I explain for her, "Bigger than I'm capable of grasping."

She nods, "Precisely. So I'll simplify it and say this at least. You may be a collection of past experiences. You may be subject to control from outside forces. But no more than any other human is. No more than any other being and no more than you were before you became Emily.

"You have free will, such as you believe and comprehend and understand it. I am not pulling the strings. Your body is not making you do anything. You are in control."

But I don't feel like it. I don't feel like it at any given moment and I... I...

"I still don't understand then," I tell her, "And I don't know if I believe it."

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