When I came to, I was wading through the water down the shoreline. I couldn't see it through the surface, and since I didn't swim too well I jumped out quickly. There was a large pile of rocks jutting out into the water that looked like a safer place to be. 

I was a Ronin, a literal 'wave man' drifting in the sea with no direction. A samurai without a master, a social outcast. In modern Japan, "Ronin" describes unemployed or students out of school, which worked for me too. 

On the rock was a great place to relax, feeling like I was Prometheus bound by Zeus for the war with the Titans. The rebel Titan deceived the god with fake sacrifices. One was healthy on the outside but rotten within, and vice versa. When Zeus picked what appeared to be the better offering he was tricked into accepting these bad sacrifices for the rest of time.

Daydreaming like this was all his fault. Prometheus was responsible for handing out traits to the creatures of the world. His slow-witted brother, named after hindsight, gave away all of the best survival traits to the animals. As a result, humanity was left defenseless and exposed. The sibling named for foresight stole the fire of creativity from the gods to make them prosperous. Now, he was forced to have an eagle eat his liver every day only to have it grow back the next. Was creativity the better deal after all?

As the sun descended I noticed a glimmer from the lighthouse, a light for lost souls. I got halfway there when I found a girl reading alone, sitting in a beach chair, holding a novel that was thick as a brick. Her sundress covered a red and white striped bikini and her face was hiding behind over-sized, Hepburn sunglasses.

She lowered her shades and peered over at me. I didn't know what to say. I was frozen.

“You look like you've never seen a book before.” she said sarcastically.

“That's some heavy beach reading.” was all I came up with.

She wasn't impressed but put the book down. More annoyed than anything, she must have just thought I was hitting on her. I suppose I was. Something compelled me to get to know her. 

“It helps me put my mind in another place.” she said, giving me the hint that she didn't want to be bothered.

“Sure, if you want to escape to another world, but you could get that from any dime store romance novel.” I said bluntly, reading Fyodor Dostoevsky on the spine of the book. “Russian Existentialism is going a bit out of your way. Don’t you think so?”

“When I read to 'escape' I want to go to a world worth escaping to.” she said. “Dostoevsky is classic. I'm stuck on him lately.”

“Poor Folk. Never read it myself.” I admitted.

“Do you like literature?” she asked.

“I don’t read much. I’m more into movies and cartoons.”

“Cartoons?” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Well, not all cartoons are for children. Some of them are about literature or philosophy.” I rebuked.

“Dostoevsky does feel more like philosophy than literature sometimes.” she admitted.

“There are many interesting philosopher stories…” I trailed off.

I could tell she wasn't paying attention.

“Where are you going?” she asked

“I don't really know.” I said “I just talk sometimes without-”

  "I mean just now, when you were walking over there by down the shore." she specified.

“Oh, I was just walking toward that lighthouse.”
“You'll never get there that way, the beach is too rocky. Come around the dunes.” she asserted. She led me through a shortcut to the base of the tower while I thought about what to say next.

“What were you saying about philosophy?” she asked.

"Let me tell you a story about Rene Descartes. There once was a man that was so upset with the world that he locked himself away in his chateau until he could prove that everything was real. He didn't trust anything and elevated paranoia to an art form. To prove his own existence he denied the existence of everything else around him.”

We entered the lighthouse and began ascending the creaking, spiral staircase hundreds of steps high.

“He sat by the fireplace holding a candle. He knew what the candle was supposed to feel like, firm and solid. As he stared down at it, the wax melted and slipped through his fingers. It was still a candle but it had none of the properties he knew candles should have. He had been tricked.“

The lighthouse was getting darker as we got farther away from the entrance. I was afraid I would miss a step. It looked like a long way down.

“He threw all of his books in the fire. Mathematical textbooks, science, it all had to go until he could be sure again. Slowly, he brought back geometry and God and regained his sanity. Still, he had nagging doubts that there was someone else pulling the strings, a manipulator, a deceiver... A demon.”

We made it to the top of the staircase and I couldn't set my hand in front of my face let alone her. For all I knew she wasn't even there anymore. I could have been talking to myself.

“The Great Deceiver tricked him into believing things were real and he had no way of knowing what to believe. The doubt itself, however, was the key. If he was questioning his thoughts then there must be a self doing the doubting. 'I think therefore I am!' he exclaimed. The Deceiver was banished. Or so it seemed. This only worked on himself; he could not prove that his friends or other people were thinking. How they felt, reacted to things, could all be simulation. The demon had the last laugh."

She opened the door to the balcony and rose light poured in. The sky was all cadmium and naphthol. We leaned on the railing and marveled at the endless ocean reaching out past the setting sun.

“That was a nice story. I’m a sucker for good literature. My name is Sophia, by the way.”

“Billy.”