From: Anders Sandberg Something Beneath I was eating dinner with Marilyn when I felt something move in my mind. How can I describe the dreadful feeling? It was like laying sleepless at night, and being startled by an unexpected bowel movement; a part of me that acted on its own. Autonomous. Unknown. Threatening. Marilyn must have noticed my strange expression and asked how I felt, but I just hid my emotions and said I was fine. The next time I was somewhat prepared, but it was much worse. The whole afternoon I had felt vaguely uneasy. The office was stifling despite the air conditioning, and something was steadily growing more wrong. I broke out in a cold sweat of anticipation, and then I felt it again: something *moved* or *shifted* in my mind outside my control. Something alien, something that was not *me*. The entire thing lasted for just a few seconds, but it was more than enough to send me screaming into the fortunately rather empty hallways to escape whatever was happening. I hid sobbing and shivering in a toilet stall for several hours until I dared to leave the building. After that incident nothing was the same for me. I have heard that some people who take acid continue to see strange colours for the rest of their lives: they have learned to see the hallucinations we all have but ignore. In the same way I became conscious of that something was going on, something that might have been going on for years. At times I almost managed to convince myself that I was merely overworked and needed to see a doctor, but then I would feel the presence again of that other *thing*. It was not always there, but I could feel its movements from time to time. Several of my friends noticed that something was amiss, and tried to cheer me up or help me, but I couldn't accept it. They just lived on the surface, unaware of that something was below. I took a sick leave anyway, hoping to be able to do something. I looked up things in a book about psychiatry, and read about paranoid schizophrenia. Bullshit. Whatever this was, it was *real*. There was something in my head, and it was awakening. Then I found some pop-psychology book about Jung and his archetypes. One picture etched itself into my mind: five fingers rising through the surface of an ocean. The caption explained that each human was like one of the fingers, apparently disjointed from all the others but under the surface, in the collective subconscious, parts of a single hand. But what else could be down there in the collective subconscious? The same evening I turned on the television in the hope of distracting myself, and was confronted with the opening scenes of "Jaws": a huge shark is rising faster and faster through dark depths towards an unsuspecting swimmer on the bright surface, ready to devour her. Jung called this kind of events synchronicities. I am now convinced that it is getting more powerful. I can feel how it moves more and more, getting closer and closer to the surface. I don't know what it is or what it wants, but I know one thing: when it surfaces it will be bad. Very bad. A few of my friends tried to see me today, but I didn't let them in. Perhaps I was afraid it would awaken in them too, perhaps I was merely afraid they would try to help me. But I know what to do now, despite its approach. Somehow I just know what is to be done, as if I have always known. I have placed the tarot deck Marilyn gave me in a circle on the floor; Jung said they reflected the archetypes, and I hope they can at least confuse it long enough for me. I have also sharpened a kitchen knife. The thing beneath is rising faster now, ascending like a shark against the tiny human body above. But I have a surprise for it. We are sculpting something together, I and the agony. Something no one ever expected. The pain is awful. But it is mine.