Closing my eyes, I regurgitated the first lines of an opening address I had committed to ABE memory. “If you believe that God is perfection and that we were created in His image, Ms. Helms, then why aren’t we perfect? The answer lies in the human brain. Like a computer, our brain was designed to process information—in our case about four hundred billion bits of information a second. We’re only aware of an infinitesimal percentage of that storehouse of memory because our brain must adhere to the programming limitations imposed by the blinding forces of our perceived reality—a reality anchored by natural selection and the weight of our evolution as a species. While there are exceptions to the rule—photographic memory … Mozart composing music as a child—solving abstract problems of logic or recalling previously read texts was not a skill our ancestors required to survive while hunting and foraging. Furthermore, the human brain cannot relay to the mind what our senses cannot perceive, and our senses lie to us during every waking moment.

“By the baffled look, I gather you’re lost. An example then: As we speak, our planet is rotating on its axis as it soars through space at a speed exceeding eleven hundred miles a minute. And yet, we feel nothing. Why? Because our senses lie to us, concealing the velocity from our brain. The walls of this train possess atoms, each a universe unto itself, and yet we cannot perceive of the micro any more than the macro. If our senses cannot perceive it, Ms. Helms, then for us it does not exist, and yet it does. What is needed is a pair of neural spectacles that will allow us to see.

“Enter ABE, a bio-chip that allows its user to direct his or her thought impulses to the parts of the brain best suited to download, comprehend, store, and retrieve the information. Think of ABE as a television remote control, one that uses thought energy to enable its user to channel surf or immediately dial up their desired program or app.”

Stealing a breath, I had ABE restore the h-phone volume, catching Mount Saint Helms in midgust.

“… virtual research showed that eighty-six percent of a populace enhanced with your neural chip would use ABE like an LSD trip, smelling colors and seeing music in their heads. Ninety-seven percent of subjects using ABE would miss at least five hours of work each week, absorbed in some sordid act of mental masturbation. Of greater concern to many of us New Americans who adhere to the guiding principles of the Bible is that your neural chip can control the secretion of hormones like progesterone, allowing a woman to abort her own child.”