Abstract

This chapter presents a science fiction tale in which the author is sent on a bomb‐defusing mission to Tulsa, Oklahoma, by NASA. He recounts his out‐of‐body adventures that test the limits of leading theories of personal identity, especially informational patternism. According to monitoring instruments, something about the nature of the device and its complex interactions with pockets of material deep in the earth had produced radiation that could cause severe abnormalities in certain tissues of the brain. No way had been found to shield the brain from these deadly rays. So it was been decided by NASA that the person sent to recover the device should leave his brain behind. It would be kept in a life‐support lab in a vat in Houston, where it could execute its normal control functions. After the author came out of anesthesia, he asked the inevitable postoperative question: “Where am I?”.