I

Atfirst I was just blood and guts, tissues and arteries. Not a whole person, just separate body parts that needed attention and time to heal.

There was no pain, no suffering, no trauma at all. My brain just stopped taking my body’s messages. Yep! Just up and closed shop! Abandoned ship!

“WRONG NUMBER,” it said.

“GONE FISHIN’,” it said.

“SEE YA, WOULDN’T WANT TO BE YA.”

And kidneys don’t think.

Bones don’t feel.

So without a conscious mind to acknowledge their problems, the various body parts were on their own. They simply knew they were damaged and set about repairing themselves. Because that’s what the body does.

Magnificent thing, the body.

Separate pieces of LIFE—just blood and meat and skin and bones—incredibly strung together, forming a system, a machine, now working together, now helping one another, no longer alone, anticipating each other’s needs. Too fantastic!

So I was rebuilding myself. From the bottom up.

Pretty kick-ass, huh?

II

 

In my head, though, there was only darkness. And silence. And nothing else.

For how long? Who knows. Turns out, my mind stretches to eternity, in all directions. (Jealous?) And as time has no meaning in the void, of course, I could have been in there a minute or a million years.