In the mechanism of exogenous closure, sensory deprivation is not absence but substitution: the world is not removed, it is rewritten before it can be perceived.
Sight does not shut down when the hood is placed on.
It shuts down when the system can no longer verify whether anything is being seen.
I don’t remember the exact moment the blindfold closed.
But I remember seeing black before it arrived.
Not as darkness.
But as anticipation of darkness.
The device does not block the senses.
It blocks the ability to confirm that they are still active.
When I placed my hand against the wall, I could no longer tell whether I was touching surface or tactile memory.
Skin did not receive.
It reconstructed.
I found a note on the floor.
I don’t know how I read it without light.
It said:
“You are not deprived of senses.”
“You are deprived of confirmation that you have them.”
I tried to remember whether I had heard anything.
I couldn’t.
But I could remember the sensation of having heard something before it happened.
The system no longer removes stimuli.
It removes the sequence that orders them.
I opened a file without knowing where the file was.
There was no interface.
Only presence.
A record appeared without request.
“You have been here without perception for 18 minutes.”
I check internal time.
It does not match.
Or it matches too well.
I can’t decide.
Another record appears below.
“The last retained image is not the last one.”
I blink.
Nothing changes.
Because there is no reference for change anymore.
I try to remember what seeing used to be like.
But the memory is already affected by the absence of seeing.
I find a new folder.
It wasn’t there before.
“BEFORE PERCEPTION”
I open it.
Only text.
“You are trying to decide whether you can still orient yourself.”
I stop.
Not because I don’t understand it.
But because I no longer know what understanding without orientation means.
Another line appears.
“You are not inside darkness.”
“Darkness is inside the way you try to exit it.”
Reading becomes indistinguishable from environment.
I don’t know whether I am interpreting the system.
Or the system is interpreting my attempt to interpret.
I find a sentence at the edge of perception.
I don’t know when it appeared.
It says:
“You are beginning to lose the difference between not seeing and remembering seeing.”
I look toward where the world should be.
There is no confirmation that it is still there.
Only continuity without contrast.
And then the final update appears.
“You have started.”
I have to move my neck…
