My father was a relentlessly self-promoting turnip salesperson from Belgium with a low-grade narcolepsy and a distinct penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen-year-old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet.

My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy, the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament.

My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap sack and beaten with reeds, pretty standard really. At the age of twelve, I was received into the Cybernetic Guild of Prague...