Read "Suite Mentale" by Randall Garrett online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
"Now what the hell's the matter with me?" thought Paul Wendell. He could feel nothing. Absolutely nothing: No taste, no sight, no hearing, no anything. "Am I breathing?" He couldn't feel any breathing. Nor, for that matter, could he feel heat, nor cold, nor pain.
"Am I dead? No. At least, I don't "feel" dead. Who am I? What am I?" No answer. "Cogito, ergo sum." What did that mean? There was something quite definitely wrong, but he couldn't quite tell what it was. Ideas seemed to come from nowhere; fragments of concepts that seemed to have no referents. What did that mean? What is a referent? A concept? He felt he knew intuitively what they meant, but what use they were he didn't know.