Questions about Stephen King's "The Jaunt"

[Unimatrix Q]

In the Matrix you are pretty much in a sphere of goo....but you live.

Creepier would be to see glass spheres like grapes...and the person “walking” but not moving in it. Now sitting at a table that isn’t there. Eating food that isn’t there. Turned this way..now that. We don’t see the vision he sees. Not in bed. Not hanging like something from COMA or Dead Stop.

We just see the struts and frets.

Yep. Thinking a bit more about compairing the experience of a being trapped inside the jaunt and the matrix, wouldn't the brain at some point try to save itself by simply displacing torturous memories and provide the mind with vivid although perhaps increasingly more strange and weird dreams?

So what makes the mind actually break down and what's the experience of a person like shortly before that point is reached?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The Matrix is different, because (from your POV, anyway) you still have a normal life. You are conscious of a world around you, you have experiences and senses, there are other people you interact with, you have a normal lifespan...in every way that matters to you, it's a regular existence.

If you're conscious in the Jaunt, however, that is quite literally nothing. You literally don't see or do anything at all. Just sit there, going mad, all senses shut down, for millions or even billions of years.

So the basic thrust of the gist is, being trapped in the Matrix is a walk in the park compared to a waking Jaunt. Hell, I'd be scared shitless to even live in a world where the Jaunt exists at all; even if I had no intention of ever using it (or if I did, that it would work as normal), who's to say whether some psycho could get ahold of a Jaunt mechanism and use it to torture people? What if the mob, or any number of terrorist groups, manages to acquire a Jaunt? I mean, even the worst torture anybody could undergo today, will eventually end. It won't last billions of years...

 

[Unimatrix Q]

The Matrix is different, because (from your POV, anyway) you still have a normal life. You are conscious of a world around you, you have experiences and senses, there are other people you interact with, you have a normal lifespan...in every way that matters to you, it's a regular existence.

If you're conscious in the Jaunt, however, that is quite literally nothing. You literally don't see or do anything at all. Just sit there, going mad, all senses shut down, for millions or even billions of years.

So the basic thrust of the gist is, being trapped in the Matrix is a walk in the park compared to a waking Jaunt. Hell, I'd be scared shitless to even live in a world where the Jaunt exists at all; even if I had no intention of ever using it (or if I did, that it would work as normal), who's to say whether some psycho could get ahold of a Jaunt mechanism and use it to torture people? What if the mob, or any number of terrorist groups, manages to acquire a Jaunt? I mean, even the worst torture anybody could undergo today, will eventually end. It won't last billions of years...

Yes, it would be very painful for a long time. But in at least some cases of trauma, the brain tries to protect itself from damage by making harmful memories inaccessable to the waking mind (In this case being trapped there for such a long time).

Wouldn't at least this process happen at some point? And wouldn't the mind beginn to dream or hallucinate like in a sensory deprivation tank?

 

[Oddish]

The jaunt is presumably like a sensory deprivation tank, only you're in it for who knows how long. Many posters here say it might feel like millions of years, but it would not take millions of subjective years, or even hundreds, to totally shatter 99.999% of people's sanity.

 

[Unimatrix Q]

The jaunt is presumably like a sensory deprivation tank, only you're in it for who knows how long. Many posters here say it might feel like millions of years, but it would not take millions of subjective years, or even hundreds, to totally shatter 99.999% of people's sanity.

But why wouldn't the subconscious try to block away the memory of being there for such a long time and perhaps change the subjective perception of time and wouldn't this make the experience at least a bit easier for such a person to swallow if the mind simply lost the knowledge that it is in the jaunt and perhaps begins to believe it is living a infinite series of lives somewhere or maybe just has a neverending dream?

 

[Oddish]

Maybe in the other 0.001%, the ones who might have a chance of getting through with a shred of sanity.

 

[publiusr]

They would have to have Darkseid level will...then too...he may be the first to break.

Perhaps this is what Q meant by being the Scarecrow...where Kirk was in the suit...the man trapped in a mind sifter with no torturer to keep him company...E space...Copper’s Great White Space. Rucker’s novel WHITE LIGHT may be of interest, though more positive. Larry Niven once warned us to never look out of the windows at FTL.

There is a part of me that thinks...when we close our eyes at the last...The Jaunt awaits us all...

 

[Oddish]

There is a part of me that thinks...when we close our eyes at the last...The Jaunt awaits us all...

Sort of reminds me of Act 3 of "Our Town"... when you die, you get sent to time-out. Forever.

 

[publiusr]

A different type of torture was told by Borges in his story “Funes: His Memory”

 

[Oddish]

The best stories are the ones that mess with your head like that. "Funes", "The Jaunt", and "Inner Light" all qualify. And one of the later chapters of Harry Potter: "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

 

[Chaos Descending]

The best stories are the ones that mess with your head like that. "Funes", "The Jaunt", and "Inner Light" all qualify. And one of the later chapters of Harry Potter: "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

Doctor Who, when the Doctor is trapped inside a "Confession Dial" for basically 4.5 Billion years. Yikes.

 

[Starkers]

Doctor Who, when the Doctor is trapped inside a "Confession Dial" for basically 4.5 Billion years. Yikes.

But from his perspective he's only in it for a matter of hours/days (although consciously he knows there have been untold millions of versions of him that came before.)

I always had a soft spot for The Jaunt, I wonder if your mind were really to remain conscious for so long whether it would effectively evolve, becoming that epitome of Trek, a being of pure consciousness that can go anywhere and do anything, just not physically.

 

[Unimatrix Q]

They would have to have Darkseid level will...then too...he may be the first to break.

Perhaps this is what Q meant by being the Scarecrow...where Kirk was in the suit...the man trapped in a mind sifter with no torturer to keep him company...E space...Copper’s Great White Space. Rucker’s novel WHITE LIGHT may be of interest, though more positive. Larry Niven once warned us to never look out of the windows at FTL.

There is a part of me that thinks...when we close our eyes at the last...The Jaunt awaits us all...

Wonder why apparently no established writer, as far as i know, ever came up with a jaunt like story, told at least partly from the perspective of the person going through something like that.

Or do stories like that exist that i never heard of?

But from his perspective he's only in it for a matter of hours/days (although consciously he knows there have been untold millions of versions of him that came before.)

I always had a soft spot for The Jaunt, I wonder if your mind were really to remain conscious for so long whether it would effectively evolve, becoming that epitome of Trek, a being of pure consciousness that can go anywhere and do anything, just not physically.

Yeah, doing something like that in Trek (perhaps in SNW) could be an interesting story. Or maybe show a civilization that simply believes this to be true and bring up the ethical dilemma for the crew.

By the way, now i wonder how a version of Doctor Who would take a trip through the jaunt? Apparently he can't go insane

 

[Oddish]

By the way, now i wonder how the Doctor would take a trip through the jaunt? Apparently he can't go insane

According to the events of "Latent Image", he most assuredly can.

 

[Unimatrix Q]

According to the events of "Latent Image", he most assuredly can.

Sorry about being a bit unclear with my post, i wasn't talking about the doc from Voyager. I meant Doctor Who

 

[Oddish]

Another reason why they should have given him a name.

 

[Starkers]

By the way, now i wonder how a version of Doctor Who would take a trip through the jaunt? Apparently he can't go insane

I'm pretty sure Timelords can go insane, I mean look at the Master!

 

[Unimatrix Q]

Thinking a bit about the direct implications that sedatives or everything that puts the mind to sleep prevents that jauntees experience a subjective eternity during their trip, i wonder what would happen if someone staying conscious but given a drug causing extreme euphoria or other positive feelings went through the jaunt.

What would happen with the mind of such a person during their voyage and what would their experience be like?

 

[Oddish]

I expect the side effects would probably still drive you insane, you'd just enjoy it more.

 

[publiusr]

Or drift into Nirvana