Exordia

by Seth Dickinson

awareness that connects it to Zhenya’s mind. It passes through the rifle scope, into his eye, into his soul. Like a stent, it inflates. Whatever was in him pops out. He drops the telescopic sight. He spasms. His mind, severed from the kernel of dualist power that has accompanied and cajoled it all his life, reflexes into something merely real. There is a condition called apophenia. It is universal to the human mind, but it is particularly acute in conditions like paranoia. It is the tendency to see connections between unrelated things, to perceive meaning in nothing. Apophenia is a delusion. Zhenya experiences the precise opposite. Call it exophenia: the movement outside meaning. He suddenly perceives the lack of connections between things. He is suddenly relieved of an irrational conspiracy that had preoccupied his mind since birth. He is not deluded. He has been reluded. He is supersane. He is surrounded by monsters.