TOUR OF BABBLE

(For Angelo Codevilla and Christopher Akerele)


Crawford let out a yelp as he bumped his head on the bunk above him on the slow moving East Bengal Express. Although there were no other passengers in his air-conditioned compartment, he was compelled to ride in bunk-bed conditions befitting a Boy Scout because in a fit of nostalgia, or perhaps an ignorance of modern engineering, some genius in the East Bengal Railway Company had designed these supposedly 21st century, nuclear powered steam trains after a colonial model some two hundred years out of date.
Why Crawford was on a train at all, instead of a suborbital shuttle, was still a matter which irked him to no end. ¡°Must show appropriate sensitivity to the local culture, old fellow,¡± Fraser, his boss at U.N. Regional Headquarters, the very incarnation of the classic British upper class twit, had advised him. Fraser was one of those fellows, lacking technical expertise in anything, but possessing the best of breeding and a liberal Oxford education who had, as a consequence of his birth, acquired a position as a high ranking representative from his country to the United Nations. As the twenty second century drew near, Great Britain, which had spawned the industrial revolution still remained a class society, governed by a self-perpetuating group of White Anglo Saxon Protestants, who, while they could declaim Cicero in the original Latin, would have had trouble telling an algorithm from Alka Seltzer. Crawford, by comparison, although he had done a fair amount of the classics himself (as electives during his undergraduate years) and had nothing in particular against Latin and Greek per se, simply felt that they were a bit out of place as the technical tools by which one might seek to rationalize production methods and bring relief to an ailing Third World.
And over the years, the United Nations, which had once been nothing more than a propaganda machine for backward and repressive regimes, had indeed come to play an increasing role in the affairs of the developing world (privately, Crawford thought it might be more accurately titled ¡°the undeveloped world¡±, but even he knew such language would be entirely unacceptable within the organizational confines of the United Nations.) In the twenty-first century, the organization was not so much involved in pacification, where Article 53, the ¡°self defense¡± clause of its charter had never proven worthy to the challenge, but rather in the emergency aid and disaster relief which inevitably followed the period¡¯s wars of ethnic identity and ¡°national self expression¡±. While an earlier age might have called this ¡°aggression¡± or even ¡°genocide¡±, the more enlightened social matrix which was now rapidly approaching the twenty second century, had come to understand that appropriate ethnic sensitivity and the recognition of cultural diversity demanded that the military aspirations of all repressed peoples be accepted at their true face value, and should even be applauded in the spirit of universal fellowship as the natural expression of those societies¡¯ equal rights to do unto others as they would do unto them.
For Crawford, who held doctorates in engineering as well as in medicine, this had meant interminable tours of duty trying to patch up the human misery and suffering of those whose principal crime was that they were in some marginal way slightly better off than their neighbors. The range of such disputes was largely a function of the range of the weapons in the hands of the ¡°offended¡± party, and when the struggle for equality was over, it was left to Crawford and a handful of UN Social Assistants (to have called the SA¡¯s by any title higher than ¡°assistant¡± would have been an insult to the indigenous culture, or so the U.N.¡¯s Bureau of Ontological Correctness had determined) to try and pick up the pieces.
His latest assignment had come about during a conflict between the People¡¯s Democracy of East Bengal and the Republic of New East Bengal, both former provinces in what had been the country of Bangladesh, before that country, itself the result of a secession from Pakistan, which in turn had been separated from India some hundred and fifty years earlier, had disintegrated into chaos. Of course it wasn¡¯t called chaos any more, but rather ¡°individual ethnic self-determinism¡±.
¡°History is truly written by the victors,¡± thought Crawford, noting that since most of the splinter factions of what had been Bangladesh were illiterate, and that for the past fifty years, the place really had no history at all, just a constant round of internecine warfare. Of course, back home, historians would have upbraided Crawford for his social insensitivity. ¡°Certainly there is history in East Bengal,¡± they would have told him, although he was quite sure that not one in a hundred could tell him where the boundary lines lay between the People¡¯s Democracy of East Bengal, The Republic of New East Bengal, the Bengali People¡¯s Republic, New East Bangladesh, The Islamic Republic of East Pakistan, Dhaka (now a City-State), the Bengali Archipelago, Western East Bengal, New West Bangladesh, Inner Bengal, and The Bengali Independent States. Despite their ignorance on the subject, they would have told him that it was merely his chauvinism as a white man (which struck Crawford as more than a little weird, given the fact that he was half black, and had always thought of himself as an African-American) which blinded him to the existence of the local oral history.
Crawford was a tall dark-skinned rangy man, with a prominent nose which he credited to his Jewish grandmother on his father¡¯s side. Born in a family of academics, his extraordinary achievements at Stanford, Princeton and M.I.T. had not blinded him to the social consciousness which was part and parcel of his nature. He had been a basketball star at Stanford and could have gone professional, but he preferred to pursue first a medical education, and then a doctorate in mechanical engineering. After he had invented several electro-mechanical devices which revolutionized cardiology and cardiac surgery, he had received generous offers from a number of medical manufacturers to head their research and development divisions. Finding these offers spurious from a financial point of view (royalties and licensing fees from the inventions had already made him a rich man), and tiring of the academic environment, Crawford had joined the U.N. with an eye towards devoting his talent to medical and infrastructure relief in distant places which would otherwise have been unable to afford a talent such as his.
This was his sixth year of service and his seventh tour of duty. Yet if events continued to proceed as they had been going, he seriously doubted whether he¡¯d be able to survive an eighth tour. Fortunately, unlike most of his fellows, he was not dependent upon a Civil Service pension, nor did he make its magnitude (whose differences often required the instantaneous derivative of differential calculus to measure) the primary concern of his career, as did so many of his pencil necked, pencil pushing fellows. Crawford didn¡¯t break one good report into three smaller, mediocre reports to get more points from the bean counters at Headquarters (a particularly annoying habit of his boss, Fraser) and win a performance raise, any more than he falsified reports to make his section look good at the expense of the people he was supposed to be helping. And he didn¡¯t avoid difficult assignments in order to always please the brass and therefore earn successive promotions. That he was still a field man after six years suited him just fine, and the day he was assigned to a desk as a reward for services well rendered was the day he retired, pension or no pension.
Thinking about the region¡¯s oral history, and the sensitivity Fraser demanded that Crawford show towards it, forced a chuckle out of him. ¡°Oral history¡± he thought, ¡°another circumlocution designed to disguise the obvious and unsettling truth.¡±
Of course, if such a thing did indeed exist, beyond the fragmentary rantings, imaginings and propaganda of an endless succession of despotic regimes, most of whom did not bother to re-write history, since after all their leaders generally could not read, Crawford imagined it was something akin to the jokes his African-American grandmother used to make about the ¡°hillbilly boys¡± of Arkansas. She had often told him stories of these inbred American hill tribes, claiming that a famous President of her own grandmother¡¯s youth had come to power on the backs of the warring factions of the Martin¡¯s and McCoy¡¯s. These rival clans apparently were also illiterate, inbred and constantly engaged in small scale local warfare, although in those days it was called the ¡°blood feud¡± rather than ¡°politically correct ethnic self determination.¡± Despite the relative primitivism involved, however, it appeared that their victorious leader had nonetheless successfully carried this ethic into the White House.
According to his grandmother, and in recent years, Crawford had come increasingly to agree with her analysis, his present job was simply the end product of a hundred years of the policies first pursued by this back-woods President. By the time Crawford had entered the U.N.¡¯s relief arm, his own country had long since wedded its foreign policy to an ethic which had evolved into ¡°post-conflict, non-judgemental intervention¡±. Crawford took this to mean footing the U.N.¡¯s ever growing bill, and occasionally caring for the survivors after having abdicated all responsibility for preventing conflict of any type around the world. He was often sure that there was a shorter word or phrase which described this policy, but if so it had long been purged from the lexicon of diplomatic and political language, perhaps as being racist, sexist, developmentalist or simply insensitive.
Indeed, the ¡°vocabulary gap¡± was currently a hot topic of debate in the U.N.¡¯s General Assembly, where it was felt that the excessive number of words present in the languages of the former Colonial powers (another anachronism, since none of them had maintained colonies for the better part of a hundred years) represented a resurgence of Neo-Colonial oppression. In order to remove the unfair cognitive barriers which these languages imposed on the majority of the world¡¯s citizenry, progressive thinkers argued, the former Colonial powers ought properly to reduce their grammar, syntax and vocabulary to a few hundred, or at most a thousand words, much like the simplified Mandarin which the great humanitarian, Mzdng (pronounced ¡°Mao Tse Tung¡± in the new modified vocabulary of the Peking Peoples Progressive Lexicon, but now written in the approved abbreviated transliteration) had spread across greater China in order to let all of its people easily communicate the teachings of ¡°Mao-thought¡± and Marxist-Leninism with one another.
While Crawford was occupied in the contemplation of the role of language in world events, his yelp at bumping his head on the correctly proportioned bunkspace (the Republic of New East Bengal was deeply committed to the fight against horizontal chauvinism, or as it was more commonly referred to by judges passing sentence in the criminal courts of that country, ¡°heightism¡±) had, in the meantime, brought the compartment¡¯s artificially sentient, electronic companion scuttling up to his bunk.
¡°Excuse me Ms./Sr. is there anything the matter?¡±
Mistaking the lexicologically correct ¡°Ms./Sr.¡± for the French ¡°monsieur¡±, Crawford began to answer in that language. One consequence of his long education was that he had developed a deep love of literature and in order to read the forbidden classics, such as Baudelaire, Rabelais, Goethe, Tolstoy and Mishima, he had learned French, German, Russian, and Japanese, in their original, chauvinist forms. Occasionally, this knowledge led to embarrassing consequences, such as those which were occurring in the present situation. Fortunately for Crawford, he was a gifted conversationalist, and when not dragged down by fatigue, or the occasional bout of Beninian Malaria IV, he was usually able to talk his way out of whatever politico-ethnological gaffe he had made by using his otherwise silver tongue. Before he had a chance to remedy the current situation, however, the artificial companion interrupted him, stating, ¡°I¡¯m sorry sir and madam, but I am programmed not to acknowledge anything stated in the language of societies which condone the economic oppression of the people of the Republic of New East Bengal.¡±
¡°What the hell?¡± questioned Crawford.
¡°The Republic of New East Bengal has been the unfair target of ethnic discrimination by the National Union of Quebec and therefore we refuse all communication with their Tribe, including the usage of their language, which is a fineable offense, payable at the point of departure or arrival, whichever may be more convenient. We accept cash, Traveler¡¯s Checks or Visa.¡±
¡°Ethnic discrimination?¡± Crawford asked once again, ¡°I mean this sounds pretty much like a straightforward trade dispute to me, although, after all, I¡¯m just an outside observer.¡±
¡°Oh my golly goodness gracious, no!¡± replied the artificial companion revealing a certain hidden degree of linguistic chauvinism in its conversational programming. ¡°The trade dispute is strictly between ourselves and the People¡¯s Democracy of East Bengal.¡±
¡°Would you mind explaining that a bit?¡± Crawford pleaded.
¡°Not at all,¡± replied the artificial companion. ¡°The trade dispute is indeed serious, and in need of immediate resolution, but that is a local ethnic conflict based on the misguided behavior of our brother state, the Peoples¡¯ Democracy of East Bengal.¡±
¡°On the other hand,¡± the machine continued, ¡°the retrograde Imperialist Canadian Oppressors have engaged in acts of economic warfare based on their racial bias and attributions of ethnic superiority, designed to take advantage of the Republic of New East Bengal as an emerging nation.
¡°Huh?¡± remarked Crawford, his powers of speech for once failing him in the midst of this machine powered onslaught.
¡°You see,¡± the companion continued, ¡°these Quebec chappies sent us their shoddy goods and then refused our offer of payment on deferred terms of credit, clearly an act of economic discrimination, and provocative of open hostilities.¡±
¡°Could I get a little more specificity here please?¡± Crawford asked.
¡°I¡¯m sorry, Ms./Sr. but that word is not in my databanks. Could you perhaps translate ¡®specificity¡¯ into an approved commonly spoken language?¡± the companion inquired.
¡°Besides Bengali?¡± Crawford asked.
¡°Bengali is not a language,¡± the companion informed him.
¡°Really? Crawford asked. ¡°Then what is it that I¡¯ve been trying to learn to speak these past three months?¡±
¡°Oh,¡± replied the companion, ¡°that is Bengla. The people of Republic of New East Bengal are Bengali, our food is Bengali and our culture is Bengali, but our language is Bengla, and I regret to inform you that calling it ¡®Bengali¡¯ is also a fineable violation of the Republic of New East Bengal Code of Approved Phrases and Acronyms.¡±
¡°Hmmm,¡± mused Crawford, , certain that this business of fines for the ¡°improper¡± use of language was just another variation on local corruption and extortion. Attempting to test this hypothesis, he inquired, ¡°OK, now what was this business about fines?¡±
¡°As payment for your offenses, before you depart this vehicle, you are required to settle all outstanding fines by Visa, Traveler¡¯s Checks or Cash,¡± the artificial companion replied.
¡°What about American Express or Master Card?¡± Crawford asked, unable to resist.
¡°Sir and Madam,¡± the artificial companion replied in an outraged tone, the Republic of New East Bengal would never accept payment in the form of a credit card issued by an Imperialist aggressor, and we certainly wouldn¡¯t even think of touching the debased currency of any self styled ¡°Master Race¡±.
Sidestepping the idiocy of the machine¡¯s response, Crawford decided to throw it a curve by pointing out the inconsistency of its basic position. ¡°But you take American Express Traveler¡¯s Checks, don¡¯t you?¡±
¡°That¡¯s different,¡± replied the artificial companion.
¡°Different how?¡± Crawford inquired.
¡°We don¡¯t pay any commission to Imperialist Aggressors when we use their travelers¡¯ checks,¡± the artificial companion replied.
¡°All right,¡± Crawford continued, ¡°enlighten me. You say I¡¯ve committed a fineable offense. Finable for what, if you don¡¯t mind my asking?¡±
¡°Unlawful commerce with the enemy¡± replied the artificial companion.
¡°What commerce?¡± Crawford complained, ¡°I¡¯m riding on a goddamned train and I¡¯m the only one in the compartment.¡±
¡°That was a very insensitive remark, Ms./Sr.,¡± the artificial companion replied.
Not to be put off by this show of electro-mechanical empathy, Crawford continued, ¡°besides, I thought your current enemy was the People¡¯s Islamic Republic of Western East Bengal, not some French-Canadians.¡±
¡°Yes,¡± replied the artificial companion, ¡°they too are our enemies, but that is merely a temporary local dispute arising from the extortionate rates which the People¡¯s Islamic Republic of Western East Bengal insist on being paid for goods which have, in any case, already left their custody. The burning issue of national self determination recognized by all patriotic cadres of the Republic of New East Bengal today, is the Hair Oil Dispute which has just recently begun, and not the antiquated trade dispute which in any case cannot be resolved until the ongoing embargo is lifted,¡± the artificial companion explained.
Crawford began to feel that he was going to be in for a long ride indeed. The artificial companion continued by stating that ¡°The true enemies of Republic of New East Bengal are the hostile forces of the People¡¯s Democracy of East Bengal, who have so cruelly constrained our ethnic freedom of self-expression through their unjustified criticism of our native cultural habits.¡±
¡°Native cultural habits?¡± Crawford queried. ¡°Hair Oil Dispute?¡± he asked with more than a trace of confusion in his voice.
¡°Yes,¡± the artificial companion replied. ¡°You see,¡± it continued, ¡°we in Republic of New East Bengal have very strict standards by which we apply our weekly ration of hair oil.¡±
¡°We?¡± Crawford asked, more than a little bit puzzled.
¡°Yes,¡± replied the artificial companion. ¡°Because, Ms./Sr., you see we have been reduced to very limited supplies of the ingredients necessary to make both hair and face oil, due to the depredations of the former nation of the New Peoples¡¯ Republic of Western East Bengal.¡±
Crawford pondered this briefly. He didn¡¯t remember any New Peoples¡¯ Republic of Western East Bengal, but perhaps they had only been a splinter group of a few villages which had temporarily broken away from Western East Bengal and had then been subsequently reabsorbed into the parent country. He would have to check his database for news bytes on the subject, after all in his line of work it paid to be informed, since you never knew what you were going to run into.
In the meantime, the artificial companion continued to explain the nature of the Republic of New East Bengal¡¯s current hair oil crisis.
¡°Since Imperialist depredations have reduced our hair and face oil stocks, our Great Leader has decreed that while face oil may be changed daily, hair oil may be changed only once a week. In the patriotic spirit of group sacrifice, we have taken this occasion in order to make a Great Leap Forward.¡±
Trying to remember whether this week¡¯s Great Leader was the same as last week¡¯s Great Leader, Crawford asked, ¡°So what¡¯s the problem, then?¡±
¡°The problem is that since we have moved to a war-time footing with respect to hair oil, the People¡¯s Democracy of East Bengal refuses to allow their women to marry our men.¡±
¡°Why ever would they do that?¡± asked Crawford.
¡°They say that we smell bad,¡± the artificial companion replied.
¡°How so?¡± Crawford asked.
¡°Oh, it is a tragedy of the first magnitude. The People¡¯s Democracy of East Bengal knows that we do not have the resources to comply with their demands, yet they complain that after three days the benevolent sunshine of the Republic of New East Bengal turns our hair oil rancid, which is simply a clever capitalist lie on their part to try and force us into a disadvantageous trade relationship.¡±
¡°Disadvantageous how?¡± Crawford wondered aloud.
¡°Why, since they now control the only readily available source of ingredients for hair oil, and they withhold their women from marriage with us unless we revert to the barbaric custom of daily hair oil changing, we are continually in a state of economic and social oppression,¡± the artificial companion explained.
¡°And the smell of rancid hair oil doesn¡¯t bother your own women?¡± Crawford inquired.
¡°Certainly not,¡± the artificial companion replied. ¡°You see, that¡¯s just another typical chauvinistic remark from an insensitive outsider. The next thing you¡¯ll be doing is spreading seditious ideas, I suppose, like suggesting that we give up our venerated traditions of hair oil preservation and surrender to the Imperialistic trade policies of the People¡¯s Democracy of East Bengal.¡± Raising its artificial voice several decibels the artificial companion began to shout ¡°Baldness Before Balance of Payments!¡± ¡°Baldness Before Balance of Payments!¡±
¡°O.K., O.K.¡± Crawford shouted in return, ¡°Enough already. Besides,¡± Crawford continued, ¡°you¡¯re already bald, I mean after all you¡¯re a machine, you don¡¯t have any hair in the first place.¡±
This proved to be a major mistake, as the artificial companion took immediate offense to Crawford¡¯s comment. Unfortunately, somewhere in the history of its design and construction, it had inherited an old Russian ¡°paranoia¡± chip which formed a sub-assembly co-processor for its AI cognitive functions which continually routed it back along paranoid decision paths which forced it to interpret every statement in the worst possible light. While this might have been good for revenues, given the fines it continually imposed, it made riding the East Bengal Railway hell for the passengers.
Still maintaining an offended tone, the artificial companion continued to reprove Crawford, stating that ¡°I am a fully functional multi-cultural, multi-linguistic electro-mechanical companion, capable of conversing in eleven dialects of Bengla, three dialects of Burmese, as well as the more universally recognized languages of Eubonics, Pidginoise and Xenomorphobotanicon.¡±
¡°Uh, I didn¡¯t quite get that last one,¡± Crawford remarked.
¡°Xenomorphobotanicon¡± replied the companion. ¡°It is the galactic language of the secret life of plants.¡±
¡°Not to put too fine a point on it, but you wouldn¡¯t happen to have a similar program for the inorganics, you know like the secret life of rocks and all that?¡± Crawford inquired, ¡°after all, he remarked, ¡°you know rocks have feelings too.¡±
¡°Not yet Ms./Sr.,¡± the companion replied, ¡°but we¡¯re working on it.¡±
¡°All these programs must take up a great deal of storage space in your artificial memory,¡± Crawford remarked.
¡°Oh the designers thought so at first, especially since the oppressive credit system of the Mercantilist Europressors denied us the latest technology, which was particularly damaging to our national ethnic pride, since that technology would have been very useful in our laser targeting systems. However, one we did the lexicography, we found that we could fit both the Eubonics program and the Xenomorphobotanicon on a single chip, even with the limited capacity which our Neo-Colonialist, Mercantilist Oppressors burdened us with.¡±
¡°Burdened you with?¡± Crawford questioned the artificial companion.
¡°Yes, that is all that they would let us have for free. When we asked for the more advanced systems, particularly the ones with the superior weapons functions and applications, the Imperialist, warmongering capitalist aggressors denied them to us, and this despite their reprehensible failure to intervene in either the trade crisis or the hair oil dispute.¡±
¡°Well I really don¡¯t see how either of those problems are any of their business,¡± Crawford interjected, ¡°and they did give you the rest of this equipment for free. Actually I¡¯d call that pretty generous, you know like foreign aid, or even charity,¡± he said, ¡°After all, you did get something for nothing as far as I can tell.¡±
¡°You see, there it goes again,¡± the artificial companion replied. ¡°You are oppressing me with the typical linguistic chauvinism of the European race. This is the way the white man always misleads and oppresses the true children of the earth.¡±
¡°Wait a minute here, Pinocchio,¡± Crawford answered, certain that the artificial companion wouldn¡¯t get the reference, ¡°I¡¯m not white, I¡¯m black,¡± he said pinching his arm, and then pointing to his face, saying ¡°Black.¡±
¡°No you¡¯re not,¡± the artificial companion insisted. ¡°And I¡¯m not a pin-okyo or whatever you said, I¡¯m a third generation copy of a Peruvian improved design North Korean re-engineered, Matsushita IV all purpose independent security system.¡±
¡°You don¡¯t look very improved to me, if you can¡¯t even tell the difference between black and white,¡± Crawford complained.
¡°Typical Europressor chauvinism again,¡± the artificial companion remarked. ¡°You know we have been programmed by the best minds in The Republic of New East Bengal, far superior to anything in Europressor society, and no matter how many sophistries you throw at me, you will not fool me into believing your White lies.¡±
¡°Dammit, you overgrown motorcycle motor, I am not white, I¡¯m black,¡± Crawford said in frustration, pulling out his white UNOC badge. ¡°You see,¡± he pointed to the badge, ¡°White¡± and then pointing to himself ¡°Black¡±, he repeated ¡°White-Back, White-Black, White-Back,¡± alternately pointing from the card to himself and back again.
¡°Oh you are not fooling us Ms./Sr.,¡± the artificial companion replied, ¡°my programming is very explicit on this point.¡±
¡°Explicit about what?¡± Crawford inquired, ¡°certainly not explicit about colour,¡± he finished.
¡°If you were truly black, you would manifest the appropriate cultural characteristics.¡±
¡°What appropriate cultural characteristics? I¡¯m an African-American, and I¡¯m perfectly appropriate for my culture you miscreant piece of junk.¡±
¡°You see what I mean, there goes your cultural chauvinism again,¡± the artificial companion replied. ¡°You continue to insist upon using untranslatable euphemisms and Europressor slang like ¡®miscreant¡¯,¡± the artificial companion said.
¡°What¡¯s the matter?¡± inquired Crawford, ¡°too much for the circuits? Kim Il Sung didn¡¯t steal the right plans from the Japanese before he sold them to Peru?¡±
¡°How horrible. You see only a Europressor would describe the dedicated efforts of the revolutionary struggle of the people of The Republic of New East Bengal in such terms. I¡¯m ashamed that they let you into the country at all. Your cultural influence is bound to negate whatever so-called medical assistance you¡¯re providing.¡±
¡°And how would you know?¡± Crawford asked, truly perplexed by this point, and hoping that he could get to the aspirin and purified water in his medical bag soon, since his headache was beginning to take on blistering proportions.¡±
¡°Well, if you were a real black man,¡± the artificial companion continued, ¡°the least you could do as a civilized being would be to speak in Eubonics!¡±
¡°Eubonics?¡± Crawford thought to himself, remembering the deranged attempt of some of his countrymen earlier in the century to short-circuit the English language, leaving the Black Man (and Woman) at even more of a competitive disadvantage in the primarily white, English speaking society of the United Sates than they had been in the first place.
¡°Motherfucker!¡± Crawford expostulated in a moment of lost self control, for which he was certain he would be fined yet again by the linguistically correct artificial companion.
Yet much to his surprise, no sooner had he uttered the forbidden epithet than the machine suddenly pivoted one hundred and eighty degrees and immediately sped out of the cabin, finally leaving him alone to tend his headache, which he feared was merely a presentiment of the trials yet to come.