Genocidal Organ Page #3

right here in this living room.

Your English is impeccable, ma'am.

English is the hegemonic language, after all.

Where did you learn?

In America. I studied linguistics there.

So you're a word pro, then!

Where in America?

MIT.

Wow, that makes you an elite.

--"Wow, that makes you an elite!"

--There was something I could only study there,

so I went. --"Wow, that makes you an elite!"

--There was something I could

only study there, so I went.

That's all.

What did you research at MIT?

Hmm... You could say I studied the effects

of language on human behavior.

"A man's language

molds his perception of reality"...

Like the thing about Eskimos

having twenty words for snow?

Ah, the good old Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

No, not like that.

Are you familiar with the

inherent ability to generate grammar?

No...

This goes back to the era

when slavery was legal.

People from different tribes

kidnapped from different places in Africa

were forced to work together without

understanding each other's languages.

In time, they picked up broken versions

of their masters' languages.

These were grammatical messes,

and any literary technique was impossible.

First-generation systems

like that are called "pidgins."

When children of those slaves

grew up speaking the pidgin natively,

a lively, natural syntax arose

that the rigid pidgin didn't have.

The children acquired a complex

grammar that didn't exist before!

The only explanation is that our brains

have a faculty for generating sentences.

An inherent ability

to generate sentences...

It's a mechanism hardwired into our DNA.

An organ that gives birth

to language, if you will.

When you say "organ," is it like

our internal organs, or arms, or eyes?

That's right.

Well, you two enjoyed

a very cultured conversation.

Leave it to a Lit major.

It just happened to play out that way.

Oh yeah? Looked to me

like you steered it that way.

Jealous of my single status?

Hey, I've still got it, I'll have you know.

That teacher lady

would've been putty in my hands.

As if you're capable

of cultured conversation.

I'd talk about Eskimos.

Or Kafka.

Knowledge gaps are key. Gotta leave

openings for the women to poke fun.

That's not a gap, that's a crater.

"Penhaligons eau de toilette"...

a cologne for men.

Pretty sure she hasn't had

any men over since John Paul.

The lingering scent of John Paul, eh?

Maybe even he wants to seem

gentlemanly in front of his girlfriend.

No sperm in the air?

You'd think they'd be excited

after so much time apart.

Watch out, Clavis.

I'd peg her as a femme fatale.

She brings men grief.

Not that your nerd pheromones

attract women anyway.

We're set. May I have your

authentication, for the contract?

I'll make my "gaps"

a bit classier than Williams's.

I hope I can read Kafka in Czech one day.

Oh, no, Kafka wrote his novels in German.

You know this country used to be

part of the Austria-Hungary Empire, right?

It rings a bell.

Kafka was also a Jew... but he couldn't

quite fit in with Jewish society.

And he apparently thought of German

as a borrowed tongue not his own.

I wonder if works like

The Castle and Amerika

reflected his sense of having

no group to belong to.

"L have nowhere to belong, and my words

are a string of borrowed sounds."

Yes, perhaps Kafka felt that way.

Like the land surveyor

loitering around the castle?

I'm sorry.

I was just remembering someone

you remind me of. He loved books, too.

What was this boyfriend like?

That's a very personal question.

You're the one who brought him up.

I suppose so...

He was an academic

doing linguistics research, like me.

He was the more brilliant scholar, though.

He was involved in a Department

of Defense language project.

The Pentagon invests in linguistics?

He said he was funded by DARPA.

That's one impressive guy.

We met at MIT. We dated

for a while, but it didn't last.

Then I came back to

the Czech Republic and started this job.

Welcome to the Czech Republic

Ministry of Tourism.

Please select your language.

Nothing, huh?

Thanks, Williams.

What a surprise.

Now, then. What I want

to know is, who are you?

Like I'd tell you!

Now, then. What I want

to know is, who are you?

I'm nobody!

Now, then...

Who are you?

I'm no one! Please believe me!

I'm really nobody!

You're a cruel guy.

I'm a cruel guy.

Either he lost his fingers in an accident

and got transplants, or...

That'd be in the records.

A database mismatch?

"L'm nobody," he said...

How about this explanation?

He has a contact who's capable

of illegally altering the database.

If so, he's probably an agent

of one government or another.

Is that why the Pentagon is in

such a hurry to assassinate John Paul?

Very possible.

Hey.

Hello!

It was a lucky break that Lucie

offered to show me Kafka's grave.

If someone's tailing her, it means

the enemy isn't only interested in me.

Which of us are they

keeping tabs on? Or is Lucie in on it?

Were these Kafka's sisters?

Yes.

They all died around the same time...

...Oh.

Yes. Auschwitz.

They all died in the Holocaust.

His youngest sister, Ottla,

was married to a German,

but she divorced him and

voluntarily went to the ghetto.

Even though as the wife of an Aryan,

she could have gotten an exemption...

You know all the details.

John told me many times.

"John"... That's the man

you used to date, right?

John talked about the Holocaust a lot.

He seemed interested

in the history of genocide.

He'd talk about Stalin,

Cambodia, the Sudan, Rwanda...

The history of genocide, huh?

He said it had a particular smell.

A smell?

One that lingers in the Nazi death camps,

Katyn Forest... all those sites.

So, in the end you never knew

what John was researching?

No. I don't think he told anyone.

He did it all himself.

I doubt even his wife knew.

His wife? You mean you--

I knew he had a child, too.

I'm the worst sort of woman.

L-I'm sorry, I shouldn't have pried.

It's fine. But if you're sorry,

will you come to one more place with me?

Do you drink Budweiser?

Budweiser? That's what

I always drink in America.

Ah, the Busch one. I won't say it's bad,

but you need to try the real thing.

--Paper money? --I suppose ID-pay

is the norm these days, isn't it?

So that was illegal currency?

Of course not! It's a regional currency

recognized by the government and the EU.

I thought the experiments

with regional currency were over!

Yes, past attempts were about

reempowering the community,

so they leaned too far to the left.

But this isn't a community movement

so much as a punk one.

Punk?

People want something to balance out

the information society.

Hi, Lucie.

Ciao, Lucius!

Lucius owns this place.

He's very smart, and a deep thinker.

This is Charles Bishop. His company

just transferred him here from the US.

Pleased to meet you. This is a great bar.

Thank you.

You haven't been by in a while, Lucie.

Everyone's missed you!

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