Project Itoh - Genocidal Organ

“No, it’s my own fault. I shouldn’t be so careless with my tongue.” Her eyes were filled with sadness. “I’m so sorry for ruining a perfectly good day.”

“Please. The fault really is all mine … I was being far too familiar with all my questions. If there’s any way I could make it up to you, I would.”

Inside, I was sneering at myself. Laughing at how low I was stooping at this moment.

Ms. Lucia Sukrova. I already know full well that you used to date a married man.

I know which restaurants you ate in. I know what magazines you bought. I know which branches of Starbucks you took your coffee in. I know how many condoms John Paul used to buy.

I know all this, and yet here I am talking to you, putting on a bare-faced facade, painfully dragging all this information out from your own lips just so that I can pretend to you that I’ve acquired this information from you “naturally.”

“Mr. Bishop? If you do really mean that about making it up to me, I wonder if you’d be kind enough to accompany me to just one more place?” Lucia asked. She was still smiling sadly.

I was overwhelmed by remorse at my own shamelessness. I had no right to look on her face. I was no man.

2

The club was pounding with youthful vitality. The dance music pumping through the club was like an alien being to me. I’d long since stopped following the latest trends in music, so I wouldn’t have known whether to describe the setup as a Prague thing or just a young person thing .

“You know, this isn’t really my scene …” I said, though my face undoubtedly already showed that fact.

“I thought you said you’d do anything to make it up to me.” Lucia pulled me in by my arm. “Just to keep me company?”

Truth be told I found it hard to believe this was Lucia’s sort of scene either. She seemed out of place in such a lively atmosphere. She was most beautiful when talking about books, and there was nothing in her classroom to suggest she was interested in this sort of hedonism.

As I was cajoled into the club by Lucia and crossed the threshold, I was assailed by an uneasy feeling. Something wasn’t quite right, though I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what. I was alert, anxious. Something was missing.

We arrived at the bar.

I looked over to the dance floor to see a mass of writhing young men and women—hardly more than boys and girls—grinding, making out, sharing hormone hits. The tiles of the dance floor were covered by a strikingly realistic video projection of the abyss. I could imagine myself tripping over the edge and plunging downward for all eternity—except that the young people were dancing right above it, floating on the void.

One of the young people stood out: a skinhead who’d coated himself with a holographic nanolayer. A thin film on the back of his head created a display field that made it look as though his skull was transparent and his brain was visible for all to see. Just CGI, of course, but I couldn’t help but wonder if hell was in there too …

Lucia had already found us a couple of empty bar stools and fired off a drinks order.

“Have you had a proper beer since you arrived in this country?” she asked. “A proper Czech beer, I mean.”

“Uh … just a Budweiser or two.”

“The real Budweiser Budvar? Or just what you Americans call Budweiser?”

“Um, the second one, I think. It’s what I drink back home, anyway.”

“Well, we’ll have to change that, won’t we? Oh, I’m sure your stuff’s fine as far as it goes, but this here’s the real deal.”

Two glasses arrived on cue.

“What you Americans call ‘Budweiser’ is really just a brand name, no more. And, in fact, if you look closely at the label of the stuff you usually drink, you’ll see that it’s made by an American company called Anheuser-Busch, unlike our stuff, which comes from the city of České Budějovice—Budweis in English—a bit to the south of here. That’s why your Budweiser can’t be marketed by that name in many European countries; Budweiser Budvar is the only one allowed to use the trademark. Anyway, more to the point, this is a great Czech beer—the best in the world, I think.”

I listened to her speech and I was surprised. Not because of anything she said, but because she casually flipped out a change purse from her jeans. I hadn’t seen such a thing for years. I was even more surprised to see Lucia take a bill out and hand it to the bartender as a tip. This was a blast from the past—a flashback to the pre-automatic-transaction era.

Then it hit me. The reason why I felt something was not quite right when I entered this joint.

We hadn’t been ID’d on our way in.

If Lucia clocked my surprise, she didn’t show it. She just took a swig of her beer. A hearty one at that. Maybe there was more to this lady than first met the eye.

I was evidently reeling from the shock, as Lucia eventually did catch on to my dazed expression.

“Aren’t you going to drink anything?” she asked.

“Uh, sure. I was just a little surprised, is all …”

“By what?”

“Well, it’s not exactly every day you see paper money.”

“I suppose you’re right—since Mobs became widespread, you mean?” she said, referring to the ubiquitous mobile terminals.

“So … is this place black market or something?”

Lucia laughed. “Hardly. It’s all above board, just about. The Czech government, or I guess I should say the Euro government, still acknowledges bills as legal tender. Not too many places are happy taking them, of course, but—”

“Here is one of them?”

“Exactly. It’s a regional thing. Actually, come to think of it, I’m not sure that paper money is technically legal tender as such, although it’s certainly not illegal. It’s more like what would you call in America … scrip?”

“Scrip, huh? I’ve heard of it, but I thought it had been abandoned last century, given up as a failed experiment.”

“Last century’s grassroots attempts at establishing parallel currencies, you mean? Yes, they were abandoned, even if some of them were successful enough while they lasted. Based on cooperative ideals, issued by local organizations with lofty socialist goals such as ‘back to basics’ localism. They were usually well meaning enough but, like most things based on idealism rather than harsh day-to-day pragmatism, never really took off. Whereas the money in my pocket now comes from a very different sort of impetus. A punk spirit, if you will.”

“Punk scrip? I’m not sure I follow you,” I said.

“Money that’s untraceable. The government isn’t too happy about it. It’s something of a thorn in their side, and there are plenty among the powers that be who’d like to see it eradicated. But they’ve never succeeded in passing a law to ban it. Even within government, not everyone’s in favor of tightening the surveillance state further, and I suppose that paper money is something that helps even the odds in the little person’s favor.”

I looked around the club again. This time I noticed, dotted among the youths, a number of older people, older than us. People who would have remembered a time when they didn’t have their identity and movements checked and tracked and cross-corroborated twenty-four seven, 365 days a year. And then I realized that one of the older customers was waving at us and making his way over here. He wore a well-cut sports jacket, casually carried off over a cashmere turtleneck.

“Lucia ahoy!”

“Ciao, Lucius!”

An acquaintance of Lucia’s evidently. She beckoned him over to the bar and bade him sit down next to me.

“Lucius is the owner of this club,” Lucia said by way of introduction. “A shrewd operator, but don’t let that fool you—he also has an introspective streak and is a gentleman to boot.”