There’s no difference at the level of neural activity. They injected those nightmares into my brain and made them real by taking advantage of biological mechanisms to which I had no defense. I wasn’t fighting illusions with reality; instead, I was making illusions to fight reality—a battle that I couldn’t win. “What use was it for me to conjure Cheng Xin? In response to my pleas, my tormentors could make her show up in my mind, giving me hope that a miracle had occurred, that salvation was at hand. But then they would turn the visitation into an even worse hell, one a thousand times worse than
...more
