A.A.G.M. Prologue

Prologue

April 11, 2011

The earthquake vibrates the bullet train. Greg Sampson, a man who conceals his anger and nervousness just below the skin, tucks his briefcase between his legs and spins his chubby thumbs in circles. In the briefcase is a tiny, plastic container housing his most prized possession—a slice of Albert Einstein’s brain stem cerebellum. Greg acquired this piece from Thomas Harvey, who stole Einstein’s brain, nearly two decades ago.

Greg looks up from his computer to observe the commotion that flows through the cabin. His Japanese is mediocre, at best. The tone of the passengers implies this disturbance is fleeting, so he turns his attention back to work. He’s only in Japan for two days and needs to finalize his presentation on Einstein’s brain for tomorrow. He doesn’t recognize the danger he, and the other passengers, are in.

Someone cries out. He lifts his vision from his computer to witness the sea as it rises to meet the train.

The world transforms into a cacophony of screams.

Breaking glass.

A mammoth roar of tearing metal.

All of which are deafened by the power of the tsunami.

The three-story wall of water devours the train like ravenous jackals, shredding the metal and people with a hunger only the sea can produce. Greg is knocked unconscious and flung into the ocean.

The raging water rips apart his briefcase like wet paper and knocks loose the prescription bottle. The plastic, makeshift submarine harboring this chunk of gray matter moves inland and then out to sea. It sinks into the ocean, connects with the Kuroshioto current, and rides the ocean’s slipstream for nearly one hundred sixty-two days until it is kicked loose by a school of fish. It comes to rest along the ocean's floor near the beaches of California, and the saltwater eats away at the container, bit by bit.

This white and orange oblong vessel piques the curiosity of several clams. They scurry around it and begin to filter plankton that surrounds the container. Then a tuna fish gulps up the clams and plankton, along with the barely protected piece of brain. As the bottle of brain languishes in the tuna’s stomach, it breaks down further. The fish is caught by a fisherman; as it’s gutted, the stomach rips and spills the contents onto the lower deck of the fishing boat.

The bottle’s integrity is nonexistent, and as it collides with the hard floor, it shatters and the piece of brain propels onto the bed of ice. The tuna is gutted, halved, and placed on top of the ice where the brain rests. It camouflages into the meat; the tuna ships from California to Boston.

Before the tuna was caught, killed, and gutted, it lived near the coast of Japan. It swam in the same water saturated with waste from the Fukushima disaster.

Now, as it rests on the ice of the boat, the radiated meat intermingles with the piece of Einstein's brain.

Upon arrival, the fish is purchased by a local sushi restaurant.

A young businessman sits at the sushi bar and orders edamame, two salmon rolls, and one tuna roll.

As he eats, he doesn’t notice the odd piece of tuna in his meal. The chef didn’t notice either, as he’s on day two of an alcohol binge, inspired by the news of his testicular cancer. The roll is a perfect mix of four parts tuna and one part brain.

As the man bites through the rice and seaweed, he quickly spits the food onto the plate. The gagging sound triggers the inebriated sushi chef into a state of rage. He curses at the patron and reaches over the bar, snatches the plate, and slings it into the sink. The small section of brain posing as sushi washes down the drainpipe and into the Boston sewer system.

The combination of the radiation and sewage transforms the piece of the brain into a homing beacon. This signal expands throughout the globe and gathers Einstein’s scattered ashes. As the molecules slither and slug their way to the irradiated brain, they begin to solidify.

Nearly two hundred days later, the cremated body of Albert Einstein gathers in a gel-like pile in the Boston sewer system.

The goop slinks through a series of pipes, moving towards something familiar, striving for every speck of DNA. The ooze reaches the air, sheds the sewage from its skin, and begins to take shape. A human skeleton forms inside the gray ball, loosely wrapped with a thin membrane of flesh. This translucent skin shrinks, and the mass molds over the skeleton. Shivering, the pile transforms from a mound of unrecognizable gray matter into a human form.

Naked in someone’s apartment bathroom, nearly one year after his piece of brain stem cerebellum was violently tossed into the ocean by a tsunami, stands Albert Einstein.