Spoiler warning: If you have no idea what I’m talking about at the first or second paragraph, stop there because you won’t know what I’m talking about and there are major spoilers in the third paragraph, and I’d hate to ruin the story for you if you ever to read it in the future.
So I’m trying to remember the name of this really good short story I read once. Basically what happens is a man is imprisoned for committing some crime, but instead of being put in jail they use him as the test subject for an experiment.
They spend days or maybe weeks asking him questions (on a lie detector or with truth serum or something I think so they know he’s telling the truth), recording every aspect of his mind/body/existence. They then stick him in a nicely decorated room with writing implements, paper, bookshelves, nice clothes, a comfortable bed, and a bathroom. He is locked in this room and probably being monitored by the overseers of the experiment. Food is passed in through a slit in the door at meal times, and he is expected to put the empty tray back on the food slab to be taken away.
I’ll skip the horror and the middle parts but the crux of it is that all the books on the shelf contain these massive logs of everything he will ever do with exact times and dates attached to them. Apparently the people behind the experiment have broken the human mind and are able to predict the future actions of a man exactly, which supposedly proves that free will doesn’t exist.
So anyone have any idea what I’m talking about?