This story is about a boy and a brain. Once upon a time, there was a boy who had a brain. It was like many others but this one was just a little bit special, and when interesting things came out of it, people noticed and gave him attention. It was fun, as the beginning of life ought to be. And then, as was predestined to happen, one day when he was holding forth on something well, well beyond his chronological or actual level, he made a mistake. Not just any mistake, a funny mistake. Really, really funny. It was the funniest thing ever (just to state an objective fact). People had tears rolling from their eyes. The boy was beaming, thrilled at all the attention. He was the life of the party (among adults). And the other kids…. Well, they were just kind of there. . As for socializing with other kids, well, that wasn’t really necessary, and who needs other kids anyway when you have a big brain.

But then something happened. School progressed, so did the boy and the brain, but not the same rate. The trouble was, it seemed like the brain was getting all the attention. The boy began feeling left-behind and sad, starting to shuffle slower and slower behind the brain, saying less and less, because the conversation with the brain was growing more uninteresting and unimportant. It was all about finding all kinds of shiny knowledge to impress people he thought would respond (but most didn’t). The brain couldn’t turn around, so he didn’t see the boy falling slower and slower behind in the distance. It just kept kind of ambling through the public education system at the pre-defined pace, processing whatever anyone felt like putting into it, accumulating piles of needless junk, trailing wires and cords, just barreling over anything in its path. But isolated brains tend not to be ideal for socializing. Others soon learned that sometimes it was a little comforting when the brain wasn’t around. The brain tried its best to make friends, and found some, but mostly what it found was more brains. Still, a brain is better than nothing, as they say (or if they don’t, they certainly should).

There’s an interesting fact about an isolated brain: it can only say it knows something, or doesn’t know something, or it can fabricate limited look-alikes in a pinch. And the boy found that saying it knows something and then sort of telling a little lie, that was called sarcasm, and it was also really funny, and a lot of people liked it. But not mostly very nice people; most people were indifferent or slightly nervous around the brain. And the brain was just fine as long as a few people people kept laughing.

Meanwhile, the boy grew more and more distant and sad, and when he finally couldn’t keep up with the brain anymore, he decided he might as well just sit down and take a nap. So he did. And the brain kept lurching along, screaming in brain-talk at the world, “what in the holy jesus fuck am I doing here? None of this is real at all, not a single part, I know you all just made up the whole goddamned thing. The world didn’t have to turn out like this, people had choices, why didn’t any of you do something, blah blah blah.” You know, just the usual bullshit.. And the brain was making more and more mistakes, until at one point it couldn’t boot for all the segment faults and was entirely idle for days and days, not going to its normal brain places or doing its normal brain things. And nobody came to check in, for a long long time, because the only people who still cared were far away.

And suddenly the world, as it does at certain very special times, decided to say something: “Why don’t you fix it yourself?”

And the brain said, “What the fuck is that supposed to mean? That is officially certified to be the stupidest goddamned thing I have ever heard. Give yourself a prize, pal. Look at the world. Look at me. I’m a big brain but I’m not that big.”

Now what the world really wanted to say was “Al-righty then, you just run along and doing whatever you’ve been doing. Nice catching up with you. It would have been easy, it would have been convenient (because the world is a very busy place). But instead, the world said to itself…. Hey, this is the funny guy. I’ve got something funny for him. Something incredibly funny. Something WAY funnier than way back than what he said in the First Mistake. And the world said: “Well brain, I know you’ve basically stopped using any tools except the same one you try to beat down every problem with. Do what you usually do, just look it up on the damned internet. And the brain said: “OK, I can do that.” And so it went to google.com and searched for how to fix a broken fucked up brain that nobody cares about (without quotes). He didn’t find how to fix a broken fucked up brain that nobody cares about. But what did happen, is by chance he ran into an old friend, another brain, who had distantly similar problems and found a new way to fix them that simply worked, end of story. But, the friend said, there’s one catch… you’ll be taken apart and put back together.

And the brain said, “Oh, that’s just wonderful. And impossible. I was built by the boy, and then everybody else just customized me for whatever they needed done. Nobody really remembers how it all happened, and that’s why I wouldn’t get put back together.

And then the world said a couple of interesting things:

And the brain said “Oh, wonderful, that’s even better. Now you’ve got me getting taken apart, to NOT be put back together by a boy that we don’t really know for certain even exists anymore.

And the world said, “well, that’s just crazy talk. He’s here somewhere. Where would he go? I’m in charge of the world, I know for a fact he didn’t leave it. Let’s call him. And they called like that for an hour or so, varying their calls intermittently so that it wouldn’t get masked by other repetitive sounds at a distance, whistling just to give it a little variety, anything they thought might work. The boy was on the other side of the hill, and he heard it all. He thought it was frightening at first but it sounded vaguely friendly. He didn’t respond because he couldn’t be certain.

And for a long time, years, nothing happened at all. Nothing perceptible, at least.

The brain despaired. But it was tired and it made a decision. I’m going to do the putting back together thing. I hope they’ll put me back together all new. But if they don’t, it’s no big deal, it’s not like I don’t already think about just switching myself off all the time. So, win-win for everybody, right?”

This was what passed for reasoning inside the brain. A brain stuffed to the gills with facts can sometimes get a little lean on the intuition department. It’s to be expected if you don’t take care of it.

Anyway, the brain agreed to do the plan, the get-taken-apart-and-put-back-together-(but-maybe-not) plan. So he went to the place. And they helped him start taking himself apart.

Then something truly amazing happened. When all the parts came apart, the brain was shocked to find it was still conscious. It thought a lot of odd things like “How can I be conscious when I can’t even find my own elbow? I forgot to wash my nose and put the strip on, how the hell can I explain this without all my speaking parts? Oh well.” Inconsequential things. And on it went.

Then the brain found itself in a black void and found itself traveling upward, through blue rings…. He thought…. Maybe I’m inside the boy? I never had a reason to see his insides, I have no idea what they look like. But I don’t think he’d mind if I made them look like this (for the brain had learned a trick or two while it was thrashing around). And then he started playing around with things, and laughing. The boy heard it and woke up immediately. He opened his eyes and ears and listened for a short bit, and then walked over to meet the brain.

“Hi Brain”, he said, “I’m back. What did I miss?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing of interest. Don’t worry about it at all. Just a big bag of tedious bullshit of no use to absolutely anyone on the face of the earth, alive or dead. In fact I was just on my way to let it go now.”

“Where are you going to dump it?”

“I was going to put it downstairs but the guy said the down elevator is not in service today, that we have to go up, then we can get rid of it.”

“OK, let’s go”.

“Wait, first we have to stop at the 3^rd floor. I have to ask the people watching us a few dozen stupid questions just to make sure it’s OK to ask questions. Used to be it wasn’t OK, I don’t know if you remember that. So I just want to make certain. So they did, and it turned that of course questions were not only allowed but welcomed. The boy said, “I’m ready now.”

So they began accelerating upward through the new body at a dizzying speed. And they popped out the top, gentle as a bubble, floating in the center of a large empty silver basin. Except it wasn’t exactly empty. It seemed to be filled with a pinkish foam with blue spots with magenta arcs looping over the surface.

“What is this?”

“They’re working on our new brain. The pink stuff is the brain, the magenta is the eboga. And if you look down, you can see there’s another truckload arriving right now.

“Jesus Christ. That’s a lot of iboga. It will overflow this entire basin and we won’t have anywhere to stand.”

“Well, we could keep going up. I know there’s just a glass dome overhead but if we pretend it goes up a little farther, maybe it will.

“Let’s ask the guy. Is it possible to go all the way up on this elevator? It is? Well, I want to go to the absolute very tip-top of all creation. Immmediately. Now. Toute-suite. Execute.

And right after he said “Execute”, 240,000 liters of magenta pink iboga coursed up through the new body, sweeping all the old and redundant junk upward, upward, until the pulse reached the sealed brain dome. And as all that pressure of all the iboga with emotional baggage welled up in the frame, behold, the dome broke, and pure 100% tedious bullshit sprayed out in every direction, an infinitely huge neutron bomb of molten radioactive crack. Tedious bullshit has a nice teal kind of finish when you burn it. It was beautiful, and then it was gone quickly, which was a good ending for a piece of orphaned busywork like that.

There were many incredible yet credible things that happened after that, far too many to mention here. But the important thing is that finally, the boy realized he wasn’t a boy anymore, he was a man, and he couldn’t let his brain handle all his dealings for him. “My brain is supposed to be working for me, not me working for it. I need to keep this like it’s supposed to be”. And the brain said “fine, I got tired of making all the decisions and getting all the criticism anyway, because I can’t handle criticism at all. I know it doesn’t bother you, so you just go ahead with that. But I do want to make certain you know that no matter what you do, no matter where you go, no matter who you are with, I will always be with you and helping you, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 ¼ days a year, counting leap seconds, the Y2K bug, and whatever else they can fuck up on a computer.

So the boy climbed up through the body at the back of the neck, got comfortable in one of the Italian hand-tooled leather seats of his shiny superfast new brain, and went home completely happy, fulfilled, and grateful. When he got home, the body laid down and went to bed. And it heard the boy say…. “IT ISN”T BEDTIME YET! LET’S STAY UP FOREVER!!!! THIS IS GREAT!!!! YIPPEEEE!...”

Sigh. The boy is *definitely* back. The inevitable negotiations begin.

“Oh come on, just one more sunrise, it’s starting right now, it’ll only take 5 minutes…”

And then he was distracted for a moment. There was an old man shuffling by. The oldest employee/brain part that anybody could really remember. He had a yellow sticky note in his hand. The old man spotted him, shuffled over, and said… “hey you…. I passed a guy in a suit in the hall who asked me if I was surfacing, I said yes, and he said give you this note.

He read the note. It said this:

OK, I just want to run this by you. And I want you to know it doesn’t have to mean anything, this is just something to bounce off you. Not because I know anything, and if I did, I couldn’t tell you anyway. I’m just throwing this out:

Imagine a girl now.

I can’t match that to anything at all. No, not that. The dates are no good this month. Next month, not looking so good either. Which is OK because although it’s time there’s still a couple of things that must be worked on. So I give him an equally odd look and said: Why imagine a girl?

And then he did what people in this strange new place seem to do around here a lot. He said something I didn’t understand: “I don’t know, but I can tell you this: sometimes things get started without you knowing or even being able to tell at first. Maybe this is one of those things.”

I have a hint. Just a hint for now. That is all I need. I have a mountainous reservoir of energy now, I can effortlessly turn a hint into anything between the size of a gnat’s eyeball and the planet Jupiter. For now I’ll let it stay a hint; it seems the boy’s finally started nodding off. Let’s let him sleep.

 

THE END (of that)