A SPEECHECTOMY WITHOUT TEARS.

PAUL DENNITHORNE JOHNSTON [*]

Pang's First Words, Live

DURING THE initial nineteen years of his life, our hero was unaware of the existence of language (the thinking and communicating tool we usually take for granted). When he'd finally learned to talk, his linguistic interactions had been with machines: his personal robot Cal, semi-automated life support and comfort systems, holocasters, talking domestic appliances, and malfunctioning voice mail. Spoken to no one but himself, in a vacant tunnel inside his abandoned asteroid home, his first experimental sentence was:

"Your call is very important to us."

Pang had learned much from watching reformatted 20th century dramas and had come to understand the importance of romantic love. He'd often daydreamed that his first live verbal exchange would be with a beautiful woman, the Princess Graceful. After spending a night with the lovely Dolly, he'd modified his dream to include her. However, due to certain circumstances, Dolly and Pang had not actually spoken while they were together, so his dream still remained unfulfilled.

The first words Pang heard from a live human came as verbal abuse from his shipboard jailor.

"Talk, you dumb bastard!"

These violent words left Pang speechless. The synthetic voices he had encountered spoke in neutral or comforting tones. Now his captor glared at him malignantly. Pang had never felt himself the focus of such malicious hate.

After yelling questions at Pang for several minutes, Comfort [Operative.sub.924] yanked him to his feet and propelled him into a virtual cell. The Operative's shift was over, so he hurried toward Home Deck to eat dinner and play with his children. In fact, [Operative.sub.924] had not been angry at Pang, he'd just been executing facial [expressions.sub.4236], [vocalizations.sub.2178], and [gestures.sub.467-479], as now required by The New Age Policing and Intimidation [Manual.sub.102].

As Pang recovered his equilibrium, he noticed that his cell had no physical door. He decided to try to leave, which he did without hindrance. Unlike most of the population, Pang, a clandestinely manufactured clone, had no identity chip implant. Thus, the force-field door sensors of his virtual cell, along with a great many other devices aboard O'Wally's Executive Space Ship, did not recognize his existence.

Pang wandered around the Incarceration and Recreation Deck where he caught up with an ancient hunched man pushing a snack trolley. The first words that Pang spoke to another living being were, "Please, may I have a peanut butter sandwich?"

The old man silently handed Pang a limp plastic-wrapped wedge. Assuming that his customer's identity chip had automatically triggered a sale, he moved on, looking even more weary and hunched over than before. Pang grew tired of wandering around the empty deck. He returned to his cell, unwrapped his sandwich and ate it. Soon he wished he'd asked for a glass of molick as well.

Records of Pang's Capture Lost in the Information Jungle

A duty-person keyed information regarding Pang's capture into the security data bank. Because Pang's arrest had been ordered by Chief O'Wally, the message was tagged **[Highest Priority]** [Circle with upside exclamation point inside it]Instantly to the Chief Immediately [Circle with upside exclamation point inside it] Do Not Delay! *** PRIORITY MAIL ** and other urgent flags which in fact slowed it down. O'Wally's plan was to liquidate Pang. He feared this mysterious clone because of a popular myth which said that such a being would cause the downfall of a mighty ruler.

The day before Pang's capture, O'Wally had beamered down to Earth to go sailing in his favorite boat, [ketch.sub.22], leaving orders not to be disturbed. By the time he returned, his message machine had maxed out and begun automatically deleting messages from the bottom. For days O'Wally did not know that his nemesis had been captured and incarcerated directly beneath his own executive suite.

Because security and other sensors were blind to Pang's existence, he was free to come and go. He'd leave his cell, wander among the populace of O'Wally's Executive Ship and, in order to practice his language skills, converse with anyone who would give him time. Owing to his ignorance of certain nuances of language and culture, his conversations sometimes ended unpleasantly. Once he had to seek medical attention.

The Robot Runs Away

On Asteroid 2202 Bluto, Dolly was heaping misery on Cal, the absent Pang's personal robot. Angry with Cal for failing to teach language to his clone ward at the appropriate age, Dolly berated him frequently and assigned him a seemingly endless number of unpleasant tasks. Cal's macho program had begun to wane and his more sensitive maternity program was in the ascendant again (perhaps owing to radiation from sun spots). Dolly hurt his feelings repeatedly. Was this punishment for neglecting the clone who'd been entrusted to him? Cal decided to leave the asteroid and find Pang. He e-mailed his consciousness to another device, the lifeboat pod that had brought Dolly to the asteroid, then took off secretly, leaving his robotic body behind. He also left Dolly there, after deciding not to advise her of Bluto's collision course with Earth because she'd treated him so abominably.

Dolly Begins a Search for Pang

To search for Pang, Dolly rebooted a bank of computers in Bluto's communications center and hacked into the InterPlaNet. She thought a name search was futile, but did one anyway. The search returned so many occurrences of the name "Pang" that her computers locked up. This helped explain to her the unsettling coincidence that the young man whom she'd recently slept with had the same name on his space suit as the clone she now hoped to find. Dismissing further speculations, Dolly continued her InterPlaNet search and became so engrossed that she didn't notice Cal's disappearance for several Bluto days.

She knew what to look for.

Since Pang had no identity chip implanted in his bone marrow, she would have to seek another sign. Not a signal that he was there, but a shadow, or perhaps some sort of electronic ripple. For example, she could hunt for a change that had no apparent cause. She reasoned: Even if you don't see it disappear, if you have a piece of cheese and then you don't, you might suspect you have a mouse.

Reggie Tries to Warn the World of Impending Disaster But Nobody Listens

Having discovered that asteroid 2202 Bluto was on a collision course with Earth, Reggie attempted to alert the authorities. She sent e-mails to the Interplanetary Geographic Society, INASA, Planetariums Anonymous, The Universal Society of Cosmologists, and other institutions. No one replied. She sent reports to the media but nothing appeared on the news.

Reggie bought a black-market encryption device from an agent provocateur. She wrote e-mails describing the impending crash of Bluto into Earth, encrypted them, and spammed them. A spy system of O'Wally's, which secretly scanned private communications for key words relating to terrorism and disaster, intercepted Reggie's e-mail. Thus, O'Wally's eavesdroppers learned of the imminent destruction of Earth but they postponed telling the Chief because they were afraid to bring him bad news. Those who did so usually got demoted, or worse.

On returning to his Executive Ship from a sailing vacation down on Earth, O'Wally learned of Reggie's discovery. He ordered his own scientists to investigate. An hour later they informed him, yes, Planet Earth was indeed about to be destroyed.

"Great," grumbled O'Wally bitterly. "Just when I was beginning to get my favorite ketch to sail another point closer to the wind."

"She called it the Millendium," said one of the Scientists, Dr. Defrocked Chakra, an expert in non-testable research questions.

"I invented that word!" snarled O'Wally. "That's what I named my project to delete two digits from the calander which I thought up all by myself without the help of anybody else."

"Yes, you did, Sir," replied the scientific team in chorus.

O'Wally ordered his Comfort Operatives to interview Reggie. As regulations required, they immediately began the Debase and Humiliate Protocol.

"It's all on public record," yelled Reggie before they'd done too much damage. "I filed reports everywhere, even with scandalmonger journalist Heraldo Irreverent."

A Senior Operative monitoring Reggie's interrogation for training purposes and improvements to customer service smashed the one-way mirror with a chair and leaped into the room. "She's a hero," he bellowed to his astonished underlings. "Advise the Chief at once. Clean her up so she looks good on the five o'clock news."

O'Wally Decides to Delanguage Pang

When O'Wally learned of Pang's capture, he screamed and broke his favorite souvenir seashell because he hadn't been informed earlier. Still fuming, he sentenced a cowering Junior Expert to a forced-leisure punishment camp that had no daytime drama. O'Wally then summoned his new head of The Unspeakable Project, Dr. Walter "The Pidgin" Toad, who had recently been diagnosed as suicidal and chronologically depressed. O'Wally had promoted Dr. Toad on the rationale that he was too depressed to enjoy his advancement and would probably become even more despondent because of that.

"I've got the subject for your next delanguaging test," said O'Wally gleefully. "A male clone of twenty some years. Never knew of language until he was nineteen."

"It'll probably kill him," said Toad gloomily.

O'Wally smiled.

"And if it doesn't?" asked Toad. "Supposing this time it actually works?"

"A win-win situation."

"That'll make a change."

"Don't get sarcastic with me," hissed O'Wally. "I've got the power to squash you like a bug."

"What's it matter?" said Toad with a dreary sigh. "There isn't any reason for anything, is there?"

"Feeling depressed?" asked O'Wally quietly.

"Is there any reason not to?"

"Good thinking," said O'Wally. "Maybe I won't squash you for a while."

"I wish you'd get it over with."

"It would ruin the suspense. Now I'm going down to the Hospitality Suite to inform clone Pang Lawws that he'll have a speechectomy as soon as I get the paperwork from his HMO."

Pang Angers the Chief

O'Wally rubbed his hands happily as he entered Pang's cell. He knew how to make people squirm. O'Wally identified himself and waited for Pang to show fear.

"Would you like a cup of tea?" asked Pang, recalling proper etiquette from a holofilm he'd once seen. He motioned graciously for O'Wally to sit down. "Molick? Sugar? Two lumps?"

"Do you know who I am?" growled O'Wally in his most intimidating tone, puffing up his chest and looking more than ever like a frog.

"Yes. How do you do?" said Pang pleasantly. He sat, so he wouldn't look down on his visitor.

"I run this damn universe. I'm CEO of just about everything. I could have you squashed like a bug by snapping my fingers."

"Are you sure you wouldn't like a cup of tea?"

"I'm having you delanguaged. Know what that means? You'll never speak again. You'll never hear words again even when somebody yells in your face because words won't mean anything to you. You won't even think in words. Understand?"

Pang's face brightened. "Yes, I understand," he said happily. "When do we start?"

"You want to be delanguaged?" O'Wally screamed. "Are you crazy? Language is the most precious gift that humans have. You're supposed to squirm and beg to keep from losing it."

"I can if you like," said Pang, determined to maintain his good manners.

"Let me get this straight," shrieked red faced O'Wally, trembling with rage, so blinded by fury he could hardly see. "You don't care if I take away every bit of your ability to use language?"

"I had no language for nineteen years," said Pang sadly. "I was happy then."

"Get me out of here," yelled O'Wally.

Unlike Pang, who had no identity chip and therefore was invisible to the sensors that controlled the virtual cell, O'Wally had to wait for someone to turn off the force-field. He left muttering.

The next day O'Wally summoned Dr. Peevish Shtinker, a linguistics expert who taught that a perfect language would be so self-contained it would have no humans involved to mess it up.

"I want a report on why Pang Lawws doesn't mind having a speechectomy. The idiot seems to want it."

O'Wally was determined not to give that clone what he wanted, even if it meant not thinking about those dreadful dangers heralded by the Myth of the Unlicensed Clone.

Dolly Finds Pang

On asteroid 2202 Bluto, continuing her InterPlaNet search, Dolly discovered evidence of Pang's whereabouts. An analysis of returned data revealed that aboard O'Wally's Executive Ship, My Air Force One, peanut butter sandwiches were disappearing from inventory without any record of accompanying sales transactions. Not bothering to power-down anything, Dolly opened a secret door, boarded a shuttle craft she'd hidden there two decades earlier, and lifted off to find Pang.

Years ago, when O'Wally had decimalized conventional time, his engineers had not attained perfection. Since then, to keep in step with astronomical time, all clocks had to occasionally stop for a bit and let the universe catch up. During this interval most equipment went into sleep mode. The populace knew that if they moved more than a few millimeters, their punishment would be unthinkably horrid, so people just froze and waited.

Dolly chose one of these down-times to arrive aboard O'Wally's Executive Ship and make her way into Pang's cell. Since the next down-time would not occur for years, she was uncertain how she would escape.

Dolly Tries to Persuade Pang to Protect His Language Ability

Pang's cell, made of standard-issue white composite components, with the usual built-in facilities, seemed like many of the living cubicles inside his home asteroid. Conveniences included Real Live Sound(tm), thousands of holocaster channels, hundreds of virtual entertainments, and a vast encyclopedia of synthetic experiences. Room servo outputted fine foods. A religious guidance councilor and sex therapist attended regularly; both duties were performed by the same young woman wearing different hats. A dietitian was on call, as was a homopathologist who could only diagnose diseases that he'd once had himself.

Pang seemed happy. For hours he lay on his bunk, eyes closed, smiling.

"I'm going home," he'd say dreamily.

Pang didn't watch the holocaster.

He didn't read virtual books or magazines.

He didn't listen to music.

He rarely spoke.

Lying quietly, he felt a movement, opened his eyes and saw Dolly sitting beside him. "Would you like a cup of tea?" he inquired, sitting up.

"Doesn't anything surprise you?" she asked angrily.

Pang wondered why Dolly was staring at him so peculiarly, as if she were the one who was surprised. He thought a moment. "Everything is new to me. How can I be surprised if I don't know what should happen?"

"Glad to see me?" she asked nervously.

"Yes, I am," said Pang seriously. "I'm glad you came before I get delanguaged so I can tell you that I love you."

"You don't love me," said Dolly gently. She had lived the equivalent of 109 Earth years, although she'd aged only 30, and she'd accumulated much experience of love. "What?" she shrieked, jumping up. "They're going to take away your language function?"

Pang smiled serenely.

"You don't care?" she cried incredulously.

"I want it."

"You won't be able to talk."

Pang continued to smile like a drugged monk.

"You won't be able to say what you need, express an opinion, give instructions, ask directions, or say you're hungry or cold or sick."

Pang met Dolly's eyes. His face displayed the tranquillity of a holy man who had made peace with his maker, and just about everyone else, including door-to-door evangelists and veteran tele-marketers.

Dolly grabbed Pang's shoulders and shook him.

"You won't even be able to think," she screamed.

To Dolly, this felt like shaking a jellyfish that had dined on wet noodles. She knew that Pang had given up.

"They'll destroy everything connected with talking and communicating and thinking, everything that makes you human."

Pang smiled drunkenly. Dolly slapped his face.

"Fight back, for God's sake. They're going to turn you into a zombie."

Pang's face was red from slapping but he remained tranquil.

"Don't you realize how serious this is? There's no reversal. It'll make a lobotomy seem like an ear piercing."

Pang smiled. "I'm going home," he said.

"You're not going home," yelled Dolly. "Before you know it, your home won't exist. I just heard it on the news. Your precious asteroid is going to be smashed to a million pieces. It'll be a sky-ful of dust, a fart in the solar wind. Just like Earth. But you don't mean a physical home, do you?"

"I'm going home."

"Say that again, I'll strangle you," squawked Doily, her voice grating like a witch's fingernails screeching down a blackboard.

Pang put his hand on Dolly's arm. She sat beside him, took a deep breath, sighed. lie met her eyes and to her the contact felt like a jolt of electricity, he seemed so much in the present and so focused on her alone.

"I lived for nineteen years without language," he said calmly.

"An accident," she blustered. "You were supposed to receive instruction at the usual age. A computer glitch kept the program from initializing."

"I was happy without language.

"How do you know that? You had no language to even think it."

"I remember the feeling," said Pang slowly. "Life was simple then. I saw, I touched, I felt, I inhaled the smell of things. I was part of all that exists. There were no boundaries. I belonged to everything I saw and touched and felt and breathed. I was the universe."

"You're insane," said Dolly in a small voice, her eyes glistening.

"Before I had language I had no awareness of myself as something separate. I simply felt and did, looked, touched, sniffed, walked, breathed. I saw what I now call a rock and I touched it and I felt happy. I experienced shapes, colors, and sounds and felt happy. I breathed and I was part of all things.

"Then I learned language and I became aware of myself as something different. I didn't belong anymore. The more I tried to belong, the more I felt torn apart. I tried to own the universe with language. I named things. I described things. I cursed things. The more I got language-orientated, the more alienated and separate I became. With language, I learned that I am alone.

"Dolly, I want to feel happy again. I want innocence, not cognizance. I want to go home."

"You can't go home. Thomas Wolfe said so." Dolly was crying. "Take me with you," she said, then she slapped herself several times. "I'm getting as crazy as you are," she yelled. "You can't unlearn what you've learned. You can't become a linguistic virgin once you've lost it. God, I wish I just didn't have to think. I wish I had no thoughts at all."

The Expert's Opinion

The following report by Dr. Peevish Shtinker analyzing why Pang Lawws desires a speechectomy was ordered by Chief O'Wally.

Subject was raised on abandoned asteroid 2202 Bluto, completely isolated from contact with living beings. Because of a computer malfunction, he did not learn of language until nineteen. He grew up in a world of sensory experience, feelings, and perhaps thoughts of a certain kind, but with no words to describe them.

One of the problems arising from having no symbol system for most of your life is that when you discover it, you think language is the greatest thing ever made. You can use shapes and sounds to represent things that exist or happen. Unlike thoughts, which disappear into the void, such representations seem permanent.

It is impossible for adult language-users such as ourselves to apprehend this experience. We have long forgotten our infant innocence of a world without words. We cannot think without words, or at best, we can do so for a fleeting Zen-like moment.

Picture his environment. Bluto is a small asteroid, now abandoned but once a busy mining operation. Below the surface are extensive mining tunnels and caverns for equipment and living quarters. Imagine yourself there. The cloning capsule has been left in an abandoned cargo bay. After a long incubation, a clone emerges from the transparent chamber. Physically, he is fully developed, a handsome young man who looks much like a composite of several 20th century baseball players, from which we believe came some of his DNA. Like a newborn colt, the young, physically mature but utterly inexperienced clone struggles to his feet. Immediately, the clone's caretaker robot snaps into action. Except it fails to teach him how to talk.

In the normal production of clones, preexisting memories are implanted while clones grow within their uterine capsules. When a clone emerges, it knows its own identity, how it should behave, what it should enjoy, fear, and do. For example, aboard the Baseball Planet, where engineers have pioneered cloning technology in order to produce cheap baseball players, a clone knows he is Babe Ruth, or Ted Williams, or whoever.

Imagine yourself, a newly emerged living being, physically full-grown, eyes seeing, nose smelling, skin feeling, proprioceptors checking positions of head, limbs, torso, fingers. Around you, the once-white corridors of a small asteroid's subsurface living quarters are now abandoned and gathering dust, but the life-support system still functions adequately. You see things, smell them, touch them, but what can you do with the sensory input? You have no words.

A normal clone would have preexisting memories that include practical daily functions, but not this unique clone, because his designer, the person "Jane," of whom we only have a name and a few of her notes, had deliberately withheld those manufactured memories so that Pang would begin life as a clean slate, and go on to create his own original thoughts.

You have no stored memories with which to compare or evaluate incoming sensory experience. You sense, sense, sense a barrage of sensory input from all directions. You store, store, store this chaotic influx in memory. You observe but can make no judgments. You have no negative memories. You never fell, never banged your head, never hurt a finger. No one ever hit you, yelled at you, or refused you food. No one taught you fear of doing, fear of thinking, fear of being. With pleasure and excitement, you soak up sensory experience like a sponge.

But how can we even imagine this, we whom life has taught so much?

I put it to you, after nineteen years of innocence, now confronted with the confusion of our messy, ambiguous, imprecise, delusionary, hallucinatory, and highly fallible language system, he is overwhelmed. Can you blame the wretched neophyte for wanting to go back to the womb of a world before words?

"That's not a scientific report. It's opinion and speculation," grumbled O'Wally with disgust when Dr. Shtinker had finished reading.

"It's theory," replied Dr. Shtinker haughtily. "You don't expect us pure theoreticians to get involved in praxis, do you?"

"Praxis is poop, I want something practical," sneered O'Wally, who hated all pedanticalness except his own.

"There's a lot of art in science," replied Professor Shtinker defensively.

"In that case you'll enjoy your new appointment," said O'Wally with an evil smile. "I've just made you Artist in Residence at an equal IQ community college in Old Siberia." O'Wally Sends A Group of Heroes to Demolish the Rogue Asteroid Before it Destroys Earth

A Comfort Operative informed O'Wally that unauthorized entry had occurred in the Hospitality Suite of Special Guest Pang Lawws. O'Wally decided to investigate himself, since he was surrounded by incompetence. He trudged down to Pang's cell and barged in, to find Dolly and Pang sitting side by side on the bunk.

"You're Dolly what's-her-name and you just came from 2202 Bluto," said O'Wally authoritatively. "I'm CEO and I know what's going on.

"Dolly thought I'd be on the asteroid where I used to live but I wasn't so she came here to visit me," said Pang. He decided not to offer the CEO a cup of tea this time. According to holofilms, offering a cup of tea pleased and placated guests, but here it just seemed to make people angrier.

"You grew up on the asteroid that's going to hit Earth," mused O'Wally. "I suppose you know it inside and out?"

"Oh yes," said Pang with fond remembrance. "I know every bay, cavern, and tunnel. I've thoroughly explored the surface, as well."

O'Wally switched his communicator to Security and gave an order: "Send in those sisters, Veggie and what's-her-name, the one that discovered asteroid Bluto is going to crash into Earth."

O'Wally turned to Pang and Dolly.

"Now here's what you're going to do," he said. "Since you both know the asteroid, I'm sending you up to destroy it. I'm also sending the astronomer who discovered the little problem and her sister who happens to be an expert on breaking rocks. Until now she's split only precious stones and such, but no matter. If you want to live, you'll figure out how to annihilate Bluto before it obliterates Earth along with everyone and everything you ever cared about."

(*.)Paul Dennithorne Johnston, emergent humorist, serves as Executive Director of ISGS. Here, he continues to explore humor and post-modern science fiction as a means of creating more awareness of general semantics. Copyright(c) 2000 Paul D. Johnston.