Please remain separate from the equipment

I’d expect a new particle to ruin somebody’s equations. I would be less prepared for it to explain why I am not the kettle.

Call it the separon. In this model, it has no electric charge and couples to the boundary between observers. Its field keeps the sensation of being me from spilling into whatever happens to be nearby. Apparently being an individual requires insulation.

We build a chamber that turns the field down. Two volunteers enter. At half strength they share a toothache. Lower still, one remembers the other’s seventh birthday. At zero, both insist they are the cryogenic pump.

We unplug the pump. Six physicists scream. The pump remains silent, which the paper describes as inconclusive.

The instruments still register ordinary atoms in ordinary places. Nobody has physically merged with anything. Our headcount, however, is now a philosophical emergency.

This is where I start worrying. If the field around me disappears, do I die, or become less specific? Would turning it back on rescue me, or cut someone into pieces? I would like these questions answered before anybody installs a dimmer switch.

I’ve always imagined physics eventually finding the stuff everything is made of. It would be rude if it instead found the mechanism that allows anything to count as a separate thing. No final bead labelled ASLAK. Just a temporary restriction on what the universe can experience at once.

Maybe that restriction is necessary. A mind with access to every sensation might be incapable of having a single thought. Loneliness could be the price of being able to finish a fucking sentence.

But the toothache still hurts when the name attached to it changes. That seems significant. We spend a lot of effort deciding whose suffering counts while the suffering gets on with being suffering.