Your Next-Door Neighbor Is a Dragon:. Zack Parsons

the walls sway almost imperceptibly.

      “Take off your shoe, but not your sock, und have a seat on zee…seat,” Anders instructed.

      He watched me untie and remove my shoes and then I stepped into the room. Anders followed me in and walked me to the seat. Every movement, everything that should have made a sound, was muffled and deadened by the acoustics of the room.

      I sat down in the black reclining chair. It was difficult to settle into properly, but with a little help from Anders I found the right position. At that point it became very comfortable, so comfortable I might have been tempted to nap were the room not so bright. Anders hydraulically adjusted the seat using a foot pedal on the floor and then adjusted the back so that I was facing forward and slightly up.

      “Zee chair will turn slowly,” he said. “Zis, accompanied wiz everything sometimes make a person sick.”

      He pressed a tightly folded paper bag into my hand.

      “If you feel zee sickness, use zis,” he said.

      I nodded.

      “Remember, do not get up during zee process,” he said, and I replied in the affirmative.

      Anders gave me one last check, adjusted the chair’s height again very slightly, and then stepped back.

      “Okay, gut, you are ready,” Anders pronounced. “I will give you instructions over zee speakers. If I ask you a question you must answer immediately; do not hesitate. Hesitating can contaminate the response. Inshtinct is zee key.”

      “I’ve got it,” I said, and gave him two thumbs up.

      Anders walked out of zee chamber, sealing the glass door and leaving me alone with the bright whiteness. There was a mechanical thump overhead and the lights within the chamber suddenly switched off.

      Faint techno music began to play from three sides. I did not recognize it, but it was driving and repetitive. It was the sort of moronically pounding music that might play over the sound system at a car show as models in bikinis posed next to an ergonomic green Frisbee on wheels. It was hypnotic twenty-first-century Jock Jams.

      The music began to increase in volume, and I realized there were also speakers built into the headrest of the chair and a booming subwoofer pressed against the small of my back. The drum and bass was beginning to vibrate my insides. The sensation wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Yet.

      Digital constellations of colors burst across the walls in synchronization with the music. Red and green showers of pixels exploded with each drum hit. Smaller eruptions of blue and yellow exploded into being with machine gun rapidity and tracked in glowing strips that crisscrossed from one wall to the next.

      The room had become a mathematical visualization of the music, hypnotic and a little overwhelming, like the bars on a giant, psychedelic equalizer.

      I presumed the effect was achieved by using some sort of projectors concealed behind the fabric and framework of the chamber’s three walls. Even knowing this, it was still impressive and a little disorienting.

      The chair began to shake. For a moment I thought it was the subwoofer blasting into my spine, but as my view of the procedural fireworks began to shift I realized the chair was rotating. It swiveled on the hydraulic lift until the dark glass of the windows was on my left side, then it rotated back in the opposite direction until the glass wall was on my right.

      “You vill listen to my voice,” Anders boomed from the speakers as if I had a choice. “You are entering zee Matrix.”

      On cue the visualizations shifted to the green alphanumeric waterfalls popularized by Zee Matrix.

      “You leave your body behind und your consciousness flows into zee digital realm. You are not any longer constrained by zee physical body. You can now be whoever it is you choose. Vatever you vant.”

      The green letters and numbers faded away and were replaced by a dynamic collage of faces. They appeared to be clipped from family photos and class pictures. Most were anonymous, but I recognized Anders among the faces. And there was President George W. Bush. And…Shannon Tweed. And was that her again in a red wig?

      “Now it is time to discover who you are and who you will be, Mr. Parsons!”

      Anders’s delivery was overwrought and almost gleeful. He was plainly enjoying his role as the disembodied voice of the Wizard of Oz.

      “The new you will begin to take shape from your unconscious and your consciousness. Your instincts will guide you. Are you ready?”

      I waited for a moment to be sure he wanted a response and then I answered, “Yes!”

      “Good. You are now immersed in zee stream of zee sensory data. You are beginning your journey of discovery. Look at zee images you see before you…”

      The screens faded to black.

      “…as each appears, speak aloud zee first word zat comes into your head. Do not hesitate. Do not think about your answer.”

      What might have been simple association was complicated by the audio that began to play along with the images. As the first image appeared—a photograph of a white cat rubbing its face against the corner of a coffee table—words began to bubble out of the speakers on the chair’s headrest.

      As the cat fully resolved on each of the walls I heard a steady stream of contradictory words and phrases.

      “Gold,” said a computer-generated woman.

      “Pickles,” said a computer-generated man.

      “Red. Red. Woman. King. Zero. Champion. Guitar,” the voices babbled in my ears, switching sides and overlapping.

      “Answer quickly!” Anders shouted over the main speakers.

      “Cat!” I answered.

      “Pumpkin. Pigeon. Book. Crease,” the voices continued, my auditory focus shifting through several bands of spoken words emerging from the speakers.

      A new photograph faded in on the screens. An image of a gleaming samurai sword held in a clenched fist.

      “Finger,” said the woman’s voice.

      “Finger!” I blurted.

      The image of the sword dissolved into a photograph of a basket full of apples.

      “Crane. Shoe. Hiccup. Porridge,” the voices babbled.

      “Fruit basket!” I shouted, but I had to think for a moment and resist the urge to simply parrot the words being spoken directly into my ear.

      The experience would be alien to most people outside of the former Soviet Union and parts of Cambodia. Maybe a few captured American spies were subjected to something like this by the KGB, but the average person has never been led into an empty room, sat in a dentist’s chair, and asked to yell out responses to images while techno music and random words blasted in their ears.

      The closest common experience might be attempting to count to a high number and being confused or losing your place when you hear other numbers. That was the sort of maddening mental failure I endured for much of the exercise. It was a constant struggle for my brain to react to the images independently of my ears. I got the hang of it after several pictures, but as it progressed I realized my defense mechanism was simply naming what I was seeing in the photo.

      “Very good,” Anders announced, even though I was feeling stressed out by the exercise. “Take a moment to regain zee composure. Listen to zee music und relax. Vee vill continue to zee next phase once you tell me you are ready.”

      The digital fireworks returned and the music grew a bit louder. The chair continued to swivel from side to side. I had to admit, the sensory overload was becoming slightly nauseating.

      I fought through the ache in the pit of my stomach and announced my readiness.

      “Excellent. You are doing vell, Mr. Parsons.”

      The