LSD: A Trip into the Unknown

A short story about the risks of chasing the white rabbit.

For some, mathematics is a sufficient substitute for religion. Aaron Berkowitz was one of those people. His entire worldview was contoured by abstract ideals of analytic perfectionism, all of it striving to uphold mathematical transcendence. He was the type of guy to spend his free time contemplating the implications of Gödel's incompleteness theorems for his philosophical framework of scientific platonism. Certainly not the kind to make his presence known in the local college party circuit. That all changed one day when he met a girl named Alice Butler after hours in the university library.

Their paths crossed as they wandered through the philosophy section. She was studying the intricacies of Foucaultian post-structuralism for her arts degree in international relations. She was the kind of beautiful that would usually turn Aaron into a stuttering mess, but their shared passion for philosophical dialogue awoke his inner Romeo. After some impromptu flirtation, she gestured "We're having a party tonight at my friend Jen's house. There'll be booze, weed and loud music. You keen?" Not his usual idea of a good time, but her fair milky skin made him capitulate. "Bet. I'll go."

He rocked up unfashionably early. Alice had yet to arrive. He poured himself a drink of alcoholic punch and stood in the corner, anxiously lost in theoretical considerations. A young man in a Rick and Morty shirt eyed him off from a distance. His name was Chris Green, but everyone called him Cyber. "You're the maths dude, right? Doing the nerdy shit in unison with all the other virgins, yeah?" Aaron felt almost offended by Cyber's opening remark. Unfortunately for Aaron, he ignored his gut instinct and entertained the stoner's inquisitiveness.

Despite all appearances, Cyber displayed remarkable aptitude in the realm of metaphysical speculation. He knew of the ancient Hindu Upanishads and the Buddhist style of tetralemma argumentation. Aaron was pleasantly surprised. "What is infinity?" Cyber inquired with seeming smugness. "That's a big question. I've thought deeply on this in numerous different contexts. It'd take a long time to unpackage my full thoughts on the matter." Aaron replied soberly. It was at this point that Cyber reached into his pocket and pulled out a small piece of alfoil, no bigger than a paracetamol tablet. "What if I could show you... You've heard of lsd right?"

The party went on as they do. Aaron had had no further romantic luck with Alice, but that didn't bother him too much. His mind was on something else. He woke the next Saturday morning encumbered by a slightly lingering headache. He opened his drawers to find the small piece of flat folded aluminium foil sitting beside his obsessively arranged socks. The paper blotter had been wrapped in the foil to protect its infused lsd from potential light damage. He knew as such based on his broad chemistry knowledge. Nervously, he opened the small piece of foil.

The first effect he began to notice was the trails of fractal images that followed his hands as he waved them about his face. Astounded by this, he began to draw scribbles on his school notepad. Light rays beamed from the surface of the paper. His whole world had turned into a kaleidoscope of rainbow themed visual stimuli, akin to zooming in on a Mandelbrot set. His mind twisted and turned with all sorts of conceptual analysis attempting to define what exactly this experience was. After some minutes of playful jubilation and cheerful laughter, the trip took a turn for the worst.

There was a loud knock at the door. Alice had felt bad about her somewhat avoidant behaviour the night before. She really liked Aaron. At first there was no answer, so she knocked again. By this time Aaron was in the midst of a deep anxiety attack consisting of looping thought patterns unveiling his repressed low self-esteem. "Hey Aaron, you there? It's me Alice." A strange voice responded from deep within the apartment "I am the death of joy. Leave me to rot on my own." Alice, now more concerned than curious, offered her condolences as best she could understand. "I said fuck off! Or else I'll really fucking hurt you." Nobody had ever seen aggression from this man before. Something was severely wrong.

Lieutenant Robinson and Deputy Murphy were the first to respond to the scene. Aaron was now naked roaming around his apartment block carrying a large kitchen knife. "We just want to have a talk with you mate. Have you taken any drugs today?" The officer spoke with authority and concern. "It's all a fucking lie! If everything is relative, then even this is relative. We have reached a peak turning point into the origins of cataclysmic nothingness! The numbers reveal all." The officers told him sternly to put down his weapon, but he paid them no heed. Cyber was gutted when he finally heard the news. Was this blood on his hands he was feeling? Alice recovered quickly from her stab wounds. She sobbed at Aaron's funeral.