Mind Radio © John A. Ward
Lloyd Heisers was in the news today. Mister Heisers is from Nova Scotia.
“It's happening again,” said Charlie as he sat at his favorite table in the Loose Caboose, a retired railroad car converted into a diner.
“What's the matter, Charlie? What's happening again?” Chevonne sucked the dregs of her French vanilla milk shake through a straw, filling the booth with staccato slurping.
“It's been years, the Canadian Air Farce , way back in the seventies, but I can hear it as clear as if it were yesterday.” He was looking off into space at the nostalgic photos of Elvis, Marilyn and James Dean, a visual blast from even further past. The Caboose itself was inspired nostalgia run amuck.
“It was yesterday,” she said. “I read in the Enquirer that all of those radio programs are still out in the universe. They usually spread out from the source and diminish, according to the inverse square law, but every now and then, one of them encounters a black hole.” She dipped a fry in a blob of ketchup and bit the end off before continuing. “A small one, from the European Supercollider, and the radio wave gets sucked in and spit out into another galaxy, where it passes a giant black hole from a collapsed star.” She stuffed the rest of the fry between her lips painted with Revlon's Purple Passion , chewed twice and swallowed. “It gets a gravity assist from the giant black hole and that sends it screaming back to earth.”
Charlie felt Chevonne's hand on his knee, snaking up his thigh, her fingers twitching.
“It collides with a Fullerene plate in someone's brain and the radio show plays back in that person's head.” She removed her hand from Charlie's anatomy to whack the ketchup bottle and plop another blob on her plate. “Just thinking about it gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
“But it has to be in the temporal lobe, right?” asked Charlie.
“With radio it does,” she said. “But with television, it can be in the occipital lobe. Then the person sees the show, but there's no sound.”
“I heard it on Fox news,” he said. “I don't believe it.”
“Why not?” asked Chevonne.
“I don't believe anything I hear on Fox News,” said Charlie. “I believe what the doctor said. The fullerene sets up an electrical current in the brain and it stimulates the release of memories from the cerebral cortex. Then the fullerene absorbs them into its intermeshed structure.” He reaches across the table, pilfers one of her fries and dips it in in the ketchup. “It backs up the mind.”
“Why do you have cosmetic surgery on your brain?” Chevonne takes another fry, dips it and presses it to his lips.
“It's not cosmetic. I'm losing my memory. The fullerene plates are my only hope.”
“I have one in my limbic lobe,” she said. “It integrates with the reticular activating system, so it stimulates everything. It can be anything, sight, sound, sometimes everything all at once, sometimes just emotions. The ones that scare me are from the rhinencephalon.”
“That's the smell brain,” said Charlie. “Why does that scare you? Do you have bad smell memories?”
“Everybody does,” she said. “Mine was in the monkey house, but that's not what scares me.”
“What then?”
“It's a primitive part of the brain, the reptilian brain,” she said. “We have grotesque things inside our heads, Charlie. Be thankful your memory is Lloyd Heisers.”
At that moment, the biker they call T-Rex flung open the door and stepped into the Caboose. He turned his head slowly and locked his gaze on Chevonne. He pointed his long leathery finger at her. It looked like a stick of Slim Jim beef jerky. He growled, “I want you, woman.”
“Ignore that,” said Chevone. “It's the implant talking.”
“I don't think so,” said Charlie. “I can hear him.”
“Not my implant,” said Chevonne. “He has one, too. His implant wants me. Don't worry. My implant has Wi-Fi. It's sending his implant a subliminal message now. Soon, he'll start clucking like a chicken.” -------------------------------- John A. Ward was born on Staten
Island, attended Wagner College in the early 60's, sold his first poem
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