Chapter 50

 

The day of the operation Fred was escorted to the onsite hospital building. Maureen insisted that she be allowed to be by his side before and after the operation; Mr. Shade reluctantly agreed.

Fred was placed in a regular hospital bed; a needle was inserted in his arm. The nurse attached a plastic tube which connected to a hanging plastic bottle with clear liquid dripping from above. 

“Don’t worry,” she said, “it’s just a mild sedative.” 

“How long will the operation take?” Fred asked. 

“Barring complications, we anticipate that it will range between one and two hours. You’ll be completely out, though, so you won’t really care.” 

“Which part of my brain will the damn thing be inserted in?”

The nurse placed a finger on his scalp. “Right about here.” 

“How can you do that without removing part of my skull?” he asked.

“The surgeon will talk to you before the operation; you can ask him anything you want to.”

Fred felt that she knew the answer, but she wanted the doctor to deal with the more disturbing aspects of his operation.

In a few minutes the anesthesiologist entered and asked the standard series of allergy questions. Concluding, he said, “Dr. Factor will be with you in a few minutes.”

Through it all, Maureen had her chair pressed next to Fred’s bed. He could see that she was trying to hide her concern.

“It’s okay, hon, it will be over shortly; and then you will see the old Fred come out of it.”

She said nothing.

In a few minutes a stocky man in what Fred guessed was his mid- forties walked in.

Fred noticed the length of his fingers were disproportionate to his other features. He assumed that was a definite advantage for a surgeon.

The man held his hand out. “Fred, I’m Dr. Factor, I’ll be doing the operation. I don’t anticipate any problems, so let’s both relax.” 

He grasped Fred’s hand firmly as if to symbolically instill additional confidence in his patient. To Fred, all it meant was that he had a strong handshake.

“I hope you’re right. But I do have a couple of questions.”

“Shoot.”

“How can you operate on me, place the device in me, and still leave my skull intact?”

“We can’t. We have to remove a piece of your skull for two reasons; obviously, so we can insert the unit, and also to allow room in case your brain swells. That’s the same procedure we use in the case of a serious brain injury, due to an automotive accident or a bullet wound to the head.” 

“What undesirable things could happen if the brain swells?”

“No reason for me to even respond to that, Fred, because nothing bad will happen. If it does, it will be minimal and the segment of the skull we remove will provide plenty of tolerance for expansion. Besides, if there is any swelling, and again I’m sure there will be none, your brain will return to normal in a fairly short time. We would use drugs to counteract any possible expansion of your brain.”

“Do you replace the part of the skull you took out?”

“Yes, of course. Normally, any swelling will occur in the first three days. If there’s no swelling, after five days we’ll replace the segment of your skull that we had removed. Of course, if for some reason the device doesn’t function as planned, it also allows us to remove it within that five day window.” 

“You can’t remove it after that?” 

“Oh, sure, it could be removed, but that would require removal of the same section of your skull that we removed previously. So, we wait the safe period before your skull piece is returned. We don’t want to perform that operation a second time. Don’t worry, you’ll be well- bandaged and a piece of sterile plastic will be applied as a temporary cover to prevent infection.”

“Besides the inflammation of my brain, what else can occur?” Fred had become more and more anxious. Why the hell am I doing this, he thought again to himself.

“We also have to be careful about bleeding. We will be connecting the miniature wires to parts of your cerebrum and that will require us to surgically open your brain. We will cauterize any areas of bleeding during the operation. But remember, the wires are tiny; so much of the operation will be performed using a medical microscope.

You should have no problems, Fred.” 

With that, the doctor patted him on the shoulder and left the room. It was obvious that he didn’t want to field any more questions. 

In truth, Dr. Factor couldn’t respond to many more questions. Although he was a neurosurgeon, he had never conducted this type of operation before. The spot in the brain in which the insertion was to take place was responsible for higher brain functions. Specifically, he was going to enter Fred’s parietal lobe which controlled movement, balance and the perception of stimuli. That was always a nasty area for a neurosurgeon to play with.

For years there had been an ongoing disagreement between the western and the eastern world. The eastern world was rooted in the belief that powers such as ESP existed outside of the body, and such capability was possible only when there was integration between the brain and the metaphysical. Dr. Factor believed in none of that, he knew that all human experiences were processed solely by the human brain, and he also understood the detailed functions of all segments of the brain. The extensive work done at AU had provided him with limited additional insight as to where the ESP capabilities were situated in the brain. The problem from Factor’s perspective was how the functioning brain integrated various activities, and how this device was going to communicate with all the other brain functions. He was delighted that soon Fred was going to be the living experiment that was going to answer that question for him. The optimism concerning the operation that he had conveyed to Fred was false. In truth, he had no idea what was about to happen. But he was delighted that he was about to find out.