“When we sleep, are we the ones who dream, or are dreams the things happening to us? Do dreamers dream, or do dreams? Are we the subjects of the sentence or sentenced at night to be the subjects of…”
“What’s he talking about?” my friend whispered.
I turned to him, leaning toward his ear. Speaking as low as possible, I said, “He’s trying to explain away how he uses magic.”
“…memories themselves, not much more than dreams, are alike in having their own reality. They are places we inhabit. Subjective, but are we any more objective than they? If, say…”
“Here’s what I mean,” I add.
“…and by such methods, past, future, present, is perceived to be, not just what we make of it, but what it also makes of us. Who’s to say if you were born? Others, right? You weren’t there, at least not the you you are; so who, then, was born?”
“He’s talking out his ass.”
“Yes,” I whisper. “But he has to, on some level, for his own sanity, deny his own existence, his own will, to escape his culpability. If there is no one to sin and no one to sin against, he can keep living the life he has chosen, chanting over and over again his favorite of all mantras, that there is no choice.”
“I am you, you are me, and all is nothing,” he says as the lights go out.
Tale Told 