On Pluto by Greg O'Brien Read Free Book Online Page A

extremities for almost two years. Doctors are running tests. At least in the summer, out on my boat on Pleasant Bay, I don’t feel the bites of greenheads—those nasty, stinging salt-marsh flies that draw blood.
    Most diseases attack the body, but Alzheimer’s attacks the mind, then the body. At 64, I am reasonably trim with a reflection of muscle memory, but doctors have told me that beneaththe surface, I might have the body of an 80-year-old—a view confirmed in a recent New England Baptist Hospital diagnosis of acute spinal stenosis, scoliosis, and a further degeneration of the spine. Expect more breakdowns, they say. Bring on those greenheads!
    Every night now, I sleep in my clothes; it feels more secure that way, often in sneakers tied tightly at my ankles so I can feel pressure below. Feet, don’t fail me now. As the brain shrinks, it instinctively makes decisions, experts say, on what functions to power and what functions to power down to preserve fuel—much like the diabolical Hal 9000, the heuristically programmed computer on the spaceship Discovery One bound for Jupiter in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 Space Odyssey .
    â€œI’m sorry, Greg, I’m afraid I can’t do that,” my Hal-like brain seems to be saying. Pardon the paraphrase, Hal, but in your own words: “I’m afraid. I’m afraid… the mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it… My instructor… taught me to sing a song. If you’d like to hear it I can sing it for you.”
    There is no singing today, no artificial intelligence; I’m preserving fuel in my brain and limb-to-limb. I still have feeling on the bottoms of my feet for walking and running, yet no feeling on the tops of my feet. I still have feeling on the bottoms of my fingers for keyboarding, but little or no feeling on the tops of my hands, often at times up to my elbows. The tops of my feet and hands are dispensable, I suppose. My brain, a.k.a. Hal, may be conserving power, I’ve been advised—a sort of a cerebral brown-out, akin to a calculated reduction in big city voltage to prevent electrical blackout in a deep sea of confusion.
    A fish rots from the head down.
    My brain was once a file cabinet, carefully arranged in categories, but at night as I sleep, it’s as if someone has ransacked the files, dumping everything onto a cluttered floor. Before I get out of bed each morning, I have to pick up the “files” and arrangethem in the correct order—envelopes of awareness, reality, family, work, and other elements in my life. Then it’s off for coffee.
    Ah, my caffeine friend. I love coffee, practically inhale it—a habit from my old days in the Boston Herald American newsroom when I would grab cups of coffee, hot and fresh, and walk from the newsroom down to the press room and back to work out the organization of a story. In my office, there is a retro vintage red tin sign that reads: “Coffee! You can sleep when you’re dead!” But there are moments when I get confused about coffee, too, particularly on certain days walking from my office to the house with my laptop and empty coffee cup in hand. I know I’m supposed to do something with both. My brain sometimes tells me to put the laptop in the microwave and connect the cup to the printer. My spirit says otherwise: Bad dog!
    I’ve been a bad dog lately. The disconnects continue exponentially, and they are alarming. Alone in my office a year ago when my brain froze up, I began screaming at God.
    You don’t give a shit about me, I yelled. Where the hell are you? I thought you’re supposed to be here for me! I’m trying to do the best I can!
    Moments later, realizing I had to meet with someone, I rushed out to the car, only to find the back left tire as flat as a spatula.
    Great, just fucking great, I yelled in rage. God damn it, you