War Comes to South Waziristan

The senior U.S. official said a small number of U.S. helicopters landed troops in the village near Angoor Adda in South Waziristan, where Taliban and al Qaeda fighters have hunkered down over the years.
-- CNN.com, September 3, 2008

Chicks Up Front!

from "The Science of Cognitive Everything" (2004)

I went to see my neurolinguist, and she clamped on the electrodes and told me to say “copyshop” 50 times fast.

I just wasn’t in the mood.

“Ya know, this is getting kind of old,” I observed. “Couldn’t I say ‘Flurble gronk bloopit, bnip Frundletrune’ instead?”

“Aha,” she said with a wink. “All your base are belong to us.”

“I perceive you are hip,” I responded, giving the secret grep handshake.

“You too, baby. Good news! You’re going to Summer Brain Camp!”

“Oh, that’s fantastic!” I was overcome with sheer joy, as though I had just imbibed a cubic millimeter of Wyamine. “Man, busty Gujarati chicks here I come!”

“Well, I might as well break it to you now. You’re going to go as a lady.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Have you noticed your breasts enlarging gradually in the past few months? Your therapist has been slipping estrogen and female growth hormones into your cocktail of anti-psychotics.”

“Say what?” You could have knocked me down with a mackerel. “I thought I was just putting on a bit of weight; never really gave it a second thought. Although come to think of it, my testicles *have* been slowly retracting. Hey! What’s going on? And how do you know my therapist?”

“We were in the same Genetical Cyber-Linguistics program back at Harvard. Plus which, we’re part of the same secret sorority.”

Her face turned misty in front of me and I feared for a moment I was losing my grip.

“You’d better sit down,” she said. “I’ll explain.”

“I am sitting down, as far as I know.”

“Oh, right-ho. Now get a good grip on yourself. This sex change is on the orders of Her Majesty herself. We’re going to be inserting you into South Waziristan to have a little chat with Mr. Osama bin Laden, and Her Majesty’s Secret Service didn’t want you running amok among the lovely native maidens over there. In a month we’re packing you off to Bletchley Park, where the stinks and bangs guys will complete the, um, conversion. We’ll need to darken your skin a bit, and of course you’ll have to practice your Pashtu. Then they’ll run you up a British passport and fly you over to Rawalpindi, then copter you in to South Waziristan. Just so happens that the present Rani is going to have a little accident, and we’ll do a quick change. With luck nobody will notice the difference.”

“Holy shit!” I expostulated. “This is all happening so fast. But if it’s on the orders of the queer old dean, I mean dear old Queen, then of course count me in. Heh. The game is afoot, Watson. Just one thing – the Rani isn’t married, I hope? Also, I really don’t cherish the notion of beginning to experience the menstrual cycle at this point in life.”

“No problem, no problem. The Rani is post-menopausal, her husband died long ago, and Waziristani Islam and the laws of the kingdom don’t permit her to marry again.”

“Jeez, this is all happening so fast, it’s making my head spin. But wait a minute. Bletchley Park? Female hormones? Isn’t this what they did to Turing? And he committed suicide!”

“That was just the cover story,” she said, reassuringly. “Actually, what happened was ……” She leaned over and whispered in my ear.

“Really??!!”, I said, impressed. “So that means that Mick Jagger – (I leaned over and whispered in her ear.) “Lordy, lordy, who’d a thunk it!”

“Yes, well, keep it to yourself.”

Suddenly a horrible thought struck me. “I won’t have to meet Tony Blair, will I? I mean, that grinning little limey poodle dog really gives me the creeps.”

“No, no, Tony is like totally out of the loop. There will be a discreet audience at Buckingham Palace, then you’ll be off to Pakistan. Anyway, you better start packing. Be sure to pack some extra-strength tampons.”

“Now wait a minute. You said –“

“Just teasing.”

“Also, when all this is over, will they turn me back into the manly stud I am now?”

“We’ll see. They might just wanna go the whole cyborg route with you. And anyhow, you might just find that life is more fun as a girl.”

“Wow, this is all too much. You know, as a little kid in Kitchener, in Queen Elizabeth Elementary School, we pledged our allegiance to the Union Jack and Her Majesty every morning. I never dreamed I would have this opportunity to work in the service of Good Queen Bess and the Empire. Don’t you feel strongly that one has to serve, to do something significant to repay all She has done for our people? I’m sure that I do.”

“Whatever. Anyhow, our time is up. That’ll be two hundred and fifty bucks.”

from "The Science of Cognitive Everything" (2003-4)