A UNIVERSITY OFFICE. THE WORD “OFFICE” IS USED LOOSELY. EVERY SURFACE IS BURIED. CHOMSKY IS ALREADY READING WHEN THE PATIENT ENTERS.
CHOMSKY: (without looking up)
Sit down. Move those. Floor is fine.
PATIENT: I was recommended to you. There’s been a situation. A dog bit me.
CHOMSKY: (still reading)
Sequence.
PATIENT: It was jumping and scratching first. Then a man nearby — strange looking, robes — whispered a word and it bit me directly after. Not a second’s gap. The word was mordere. Latin, apparently. To bite. He vanished immediately. The only witness was a homeless man who said he couldn’t help because he couldn’t speak the language of the dog.
(beat)
CHOMSKY: (finally looks up)
Write all of that down today. Exactly as you just said it. Date it.
PATIENT: I went to a doctor first. Pangloss. He—
CHOMSKY: Told you everything was for the best.
PATIENT: More or less.
CHOMSKY: (setting down paper)
The man used Latin.
PATIENT: Yes. I don’t speak it. A doctor identified—
CHOMSKY: I know you don’t speak Latin. That’s not what interests me.
(stands, displacing several stacks)
What interests me is that he spoke Latin. That is not an accident. That is a choice. A specific considered choice that tells us something about this person’s education, their resources, their access to a particular kind of institution. People who train dogs using Latin commands are not people who wandered in off the street. This is acquired knowledge. Somebody taught somebody something somewhere.
PATIENT: (quietly)
I hadn’t thought of it that way.
CHOMSKY: Nobody does. That’s rather the point.
(another stack falls, neither reacts)
The man. Did he look at you directly.
PATIENT: No. He looked at the dog throughout. I don’t think he looked at me once.
CHOMSKY: (very still)
Practiced. He knew the area, he had an exit, he was gone immediately. This was not improvised.
PATIENT: (the first intimation)
You’re saying this was planned.
CHOMSKY: I’m saying the characteristics you’re describing are consistent with someone who has done this before. The Latin. The trained animal. Never looking at you directly. The immediate disappearance. These are not the behaviours of a spontaneous act.
(sits, causing further displacement)
Your witness. The homeless man.
PATIENT: He wanted to negotiate with the dog. He couldn’t.
CHOMSKY: Where is he now.
PATIENT: He tends to sleep on that wall. He’s usually there.
CHOMSKY: I want to talk to him.
PATIENT: He couldn’t even help at the time—
CHOMSKY: He was there. He observed the event. His testimony is evidence regardless of what he attempted. The fact that he couldn’t intervene is completely separate from what he saw.
(beat)
Has anyone else spoken to him.
PATIENT: I don’t think so. Only Pangloss knows about him.
CHOMSKY: (carefully)
Pangloss knows there was a homeless witness.
(beat)
And what has been the response since you’ve started telling people.
PATIENT: People are suggesting I provoked the dog. That the scratching was play. That the bite was incidental.
CHOMSKY: Of course they are. The original act is designed to be deniable so the scrutiny has nowhere to go except toward the person reporting it. It doesn’t need to be coordinated. It’s just how the machinery processes an event with no admissible evidence attached.
PATIENT: (slowly)
The machinery.
CHOMSKY: The social apparatus that decides what counts as credible. Who gets believed. A homeless man who wanted to negotiate with a dog will not be weighted heavily. A person who reports a whispered Latin command from a vanished stranger in unusual clothing—
PATIENT: Sounds like someone who is confused.
CHOMSKY: Or frightened. Or looking for an explanation for something that was simply unfortunate. Yes.
(beat)
That is exactly what it sounds like from inside the default assumptions.
PATIENT: And from outside them.
CHOMSKY: (without hesitation)
It sounds like a specific operation carried out by someone with training, resources, and a reason.
(produces an improbable folder from somewhere in the avalanche)
Have there been others. People this has happened to.
PATIENT: I don’t know. How would I—
CHOMSKY: Because this does not occur once. The investment. The trained animal. The classical command. The practiced exit. This is not assembled for a single use.
(the patient looks at the folder)
Different cities. Different years. Trained animals. Untraceable commands. Victims subsequently blamed.
PATIENT: (very quietly)
How many.
CHOMSKY: Enough to constitute a pattern. None of them knew about each other.
(long silence)
PATIENT: I came here about a dog bite.
CHOMSKY: I know.
PATIENT: (sitting down slowly)
The homeless man. You really want to talk to him.
CHOMSKY: He has no institutional investment in any particular version of events. No framework to maintain. No reason to protect anyone.
(beat)
A man who identified exactly what the problem was and was honest about his inability to address it is — in my experience — an exceptionally rare quality.
PATIENT: (standing, slightly dazed)
What do I do now.
CHOMSKY: Write the sequence down today. Find the homeless man before anyone else does.
(a catastrophic avalanche of books descends from a high shelf)
(Chomsky glances at it)
(looks back)
And don’t tell anyone you came here.
PATIENT: (looking at the books)
Should I—
CHOMSKY: It’s fine. It does that. Close the door on your way out.
(already reading)
Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas 