THE DAY THE INTERNET WENT DOWN, OR CONNECTION INTERRUPTED.

The story should begin in some interesting way so as not to immediately discourage the reader. It would be best to introduce an interesting character who has deeply engaging life dilemmas, or is simply funny, or both. "And what about a guy who doubts he exists?" I asked. My interlocutor smiled gently. "You'd have to be certain of your own existence, I suppose." "Why?" "Because otherwise, everything you say makes no sense. Of course, if you don't exist, then the fact that you're telling a story about a certain character is also an illusion." After a moment of reflection, I asked, "Could it be that I, the storyteller, don't exist, but the character I'm telling about exists?" "Hmm...a true story about a real person told by a nonexistent person? But then does the very fact of telling the story exist?"

Before returning to our conversation, I need to revisit earlier events for a moment. We were talking earlier, and I asked my interlocutor, "Where did mountains, forests, rivers come from?" "And where did your question come from?" he replied. "

It's pointless, after all. Why am I even mentioning it? Instead of that earlier conversation, any other could have taken place, for example: I could have told him a story about a man who dreamed he was a butterfly. When he woke up, he didn't know whether he was a man who had just dreamed he was a butterfly, or a butterfly who was now, at that very moment, dreaming he was a man...

I really regret not telling him that.

Now I see him sitting, not in the semi-darkness, as one usually does when someone talks about it, but simply, in an ordinary chair at the table where his computer was. Just today, for unknown reasons, his internet connection failed. Perhaps that's why, due to the lack of other options, he can now afford so many conversations and small talk with me. He didn't know exactly when the internet connection disappeared. When, after a long time of tinkering with the computer, nothing could be fixed, he said, "You know... actually, even though I didn't catch that one moment when the internet stopped working, I'm now wondering what it's like... I mean... that moment is a point of reference, a fulcrum. Archimedes once said: Give me one fixed point of support, and I will move the Earth. So, we have that moment when my internet went down, right? It's like the moment of waking up. The liminal moment between dream and reality. But what if you don't know which side is on which side, meaning whether you're passing from dream to reality, or from reality to dream... do you understand the analogy?" "Maybe I understand, but not everyone has to. Some people don't care, or they really want to be carefree, but they can't."

"Someday it'll all be a mess, you'll see..." he said.

I'd known him for a very long time, but I couldn't say much about him that was certain. Our conversations always seemed to reach a certain point. Nevertheless, I enjoyed listening to him, and he enjoyed talking, about everything. Everything. The key word.

So we waited to see if anything would happen.

She told me today that I was insane. Yes, that's exactly what she said: You're insane.

Hollywood narrative. Current story and flashbacks. Film. We're here, they're there. Hollywood narrative and literature. A story about a man who isn't sure he exists. Another man isn't sure how to write it.

(Sometimes, right after waking up, or while recalling a dream, I'd experience this strange feeling of awareness for a split second. Through a certain snapshot in my head, like an image, a frame from a movie, I'd remember something I'd probably dreamed of, or something that had actually happened, I don't know, and it would be juxtaposed in my head with something that was happening now, or I'd just dreamed it, something would fleetingly be associated with something else, and I could feel it, but it was impossible to recreate later... but then... in that moment, it was so obvious, as if it were really me there, in that association, not here...)

"Tell me about it," I asked... "

Okay, fine, so... I met her at that dive by the subway. You know... where we sometimes went for coffee and a cigarette, or a beer after the movies... a few days earlier, I'd met her online... little by little, we finally decided to meet. I was a bit disappointed when I saw her. She'd supposedly shown me her picture online earlier, but I'd imagined her differently, thinking she'd be a more compelling story. And yet, there she was, sitting across the table, drinking Red Bull. Driving an old BMW...

"So you didn't like her as a woman?"

"You know... she made a better impression online... her texts would pop up, and they created an image detached from concepts, but in the spirit of a game, like laying cards on the table... Texts, texts... I spun a story out of it. And when I woke up in the morning, in one moment, in a fleeting point of support, three things merged into one elusive thing: my dream today, the awareness of the upcoming meeting with her, and some earlier dream, probably from a year ago... suddenly flashed before me, like a single frame from a movie, or rather like a single still... And for a moment I knew what it was about... it was all because of the text and imagination... nothing but mediated signs...

(He could say various spontaneous sentences, express his thoughts metaphorically, and yet somehow I always intuitively felt what he meant; it was such a fleeting point of support...)

- And did the conversation stick?

"Yeah, you know... from the beginning, no problem. You know, there are always neutral topics like studies or something... and then it's always easy to relate to anything, if not cinema, then literature... And when, after my second beer, I started telling her about my various fascinations, she actually understood everything... I could say various spontaneous sentences, express my thoughts metaphorically, and yet somehow I always intuitively knew what he meant; it was such an elusive point of support...

I imagined them sitting in that bar... Let's say a table not by the window, but closer to the center. However, he often looks towards the window. He would rather drown in her gaze, but he finds nothing interesting or attractive there. Although he sometimes tries to look. She has her cell phone on the table. But she never once picks it up. Besides, it's lying face down on the table. The only thing they have in common is a shared ashtray. They both smoke cigarette after cigarette. Coffee with milk, without milk, beer, Red Bull, he had another beer... The conversation flowed smoothly from the start. Of course, there were always neutral topics like studies or something... and then it was always easy to relate to anything, if not cinema, then literature... At some point, it all somehow transformed into an inspired discussion about the contemporary and future worlds, in which he spoke passionately, and she, with smiles and interjections, expressed a certain understanding.

"You know," he said, "what's so fascinating about all this? Relativity... look: it's scientifically proven, by physicists, that time travel is possible. I don't know what the current technical possibilities are, but theoretically, it's possible." You know, I don't really know much about this... but a friend told me that there's probably some kind of molecule to discover, some kind of atom or something, it exists; you just have to master it experimentally... but it's scientifically proven that time travel, as well as teleportation, is not fantasy, but pure physics, so it's a study of the REAL world...

I think she agreed with him...

"...if that's the case, then even such seemingly certain categories as time and space, something we experience as absolute, are in fact absolutely relative... so in that case, everything is relative..." he said with increasing passion... "and do we exist then? You know, sometimes I wonder if I really exist... seriously (she laughed, but with a certain understanding)... I often have that impression, it's a fleeting moment of unconscious awareness, untranslatable into concepts..."

Silence fell on Chila. He was looking out the window. She picked up on the topic of moments of consciousness... "

I'm passionate about Buddhism," she said, "I go to meditation... through meditation you can achieve this state of completely non-conceptual awareness..."

"Concepts, concepts...! The Matrix! It's all the matrix... it fascinates me terribly... not even postmodernism, not the postmodernism of the last 25 years, the one of the textual world, but this post-post... this of the virtual, internet, post-internet, and post-virtual era... can you imagine what it will be like when, maybe in 100 years, complete relativity and relativity of the ways and concepts we use to describe the world today prevails, and it won't be the case that love, justice, power, responsibility, work, interpersonal contacts, having fun, earning a living, eating, sleeping... it's unimaginable what could happen, because there will be completely different categories, impossible for us to express and understand today with our system of concepts, even abstractly... but it's truly terrifying, it's beyond me...! And cloning! Human cloning?! They say a person loses 21 grams at the moment of death... is that how much a human soul weighs? he said, supporting his words with gestures and a look.

He could utter various spontaneous sentences, express his thoughts metaphorically, and yet somehow she always intuitively knew what he meant; it was such an elusive point of reference...

"And you know what else?" he continued. "We store data on computer disks, megabytes, gigabytes, in microprocessors and integrated circuits made of inanimate matter... and did you know that even a single living cell can store far more information than the hard drive of the best computer?! Storing data in biological material... they're researching this, just like they do on artificial intelligence... and it's not just a pipe dream..."

He smoked another cigarette. She probably had already finished her Red Bull.

-Sometimes I'm not sure - he said - if I really exist... and maybe you too... haha, you know, we actually met on the internet, and now I see you here, sitting on the other side of the table, so I guess you're not a virtual apparition...

-Well, who knows... - she smiled.

"So I'd like to find a hole in the system. In "this" system. Remember how it was in "The Matrix"? When something was being tampered with, when something was being changed...then the characters always had some kind of déjà vu...something would happen twice in a row, for example, a cat would pass by...then something was always going to happen...most often, the computer program Agent Smith would pop up, hehe...Smith...Kowalski...Józef K....everyone...everyman...a cog in the machine...um, never mind, I'm running wild with my thoughts...you know? You know when I experience this? When I experience a hole, a gap in the system, I guess? Right then, on the edge of dream and reality." Sometimes, right after waking up, or while recalling a dream, I'd experience this strange feeling of awareness for a split second. Through a mental snapshot, like an image, a frame from a movie, I'd remember something I'd probably dreamed before, or something that had actually happened, I don't know, and it would juxtapose in my mind with something that was happening now, or I'd just dreamed it, something would fleetingly be associated with something else, and I could feel it, but it was impossible to recreate later... but then... in that moment, it was so obvious, as if it were really me there, in that association, not here...

Finally, they left the café. She drove her green BMW, he took the subway.

At home, he turned on his computer. Everything was still working properly then. A story usually falls within a certain framework.

There's nothing like foreign cinema. And here? The dialogue is weak. And the action. No action. The guy lights a cigarette. Oh yes, he looks... and nothing happens. Nothing happens.

I went to bed quite early. Around 11 p.m. I fell asleep. I lay on my left side, my legs slightly drawn up, my arms folded beside my head. The light in the room was on. It was strange that while I was asleep, I seemed to see everything from the exact perspective I was in, lying just as I was, seeing the exact part of the room and myself that I would have seen from that position if I were awake... and now I was dreaming... and a moment later, finding myself in that exact situation, in my dream, something grabbed me from where I was lying and threw me against the wall to the left, then the same force threw me back onto the bed, into the same position, several times... and I'm not sure... but I think I even dreamed that I didn't know if I was dreaming or real, and that's why this situation terrified me. Finally, I woke up. I think so... I was disoriented, but since I could now see colors more clearly, nothing was happening, and I had a clearer awareness that I was truly here and now in this room, and nothing more... but a moment later I lay down on my back and immediately fell asleep again. Now I don't think I saw the perspective visible from that position in my dream anymore... instead, I felt as if some invisible cloud of energy was descending over my head and suffocating me, tearing at my fear, and I heard an impossibly low sound, like a thousand forks scraping their tines against polished plates at once, and it kept growing. When it became unbearable, I woke up terrified and jumped to a sitting position... the hazy awareness of waking lasted only an elusive split second before I realized that I was now hearing sounds too: behind me, behind the bed, I could hear some scraping. Disoriented after waking up, I got up, stood next to the bed, and slowly looked in the direction of the mysterious sound... suddenly... a small brown mouse jumped out from behind the bed, in a second it ran across the sheets, then jumped down to the side... and disappeared somewhere behind the furniture. I don't know what I was feeling or thinking... in a flash of realization, I left the room. It was probably not long after midnight, because my mother and sister were still in the next room. I went in... "We have mice in the house," I said. After a moment, my mother, laughing (I'm not sure...), probably said, "God, he can already see white mice!" "But really... I haven't had anything to drink." I briefly explained what seemed to me to be facts about the matter. I decided to hunt down the mouse, see if it really existed. I armed myself with a shoe. My mother and I examined the area around the bed. Sometimes I thought I heard something rustling somewhere... But I didn't scare away any mice... That night I couldn't sleep for a long time, I don't know when I fell asleep, I don't know if I slept at all. And a few days later, my mother told me she'd seen a mouse in the kitchen (probably the same one...). Now, though, I'm not sure if I really heard it from her, because I think she told me at the exact momentwhen I woke up in the morning and sat up in bed.