Transplant

Last night I had a very strange dream.

I was in the backseat of my mother's car, laying down, and my mother was driving. My sister was in the front seat and explaining the details of the medical procedure I was about to have. She then leaned over and put this thing in my mouth that looked like an inhaler for asthmatics, but it had this long connector thing that she pushed up into my mouth and down my throat. In case this isn't obvious, as it was to me in my dream, she was giving me anesthesia for the operation that we were traveling to. I had the feeling that for some reason, I had done something to interfere with the anesthesia's effectiveness and decided to worry about it later.

We pull up to the operation site, which turns out to be a Chinese androgynous person sitting on a little stool outside of an Oxxo or am/pm or one of those sleazy mart convenience stores and I get the feeling that he or she or it is my doctor and the operation that I'm about to have is some type of eastern new-age homeopathic procedure. In front of him, laying on the floor on a red blanket are his tools, scalpels and rusty looking sewing needles and blades and even a thimble, and I worry about infection. My sister tells me not to worry.

The doctor tells me to lay down on the ground and I do, but I tell him that I can still feel my stomach (interesting) and I imagine him slicing it open with the rusty blade. He tells me not to worry, and then tells me that he's already halfway done. I look up and see him holding my brain in his hands. He lets me look at it for a moment and I see that it is really gray and disgusting looking matter. There are scars all over it and holes in it and suddenly I feel very excited. I'm getting rid of this faulty brain and getting a brand new one.

A brain analyst comes out of the am/pm and hands a piece of paper to the doctor, and then walks back inside the store. The doctor looks at the paper for a moment and then shows it to me. Its a brain evaluation that they've just done on my brain, and the doctor points to areas on the paper, proving that the brain transplant had been absolutely necessary. I remember only one point from the printout: my IQ was only 90.

So the doctor shows me my new brain, which is huge and shiny and pink and throbbing like a heart in his hand. I'm ecstatic now, as I compare the brains side by side and see that my new one is going to be much, much better. But then I panic, there's something wrong. If the old brain is there and the new one is right next to it, what's inside my head right now?

So I ask the doctor, and he tells me that they haven't finished the procedure yet, but not to worry. You can still think, can't you? He asks. I think about it and realize that I can. I think, 2+2 is 4, 4+4 is 8, 8+8 is 16, 16+16 is 32, 32+32 is 64, yeah, I can still think.