Gemini vs Gemini

I love the movie “Inside Out”. I often think about my brain in those terms – who’s actually running it on the inside? Am I a single consciousness, or a sum of different pieces of sense and thought? 

This is my version of what I think is going on inside!

As always – one of these is mine, the other is AI. Hopefully you enjoy, but more hopefully, you think about this idea at some odd times of the day! 

Essay A

The fluorescent hum of the Aisle 4 lights pulsed in the control room, a steady, sterile beat that Sight monitored with a weary eye. He adjusted his glasses, tracking the red-and-white labels of the soup cans. Beside him, Hearing wore noise-canceling headphones, only partially pushed back to catch the rhythmic clack-clack of a cart with a wonky wheel.

“Focus, people,” Thought muttered, pacing the center of the room. Thought didn’t have a station; he had a chaotic chalkboard that spanned the back wall. He was currently scribbling a flowchart titled Why Did I Say ‘You Too’ When the Cashier Said ‘Enjoy Your Meal’ in 2014? 

“We’re just buying lentils, Thought,” Touch sighed, absently feeling the condensation on a nearby carton of almond milk. “Can we stay in the room for five minutes?”

“I’m busy optimizing the Tuesday schedule!” Thought snapped, his tie tucked into his shirt, eyes wild with the frantic energy of a man trying to solve a puzzle with missing pieces. “If we don’t meal prep tonight, the entire week collapses. Also, do you think the person behind us thinks we’re taking too long to pick a soup? They’re looking at us. I can feel it.”

“Actually, they’re looking at their phone,” Sight reported, not looking away from the shelf. “But the lighting in here is giving us a mild tension headache. Just a heads-up.”

The dynamic was always the same. The Senses were the blue-collar crew – the quiet, diligent workers who kept the Host from walking into walls – while Thought was the eccentric middle manager who frequently hijacked the intercom.

Suddenly, Thought hit a button, and the control room dimmed. A holographic projection of a conversation from three hours ago filled the air. “Wait,” Thought whispered. “Did Sarah’s tone imply she’s mad, or was she just tired? Let’s replay the audio.”

“Oh, come on!” Hearing groaned. “I’m trying to listen for the ‘Next Customer’ bell. I can’t hear the environment if you’re playing reruns.”

Smell poked his head up from his desk, sniffing the air. “Old floor wax and… wait, something’s burning? No, that’s just the rotisserie chicken station. Carry on.”

The Host drifted. On the outside, a human stood motionless in front of the legumes, staring blankly at a bag of split peas. Inside, Thought had completely overtaken the dashboard. He had moved on from Sarah to a full-scale projection of “What If the Car Makes That Noise Again on the Highway?”

The control room was a blizzard of abstract fears and hypothetical dialogues. Thought was shouting over the alarms. The Senses were pushed to the periphery, their screens flickering and ignored.

“Guys,” Touch yelled, his hand slamming onto a manual override lever. “Red alert! We’re drifting!”

While Thought was busy debating whether or not the Host should go back to grad school, the physical body had begun to pivot the cart blindly into the main thoroughfare. A large, over-stacked flatbed of soda crates was barreling down the aisle, piloted by a distracted teenager.

“Sight, give me a visual! Now!” Touch barked.

Sight lunged for the monitors, clearing the fog of Thought’s anxieties. “Obstacle at ten o’clock! Brace!”

Smell caught the sharp tang of floor cleaner; Hearing registered the sudden shriek of metal on tile. Together, the Senses bypassed Thought’s frantic chalkboard and sent a jolt of pure adrenaline to the Host’s legs.

Crunch.

The cart jerked back just as the soda crates whistled past. The Host blinked, the “grad school” daydream evaporating like mist. The heart hammered a frantic rhythm – a gift from the Senses to remind the Host they were still alive.

“That was close,” Sight exhaled, his hands trembling slightly on the dials.

Thought sat on the floor, looking dazed. For a brief second, he was quiet. He looked at the Senses – the way Touch was enjoying the smooth plastic of the cart handle, the way Smell was appreciating the faint aroma of fresh bread from the bakery.

“Right,” Thought whispered, erasing his chalkboard. “Lentils. Let’s just… let’s just get the lentils.”

Essay B

Sense looked over to Thought’s half of the mindscreen again. It was always such a mess. Next to his dashboard of 5 neat dials, hers always looked like a series of wayward scribbles with no end or beginning, all intertwined with each other and rapidly shifting. Occasionally they were smooth, easy to follow and calm, but right now as the Host walked to work thinking about work, they were a jumbled scraggly mess.

He glanced back at his crew fondly. Sight was on full alert to spot and dodge any dog poop and make sure the Host didn’t miss any turns. Hearing was as usual slouching his chair like a teenager, bopping to the latest K-pop beat on the Host’s headphones. Taste and Smell were currently curled up around each other on their flavor bed, having wrapped up their work on that morning coffee. And Touch was working all the necessary muscles to make sure the Host could keep up the brisk pace and avoid being late to work. All in all, his side was currently taking up more than half the Host’s mindshare, and Sense loved it when they were all fired up this way. Sadly, he knew it wouldn’t last 

Sure enough, the Host slowed down at the bus stop, and the mindshare meter immediately swung from 58% on Sense to just over 5%, just enough for Sight to zone in on the 6 inch by 3 inch rectangle in the Host’s hand. He watched Thought take charge of the remaining 95%, ordering her different sections about to feed various bits of thinking into the jumbled mess of her mindscreen. It was largely coming from the Future section this morning – a list of To Dos for the day, a little thread of worry about the big meeting this afternoon, excitement about the coffee with an old mentor.

Suddenly Hearing sat up, and shook Sight’s chair hard. Very unusual behavior for the usually passive sense, but Sense immediately got what was happening. Sight zoomed out from the screen and noticed the bus doors slowly closing, and kicked Touch’s chair to make the Host jump into the bus just before the doors closed. The Host had been so lost in Thought she had almost missed her bus! But she came back to her Senses just in time. 

As the mindshare meter once more swung back to Thought, this time full of panicky ‘what-ifs’ and a string of anxiety about what others in the bus were thinking, Sense looked back at his team and mentally patted them on their backs. They had once again saved the day. Even if the Host was constantly preoccupied with Thought, the Senses would always have her back (and her eyes, body, nose, mouth and ears).