Tall office buildings stretch geometrically above me, rectilinear forms warped by perspective. Someone above me is staring at me. But not from the buildings, no, however tall they may be. Windows are glassy, dead, and blind, no matter how much light they shine. Nevertheless, I stay out of their light, sticking to my perfect routine of nighttime walks. I do this, but I fear only the view.
CCTV cameras whirr and click occasionally, shifting their boxlike bodies slowly and carefully, on a perfect routine, but at such low volumes that they might as well have been as silent as when they did not move at all. They are recording without knowing, mindlessly probing, watching intently and without conscious knowledge. They are invasive, but I do not care about them. The cameras are dark on the inside; impassive, uncaring, apathetic, and so do not know or care who I am. That is how it should be. I avoid them out of habit, not out of any real motivation. I do not fear them. I only fear the view.
A crowd of people surrounds me, presses me, a constant subconscious pressure on me. Between bodies I feel hidden and seen at the same time; so many people see me, but they do not stop to look at me. It is a kind of hiding. But I know that this is not a place where I am hidden from the viewpoint, because I know there are no such places. And that is why I do not run, but merely walk the city and try not to think. I try very hard not to think of anything, except of the view, because that changes nothing. And that is easy, for I am always thinking about the view, because I fear the view.
I do not know how many make up the view, or use the view, or what exactly the view is. I do not know anything about it, and I do not think it matters. All I want is for it to stop viewing me. How many have done so? I do not know how many there are. That does not matter. If there were an infinite number, clustered around their screens, an audience of eyes focused on me, then it would not make the sensation of being perceived any worse– and if there was only one, one only, lonely one, curled around the view and studying it with care, would that not be terrible too? Who knows what notes and documents they have made recording my thoughts?
All I know is that they see who I am, with such potent clarity that there is little left that they do not know. I have stopped thinking about myself, tried to stop remembering things, in order to stop them from knowing things. But then– even when I sleep, the view sees my dreams.
I dream of boxlike buildings, dark on the inside, and a conspiracy of people, tall, looking down on me, crowding me with their glassy eyes. It might be the view. It might not. I do not know either way.
Somehow, I know what building I am in, inside those dreams, though it is dark and I can barely see anything and I do not know how I got there. But I know what the building looks like, somehow, though I know nothing else. I do not know if I should go there, but I don’t know what else to do.
The windows are dead– but there is something in the top floor of the building. The windows are dead and glassy, the cameras are impassive and unconscious, and the only thing the crowds know about me is that I am in the way. The view does not use the cameras, or the people, or even the windows in the building, because there is the view and that is enough to see me.
As I approach the building, even outside of a dream, I dream. The view is making me view the world differently– it inserts unusual thoughts in my head, linguistic flourishes that point to some disturbance, somehow, even though it isn’t that unusual. I think to myself, and the metaphors are bullets punching through my mind, followed by similes slicing through my head like… like something.
As I climb the stairs, there is nobody there, but I know I am being watched anyway. As I near the penthouse, there is nobody there, but I know I am being watched anyway. As I open the door, I know there will be nobody, nothing, there, but I am being watched anyway. Because no matter how high I climb, I will never truly reach the one watching me. Because as I open the door, the view is there, because as I break it into small pieces, and things begin to end, it is there, and the view is there, but the one watching me is missing.
And I think it might just be you.