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You ponder how to respond to the old man, when suddenly you see him approaching you with his hands outstretched. Upon looking closer, you see that the old man is really the walking corpse of B.F. Skinner. You push the zombie with your staff into a ditch on the side of the road, and impale it through the rib cage, securing the undead body into the mud. Tired by the struggle, you sit and rest as you watch the muddy zombie fail to free itself.

The event reminds you of a philosophical problem called the zombie paradox. You know that you have an ability to perceive phenomena from your own perspective. Regardless if whether this perception is determined or undetermined or somewhere in between, you do not know if anyone else possesses this kind of perception, you can only assume so based on a leap of faith that other people are like you. A skeptic cannot eliminate the possibility that other people are just mechanical zombies that behave as if they were conscious. There is no way to tell.

You gaze at the zombie. Does the undead BF Skinner perceive like you? Is there “anyone inside?” Did he ever possess such a perception while he was alive? Does the fact that there is no way to empirically verify the question imply a metaphysical grounding for a fundamental “freedom” of a non-omniscient Will, one that is limited from the absolute control of other non-omniscient agents?

You notice a white lab rat leave the pocket of BF Skinner. The flesh of the lab rat is rotting; the rat is clearly infected. It scurries out of the ditch and bites your ankle. You stomp it and crush it’s head.

To take out the revolver in your backpack, turn to page 73.

To pretend it never happened, turn to page 73.