If you’re ever unable to discuss the main events of your life, you have to rely on all the bits you’ve somehow always missed.

Managed some fruit. Shit an hour.

Insomnia, nausea, sinuses aching, still can’t shake this plane cough (avian pertussis? or is that for the birds?).

Vocabulary: orthogony, heuristics, traverse vertices, exocortex, autonomia, transclusion, “the embedding of one document or part of a document within another by reference.”

tetrationary.com/transclusion

But tech’s not my only vocab problem in the Emirates. There’s ménage, which isn’t quite how it’s said in French, then when I don’t understand, there’s zimmermann, which isn’t quite how it’s said in German, and then when I don’t understand that (my sinuses having imparted to my replies an enigmatically European accent), they say room keening.

Language itself is a burqa, an abaya—so many new words! so much chancy chancery cursive! The garments that blacken even the tarmac, that blacken the lobby (irreligiously lavish). Words are garb. They’re cloaks. They conceal the body beneath. Lift up the hems of verbiage, peek below its frillies—what’s exposed? the hairy truth?

Alternately, click here: dubai.ae

Click until this page wears out, until you’ve wiped the ink away and accessed nothing.

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A remote control should indicate the existence of another device to be controlled remotely—to be uncovered, certainly, within range.

The remote is typically the filthiest object in the room, according to Principal. 100 billion bacteria per button, on average. Each bacterium’s DNA containing the equivalent of approx 1 million bytes of information. Meaning the average remote control button has the data capacity of approx 100,000 terabytes.

According to Principal: streptococcus, staphylococcus, meningococcus, coliform.

Aerobic, anaerobic. Microbes.

Roomservice—because I can’t bring myself to go down to the restaurants alone. Jump. But window won’t open. Shouldn’t be smoking anyway.

I ordered the “Four Been Soup”—bean soup with regrets. Cramps 2.0.

Tetrating transgulfane: pancreatitis, the difference between communal and equitable distribution of assets earned by one party before divorce but after separation if separation was never legally sanctioned (New York Consolidated Statutes, Article XIII, Domestic Relations, §236B).

Other sites: nytimes.com (to check whether Cal had written, he hadn’t), nybooks.com (to check whether Cal had written, he had), haaretz.co.il (ERROR), haaretz.com (ERROR), guardian.co.uk, lemonde.fr, a-bintel-b.tlog.tetrant.com/2011/01/09/doc-n-law-1.html (Rach), escortzrevue.com/dubai, escortzrevue.com/abu_dhabi, whitedicksblackchicks.biz (ERROR), whitedicksblackchicks.biz/whitezilla-slaughters-her-ass (ERROR), thenational.ae, gulfnews.com, a-bintel-b.tlog.tetrant.com/2011/02/09/doc-n-law-2.html (Rach), hoodratlatina.biz/ass-to-mouth-teacher-on-student (ERROR), hoodratlatina.biz/cumpilation-blonde (ERROR), poetryfoundation.org, poetryfoundation.org/article/16129, jewsy.com (ERROR), jewsy.com (ERROR), a-bintel-b.tlog.tetrant.com/2011/03/09/doc-n-law-3.html (Rach), a-bintel-b.tlog.tetrant.com/2011/04/09/doc-n-law-4.html (Rach), bangableblackteens.com (ERROR), bangableblackteens.com/mixrace/fave/orderby+mf&timeby=today (ERROR), tetration.com/search?q=Thor+Balk, tetpedia.com/tet/Thor_Balk, maid4jizz.biz (ERROR), maid4jizz.biz (ERROR), maid4jizz.biz (ERROR), maid4jizz.biz (ERROR).

Each instance of HTTP 404ishness occasioned a buzz, a buzzing.

My gut knocking too (getting fatter off roomservice).

A deft young dark boy in a resort staffed exclusively by same, wheeling in more lentils. Occipital headache, sneezy.

I hadn’t gotten around to getting any of the currency (either dirham or dihram—tetrate it?), so gave him €4 (too much?).

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On every flight I’ve been on since the invention of wifi the attendants are always saying, don’t go online until we tell you. Then they tell you, at what they call cruising altitude, which some sites have as 30,000 ft/9,100 m, and some sites have as 35,000 ft/10,600 m. Whichever, no online, and no phone either, during takeoff and landing especially. Passenger signals interfere with the cockpit’s communications with the ground. I’d always accepted this, until aboard the Tetjet, which has no attendants, no announcements were made, and electronics were being used all the time. By Jesus and Feel. Not Principal. But still. This had me skeptical. I’d rather be brought down by glorious jihadi or a flock of sphinxes screeching into the engines than by some amped mercenaries playing some app game matching lozenges.

Principal’s coding (“Principal” is itself a code, for me to avoid having to type “my name”). When Principal says, “The Sims are ready to fly,” he means he’s ready to fly (both of his pilots are Sims: Simon Prentice, Thomas Simons).

“The Gulfstream 650 is the largest elite jet in the Gulfstream fleet. Its maximum operating speed of .925 Mach makes it the fastest civil aircraft flying, and its maximum altitude of 50,000 ft allows it to avoid congestion and adverse weather,” but then I gave up reading All About the Tetjet, and switched, dismissive flick of screen, to Media, streaming everything conceivable but also featuring a selection “curated this quarter by Kori Dienerowitz, President”: 80s sitcoms, Jeopardy!, Scorsese, Westerns all’italiana, Korean Wave, Mecha anime, 20 episodes of a show called Xun Qin Ji.

When Principal says, “Gaston wants to cook,” he knows that all meals are docketed, but isn’t hungry.

In London, Welsh radix box with a side of sprouts (both raw), in Paris mixed kales below purée de betterave crapaudine (both semisteamed), muria puama, saw palmetto, reservatrol. For dessert, his nutritive of twos: vitamins A₂ (retinaldehyde), B₂ (riboflavin), C₂ (choline), D₂ (ergocalciferol), supplemented with hazelnut oil, cedar berry, turmeric, borage, selenium, γ-linolenic acid.

When Principal says, “Lavra wants to exercise,” he knows that all workouts are docketed, but isn’t motivated.

40 elliptical minutes listening to a podcast on diamond synthesis using hydrocarbons, another on Malthus (London), watching a clipathon on the extraction of precious metals from waste electronics using plasma, another on the physiocrats and François Quesnay (Paris), Lavra alongside him on the twin machine, then leading him in 80 light squats, correcting technique. Midplantar/lower palmar reflexology, cranial electrotherapy (Lavra insists, no acupressure or brain stimulation without the cardio).

I’ve been with Principal through every meal and workout, but have never participated in any.

When Myung says to Principal, “Doc Huxtable has got you booked,” she means—forget it.

This is exactly where a code’s required, extra shorthand, an abbrev: like how red ink indicated lies in memoranda sent to and from the gulag, like “an inlaw” meant “an SS officer” in the partisan encryption of the Warsaw Ghetto, while the Nazis themselves used “solution” to mean “mass extermination.”

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Code.

There are two great innovations to recall: (1) all relationships between two or more quantities can be expressed as equations (the algorithm, which enciphers the name of al-Gorithmi, the Persian mathematician, astronomer, geographer, and Judeophile, eighth century CE), and (2) all numbers, no matter how large, can be expressed by the sequential combination of the smallest numbers: zeroes and ones (though the original binaries weren’t numerals but short and long syllables, combinable into every conceivable meter of Sanskrit prosody—Pingala, fourth century BCE).