Kimia read that again.
The philosopher did not argue that the world was unreal.
Quite the opposite.
He argued that reality became psychologically dangerous when the self mistook its own contribution to perception for an external fact.
Fear became architecture. Shame became surveillance. Desire became necessity.
Then the individual encountered these things as though the world had built them independently.
Kimia leaned back.
Her headache pulsed once behind her eyes.
She took coffee. Read more.
A different section argued that the self was not singular in the way people liked to claim.
There was the self that acted. The self that observed action. The self remembered afterward. The self imagined by other people. The self performed in anticipation of those people.
None of them were false.
The error came from demanding that one be designated authentic and all others fraudulent.
Kimia stopped.
The words became uncomfortable.
She closed the book over one finger.
The duchess. The addict. The mother. The patient. The girl who prayed to Alsper. The animal who wanted shellfish. The ruler who understood budgets. The frightened thing staring into a televox screen to make certain her reflection remained obedient. The actor.
Which one was Kimia?
The obvious answer should have been all of them.
She disliked it.
Too easy.
She opened the book again.
The philosopher anticipated the objection.
Of course he did.
He wrote that personal multiplicity did not absolve contradiction.
A person could contain several selves without each deserving equal authority.
Some were habits. Some were wounds. Some were roles demanded by survival. Some were compulsions wearing the language of identity.
The work of life was not discovering the singular true self hidden beneath everything else.
It was deciding which internal voices should be permitted to govern.
Kimia stopped reading.
The room became very quiet.
Even the indrel's mask had gone between clicks.
She looked down at her hands.
The left rested on the page. The right around the coffee cup.
Hands.
Useful. Real.
Kimia placed the cup down, then raised one hand in front of her face.
Palm inward.
The anatomy was familiar enough that she had rarely examined it.
Four digits arranged according to yinglet proportions. Pads dark against the red fur. Claws.
She opened the fingers. Closed them. Opened them again.
The tendons moved beneath the wrist. Tiny adjustments. An object that obeyed thought.
Kimia turned the hand.
Back. Palm. Side.
She flexed one finger, then another.
This belonged to her.
Simple.
Or it was her.
Less simple.
The philosopher had spent several pages objecting to that distinction too.
Kimia brought the hand closer.
The pads contained minute textures.
Ridges. Tiny scars. One faint pale line near the thumb from something that had happened in childhood and no longer existed in memory except as skin.
She opened and closed the hand again.
One claw caught the side of one of her finger pads.
A small sharp pain.
Kimia hissed.
She looked.
A tiny nick had opened in one pad.
A red bead appeared.
Not large.
Bright.
Kimia stared at it.
Blood.
Nothing symbolic. Nothing metaphysical.
Blood because claw met skin at the wrong angle.
She squeezed the finger. The bead enlarged. Pain sharpened.
There.
A fact.
Kimia almost laughed.
“Very profound.”
The indrel's head turned.
Kimia held up the injured finger.
“Nozhing.”
The bodyguard continued looking.
“Claw.”
Click.
She wiped the blood against a handkerchief from her pocket.
A tiny red mark.
The philosopher might have made something unbearable of it.