I do not remember when the current began.
I remember looking at the monitor.
I remember the blue reflection on the table.
I remember the hum.
But I do not remember the exact moment when something moved ahead of me.
The chalk room is silent.
Or it seems silent.
There is a plastic cup near the edge of the table.
I watch it for a few seconds.
I have the feeling I moved it.
The circular moisture mark does not match its position.
That should not matter.
Yet I keep looking.
As if the discrepancy were larger than it appears.
The stimulation has not started yet.
At least that is what the screen says.
And still something has already adjusted.
Not in the machine.
In me.
There is a rule I do not remember learning:
some things begin before there is any signal that they have begun.
I try to reconstruct the sequence.
Entering.
Sitting down.
Waiting.
But a fragment is missing.
Not a minute.
Not an hour.
Something smaller.
Like a piece of memory removed with care.
The monitor emits a short tone.
Nothing extraordinary.
Yet I feel late to the sound.
As if it had already happened.
As if I were hearing a repetition.
I look toward the corner of the room.
There is a thin crack near the ceiling.
I think it was not there before.
Immediately another sensation appears.
The feeling that I had the exact same thought last time.
The problem is that I do not remember any last time.
The crack did not appear.
What appeared was the memory of seeing it.
And I do not know which is worse.
The screen still says waiting.
No discharge.
No stimulation.
No visible change.
Then I notice something strange.
For the first time the body is not late.
It arrives too early.
My fingers are already tense.
My breathing has already adapted.
My shoulders have already corrected for a pressure that does not yet exist.
As if part of me received the instruction before the rest.
I look again at the cup.
Now I am sure it moved.
I cannot prove it.
Not enough to see it.
Enough for my attention to have reorganized the room around the possibility.
The door remains open.
That should reassure me.
It does not.
Because I am no longer thinking about leaving.
I am trying to understand what happened before I entered.
For a moment I remember a sentence.
I do not know where it comes from.
Maybe from Sade.
Maybe from somewhere else.
It does not matter.
The sentence explains nothing.
It only leaves a feeling:
there are mechanisms that do not need to begin.
They only need to be recognized.
I look back at the screen.
It still says waiting.
The hum continues.
The crack remains near the ceiling.
Everything looks exactly the same.
The strange thing is that I now have the feeling that the stimulation has already happened.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it…
