Picture the evening. The silence was seen once, at nine in the morning. By bedtime it has been thought about forty times: in the shower, on the bus, at dinner, in bed. The supervisor did one thing. The mind did the other forty.
Replay the silence→Alarm fires→Body on watch→Unease→Replay again
Here is the catch. The alarm does not know the difference between the thing and the memory of it. A replay in the mind sends the same picture down the same short road, and the body answers the same way: heart up, breath shallow, the slow messenger back on shift. Each replay rings the bell again.
A replay at dinner
↓→
The alarm
The silence is replayed in the mind at dinner. What does the body do?
A smaller version, because it knows it is only a memory.
Not yet. The thinking part knows it is a memory. The alarm does not take advice from the thinking part; it fires at the picture at nearly full strength.
Nothing. The body only answers to real events.
Not yet. That is what we would want. The alarm takes the short road, and the short road does not check whether the thing is in front of you or in your memory.
Rings the same alarm, as if the silence were happening now.
Right. The short road does not check whether the picture is in front of the eyes or in the memory. It fires at the picture, and the body answers.
The eventone alarm
vsvs
The replayshours of alarm
Scientists have a name for the loop: going over a worry again and again. Measured on people wearing heart monitors, the loop keeps the heart faster and the slow messenger higher for hours after the event, and even into sleep that night. The event lasted a second. The thinking about it is what lasts the day.
Move the control to set how many times the silence is replayed in a day. Each replay keeps the alarm on for about two minutes, a made-up and round figure.
Alarm time from the event2 minutes
Alarm time from the replays0 minutes
0No replays. The event rang the alarm once, for about two minutes, and that was the day's whole alarm time.
Alarm time from the event2 minutes
Alarm time from the replays10 minutes
5Five replays keep the alarm on for about 10 minutes. The event itself took two. The replays are now 5 times the event.
Alarm time from the event2 minutes
Alarm time from the replays20 minutes
10Ten replays keep the alarm on for about 20 minutes. The event itself took two. The replays are now 10 times the event.
Alarm time from the event2 minutes
Alarm time from the replays40 minutes
20Twenty replays keep the alarm on for about 40 minutes. The event itself took two. The replays are now 20 times the event.
Alarm time from the event2 minutes
Alarm time from the replays80 minutes
40Forty replays keep the alarm on for about 80 minutes. The event itself took two. The replays are now 40 times the event.
Alarm time from the event2 minutes
Alarm time from the replays160 minutes
80Eighty replays keep the alarm on for about 160 minutes. The event itself took two. The replays are now 80 times the event.
At forty replays, how does the alarm time from the replays compare with the alarm time from the event?
Less, because a memory is fainter than the thing.
Not yet. The thinking part finds the memory fainter. The alarm fires at the picture at nearly full strength, and forty fires add up however faint each one feels.
About forty times as much. The event was two minutes; the replays were eighty.
Right. The alarm counts rings, not silences. One silence rung forty times is forty alarms, and the body has spent most of the day's alarm time on pictures.
About the same, because it is the same silence.
Not yet. It is the same silence seen once and replayed forty times, and each replay rings the bell on its own. The alarm counts the rings, not the silences.
Move the control.
Replay→Alarm→Unease→Looks for a reason→Replay
The loop feeds itself. The replay fires the alarm. The alarm leaves the body uneasy. An uneasy body goes looking for the reason, and the nearest reason is the silence, so it replays. Nobody is choosing it. It is a wheel, and each turn pushes the next.
Each of these happened on the Monday. Was it the event, or a replay?
One card at a time. Tap the pile it belongs to.
Card 1 of 6
At nine, the message shows as read and no reply comes.
On the bus, the silence is pictured again and the chest tightens.
At lunch, a friend is told the story and the heart goes up while telling it.
At four, a second message is sent and also goes unanswered.
In bed, the message is opened and read once more.
At dinner, the words that might have annoyed them are gone over.
At nine, the message shows as read and no reply comes. → The event
Not yet. The event. Something happened at the other end of the phone, and this is the moment it was seen.
On the bus, the silence is pictured again and the chest tightens. → A replay
Not yet. A replay. Nothing new came from the supervisor on the bus; the picture came from memory and the chest answered it.
At lunch, a friend is told the story and the heart goes up while telling it. → A replay
Not yet. A replay, out loud. Telling the story runs the picture again, and the alarm fires at it whether the picture is spoken or silent.
At four, a second message is sent and also goes unanswered. → The event
Not yet. The event, a second time. A new message and a new silence are something the other person did, not something remembered.
In bed, the message is opened and read once more. → A replay
Not yet. A replay. The words on the screen are the same words as at nine; opening them again adds no new fact, only another ring.
At dinner, the words that might have annoyed them are gone over. → A replay
Not yet. A replay, and a long one. Going over what might have caused the silence is the loop at its busiest, and nobody else is in the room.
2Events
vsvs
4Replays
Right. Two events and four replays, and the body rang the same bell for all six. The supervisor was there for two of them.
Here is the wheel. Tap the only turn of it that the supervisor is part of.
Tap the part of the picture that answers it.
The silence→The alarm fires→The body is uneasy→The mind replays
The silence
Right. The silence is the one thing the other person did. Every other turn happens inside the person who read it, which is also where the wheel keeps turning after the other person has gone to bed.
The alarm fires
Not yet. The alarm is the reader's own body, firing down its own short road. The supervisor did not ring it; the picture of the silence did.
The body is uneasy
Not yet. The unease is the body's state after its own alarm. It is felt by the reader and made by the reader's messengers, not sent by anyone.
The mind replays
Not yet. The replay is the reader's own mind, with nobody else in the room. It is the turn that rings the bell the most times, and the one the supervisor knows nothing about.
10 amTold off
↓→
8 pmStill going up
A student is told off once in a lesson, at ten. At home that evening the heart still goes up each time they think of it. What is doing most of the work?
The teacher, whose words are still working on the student.
Not yet. The words were said once and stopped at ten. What carries on is the picture of them, and the picture is in the student's mind, where the alarm cannot tell it from the real thing.
The replays. The telling-off rang the bell once; each memory of it rings the same bell again.
Right. The teacher's words ended at ten. The alarm at eight in the evening was sent fresh, by a fresh picture, and the picture was the student's own.
Adrenaline left over from the morning.
Not yet. Adrenaline is gone from the blood in minutes. Whatever is lifting the heart at eight in the evening was sent fresh, by a fresh alarm, at eight in the evening.
Lesson complete
The hurt happened once; each replay rings the same alarm, and most of a bad day is replays.