The Cerebral Catalyst

Going to the doctor is not really about sickness or health — it's about faith. Do you, the patient, have the faith in this puny and minuscule thing that you don't understand even fundamentally, in other words the body? Do you have faith that this shell that you find your soul — or brain, or life-force, or what have you — in without your deliberation on a possibly ulterior exoskeleton is really something that won't break down or hasn't already?

I don't.

And, as stories have to work, someone has to tell it, and someone has to be the pro — or was it con? — tagonist of the story. So here I am and I went to the doctor, you see, because I had bronchitis, or something like that. I assumed he asked me how I felt, a reasonable enough question, I would assume, but since he spoke Korean and I spoke English, I wondered if I'd understood correctly. I think the contagonist failed to mention that he was traveling and not in the US, or the UK, or any other English-speaking polity, say Belize. I hate when people tell stories in circles, not giving you the necessary information beforehand, sending your thought process spinning in circles, but, hey, you can't control everything. I mean, I barely understand this body, I certainly don't understand this brain! Anyway, luckily the Latin terms united us, the doctor and I, allowed some communication. (Our ancient histories are so different, small world, my ass, I thought, people love to say that these days: it's such a small world that war isn't possible, the media will stop any, media is an opportunistic leech. Where do people get the trash that comes out of the secondary breathing opening? — anyway there's always a rift in communication between patient and doctor). He took my temperature by putting a thing like a tiny periscope in my ear. I imagined some phantasmagoric Latin American insect infiltrating my ear and then eating my brain. My mind has been known to wander. The periscope had a digital display with greenish background and grayish numbers. My temperature was 35.6 — under the norm of 36.5. He said, "Do you know that your temperature is low?" I didn't care for the fact that he had hid his English ability until now. I felt cheated.

I said, "It's always low. I am always hot, incidentally."

So he said, "You do understand the biochemical ramifications of this?"

And I said, "No." And I didn't.

And he said, "You can be a paradigm for the advancement to metamorphosis of the human race from the earthly to the astral, to cosmic safety, the yearned, civilized, protected, philosophical, metaphysical, medical, psychological, sociological, biochemical utopia. All I need to do is check one thing and this invaluable information will lead to the origin of a new epoch of human history. Free from diseases: no SARS, no Avian Flu, no AIDS, no Cancer, no Photophobia! You and I will be saviors!"

So I stood up.

And he said, "sit down."

And I said, "Nah, I don't really care for the world."

(Winner of the 2006 BF2 Best Prose Prize)
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Click here for more from Ra Gabriel.

posted 11.13.06.

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