The ASYLUM

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Read the dialogue.

What we’re after here is the truth of the situation.
I’ve got it.
I’m pleased to hear it.
In the palm of my hands.
That’s the wrong place for it.
On the edge of my seat?
In anticipation of . . . ?
. . .
. . . What?
What?
What are you waiting for?
Who says I’m waiting?
You’ve just done.
I said no such thing.
You are on the edge, young man, of your seat.
But I’m standing.
They’re your words.
There are not, even, any seats within this room to sit in.
It’s your expression.
It’s only an expression.
Your expressions contain dangerous preconditions.
There are only, between individuals, expressions.
Nonetheless, for what are you on the edge of your seat waiting?
It’s a moot point.  
I’d like to know. What are you waiting for?
. . . The truth?
See, that’s what I’m talking about.
Are you?
You can’t lie in waiting for this truth.
Like a snake?
This truth won’t come listlessly upon you.
Like the feral field mouse upon the hungry jaws of the bathing snake?
Not this truth, Smith. Not this truth.
I’d rather you didn’t call me that.
What?
Smith.
It’s your name.
I’m aware of that.
I’m not to call you by name?
You are also called Smith.   
I’m aware of that.
I might not know which Smith it is to whom you speak.
When I’m speaking to you, Smith, you’ll know it.
Nor of which Smith it is you speak. Nor which Smith to speak to. Nor which Smith it is indeed who speaks. Nor, when you are speaking, and we are able to discern that you are speaking, and not I, whether you are speaking to you or to me. Nor whether, and this is perhaps the crux of it, for me, at least: When I am speaking, and we are able, by whatever means, to agree that I am speaking—because I have, in the past, spoken, and we know how I speak—I am speaking to you and not to me. To myself I mean. I don’t want it to come to that. I don’t want to speak to myself. It’s not—sanitary. People who speak to their own selves are not, as a general rule, clean. They carry a certain odor.
Have I ever mistaken you for something else?
The odor they carry is symptomatic of their reintegration with the Earth—with the cycles of growth and decay on the Earth—from what rank and rotting organism they no longer are able to think of themselves as separate.
Have I ever taken you to be anything but what you now are?
If I no longer were able to think of myself as an entity that is separate from the world that surrounds him, I should find myself feeling rather—unable to go on.
We must go on.
I can’t go on.
You must.
I am no longer the primary agent in my own destination.
Just because you have correctly perceived that you are an agent in an already given situation does not preclude you from affecting the situation’s outcome.         
I am decidedly nothing.
You must be careful not to remove yourself from the equation.
I am the mathematical absolute of nothing.
You must be careful not to remove yourself from any equation to which you are the solution.
I am the void described by the outline on the zero in nothing.
You are deceived, I believe, by a beguiling melancholy.
I have seen my life, and it is a big empty nothing in my head that takes up space, though I cannot imagine why.
Despair, however, only comes to he who believes that he’s perceived the future.
I make no claims of precognition.
Nor could you. You succumb instead to the illusion of a prophetic despair that is developing, over you, qualities of the inevitable.
But I have moved outside a position of self-pity and despair to one of boredom.
Come now, little buddy, I know you better than that.
You don’t know me well enough to know me.
I know you better, perhaps, than you yourself do.
I don’t know how to respond to that.
I knew you would say that.
You’re a real piece of work, you know that?
I know, Smith. I know.
I know something you could call me.
I can think of a few things.
I should rather you called me Detective.
It’s not your name!
I’ve earned it!
I’m not denying it.
I completed my courses.
I’m aware of that.
It stands to reason.
I, also, am a detective.
I never thought of that.
How will we know of which detective it is you speak?
This will never do.
Are you talking to me?
I’m not talking to myself.
I thought perhaps that you were.
I’m off track.
Judging from the smell.
I’ve lost my place.
You were waiting for the truth.
Was I?
On the edge of your seat.
Nonsense.
That’s what I’m telling you.
You can’t wait for this truth.
This truth won’t come suddenly upon you.
Except, perhaps, in a moment of inspiration?
You’ll want to rein this truth in.
Hop in the saddle?
Get in the driver’s seat!
Grab hold the horns!
Now you’ve got it!
I believe I do!
Now you’ve got it, let’s get back to it.
Let’s do that.
Let’s go over what we know.
We cannot, after all, know what we do not know until we’ve covered what we know.
What do we know?
We must, after all, review all we think we know before we know what we cannot.
. . . I’m asking you.
What?
What we know.
You don’t know?
I’d like to hear it from you.
That’s very considerate.
I respect your opinion.
That’s not necessary, but thank you.
I understand that it isn’t necessary, and I accept your gratitude.
You, also, are entitled to your opinion.
This is a kind thing for you to say. Shall we begin?
Knowing I’ve your respect, I am, in fact, eager to begin.
What, then, do we know?
He’s dead.
Please be thorough: Who is dead?
I will try to be more specific: the Mathematician.
Thank you. And what is he missing?
In his position, I would miss the way the window gathers the morning light into a ball and shatters it across the far wall.
. . .
. . .
Will you permit me to rephrase the question?
You’ve not found my response to your liking?
On the contrary, I have experienced in full the delightful whimsy of your observations, but had intended to take our investigation in less imaginative directions.
I am pleased that you have found whimsy in the simple pleasures of an ordinary man, and will be happy to reconsider the question.
This is both gracious and accommodating, and I will concede that my question was, perhaps, not direct.
Not at all.
Of what, to rephrase the question, has the Mathematician been robbed?
Mortality.
Please be specific.
Mortal doldrums.
I was thinking of something internal.
The everlasting flame?
Something of the person.
Do you believe in the existence of the soul?
Something physical.
Ah. It suddenly occurs to me where you are going with this.
It would please me to hear it.
The Mathematician, who is dead, has been robbed of his bodily organs.
See now, you don’t have to say bodily there.
There are organs of all kinds that can be found in many places.
Bodily is implicit.
Organ procurement organizations have organs. Medical research facilities have organs. Certain morgues at certain times have organs. Political journals can be thought of as organs. 
Bodily is inferred.
Churches have organs.
I’m aware of that.
It stands to reason.
Let’s move beyond the organs.
It’s an important point.
I’m not denying it.
It’s a savage evisceration.
Now that’s a fact.
Is it?
Yes.
Then we’ve reined it in then.
What?
Like you said.
What have we reined in?
The truth.
No. We haven’t.
Regarding the organs.
What about the organs?
That they’re missing.
That is not a truth.
They’re not missing?
It’s a fact.
I thought we’ve just agreed that they are missing.
The fact that they are missing is a fact.
Yes!
Not a truth.
No?
Not the kind we’re after.
I understand. This truth we seek is not a fact.
No—well—yes—well—not in so many words. No.