Several years ago, from the smothering, airless muck at the bottom of a Florida swamp, divers unearthed an intact human skull. Inside the skull was a handful of gray jelly that anthropologists later discovered was the preserved remnant of a brain nearly two thousand years old. From its DNA geneticists were able to determine the sex, hair color, and biological age at death, of the brain's long silent owner.
Yet, in some cases, it is not necessary to rely on chance to deter the process of decay. Throughout recorded history it has been man's fascination to save the brains of notable personages. In ancient Egypt, the process of mummifying the body of a pharaoh began when priest-embalmers, using a large metal hook, would pull out the pharaoh's brain through his nostrils. The brain would then be sealed in a ``Canopic'' urn. In our century, but with much less ceremony, Albert Einstein's brain was preserved in a jar of formaldehyde; it now resides in a basement at Princeton University.
It takes no stretch of the imagination then to imagine the ripe possibility, after the nuclear holocaust, of the preservation of the brain of the person that started it. No doubt, the president's surgeons -- grateful for entry into the underground bunkers that wormhole the subterranea of Washington -- will insist on it. Thus, for millennia, long after all superficial traces of the First Era of human civilization have been erased, Ronald Reagan's brain will remain. It will be encased in a bulletproof glass jar, which will doubtlessly be labeled by a gold plaque citing the owner's infamous name. And, after the next stage of human -- or more accurately mutant-human -- civilization arises and its technology progresses, the day will come when future spelunkers will learn how to break into the ancient nuclear bunkers. Here, in the last holdouts of the old world, they will discover the shrine of Ronald Reagan's brain.
Handling it as if it were a fragile religious icon, the spelunkers will turn the brain over to anthropologist and archaeologist, who will be able to confirm with certainty whose it was. From them it will pass on to geneticists and other researchers. Building upon the ruins of the previous civilization's science (that inevitably they will have acquired from the remains of our ubiquitous libraries, libraries as rich to them as would have been the library of Alexandria to us), these scientists will have advanced far beyond anything known today. From brain tissue, they will not only be able to determine the sex (neuter), the hair color (stone white), the biological age at death (104), of their brain-subject; but by electronically manipulating the serotonin system -- the portion of the brain that regulates sleep, consciousness, and emotional states -- they actually will be able to revive, reconstruct, and record the memories of that brain. (The theoretical basis of this procedure resides not only in the EEG, electroencephalogram, but in the 19th century concept [discarded in the 20th century] that it is possible to find the image of a murderer frozen in his victim's pupils.) And what the geneticists will discover will not be pretty. Like Nixon's Watergate tapes, Reagan's brain will reveal the obscene ramblings of a self-deluding personality, but unlike Nixon's tapes these ramblings will not have been uncovered in time to change the course of history.
Unless, that is, someone from the future returns to a pivotal moment in the 20th century and publishes a record of the machinations of Reagan's brain.
I will allow you, the reader, to judge what follows. Since I am not important I will make no claims for myself, nor about how or from where I received this curious transcript. But an explanatory note concerning its' brevity may be helpful: Reagan's brain, either because of age or a congenital condition, was neither very coherent or talkative. To be fair, I have made no interpretations of its utterings, I will allow the reader to do that on his or her own.
TRANSCRIPT OF REACTIVATED SEROTONIN SYSTEM;c;
SUBJECT: REAGAN, RONALD WILSON 1911-2015;c;
PRESIDENT, USA 1981-2015;c;
Technical note on the process of engram/memory retrieval:
Coded electrical pulses in the range of 300 microvolts when aimed at the auditory cortex cause the reactivated brain to respond to them as sound. If these pulses are carefully modulated the brain will ``hear'' them as language. As a result it is possible to direct questions to the reactivated brain. By intercepting the impulses that exit the auditory cortex before they are filtered through the cerebral cortex, or speech center, it is possible to reintegrate them into an uninhibited linguistic response. However, as stated, it is necessary to intercept the impulses before they reach the speech center or the brain will respond not with its true thoughts but with thoughts inhibited by its instinct for self-preservation.
Pre-Cerebral-Cortex Interception is especially crucial to the retrieval of accurate data from brains of professional deceivers, like actors or politicians. In this particular examination the brain/subject's responses, since they are obviously contradictory to statements the subject made during its/his presidency, make a penultimate case for the use of P.C.C. Interception on current political candidates. In addition, the results of this study have led to the separation of historical facts from the pervasive disinformation that hall-marked the subject's administration, and this in turn may lead to a reevaluation of the true nature of the brain/subject's presidency.
What follows, then, is essentially an interview with the president of the United States at the finale of the First Era of recorded civilization. More important, it is an interview in which the subject was unable to demur from, mitigate, or falsify his basic responses:
;
Examiner: Mr. President. Mr. President. Are you there?
Subject: What? . . . is that you Nan?
Examiner: Mr. President, I'd like to ask you a few questions.
Subject: Go ahead. Shoot. Uh, I don't mean that literally you know.
Examiner: Mr. President, we may not have much time. So I'll get right to the point.
Subject: Fine with me. I like being asked questions. Gives me a chance to practice my old trade. Gosh, I loved being an actor. You know, if I'd've been half as talented as Charlton Heston, I wouldn't've had to go into politics.
Examiner: Really, Mr. President?
Subject: I could have been an artist. I always wanted to play Hamlet on Broadway. Gosh, I've never told that to anyone, not even Nancy.
Examiner: But isn't it true, Mr. President, that you, so to speak, got to play the role of King Lear?
Subject: Oh! You're referring to Ron Junior and little Patti; those kids, they were snotty bastards weren't they? They got knocked off in the retaliation you know. Actually, they survived the strikeback but I told the guards not to let them into the bunkers -- could've irradiated the lot of us.
Examiner: Now that we're on the subject, sir, what about that first strike, why did you do it? Weren't you aware that you were ending civilization?
Subject: Sure I was. I'm not completely stupid you know.
Examiner: Then you did have some rational motivation?
Subject: Yep.
Examiner: And what was that, sir?
Subject: Remember the date of the strike, dummy?
Examiner: Ah, let's see. November 2nd, 1988.
Subject: Ring a bell?
Examiner: Wasn't that the day before a presidential election was supposed to take place?
Subject: Bingo.
Examiner: And because there was no election and because there was a national emergency you were insured an indefinite stay of office, despite Constitutional Amendment 22 which stated that a president could hold no more than two terms.
Subject: You got it bozo.
Examiner: I see. You started World War Three as a political move.
Subject: Well, that's what war is all about isn't it?
Examiner: Essentially. But weren't you afraid of dying?
Subject: Hell no! With all those colon operations I thought I was ready to bite the dust anyway. I figured I might as well go out with guns blazing.
Examiner: But how could you inflict all that suffering on so many innocent people?
Subject: You know, to quote myself, you're making ``much ado about nothing.''
Examiner: Can you respond to the question, Mr. President?
Subject: Uh. Well, it seems I can't help myself. You see, I've got no problem doing nasty things to powerless people, uh, simply because I never really think about those kinds of folks. Look at my record, cutbacks on food and educational programs. But you know, the way I see it, if you're not born lucky you don't deserve a break anyway. Gosh, I miss my dog. We roasted him to celebrate the 2nd millennium; that was the first fresh meat Nan or I had in a decade.
Examiner: Before you drift off Mr. President, just a few more questions please. As a historian it's always amazed me that so many of your constituents went along with those social cuts, especially considering your skyrocketing defense budget.
Subject: I was just giving the people what they wanted.
Examiner: And you think they wanted nuclear war?
Subject: Well why else would they have elected me? I never hid my position about those Ruskies.
Examiner: You did make jokes about bombing Russia.
Subject: Those weren't jokes. And you know, I wasn't joking either, in 1984, when I told the country ``You ain't seen nothing yet!''
Examiner: Somehow, Mr. President, I don't think nuclear war was precisely what your citizens had in mind.
Subject: There you go again, sounding like some Red.
Examiner: Finally, Mr. President, what do you account your great longevity to? You lived to be nearly a hundred and five years old.
Subject: What? You mean I'm not still alive?
Examiner: Um. No sir, not exactly.
Subject: Well, in that case, I may as well tell ya. Power, son, is the fountain of youth. When you're facing the end of the trail its better than sex, and almost as good as a successful defecation. Ordering those millions of strong young soldiers to die for me, their commander in chief, was really rejuvenating. And you know, just like Rambo dreamed, I loved each and every one of those brave young scapegoats ... lads, I mean, just as much as they loved me and their country.
Examiner: Thank you, Mr. President.
Subject: Believe me, the pleasure was all mine.
Addendum: Further interviews with the subject were thwarted
when a lab assistant, thinking the brain benign since it was
several millennia old, neglected to seal the lid of the amniotic
container in which it was stored. The brain, taking advantage of
this oversight, lunged out of the receptacle and slithered
through an air duct. Local precautions have been taken to prevent
environmental and biological contamination.
Nonetheless, for the sake of the Second Era of human civilization this brain must be contained. Good luck to all of you who are participating in its eradication.
Your extra-temporal ally,
Charlie Ray
For the moment, Ron C. writes and teaches (he hopes the latter won't be held against him, ``Honest, it happened by accident!'') in south Florida. Today his favorite book is Tad Konvicki's A Minor Apocalypse; favorite movie, Ken Anger's Scorpio Rising; and music, Fred Rzweski's ``Attica.''
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