On My Caffeine Consumption

One day, I know, the amount of Diet Coke I drink will catch up to me.

It’s inevitable.

I drink six to eight liters of the stuff a day, after all, it’s a wave of nonstop caffeine I surf to make up for the fact that I can’t get a proper night’s sleep due to the amount of caffeine I ingest. It’s not normal, it’s profoundly unhealthy, and there are bound to be consequences.

I am aware of all of this, acutely so, yet I persist with my unhealthy habit. I do this consciously, making the informed decision, even knowing as I do that it will come back some day to haunt me, to follow the path I have placed myself upon.

It is who I am. It is what I am. I know that it is wrong, and yet I continue.

I have thought it out, fully, you can trust me on that. And I drink this much diet coke anyway.

So you may know, beyond doubt, that your protestations of the side effects of what I’ve chosen to do to myself, your helpful advice and suggestions regarding what might be best for me, will fall upon deaf ears.

I know it’s wrong, I do it anyway, it hurts no one but me, so try not to worry to excess.

Yes, I have heard that aspartame causes brain tumors. No, this hasn’t deterred me in any way.

In the event that I develop a tumor upon my frontal lobe, I have learned from popular culture, this tumor will in the months I have left to live provide me the ability to either see the future or read the minds of the people around me. I will use this ability, for however long I have left, to fight crime, constantly at odds with a female detective that I’m constantly one step ahead of, and with whom I share a fascinating “Will they/Won’t they” sexual tension.

Don’t get me wrong, she will be much more than simple eye candy for the fans. The good detective will, indeed, be a very good detective, and on more than one occasion will her training and keen analytical mind uncover clues that I, even with my ability to read minds and see the future, would have missed. Ours will be a partnership, in the truest sense, in spite of our oft strained professional relationship.

Because she, you see, will not believe in the paranormal, and will believe me a charlatan in spite of the proof I weekly put in front of her of the results my unorthodox methods achieve.

It will run on Fox, for a season and a half, and when it is abruptly cancelled midway through a season arc that will later win multiple Emmy’s, the fan reaction via internet will be explosive, passionate and furious…

Does this seem unlikely? Unbelievable? The fantasy of a man in denial? Perhaps.

But I do know that the “aspartame causes brain tumors” meme is based on one flawed study from more than a decade ago, and for me to have the equivilent amount of aspartame as the mice the tests were performed on I would have to eat truckloads of the stuff raw, every single day.

Which I do not do.

That’s science fact, bitches.

So no, I’m not worried about the amount of Diet Coke I drink. The caffeine’s bad for me, I’d be better off if I quit, but it’s not an immanent threat. And in the meantime, I still have to quit smoking in a permanent way, that one WILL kill me, and that’s by far my higher priority.

Plus, really, don’t pretend you’d watch the show. It’d be a fun one.

Now, if I can figure out how to get Diet Coke to sponsor…

Experiment 932

The isolation chamber was activated and the outside world began to vanish.

At the flip of a switch the lights went out and the whole world receded, leaving me floating, like a fly in amber, alone in the perfect silence.

The doctor’s at the project had had no idea when I began the treatments two years ago that my genetic predisposition toward psionics would become so overdeveloped. Every mind on earth is open to me now, and I know of no way to close myself from them.

They told me, when we began, that I would be a soldier, that through their enhancements my talents would allow me to serve my country. After all, with a mind reader on your side, no one in the world could keep secrets, we’d know all, and through that knowledge have an insurmountable advantage against our rivals. Tactics in battle, lies told at the negotiating table, locations of troop reserves, nothing could be hidden, I’d know the thoughts of the world.

The thoughts of a world are, however, useless to me. I don’t have any idea what a given person is thinking, it’s all lost in the cacophony. Close to seven billion voices all screaming at once, and I can’t make out the words to any specific one. And the over stimulation leaves me incapable of thought of my own.

So the project was suspended. Not only was my ability to read minds useless for the project’s purposes, but my life was constant, thoughtless agony. So they closed down the lab and transferred me to a private facility where I’d be “boxed” in a total sensory immersion isolation chamber, a prisoner in a coffin sized cell, unable to see another human face, or hear a voice, or sense a thought again for the rest of my, God willing, short life.

There in the darkness, I closed my eyes, at last free from the barrage of thoughts, and allowed myself to drift into the first peaceful sleep I’d had in months.