Rebirth into the future

The rebirth

My hearts were pounding erratically. I can feel my arms twitching uncontrollably. There is a sharp pain in my brain and my head wants to explode. Slowly I began to feel my legs, they were not there before. I can feel my legs get warmer, it's a comfortable feeling as though it was frozen before. I began to feel my lower legs to also get warmer followed by my toes and fingers. I tried to move my fingers but it is still paralyzed. By now my full body is warm, but it continues to get warmer and it began to hurts. It feels like my entire body is on fire. However, I still cannot move.

"lower" I heard a voice say, I suddenly realized that I have ears. I can feel my body stop getting warmer and my hearts become calmer. Wait a second, did I say hearts?

In my calming state, I began to remember what was going on. I was driving somewhere, I forgot where, but it was urgent. I came upon an intersection about to make a left turn. There was a huge truck on the opposite side waiting to make a left turn too, that it blocked my view to check for oncoming traffic. I know I should have waited for the traffic light to turn red to make that left turn, but since I was in a hurry, I decided to take a risk and hope that there's no oncoming traffic, I was wrong. The last thing I remembered was the airbag popping up on my face.

 I opened my eyes, but there is only darkness.

"Please close your eyes, Dr. Thrun" a voice said. I obliged.

My name is Dr. Thrun, I thought to myself. That is a familiar name but I don't remember anything else about me. I try very hard to remember who I was before this, but aside from the accident I cannot seem to remember anything else.

"Please stop trying to use your brain so much, it is still recovering Dr Thrun" the voice said.

How do I not use my brain? I thought to myself, and more importantly, how do they know I was using my brain "so much"?

"We just need you to not access your brain's memory, please think about the answer to 7 times 73"

So 3 times 7 is 21, and 70 times 7 is 490 add them together it's 521, no, 511. I thought to myself.

"Very good", the voice says "based on the speed it took you to calculate this question, by the time you finish the answer to what is 255 times 257 you should be recovered.

What? I thought to myself, that is too many digits to keep track of in my head, I probably cannot do it. However, given that I cannot move or see and is not allowed to use my brain's memory, I figure I'll just give it a try.

7 times 255 is let see 7 times 200 is 1400, 7 times 50 is 350, 7 times 5 is 35. Add them all together...  What was the first number again? I struggled for a while trying to solve this question I tried again to solve from the beginning, but once again I keep on forgetting the results I calculated in the first step after I finish the second step.

I don't think I can do this, this makes me really want to get up and get a pen and paper. However since I still cannot move, maybe I should try again. 

The numbers 255 and 257 are really close together, maybe I can do something with it. 255 times 257 is the same as 256 square minus 1. there are 256 states in a computer byte, there are 65536 states in 2 bytes. So the answer is 65535. Wait, how do I know there are 65536 states in 2 bytes?

"Please do not access your memory yet, please continue to solve the question 255 times 257", the voice said. 

Didn't I already solve it, why does the voice still ask me to solve it? I thought to myself. Am I in the hospital? Do I have families? Who was I?

"User cannot stop accessing memory, disconnecting  cerebral cortex from the brain..."

I forgot what happened for the next while and then all of a sudden all the memory rushed back to me. 

I opened my eyes to see a young lady greeting me. "Welcome Dr. Andrew Thrun, my name is Mercy. I will be your guide".