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Fiction. © Copyright 1996, Jim Loy
I was performing brain surgery. Maybe it wasn't brain surgery. Maybe I was creating some delicate electronic device. Or maybe it was something else. Maybe I was making some sort of android.
I was dressed in a blue surgeon's outfit, with a blue mask covering my face. I had small tools, of some sort, in my hands. I gazed through a large magnifying glass. I was being assisted by five people, also in blue outfits.
The object of my attention looked something like a brain. But it was a shiny pink, in the bright lights. And it had a blue, yellow, and red line on it, which stretched from the front of the "brain" to the back.
I was supremely confident. I knew that whatever I was doing would end successfully.
I started to grasp (gently, with tweezers) one end of this colored line. Then I felt myself being pulled away from the scene. It was as if I were half there and half somewhere else. I shouted, "No! I have to stay here! No one else knows what the 'dedidend' is!"
Then I realized that I no longer knew what the "dedidend" was. In fact, I no longer remembered how to complete the operation (or whatever it was).
Should I have just grasped (gently, with my tweezers) one end of this colored line, and hoped that it was the right end? Once I did that, what would I have done with it?
I now realized that the operation was doomed to failure. I quit struggling with whatever force that was drawing me away. And I left the scene.
I found myself in bed, looking up at something. And I had a feeling of regret. If only I could have stayed there a moment longer, I could have succeeded.
But I had forgotten what the "dedidend" was. Then, I realized that, here in bed, looking up at something, I still did not know what the "dedidend" was.
Maybe there were other words that I didn't remember. Maybe I had forgotten all words. Did I have brain damage? I could not think of any words that I did know, or any words that I did not know.
Did that something, that I was looking up at, have a word associated with it? Was it supposed to be called something?
Then my mind cleared up. I realized that I was in my bedroom, in my bed. The thing that I was looking up at is called a "ceiling." This was reality. I had been dreaming. I was not a brain surgeon (or whatever) in some other life and universe.
And there is no such thing as a "dedidend." Or is there? It is not in my dictionary.
But I will keep looking in dictionaries. If I ever have that dream again, I want to be prepared.