Note: While we’re all on vacation this week in the Outer Banks, we’ve secured a very special guest poster. He’s skinny, half bald, and is counting down his remaining months in the Marine Corps with barely-restrained glee. That’s right, it’s Bill, circa 1993.

This was a paper for an English class in which the assignment was to write an essay using an analogy. I should point out that this was years before anyone not named ‘Wachowski’ had ever heard of “The Matrix”. 

It was hard not for 2008 Bill not to edit or reword 1993 Bill’s work, but it is presented here, in all its original glory.

***

A revelation struck me several weeks ago, and I don’t think that I can ever look at life in the same light again. It all started with a simple trip to the airport. Yes, I think that’s when I finally saw through the smoke screen that’s been thrown up to hide the truth.

I stumbled upon the truth innocently enough. I didn’t set out that morning to purposefully alter my perception of reality, but it happened all the same. I was driving my coworker Ted to the airport so that he could catch a flight to Korea. While he droned on and on about his upcoming trip, I stared idly out the window at the passing scenery.

People, trees, drugstores.

Early afternoon Okinawa. I phased out the monotonous sound of Ted’s voice and gave the car a little gas.

Peopletreesdrugstores. Trees. A vending machine. A bike shop . . .

My eyes flicked back and settled on the vending machine. There was something about it. Some half-formed thought struggled in my mind to make a connection. It was only a vending machine. Just one lone machine. There were thousands of others just like it flanking countless streets all over Okinawa. No sir, nothing out of the ordinary here. Yet there was something . . . something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on . . . suddenly the half-thought made its connection with an almost audible click and it hit me.

For all the thousands of vending machines here on Okinawa, I had never seen one being serviced, stocked, or emptied of money. Surely the number of vending machines aboard Okinawa would require at least a small army of maintenance personnel. But where were they? Why had I yet to see them? There had to be an explanation. Perhaps the Japanese, in their industriousness, had devised a revolutionary new process concerning the management of vending machines. Maybe each and every machine was interconnected via an intricate network of vacuum tubes, not unlike a drive-through bank back in the States. Or perhaps each machine contained a small Japanese man that escaped each night, his pockets bulging with change, only to return each morning before sunrise with a sackful of Jolt cola, sparkling spring water, and iced coffee. I paused, perplexed. I prepared to present Ted with this interesting development, but as he was still talking, I thought it best to not interrupt him. I drifted back into my silent reverie.

Vendingmachine vendingmachine vendingmachine smallJapaneseman vendingmachine vend

Suddenly, my mind seized upon a much greater truth: could it be that I had happened along and uncovered some sort of deception? But was I possibly missing the greater meaning in all of this? Why stop with just the vending machines? Could they in fact indicate a much larger deception? Suddenly, the final piece of the puzzle dropped into place, and I had the answer. It was all so painfully clear.

The answer, of course, is that reality as we know it does not exist. We are no more than caged animals, sustained with life only to provide a kind of idle amusement for some unknown higher power, and items such as the vending machines are just pieces of some elaborate prop. My car, my office, my English class, this entire island . . . it’s all a facade: put here simply to maintain continuity and goad us into mindless complacency. There are no vending machine personnel because someone or something forgot that there needed to be. Someone or something didn’t think that anyone would notice . . . but someone did.

To a fish in an aquarium, the inside of the fishtank represents an entire world. There is nothing beyond the glass. The fish inside may be able to peer from the confines of his world and into ours, but his mental abilities are limited comparatively, and he is thus unable to recognize what he is seeing. Given this line of thinking, our perception of reality could be no more than an underwater scene printed on paper and taped to the back of our collective “aquarium”. We are as mindless fish, lazily floating not in water, but ignorance. I alone have seen through the chink in armor, the ripple in the fishtank paper!

However, I could of course be completely mistaken.