Lexicon

neurochemistry.”
    “Give me an analogy.”
    “There’s a tree in a park. A tree you want cut down, for some reason. You phone the city and ask which department you need to contact and which forms you need to fill out. Your application goes to a committee, which decides whether it makes a good case, and if so, they send out a guy to cut down the tree. That’s the brain’s regular decision-making process. What I do, which you call ‘word voodoo,’ is I bribe the committee. It’s the same process. But I’m neutralizing the parts that can say no. With me so far?”
    “Yes.”
    “All right. What’s in Broken Hill is a bareword. A bareword, in this analogy, is me getting out my chainsaw and cutting down the tree.”
    Wil waited.
    “It’s a separate pathway to the same outcome. I don’t use the committee. I skip it. Does that make sense?”
    “It does for trees.”
    “It’s no different. Your brain has multiple pathways to action. You see a hot stove, you consciously decide to stay clear of it. But if you stumble onto it, you’ll jerk back without conscious thought.”
    “So it’s the difference between a voluntary action and a reflex,” Wil said.
    “Yes.”
    “Why didn’t you just say that?”
    “Because that’s not an analogy. That’s exactly what fucking happens. You asked for an analogy.”
    “Okay,” he said. “Although I still don’t understand how a reflex can be triggered by a
word
.”
    “Words aren’t just sounds or shapes. They’re meaning. That’s what language is: a protocol for transferring meaning. When you learn English, you train your brain to react in a particular way to particular sounds. As it turns out, the protocol can be hacked.”
    “Can you teach me?”
    “What?”
    “What you do. The word voodoo.”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because it’s complicated.”
    “It doesn’t look complicated.”
    “Well,” Eliot said, “it is.”
    “I don’t see why you couldn’t teach me a little.”
    “We don’t have time to train you into a competent poet. If we did, it still wouldn’t work, because you’re not naturally compelling. If you were, I still wouldn’t, because you have very little discipline, and we’ve learned recently that giving immensely powerful words to people with self-control issues is a very bad idea.”
    “I’m not naturally compelling?”
    Eliot glanced at him. “Not really, no.”
    “I’m compelling.”
    “You’re the only known outlier to a bareword,” said Eliot. “Hang your hat on that.”
    He was silent. “What makes me immune?”
    “Your brain doesn’t process language quite like other people. Why that is, I have no idea.”
    “I have a superior brain?”
    “Uh,” Eliot said, “I wouldn’t go that far.”
    “I can resist persuasion; sounds like an improvement to me.”
    “I once had a coffee machine that wouldn’t add milk no matter how I pressed the buttons. It wasn’t better. It was just broken.”
    “I’m not broken. Who are you to say I’m broken?”
    Eliot said nothing.
    “It’s evolution,” Wil said. “You guys have been preying on us for who knows how long and I evolved a defense.”
    “What was your girlfriend’s name?”
    “What?”
    “Cecilia, right?” Eliot glanced at the dash. “Twenty-four hours, you haven’t mentioned her.”
    “What are you saying? I should be grieving?”
    Eliot nodded. “That’s what I’m saying.”
    “Who the fuck are . . . I’ve been trying to stay alive! People have been driving
cattle trucks
at my body! Forgive me for not taking a minute to cry on your shoulder about my girlfriend!”
    “Solid reasons, delivered with much defensiveness.”
    “You asshole! Jesus! As if you know anything about love! What do
you
think it is? Brain activity? Neurochemicals?”
    “I suspect it’s a kind of persuasion.”
    “So I’m immune to it? That’s your theory?”
    “The most fundamental thing about a person is desire. It defines them. Tell me what a person wants, truly wants, and I’ll tell you who they are, and how to persuade them. You can’t be persuaded. Ergo, you don’t feel desire.”
    “That’s bullshit! I loved Cecilia!”
    “If you say so.”
    “I’m being lectured about love by a
robot
! I’m broken?
You’re
broken! Tell me what you think love is! I seriously want to know!”
    “Okay,” Eliot said. “It’s defining yourself through the eyes of another. It’s coming to know a human being on a level so intimate that you lose any