“…?”

“Oh, hey, Bellamy. How was your day?”

“…”

“Me? I was just thinking about what we learned in Bio.”

“…!”

“Don’t be that surprised! I pay attention sometimes!”

“…”

“It’s just… humans are made up of cells, right?”

“…”

“And those cells, they have a lifespan, they die and are replaced constantly. But… we live on, right?”

“…”

“That wasn’t rhetorical! We live on, there are pretty much always enough cells to make us up, but… where are we? Like, we are a mass of cells, but the cells are all different from the cells that grew when we were born, so how do we know that we didn’t die too, at some point?”

“…?”

“I wasn’t exactly born this way! I was a normal little kid except… for the horrible debilitating disease, I guess. The doctors said I wouldn’t live a year.”

“…”

“Well, that’s what I’m wondering! It spread first to my left foot, so they lobbed that off and gave me a fancy robot foot. But soon, it spread all the way up the leg, so they hacked the whole thing off, so then I was walking around like a pirate with a very expensive peg leg, I thought that was very cool.”

“…”

“So, I was like that for a while and things seemed to be stable, but when I was like eight, the disease started acting up again, it took my other leg, my arms.”

“…!”

“I know, terrible! It was spreading fast, so the doctors said screw it, they’ll pop the brain out and stick it in a whole prosthetic body. Mom and Dad were worried, and so was I, obviously, but the doctors said that I was the brain, so I would still be me.”

“…”

“So there I was, laying on the hospital bed, waiting for the anesthesia to fully kick in, all woozy and syrupy, thinking about whether that was the end or not, even considering that the doctors were highly trained and certified and would not mess it up, was I about to die? Would my new metal body be me? If so, is everyone just a brain piloting a fleshy meat robot?”

“…”

“At church, we learned that we are actually our souls, this kind of ghost that still exists after we die. I asked Father where my soul was and he just kind of looked at me funny. He was all like ‘Parker! Stop interrupting mass, you’re distracting everyone!’ and then I was too scared to talk to him later.”

“…”

“I mean, yeah. The doctors said I was my brain, so the soul must be there, right? But Mrs. Franklin said that even brain cells sometimes die and are replaced, so does that mean that part of our souls change as we grow old?”

“…”

“And Darren says that his older brother in twelfth grade says that there isn’t any scientific evidence that a soul really exists, which makes this less complicated, but also more complicated?”

“…”

“Yeah, I guess the fact that we’re talking right now probably means that I’m not dead. I still have stuff that bothers me though…”

“...?”

“Yeah, it can wait till after we play games at my house.”