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\title{Ytin'he'ny\\ --- \\Those who are changed}
\author{Mechthild Czapp}
\maketitle
\chapter*{Kanahame'het - Introduction}
The Mansion in the outskirts of Soton looked impressive, however, most
people would insist that it was a scary place. The person who inhabited
it did nothing to against these perceptions. Susanne Greenville actually
liked them because it meant people stayed away from her. Except of course
the people whom she employed as buttlers, gardeners or for all the kinds of
jobs who had to be done in the Mansion. Susanne Greenville, the retired CEO
and owner of Greenware, one of the leading software companies, had the
well-earned reputation to be eccentric and reclusive to the point of
spending weeks without talking to anyone. Some of the few people who quit
working for her told that she insisted that those people who worked at the
Mansion had to learn an invented language, which she created. Her reaction
was to make those who work for her sign a non disclosure agreement about
their jobs. Despite the high contractual penalties, people signed it. The
job market in Soton was not good but her pay was.

Jeremy Course was a gardener in the Mansion. He didn't care about the
rumours about the Mansion. Actually, the scaryness of the place was
something he appreciated, since it made it easier to gain the interest of 
the ladies. When she came outside and greeted him, he could not help
noticing her strange gait and the strange tone of her voice. He didn't
actually react to it, but he did keep an eye on her as she sat down on a
chair. When felt sick, he tried leading her to the bathroom, he called an
ambulance when she collapsed on the way. Less than an hour later, she died
in hospital.

\chapter{Exkira'het - Interest}

\paragraph{Karin:} The call reached me when I was on the way home from the gym. My
xessPhone rang despite the order only to ring in emergencies. I expected the
caller to be some kind of marketing drone who managed to outsmart the
priority system. It would have been the 3rd to do so only today. The picture
I saw however was known to me. It was one of my crazy mother's guys. I
suspected always that she employed only a certain type of people to fit her
tastes and urges. 

When he told about her bad state, I was not sure whether to laugh or to cry.
To laugh because she was a bitch to me and to everyone else in the family,
or to cry because I loved her despite that. The last times we saw, she
argued with us about tour lifestyles. She of all people. The person whose
picture is in the most famous online-dictionary the illustration for the
article on Obsessive compulsive disorder. She seems to think that we are
worthless just because we occasionally like to party and, well, occasionally
the parties are wild enough to make national news. Just because we do not
live as almost-celibate as she did. Just because we actually have lifes
which do not happen in front of the computer. If she died, it would not only
mean an end of the tirades and accusations, but that we would eventually
have access to her fortune. There were children of millionaires who live a
more luxurious life than me, one of the children of one of the few women in
the Forbes 500 list. 

Then I had to think of her waiting for me after a hard exam and hugging me
and suddenly, I cried and seemed to be unable to stop.

I could not remember getting home, but I apparently made it there. I tried
to distract myself by going online and looking at my favorite sites, but my
mind was sick with worry and regret. I never was the daughter she wanted,
but I loved her and I never wanted the last words we said to each other be
spiteful accusations and almost-insults. I just, at one point or another had
given up trying to please her. I realized that I could never be what she
wanted me to be. The things she wanted me to do bored me to tears. The
subjects, she thought I should study were not my interests. It was almost a
relief to hear that she had 'ascended to a higher plane of existence' as the
Sotonese said it. 'Almost relieved' because I at least could stop hoping now
and try to get on with my life, sweep up the pieces, accept that I never
found closure, didn't say so many things I wanted to say and eventually get
over it. 

\paragraph{Stephen:} The grey sky of Soton got to my nerves despite only being there for
a few days. Of all places my stupid mother could move to, she chose a place
which made Alaska seem bright and friendly. Yes, she was European, but why
did that matter so much to her that after many years of living and working
in the USA and China, she moved to this hellhole as soon as she retired? I
had no clue. It was hard for me to give the EU-citizens to impression of
mourning when I didn't care about my mother. She had been a nagging bitch to
us. Always gong on and on about how we should study harder, party less and
stop drinking and doing drugs. She would annoy us by comparing her life with
ours far too often. She failed her studies at Munich, for Pete's sake, she
only succeeded because she got the bleep out of Germany and instead took
advantage of the opening of Europe. She had to get to Israel of all places
to get her Masters degree. She could have just asked a diploma mill for its
services, it would be similar in quality, less expensive and the risk of
being shelled by whoever fought whomever there would have been lower. She
was definitely not the right person to lecture us on discipline. My father
was not as despisable, but of course, since only the good die young, cancer
got him almost one decade ago.

Karin seemed to be far less happy about her death than I was. maybe because
our mother occasionally treated her like a human being, or and in my opinion
more likely because she just was too blonde, too stupid to realize the
truth: That we were for her just figures to mold in her own shape.

Karin and me stayed in the Funafuti, a local upper-class hotel. Others of my
familystayed elsewhere. Rumour had it that the Holiday Inn near the
Soton University became the place of many meetings of family members,
who almost forgot about each other. One of my motherbitch's servants had
shown us an long and weird list of things she wanted for her funeral. It
prove to me one thing: She was fucking nuts. She insisted that her funeral
ceremony had to follow the rules of the weird constructed world (conworld)
she created in her free time. To the point of specifying that the ceremony
had to be held in her constructed language. Seriously. Of course, this was
good news to me: tidbits like this make it easier to oppose her will should
it be not in my favour. I could almost see her willing everything she owned
to a charity or to a distant relative, for no other reason than to spite us. 
Her wrinkly face would be distorted in delight when thinking about this. 

Despite the seemingly arbitrary rules, Karin and me adhered to them strictly
when organizing the funeral. It could have been very likely that we would
have been disowned if the candles had the wrong color or smell or the
ceremony started at the wrong time (she actually included a formula for the
right time with at least 5 variables). The only person who could hold her
weird ceremony due to knowing the language lived in Ghana. Shirley
Amankwanor, a professor of linguistics in a godforsaken place called Accra,
fortunately understood the request and planned to take the first plane to
London and from there get to Soton. I found it strange that this woman
seemed to have gained the trust and admiration of my mother, who as a rule
trusted and admired no one. The Ghanese arrived only a day later. She did
not look like I would have thought a person from such a weird country would
look like. She was tall and radiated a positive kind of authority. Despite
her age (she was almost 60) and the fact that she wore old-fashioned
glasses, she looked pretty good, not like those undernourished,
AIDS-afflicted children they show in adverts for charities. 

This person even had a clue what some of the more obscure rules were
supposed to mean. She wanted to explain the spiritual reasonn for each rule,
but I had enough of Mum's psychobabble when she was still alive. Now that
she was dead, I did no longer want to deal with it.

Karin took it all more or less well, but I couldn't. I always had a short
temper and the seemingly random complications more often than not caused me
to lose it. That Ghanese person for example refused to touch or even look at
certain holy symbols, but insisted that they had to be perfectly aligned. 

``Karin, how on earth can you cope with all that bullshit?'' I asked once when
we were alone. 

She smiled. ``I have a copy of the latest Forbes list in my purse. When I am
about to lose my temper, I look at the list, imagine my share of the
inheritance and calm down. You should do too. A bit contenance won't hurt
you.''

I grinned: ``Sounds like a plan! I can't understand why she insists on every
little thing. I can kinda understand her made-up religion, but the made-up
language and all the rest... it becomes insane.''

She tilts her head in a weird way. ``Surely, it is. But the language is
something she worked on for longer than we are on this planet. I can kinda
understand her fixation with it, her wish to showcase it one last time
before the language dies with her.''

``You sound almost philosophical.'' I commented sarcastically.

``Well, yes. Her death made me think about death in general, and about my
own.'' she admitted.

``It's a fruitless topic and will only lead to despair. If you go down that
route, you will land in the weird place our mother wants us to be.'' I
insisted. 

Karin shook herself in mock-disgust. ``Definitely not a good location!'' She
exaggerated Mum's mannerism, including the preachy tone of voice and the
staring, unmoving eyes. ``There is no right and wrong, there is just
agreement inside a society and between its people.''

``You listened to her rants?'' I asked, amazed about the quality of her
performance.

``You can't prevent that things seep into your mind despite your best
attempts not to care. She often used that sentence in one way or another
one.''

I grinned. I used to tease her mercilessly when she was younger until she
arranged to have me beaten up by a group of thugs. With that stunt, she
earned my respect to a certain point. She was weaker and smaller than me,
but she found a good way to compensate for that.

\paragraph{Karin:} I was almost happy that the day of the funeral
approached. It marked an end to my hectic preparation. I started to think 
that these complex instructions were nothing but an elaborate plan to keep 
us occupied so that we would not think of her absence all that much. 
Normally, I wouldn't think much of her but after her `ascension', not doing 
so was hard. She was not the best mother out there, but she was there. I 
could have called her at any possible or impossible time of the day. Now she
was no more and I felt incredibly lonely. This was why I started to
appreciate the hoops we were supposed to jump through - despite doing so for
a completely different reason than she intended.

\chapter{Ytin'tan - Change}
\paragraph{Karin} When I stepped into the ceremony hall, I was impressed 
about the work. The `church' was illuminated in a weird, but almost magical 
light. The candlelight and the slight hint of daylight as well as my 
morning-related tiredness made me feel as if we were about to witness a 
sacred ritual. An altar was at the far end of the ceremony hall, which was 
covered in a green cloth with glittering symbols. The Ghanese... person 
refused to touch it before the ceremony. She even avoided to look at the 
entire thing. Thinking back of that, I wondered whether she took the entire 
ceremony seriously, or whether she had played a role the entire time. I 
could not decide which of these possibilities was more disturbing to me. 
On second thought, it had the be the first one. Everyone plays a role after 
a death to support the others. The dressing up in black, the various rites 
of a catholic funeral, even the fact that you don't speak badly about the 
deceased makes you slip into a role. This made the honest belief in a 
constructed religion appear like a mental illness in comparison.

The benches were arranged in front of the altar, in exactly the specified
distance. Behind the altar, a canvas from the ceiling to the ground showed a 
complex symbol, which so far was almost invisible, sable for a bit of the 
lower outlines. Above the altar, a symbol seemed to float which looked a but
like a crucifix or a giant X. Stephen and I sat down in the bench nearest to
the altar. Countless people entered and sat down behind us. The ceremony
hall was completely full. 

An instrument played from a distance. Its sound was almost like that of a
flute, but differed distinctively. I was not sure what it was, but its sound
was impressive. Suddenly Mum seemed to be not a weird eccentric but a master
of special effects. The sound shifted and turned into a slow melody full of
sadness. The instrument, whatever it was, seemed to mourn for the death of
my mother more than I could. Other, unknown instruments set in and while the
music sounded like nothing I ever heard in my entire life, it was very
moving. I wiped a tear from my eyes. `Priest' Shirley Amankwanor moved
towards the altar in a slow way. It looked more as if she floated than as if
her feet actually touched the ground. I opened the 'cheat sheet' which
translated the ceremony for those, who were not initiated into the Language.
The light made it pretty hard to read, but I would at least have an
occasional glimpse into it. While she moved around the altar, the music
reacheed a form of crescendo of sadness. She stood in the middle behind the
altar and rose her hands, then lowered them slowly. In perfectly
synchronized simultaneousness, the music died down, leaving the hall in eery
silence. I glimpsed onto the paper, but could not decipher anything at all.
The Ghanese `priest' started to chant in the language, which would probably
be forgotten after this ceremony. I again was close to crying. Even though
the language was only gibberish to me, her tone of voice seemed to convey
meaning very well. 

The sun started to rise (behind the English clouds, that is) and the signs 
became visible. The colors were strangely vibrant. The symbols were
interwoven but I suddenly realized that there only were simple ones. The
complexity stemmed not from the individual symbol but from the the fact that
many of them were used in the same picture. I looked into the handout,
trying to find where we were now by the repeating structures. Certain parts
of the `mass' were repetitive, but that seemed to be used to create calming
pictures. I saw that the text currently was about the fact that all those
who died were prevented from falling into the abyss of nonexistance by
nothing but the memories of their beloved ones, who themselves were saved in
the same way. `Until the end of days', it said there, `no good-hearted and
honest person will go forever. No good-hearted and honest person will fade
away into the great nothing.' 

A new song started. The flute again played its sad music. The `priest' sang
to it. Well, to say that it was singing was too much, she merely chanted to
the music. I suddenly felt very nauseous. Not because the music was bad or
anything like this. For no reason at all, I had the feeling that I had to
get away. Despite having that feeling, I felt also, as if I was paralyzed,
unable to do anything but stare. Even blinking seemed to be impossible for
me. I felt panic rising in me. I noticed my breath getting quicker. A wave
of dizzyness passed over me. Even if I could get up, I no longer dared. I
had the distinct impression that the room was spinning and doing so fast. If
I could, I would have screamed, in panic, for help, anything. All I could do
was stare fowards, at the priest, who chanted while turning the back on the
community. She looked at the symbols as well, only that it were not symbols,
it was a very ornamented writing. The temperature seemed to fall upon this
realization. There was no doubt though. They had the same semi-readable
quality as blackletter writing or just a very bad handwriting. My eyes
suddenly closed as if by themselves. My heart started to race even quicker
than it did earlier. I had the feeling that I was going to die here, among
all those people, and nobody would realize it until the end of the mass,
among people but still very alone. I must have had some kind of medical
issue, a stroke or something like that. I was sure that this was the end.  

\paragraph{Stephen:} The ceremony was surprisingly well-done. That weird
person read the gibberish with such a pathos and such a dedication, that the
entire ceremon was more like watching an epic film in a foreign language
than attending a ceremony of someone's deranged imagination. The second song
of the whole affair was pretty strange. Music from tape was like a voice,
mourning in pain, while the text which she spoke (according to what I have
read in the guide), was about a person reaching out her hands from the other
world to her living relatives and friends in order not to be forgotten.

Suddenly, when I looked at the weird painting, or whatever it was, in front
of me, I started to feel strange. I couldn't describe it. Maybe the smell in
the so-called `Ceremony Hall' got onto my nerves, maybe I ate something
wrong. The weird things, the British eat as breakfast did not really look
edible to me. I started to feel dizzy - and even sicker. I considered
leaving, finding a Porcelain God to pray to maybe. Of course, that would
ruin my public image for quite a while. The media would love to see someone
misbehave during Mum's funeral. They would use this as their scandal of the
week. Karin could get away with it, maybe since the press already agreed
that she was up to no good and only good for these. It would have been
pretty impossible for her to ruin her public image even further. It would
require starting digging at rock bottom. Maybe a murder would be capable of
doing so, but it would have to be a particularly gruesome one.
Unfortunately, these thoughts did not help against my sickness and
dizzyness. I had to get away before fighting it down would no longer help. I
tried to get up, but tried was the operative term since my legs refused to
obey their commands to get me out of the seating position first and of here
later. My heart started racing. `Screw courtesy!' I thought and screamed. No 
sound came out of my mouth. I thought a string of expletives. What the fuck
had happened to me? Was this some kind of stroke? I wanted to nudge Karin,
but neither my hand nor my head wanted to move towards her. I was trapped in
my own body. I renounced my faith at the age of 14, but I felt close to
praying, despite the ridiculousness of the gesture. I had to do something,
no matter how ridiculous. I tried to slow my fast, shallow breath and
realized that this was actually somewhat effective. The realization that not
every control was lost was good. While calming myself down, or at least
trying to, I could not help staring at the painting. The seemingly random
lines, which I thought looked as if a child created them seemed to change.
It was as if someone flipped a switch in my brain, but they started to look
like letters in a weird alphabet. Maybe that was the reason, why the the 
`priest' avoided looking at them earlier. Maybe she was afraid of the
meaning they had. It was a ridiculous thought, sure, but then, everything
about this ceremony was ridiculous so far. Logic and Mum had not beein on
speaking terms since quite a while, as it seemed. I realized that I was
shiveringm the temperature in the room seemed to resemble siberian winters
more than the English fall. Suddenly everything went black. I realized only
later, that not my vision failed but that my eyes simply fell shut. It was
not that comforting, but at least had the vague possibility that my vision
would return. My heart and breath ignored every attempt of me to calm them
down, every attempt at optimism and positive thinking. The weird music and
chanting bored into my skull as if it was a physical thing.

\paragraph{Karin:} My eyes opened. I was not sure whether I had been
unconscious or not, but opening my eyes had the quality of waking up. I felt
no longer sick, but I would not guarantee for my stability when standing up.
I looked around. My eyes met those of my brother, who looked about as
confused as I felt. I only then realized that I could move my head. I tried
to move my arms and hands and realized that it was possible again. I
breathed a long breath of relief. Maybe this was nothing but an imagination,
maybe I fell asleep during the mass. I could only hope that the priest did
not notice this. She turned around and looked at us with an expression that
I could not understand. She lighted a ceremonial candle, and held it high
and in front of herself. In this position, she addressed the crowd: "Let us
now pray against the spirits of the dark and the forgetting. Let us stand up
and ask the spirits of the earth and the sky to help Susanne Greenville to
the land behind the abyss." 

We stood up. I was confused that she suddenly spoke my language, but I did
not object to it. It was nice to see that even the priest stopped using the
constructed language, Mum devised. "Oh Spirits of the day, oh spirits of the
time between day and night, oh spirits of the sun, oh spirits of ths moon:
Keep Susanne Greenville protected in the land beyond ours, as we protect her
with our memories and thoughts. Lead her not astray into the abyss of
forgetting and being forgotten. Lead her not into the second death but into
the land beyond the land beyond ours." The prayer continued longer. I looked
into the guide to check where we were. For some reason, I remembered the
readable text being below the gibberish, not above it as it was now. `Your
memory had been better in earlier years!' 

Eventually, the ceremony ended. It was longwinded and I was sure that I
never experienced so many weird metaphors within the same hour. We went in
silence to the graveyard. The procession was lead by the priest who carried
the sign of the world beyond this one in her hands to free the way of evil.
The ceremony was held only over the spirit of Mum so while we were
encouraged to carry a photograph or something which reminded us of her, the
coffin was not visible earlier. Now, it was carried immediately after the
African priest. We all followed her in a long procession. The media, like a
swarm of gnats, was present and showered us all in flashes of their cameras.
I don't dislike the media normally, but during these moments it seemed
inappropriate. The short walk seemed longer this time, but I guess only the 
situation and the dignified slowness caused that. 

When the coffin was lowered into to grave, I started to cry again. The
entire scene overwhelmed me and reduced me to a sobbing heap. I could not
stop the salty tears from flowing during the entire ceremony. I was aware
that it made my makeup a mess but I did not care. I felt the pain of the
unavoidable end of all existance, the curse which the spirits give everyone
who is born. The support of the members of the family was somewhat
comforting, but on the other hand, I knew how they often talked about Mum,
how I used to talk about her. It troubled me in this moment immensely.

\chapter{Nisun'het - Discovery}

\paragraph{Richard Monger:} ``About Mrs. Greenville.'' I paused, unsure how
to say it. ``We can be pretty sure that she did not die under natural 
circumstances.'' My boss, Mr. Barons, seemed to be slighly uninterested in 
the entire situation. ``The hospital confirmed that she died by a Neotoxin. 
Probably, judging the statements of her buttler from a peach.''

Barons asked ``Why do we hear this only now?''

I made an annoyed sound. ``Because the hospital effed up their records. A
kind of virus ate through their records and they had to re-transcribe it.''

``Retranscribe? What do you mean?''

``They made the entries by hand first and only then entered them into their
computer. Because apparently viruses like this are not that seldom. It was
not the first and not the last case of attempting to hide a murder.''

``Unfortunately, her body is already rotting under the earth.''

I wondered how such a pointy haired boss could ever become my superior.
``Wouldn't have helped in the least. Neotoxins are supposed to decay
incredibly fast in the target body. Even the hospital found only small
traces because apparently the murderer wanted to be very sure and used lots
of it.''

``So, it is someone inexperienced?'' he asked.

``Probably a relative. She was rich enough to entice people to such things.''

``Definitely ungood.''

``She had the reputation of a weird recluse. Never cared enough for other
people to make enemies or friends, bought the loyality of those working for
her.''

``Sounds like a nice person.'' he commented sarcastically.

``There are worse things than a 60 year old lady who wants to live life as
she pleases. Like the kind of people who killed her.''

``You're right, but should not take everything so darn serious.'' He paused.
``And find out where she got that peach from.''

\paragraph{Stephen:} I came to my senses again. I had the weird feeling as
if I fell asleep and just woke up. Fortunately, the priest no longer spouted
gibberish but instead spoke coherently. Of course, coherence was a relative
concept. Her metaphors still made almost no sense. It was like listening to
someone who was high on a number of illegal, hallucigenic drugs while you
had to remain sober. It was what moved me away from religion, only
extracted, condensed and turned up to at least eleven. I thought some of my
essays were bad, but this was an entirely new dimension. I almost yearned
back to the time when she spoke unintelligible nonsense. Finally, it was
over. I had to get through the rest of this annoying ceremony and then would
be able to cast off her influence onto my life forever. Her insults, her
anger, her complete and utter rejection would be a thing of the past. She
would no longer be able to hurt me. She was no longer be able to punish me
seemingly at random or keep me living miserably just because she thought I
deserved it.

I spent most of the rest of the day distant, uninvolved in the ceremonies,
making others believe I was mourning. Once we left the cemetary, I noticed
that the world looked rather strange. I lacked a right word for it, except
maybe to say that it was changed. It was hard to point to the exact
differences, but they were present in many places. Listening to the
conversations around me, I noticed that others noticed the difference as
well. I noticed that the difference was related to things which had text on
them: Signs and logos seemed to be completely weird. It looked as if someone
replaced all writing with odd-looking, box-shaped letters. The thickness of
the lines was irregular and it looked as if every letter was on its own, not
being conjoined like I would have expected writing to be. The height of
these box-ish letters also was arbitrary at best. I would have assumed a
practical joke, but the writing was everywhere. No sane person would have
been able to replace all these signs without anyone of us realizing. I heard
two of my mother's sisters discuss the same matter and decided to join the
discussion. ``You too noticed the unreadable writing here?''

One of them, Martha nodded. ``I would have expected not to be able to read a
thing, but I would have expected to be able to at least decipher the
letters.''

I was confused. ``Why did you expect not to be able to read anything?''

She made a vague guesture. ``It's been a while since I've learned the
language of this nation. I live in Kolonjo and don't need it that often
there. I learned it in secondary school, but how long has that been? Forty
years now?''
 
I had a vague idea where Kolonjo was. Somewhere on the continent. To me it
made no sense that she claimed not to be able to read writing in the
language of this place, but could talk to me without any problems. I
remember that someone complained about her thick accent and claimed that it
was impossible to exchange a word with her without a professional translator
or lots of despair. ``You speak the language which this land uses rather
well.''

She smiled. ``You say that after using the courtesy to address me in my
native tongue.''

I must have looked as if I found myself on the moon all of a sudden. I did
not know any languages from the continent, well, I learned one from the
continent and a neighboring nation to the one I grew up in, but that was
ages ago and I would be hard pressed to remember anything of it. ``I didn't
choose to address you in a different way than I normally speak.'' I
shrugged.

``That is very interesting.'' chimed her sister Leonie in. ``I noticed that
for some odd reason, I suddenly could understand Karin despite normally
struggling against her way of speaking and her speed of articulation.'' 

``Did you hear her speaking the language of your land or the one of the land
I come from and we both reside in.'' I enquired.

``I am unsure.'' she had to admit. ``I didn't pay attention to this and thus
don't remember it.''

I was confused: ``You did not pay attention to something as important as the
language?''

``I didn't. I understood her and that sufficed.''

``Something seriously weird is going on here.'' I stated. ``While
communication in the group seems to cause no problems at all, everything we
see around us seems to be unintelligible.''

Martha disagreed with this assessment of the situation. ``We have noticed
that there was no problems between our two languages of origin, this does
not imply that it works universally inside of this group.''

``What about the mass?'' Leonie enquired. ``We could understand large parts
of it with ease. Could you?''

``I could, yes.'' Martha answered. I nodded in agreement as well. She
continued: ``It sounded about as normal as it did when I talk with Leonie -- 
or you.''

I agreed with her. ``It sounded like my native language to me as well. I
thought that the priest changed her language to allow us to follow it.'' I
suddenly stopped, hit by a realization. ``Are you implying that this weird
language, Susanne constructed has anything to do with it?'' 

Martha shook her head. ``I have no idea what has something to do with it and
what does not. I just noticed that this was another language-related
inconsistency. The mass was said to be in Susanne's language before it
happened but we heard it as being in our native language, after a certain
point at least.''

Leonie took the handout of the funeral service out of the pocket of her
jacket. ``The signs here use the same alphabet as Susanne's language does.''
She pointed at something in it. The similarity was eery. I felt dizzy. The
ground beneath my feet could have turned to pudding and I would not have
been surprised more.

I could barely utter my reply to this insane idea which she so calmly
mentioned. ``Do you mean that we are here in a land where her language is
real, not just invented?''

``If we were in a land where her language was real, we would still have our
linguistic differences.'' reminded Leonie.

Martha replied in a tone of voice which sounded about as shocked as I felt.
``You are implying that something was done to us to make us...'' she paused,
unable to express the insane idea.

Leonie nodded. ``...something was done to us to make us forget our natural
languages and speak this... constructed one.''

I was at a loss of words. This was a shocking idea. When I regained speech,
it sufficed for only one word. ``How?''

No one of them knew how or had any idea how this might be possible. I mean,
if this didn't happen to me, I would have written off the idea that language
can change almost instantaneously as ridiculously stupid. I would have asked
the person who suggested the mere possibility of this which hallucigenic
drugs he or she habitually consumed or currently was high on. There was no
chance in hell that I would have believed it otherwise. I still didn't. 

After a long pause, Leonie suggested: ``Maybe, we should talk to others
about it. They might not have a clue about it either, but they will have
ideas.''

Martha nodded. ``Sounds like a plan.''

We reached the hall, the repast took place in only a short while later. It
looked featureless, and more fitting to house production than mourning, and
seeing that the funeral home was founded after the big crash, it probably
did so earlier. 

The group seemed to be blissfully unaware of the issue and the mood as
properly subdued, just as the rules of etiquette for such a situation
required. In one of the neighboring nations of the place I normally reside
in, the mood would have brighter, celebrating the fact that the deceased was
now in the world beyond with the highest spirit, the ancestors and the
angels. I felt confused and while not frightened definitely in discomfort
and worry. The problem I was facing was too abstract to be frightening. It
was not a monster, which caused instinctive, evolutionally-conditioned fear.
It was nothing which attacked cavemen or earlier ancestors of humanity. This
situation was so much outside of the normal experience that I even failed to
believe this after it happened to me. I was still hoping that this all
turned out to be either a huge practical joke, or a nightmare. I was
convinced that it would not turn out to be reality. Maybe I was
hallucinating. I felt unable believe what I saw even it might have been my 
reality. 

Martha and Leonie glanced at me expectantly. I looked bas and tilted my head
as question. Martha nodded as a reply. I cursed mentally. I didn't want to
be the one to break the bad news to a mostly unaware audience, who as sure
as rain falls downwards would not believe me. Probably they would even laugh
about me. I wasn't sure about my conclusions in any way shape or form and
feared that disclosing them would have been the death sentence for my
reputation. Of all the things, which I could lose, my reputation was one of
the things I was most unwilling to sacrifice, ranking only little above my
own life and my sanity. I was not like Karin who did what the heck she
wanted, no matter what others said about her. I disliked the fact that
Greenville as a name had been tainted by two crazy people: my reclusive
mother and my hedonistic sister. People already talked behind my back about 
the fact that they assumed me to `crash' or `crack' as well only weren't
sure when. Saying here something seemingly crazy would have been the perfect 
confirmation for these people that I would have lost my mind. 

I wispered to Martha: ``Can you please say it? I lack the courage.'' It was
not exactly true, but sounded better than: `I do not want to be the one they
call crazy.' 

She shook her head: ``I don't speak the language of this place, which I
assume is spoken by the majority.''

I almost laughed. ``If you are right, it should not matter in the least.
Could even help you make your point.''

She slapped her hand against her forehead. ``I have not thought about
this, sorry!''

``No problem.'' I said with a grin.

Martha went to one end of the hall and raised her voice. ``Can I have your
attention for a second?'' The noise in the hall didn't die down but it did 
ebb considerably. She continued: ``Has anyone of you communicated
successfully with someone who didn't attend the funeral service with us?''

The faces around me were confused. Martha summarized the discussion with
Leonie and myself in a few words. When she started talking about the mass,
she suddenly had the attention of everybody. It seemed that if not everyone
then at least a very significant majority experienced the language to
change. She then asked if anyone had legible text with him or her. Everyone
rifled through his or her pockets, purses or bags. The mood seemed to
change. From the subdued mood earlier to shock and now to a state near a
mass-panic. Her demonstration turned something abstract into a tangible
thing. I also rifled through my pockets but my pockets were almost empty. My
keys had no writing on them and the cell phone was switched off. The logo on
it was just that, the logo of Orange. I decided to violate all rules of
common courtesy and took it out of my pocket and turned it on. I thought
that it was crashed. Instead of the request to log in, it only showed what
could best be described as hieroglyphs. I shook the phone, then tried to
restart it to make it behave. It changed nothing. I logged in purely by
repetition of the well-known gestures. Not changing your PIN for years
occasionally does have advantages. The phone looked really weird. Most of
its grapics still looked the same, but every little bit of text was
translated into weird symbols, which seemed to be random and completely
unrelated to the length of the word which represented the function of the
menu-item. It reminded me of that one time when I got drunk and set the
language of my xessPhone to a language which was spoken in a a part of the
world with a high population density and a ruined industry after that
collapse about a decade ago. It took me ages to manage to change the
settings again to my native language.

\chapter{Ines'he'ny - New people}
\paragraph{Karin:} Martha surely worked on the native language I spoke
recently. I was able to understand her without any problems. Only when it
seeped into my mind what she actually said, I realized that this thought was
really out of place. I remembered my confusion about the position of the
text in my native language on the handout of the funeral service. This might
have been an explanation of that. I realized that I carried my purse and
looked into it for something readable. I was never one of those geeks who
carry books in their bag. I had only makeup with me and my wallet. I
glimpsed into that. Nothing looked particularly odd until I realized that the
writing on the banknotes, which I had there was not in the way, I would
have remembered but instead a series of scribbles and symbols. I stared in
mis-comprehension. When the realization dawned on me, I had the urge to
scream. Loudly. I fought against the urge. I tried to tell myself that there
must be an explanation for it. A logical reason why it happened. Some form
of solution. So far, there always had been. I would have insisted on the
fact that the supernatural had left the earth a long time ago already. If it
ever was there, that is. Now, however, I saw myself unable to explain what
happened to me and to those around me. A horrible thought suddenly came into
my mind: `What if he higher spirits Ma and this preiest believed in are
real? What if this is a sign of a higher deity?' It was a scary thought, but
one too obvious, too mentally uncontested to disregard. I stood up, kneed
down on the floor, lowered my head to the ground and started praying. I
never took religion all that serious, but I learned in Sunday school was
prayer was about: Communication with the divine. I hoped that the divine
would not mind that I used fragments of my catholic education until I
learned how to please it correctly. ``I believe in you, spirits of the day,
I believe in you, spirits of the time between day and night, I believe in
you, spirits of the moon. And I believe in you, spirits of the sun. I want
to thank you for your sign to all of us.'' My voice must have sounded
hysterically, since this is one of the few states in which you can comletely
change your mind. ``Tell me where to go and I will go there. Tell me what to
do and I will do it. I am now completely convinced, as much as I can be,
that you are real. I am not sure wat you want from me, but whatever it is, I
will give it. I will study what Susanne wrote about you. Please forgive me
the blasphemous things, which I said about you! I know that ignorance is no
good defense, but I had been blind. Thank you for opening my eyes!'' I
started to cry. 

When I calmed down at least a bit, I expected to see people laugh about me.
To say that I lost my mind in a bet. I didn't expect that people looked at
me with an expression, I could not rate at all. Some people stood up,
then kneeled down in the position I did and prayed in silence. Apparently,
they either felt the same in their own hearts and heads, or maybe were
convinced by me. I was not sure what to think of this until I reminded me
that I completely had to change my view of the world. That I had to become a
completely new person, because the way I was, I saw the world most of the
time as construct of matter and energy which had no place for Gods or prayer.
Stephen stared at the scene incredulously. Looking around myself, some
people did share his disbelief. I had no idea how they still could. Hadn't
the higher spirits sent a miracle? What more do they need to start
believing? I asked Stephen exactly that question.

``What makes you sure that it is anything metaphysical? And even if it was,
how are you sure that it is now evil?'' He replied. He then showed his
really expensive mobile phone. It must have been very expensive since it was 
one of the newest versions. ``This... thing... is useless to me now! I can't 
navigate its menus anymore! What kind of deity would allow that?''

``One which does not care about toys and games. One which wants to make us 
aware that there is more to life than this. One which wants us to leave
behind the symbols, signs and characters of the old one and use the divine
ones.'' I paused a bit, realizing that I might have made a mistake. ``Or if
not divine, at least divinely-approved ones.''

``It could be an act of cruelty, you are aware of that? We are cut off from
the communication of others.''

``That could very well be an act of mercy. A prevention of being
ideologically tainted. Maybe, I don't know, some kind of dictator is going
to rise to power and we would not be involved in his reign of terror due to
not understanding his propaganda. Or maybe it is a challenge of the higher
spirits. If we want our phones and and our books back, we might have to
translate them.''

``A challenge? What makes you think \textit{that}?'' He sounded as if I lost
my mind, but I didn't care.

``There are examples of Higher Spirits challenging the mortals in many
religions.''

``That's an insane idea!''

``I know, but until I met Priest Amankwanor, I can only guess.''

``You seriously think this is a sign of the Gods? This is not only some kind
of sick joke, a nightmare or a hallucination?''

I nodded: ``When I was young, I often asked the Higher Spirit, I believed in 
for a sign to show he exists. He never did but now, it seems that someone
else has stepped up.''

``It is an invented religion! Our crazy mother wrote the scriptures and
ceremonies!''

``Maybe she was divinely inspired. And how do you explain what happened to
you? To us?''

He made a vague gesture. ``I have no idea.''

I smiled. ``Which proves my point.''

I met the priest a while later. She was no longer wearing her ceremonial
robe but a simple, black dress. I told her immediately about the things,
which happened. She looked concerned about this. When I told her of my
religious revelation, her face showed a mixture of expressions. It was as if
she had to restrain herself from being very happy all of a sudden. I stopped
and looked at her expectantly.

``You are sure about this? I mean, this is real?''

``This is as real as it gets. Ask anyone here.'' I stated.

The priest did suddenly start to smile happily. ``A sign of the higher
spirits might be the only explanation. I too felt something during the
ceremony, but didn't notice any... change per se. But then, I spoke unified
very well already.''

``Unified?'' I asked.

``It is the language, Susanne invented.'' She explained. ``She never claimed
a divine inspiration for it but did say that this language might unify
humanity. For some reason, this language intrigued me, even though most
linguists frown upon constructed languages. I started to contact her and to
learn her language to the point of being able to communicate in it with her
fluently. I always was surprised how easy it was though. Almost every conlang
claims to be easy to learn, but Unified actually kept this promise.''

``What is a conlang?'' I asked.

``A constructed language. Susanne's hobby was not as weird as you might
think: there are many people out there who create languages for various
reasons. It is a veritable subculture, especially since the advent of the
internet, which made it possible for these people to communicate with each
other.''

``She never said that it was a divinely inspired language?''

``She didn't, but she did write many spiritual texts in the language. She
has a website where she uploaded them. I always wondered what se meant by
them.''

I was confused. ``But... I thought you were a priest in this religion.''

``I wasn't. I was just the only person who actually bothered to learn the
language, so I was the only one who could play a priest for this ceremony. I
respect her religion, but it is not the one I believe in.''

I was shocked. This was not something I expected, but on second thought it
seemed rather clear. She held the rites with such a sincerety and such a
dedication that I had thought that it was what she honestly and in the
bottom of her soul believed in. ``To me, this seems to be the only
explanation. It is a miracle. Like in the holy book of the christian
religion, but into the other direction.''

``Into the other direction?''

``It made people communicate who couldn't earlier. It united the people here
under a shared language.''

She looked worried. ``I see where you are coming from, but I would think
that we should find out more before doing hasted things which might endanger
our standing with the higher spirits.''

``I see,'' I said, convinced that it was only a matter of time until she
would see the truth of my statement. I changed the topic. ``Can I see the
spiritual texts, Susanne wrote?''

``Sure. I will write down the address for you.'' she said.

``It will be in these weird symbols.'' 

``Well, yes, but as long as you can still check whether wo symbols are
equal, you can type it.'' she replied.

``Good point.'' I admitted. I searched through my handbag until I found a
piece of intelligent paper with the Verdvaro swirl-logo. ``Write it down 
here.'' The intelligent paper did not have a good embedded browser and a 
really slow connection, but it would suffice to open a website.

She used her finger to write the address of the site down. I was confused
since what she wrote did not look like the unconnected symbols I saw
earlier. I was even more confused when the address was parsed by the paper
and shown as a link -- and much more so when she turned it around and I
could read the address. 

I was confused.``This is not the normal writing, is it?'' I asked . ``I 
can read that.''

``Well, it seems to me. And your tablet parsed it just fine.'' she said.

``Let's see something.'' I clicked onto the link. The site was opened, but
the address was translated into these weird symbols again. Most of the text
was in these symbols as well, though a link in the conjoined, readable
language read `Unified version'. I turned the paper around. 

Shirley winced. ``This... this can't be! How\textinterrobang{}''

I pointed to the Verdvaro swirl on the edge of the paper. ``Looks as if
someone thought ahead and included an easter egg in her programs.''

``She really was the person associated with that company? I always thought 
this was a coincidence.'' 

``It wasn't. She really was the founder of Verdvaro.'' 

``This explains things. I always thought that she wasn't that rich after she
complained about the price of hosting rose by very little.''

``She was an economical person, to the point of ridiculousness. That is
true. But is was never because she couldn't afford it. Except maybe when she
was a student.''

``I see. It makes me suddenly feel better about using the money she sent me
a few years ago for this trip.''

``What do you mean?''

``She was aware of her mortality. And she wanted to have the funeral
ceremony in Unified. Seeing that I was the only speaker at that time, she
persuaded me to do it. When I cited being unable to afford it, she sent
money for the flight and the trip. I thought this was a sign of insane
trust, but now I guess that she could afford to lose the money.''

``Unless she developped a gambling habit, she could.'' I said with a grin.
One of the co-founders lost a lot of money gambling.

I clicked the link to the Unified version. To my surprise, the site was not
a simple image like the link, but actual text. I noticed that by the fact
that there was no blur which pictures normally have on this model due to
being scaled to the tiny surface. Instead every letter was shown
crystal-clear and very readable.

The text sounded really happy that someone actually read this. Texts were
offered in many different categories: Spiritual, political, short stories,
winning stories for the national novel writing month, children's books, and
much more. the page took quite a while to load despite being only the site
containing links to the actual texts. Even a text about her favorite recipes 
was there. I scrolled through the entire list, becoming more and more amazed
as I scrolled down. I thought she did very little during her retirement, but
apparently she wrote and translated many texts: Frim science-fiction to
science texts in various natural sciences as well as maths and informatics.
On the bottom of the page, there even was a tourists guide to this city. I
was immensely confused about that. I thanked Shirley for the link and then
looked through the list for the things which might be of immediate interest.
The tourists' guide might come in handy, I relized. But first, my curiosity
led me to the first link: My reasons for working on Unified.

I opened it. After the first two proagraphs, I re-read the title to make 
sure that I did not accidentally open one of her fictional work. It was just 
too insane, too much `out there' to actually be true. I cursed. Then I
re-started reading and again felt the urge to write this all off as fiction,
as nonsensical, as the fantasy of a demented person.  

\chapter{Demu'tan - Tale}
\paragraph{From the document:} I want to start this text by reminding you
that everything in it is true. Nohing of it is constructed, invented or
created as a work of art. This is what really happened.

Symbols are powerful things. They can cause people to fight each other, they
can lead people or mislead them, they can cause strong emotions (think of
getting a note with nothing but a heart on it) and as I found out, they can
also change how your brain works. It was a program for artistic purposes,
which made me realize this the hard way. I always had an interest in beauty
and thus, I downloaded a program to create a certain form of graphics. I
would explain the maths behind it but I do not want to bore you to tears. It
was developed by a professor of mathematics, so I can assure you that the
maths are highly complex. This program changed my outlook on life forever.
It was what made me retire from my job and work on Unified. This was because
after toying with it and trying different sets of parameters, Unified had
become the only way for me to communicate with the world. After using a
certain set of parameters, I found myself unable to understand the world 
around me and could communicate only in what I in a painstaking process 
reverse engineered to become the Unified language. 

Fortunately, I learned Esperanto in earlier days and still had a book on
the language which relied entirely on pictures and text in the language
itself. I am still sure that my family hated me for from one day to the
other in their view for no reason insisting on stopping to use my native 
language and instead only communicated in Esperanto. I could have tried to
get help, but I never did. Let's just say that I had a good reason to fear 
psychiatry and leave it at that. As a cover, I also pretended to be hoarse
during the first days. Until I was at a level where I could at least
communicate somewhat. I still wish that I could have been able to say
anything to those who were near me. That I was not forced to live a life of
lie around them. On the other hand, the fact that I was either declared
insane or that certain individuals would get hold of this who would use it
in very inethical ways scared me. This set of parameters could be used in
many ways to cut off individuals from communication. It could have been used
as a very destructive way of preventing certain information to spread. I did
not see any possibility of preventing the proliferation of these values
given the knowledge of their existance. Uranium and the methods to build an
atomic bomb could not be prevented from being proliferated to places like
North Korea, Pakistan and India. The ruins of Islamabad are a symbol for the
unavoidable tendency of information to seek freedom and distribution.

I was forced to live two lives. The official one in which I had to hide what
I had become and the secret one, in which I was completely isolated. I
shared a bit of the feeling not to belong in places on the internet, where
it was okay. While I was regaining knowledge of English, I felt slowly
as if I was slowly regaining my sentience and independence again. I could
not imagine how horrible the separation from fellow humans would have been
for people with less ressources and less acceptance by their families.
Without the society around you, you are nothing. Humans are herd animals and
the modern world relies on the ability of humans to communicate. Without
language, a human in the modern world would be reduced to the state of an
animal. It would not only be death but also humiliation and stripiing the
person of the only advantage he or she has in the struggle for existance
compared to other creatures. To me, the cruelness of this meant that I had
to prevent this from being known. I had to play the role of the eccentric
hermit rather than to be someone who could be a mother, a wife and a
careerwoman. 

Re-learning English was hard, seeing the amount of ressources which are
available to learn Esperanto if you know English and the dearth of material
in the other direction. I had to confide in a private teacher to help me
re-gain the ability to speak. Of course my family assumed that I was having
an affair and it saddened them immensely. However, they had no good track
record of being particularly good at keeping secrets. I even faked evidence
for infidelity. I used small amounts of men's perfume on myself and my
clothes to give the impression that I rubbed my body of that of a
handsome-looking, young man. I came home late and with slightly messed up
clothes. 

The only time I broke my lie was towards my husband at the time when I 
heard that his health-related situation worsened. When he had only a few 
days to live, he demanded to join me in the `place' my mind was in. He
wanted to be near me one last time -- or maybe just did not believe me
without any evidence. Thus, I brought a small system, the math program
(which I tried to prevent from spreading by acquiring the rights of it) and
the parameters. I entered them, and left the room while the system was
calculating. The speed of her was so slow that the result would take enough
time to seek cover for me. I didn't know yet that only the combination of
visual and audible stimuli cause the re-writing of parts of the brain to
happen and was afraid it might happen to me again, robbing me of my
re-gained ability to speak Esperanto and English. The few days we had during
which we could communicate freely were days, I remember so clearly as if
they happened yesterday. They are memories soaked in bliss and mourning
simultaneously. I am crying right now, while I am typing the words.

As soon as I could after the incident, I made sure the math-program was no
longer distributed freely. Of course it is as impossible to remove something
from the internet as it is to stop the spring, but I tried to remove the
official sources. I bought the program from its inventor and made sure that
he would not do work in a similar area by having Verdvaro patent essential
algorithms for the required technology. Despite the reputation of Vervaro
not to be lawsuit-happy, I made sure that those who ignored these patents
were sued. 

You understood that correctly: I remained in charge of Verdvaro despite not
understanding what went on. It is a well-kept secret, or not that well if
you follow certain newspaper and internet cartoons, that as soon as you are
up there, it is hard to get you down. At least not for inaction. If you
cause a huge loss, or are assumed to have caused it, you are pretty much
gone, if you are found out to be member of party for the community, there
will be no mercy and if you are caught having sexual relations with a pig
you are not married to you had it coming. Inaction however is not a reason
to be removed as long as you still manage to delegate. It was a horror
though. I constantly was afraid to mess things up. To ruin the work of my
life by one misunderstood question. However it was clear to me that I had to
make sure that the technology would not fall into the wrong hands and this
was only possible when I still had influence at Verdvaro. It was a bad time
for me. Especially since I tried getting a grip on Esperanto and trying to
understand how the Unified language worked. 

When I eventually was able to retire with an at least similarity to grace, I
thought that my life would improve. Of course, I did not expect the constant
curiousity of my children. Let's just say that I was far from the best
possible mother. It still makes me very guilty what my children went
through. I wish so much that I could have prevented all that from happening,
but I can't. When I came to my senses enough to understand their issues,
they drifted to a point where I felt unable to reach them except by
strictness and sanctions. It was painful, but I saw them drifting to their
own destruction and had to interfere.

At the same time, I had to create a community of people who understood
Unified and their native languages so that just in case the parameters would
leak, people would exist to provide communication. I knew about what is
considered to be auxiliary languages, but I was not aware of the hard
competition between those. Thus, I tried promoting Unified as international
auxiliary language and failed horribly. Even though Unified was easy to
learn for those who actually tried it, some reported that it was even easier
than esperanto, less than one dozen people were interested in it. I had to
do something different to make people use the Unified language. It is not an
easy thing to do, far from it. At this point, I have no idea how to tackle
the affair except for a weird plan, which hopefully never gets put into
action, but which will happen if the circumstances will get me before a
better plan is devised.

Thus, after many words, the answer to the question why I work on Unified,
why I accept humiliation, sneers and the occasional flames from people for
doing what I did is easy: I have to do it. I have to fight the threat which
the symbols of Unified would pose if used by the unscrupulous and the
Machivellian by making Unified a minority. Something which is not common,
but also not completely uncommon.

\chapter{Ika'het'ny - Temporary Solutions}
\paragraph{Stephen:} Things did not go as planned. Definitely not. My weird 
sister used this situation to become religious and follow the Gods my insane 
mother apparently worshipped, people took her actually seriously, and she
wasn't even persuaded by the best proof that it was all made up: the
writings of my mother. How stupid can you become? Seeing that it's my sister
we are talking about, apparently the answer is very much. What was worse was
that karma decided to be a bitch. If my mother would not have been murdered,
the substitute plan would have never been put into effect. Who knows what
idea she would have had, at least not such a bad one. Or at least not a bad
one which involves me. Couldn't she, like, fund schools to create her
Unified minority? Or was she aware that whoever offs her must be a member of
her close family and she wanted a payback? I tried hard to shut my
annoyingly loud and angry conscience up. She deserved revenge, even though
an explanation existed (as I found out now), her cruelty, humiliation and
complaints were something, which I had to suffer fronm for years. It is a 
bad and uncomfortable fact in life that certain people do not behave as if 
they were members of the human species. And that should mean that basic
human rights no longer apply to them.

Our group had to vacate the room at a time, which seemed far too early.
Since we still had no clue what to actually do now, we stood on the sidewalk
to think about it further. It must have looked rather weird: a group of
well-clad individuals who stood there talking among themselves in small
groups and looking generally like a group of students who did not know which
party to go to. The mood was scared, about to change into complete and utter 
panic. Everyone who read the story of Susanne knew that while it was
possible to adapt to real life again it would be a task taking years. A
full-grown man started crying because his wife could not come to the funeral
and he only now realized that this would mean complete separationfrom her
for indefinite time. No more `I love you' could be said and understood
anymore without the help of several months of language practice. I could
sympathize with him somewhat even though my relations with women were mostly
one night stands and short relations, barely surviving one month. the
feeling of sudden separation, I knew far to well though - and apparently for
the same reason. Other people tried to look at the bright side of the
situation, if it existed. They would tell everyone who wanted to hear that
they at least were a large group who was together. While they were right, of
course, it seemed to me like a very small advantage. I mean, yes we could
communicate, but we could only do so with equally clueless and helpless
people. Some people were reading the texts of my mother on whatever brought
them online. And one person, who lived nearby, but not in walking difference
wondered how she could now get a ticket home. I was annoyed at the fact that
nothing happened. People were just talking but not reaching any conclusion.
Just when I was thinking that, Karin came over. I expected her to attempt to
convert me again, but instead she asked people nearby whether they had an
accomodataion for the night and if yes, how much longer they could stay
there. She also exchanged telephone numbers with the group. She used her
sheet of intelligent paper to note these things. 

It was a good idea, I must admit. She did not think of the time ahead any
longer than the night and breakfast, but that was what the group needed. On
the other hand, I was somewhat jealous that it was her who had that idea. I
often saw her as the brainless blonde, the role, the media loved to show her
in. Our relation was not the best, and there had always been an element of
rivalry between us, so I guess it made sense that I saw a distorted picture
of her, just so I could even during bad times tell myself that I did not
fail as much she did. Of course this meant when I could not construct
failure out of what she did, it hurt.

Some people wo were only there for the day could find a place in the hotel
room of a total stranger, but a group of people was unable to arrange a 
place they could sleep in. We all were discussing a solution for this
problem. Well, most of us were. I knew that a few people scurried off to
find a public restroom and others tried to orient themselves in the city.
They said something about a tourist guide of the city, which Susanne must
have written and which might contain relevant information. I thought this
was a weird idea. On the other hand, none of us actually lived in Soton and
so it might come in handy to be able to lead people to certain places.

Karin suggested that the priest might be able to help the stranded reserve a 
room for the night. I shook my head at this suggestion. As it turned out,
she was as affected by the symbols as we all were. 

``Well, yes, but Shirley has one advantage we don't have: She is a
linguist.'' Karin said as if it would explain anything.

``So what?'' I asked slightly annoyed.

``Linguists study languages. And there is at least one place where she can
get started. The page on Unified has an introduction of it in the local
language. This might help her to find out information about what is spoken
here.''

``There are a few too many said or unsaid `might's and `maybe's for my
taste.'' I admitted.

Karin was unfazed. ``Of course. But it currently is the only plan we have. A
bad plan which exists beats a nonexisting good one every time.''

``Do we have a second plan? For anything now?'' I enquired. ``I mean apart
from taking starting to convert the city.''

Her sudden change in mimic made me involuntarily step back. She suddenly
laughed as if she went completely mad. Or was confronted with something
crazy enough to work. Or both. ``That's it!'' she shouted. ``This is what we
need to do. We need to spread the blessing of the spirits. We need to make
everyone around us aware of the divine language. We need to become the
minority, our mother wanted us to be.''

``You scare me, Karin.'' I stated. 

``Why? I think this is what is required to happen. The divine language needs
to be spread and as will spread it!''

``You no longer think about the consequences of your actions, do you?''

``I do. Have you read what Susanne said might happen if we remain few and
isolated? The needs of the many occasionally outweigh the needs of the few
who ould be affected. And by the way, since when do you care about ethics?''

She had a point here. I normally was pretty hedonistic, but I did see the
difference between getting drunk, taking drugs and having wild sex with
people I didn't care about but claimed to love and trying to confuse the
language of an indefinite amount of people. It was a completely different
class of evil. It was not like drunk driving, jaywalking, or tax cheating
or talking someone into poisoning someone else. This was evil by my
standards. ``There isn't only black and white, there are all sorts of grey
you have to draw the line somewhere.'' I trued at least to distract her from
this topic. ``But this doesn't help us right now, does it?''

She nodded. ``Indeed. This is long-term.''

\paragraph{Karin:} I tried not to let the idea of converting a huge amount
of people control my thoughts. It was something, which had time for later,
maybe at times when it would be possible to use the symbol as advertising on
television, or on popular internet-websites. I stopped myself from following
this line of thought longer. I tried to think of only what mattered now, not
what would matter in the future. 

Shirley had been working on the text for quite a while, using my intelligent
paper as well as a dumb pen and paper from her own pocket. It looksed weird
to see her there sitting on the sidewalk, frantically scribbling something,
occasionally cursing. She looked like a first-grader who forgot her homework
and now had to do it under the orange glow of a streetlight, well, a very
old first-grader. I went towards her: ``Any progress?''

``There is a chance of it happening.'' she smiled faintly. 

``That's better than nothing!'' I said trying to smile encouragingly.
``What's the problem?''

She grimaced. ``The problem seems to be that I am apparently suffering from
brain rot. It took me quite a while to get a simple concept. If that
happened to me two weeks earlier, my colleagues would have laughed about my
stupidity. It would have been the talk of the entire faculty! I feel like a
first year student again.''

I smiled sympathetically. ``I guess since the change affected our ability to
process language, it makes sense.''

She nodded sadly. She reminded me of a star pianist who just learned that
one of his hands had to be amputated. ``I seem to be so... ineffective.''

I had an idea: ``Maybe it is more difficult to express these things in 
Unified. Maybe Unified is intentionally clumsy in these areas to prevent
people from defecting from it.''

``You mean... that it employs the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in self-defense?''
she looked at me as if I lost my mind.

``I don't know what you mean by `Sapir-Whorf hypothesis'.'' I admitted.

``In the strict form, it is the idea that the borders of your language form
the language of your thoughts. In the weak version, it says that the
language influences the thought processes to a certain point. There are
some proofs for the weak form, though they are not that convincing yet. For
example can people distinguish light blue and dark blue faster when their
language has two distinct terms for them. You seem to think that something
in the structure of the language or in its vocabulary prevents the
aquisition and study of other languages, or makes it harder than normal,
right?'' 

``Pretty much so, yeah. The higher spirits would probably not want us to
immediately return to whichever language we were rescued from.'' 

As if completely forgetting about my presence, Shirley talked to herself: 
``This is an interesting thought. Susanne managed to reach an understanding
of English. If she had somewhere put her notes on the language, it would be
very advantageous.'' she paused and bit on her loer lip.``I can't imagine 
that she put absolutely nothing onto the site to help us with English if she 
planned this. She must have planned something, no other possibility
exists.'' She started torturing the paper with many simultaneous access 
attempts. I was not sure whether I wanted to know what exactly she tried to
achieve like that. It looked different from before. The calm struggle for
understanding was replaced by a fierce attack against the trickyness of the
deceased. Not a physical battle but a battle of wits. I slowly wandered
away, almost scared by the anger, which seemed to be in her actions.

Nothing was really decided when a group of younger people, probably in high
school age returned to the group. They had the glorious idea to try to 
orient themselves in the city with the probably deprecated notes of the 
tourist guide. I thought that the idea was not that bright, but they were 
old enough to make their own decisions, maybe not legally, but at least in 
my opinion. So if they wanted to do something I couldn't immediately 
understand, it would have been wrong to ust assume that they were immature 
and crazy like many people in my age seem to start doing. One of them
shouted the news to the group as soon as she caught breath again. ``There
are speakers of Unified in the city.'' She stopped again to breathe. It
seemed that she ran here quickly and without pausing on the way (with the
possible exception of roads, she had to cross). ``There are people who
worked for Susanne and learned Unified for that.'' If this was a movie,
oneof these people would have worked in a hotel reception now. But since
this happened in real life, the nearest Unified speaker operated a small
clothes shop. I followed the group there even though I couldn't actually 
help. 

\chapter{Kunakuna'ta'iln - Don't panic}
\paragraph{Karin:} The clothes shop was tiny and catered especially to tall 
customers as the travel guide helpfully mentioned. It also mentioned that
the owner worked odd jobs in the Mansion before his father saw himself too 
old to continue the business. The guide cited him as good at everything
which does not involve selling clothes, but since the store still existed,
he couldn't be that bad. It also mentioned that Gary Brown was not too fond
of Unified when he first heard about it. To him it seemed weird that she
wanted him to learn a language no one except her would use. The group
started giggling when they thought of his face when he would hear their
Unified.

When they arrived, Sean Maud the owner, a thin, tall, and grey-haired 
person, whose clothing was bland an in various shades of brown just 
wanted to close the store. He was busy moving a rack of t-shirts inside 
when we arrived. ``Pardonu, mi estas fermitanta la vendejon. Mi petas ke 
vi revenu morga\v{u}!''

People looked at me expectantly. I supressed a sigh. ``Hello. Maybe you are
able to help us out.''

He stared at us, seemingly failing to believe his own ears and eyes.
``What\textinterrobang{}''

I asked him again: ``I was told that you understand this language, didn't
you?''

He nodded, still confused and probably still thinking this was not real.
``Yes.'' 

``I think that you might be able to help us. We are stranded in this place
and don't know the local language.'' I explained.

``But... I thought that Unified was no real language... I thought it was
just something made up.''

``I thought the same until something... happened and the higher spirits,
while allowing me to speak this language, made it impossible to speak my
native language.''

``What? Is this a practical joke of some sort?''

``It is not, it is exactly what happened.'' Other murmured confirmingly.

``So? You say that this language... spreads by divine methods?''

I made a vague gesture. ``It spreads via a divine symbol and sound which
Mrs. Greenville discovered. She never wrote the language so much as
discovered it.''

``Feko! Mi ne povas kredi \^{g}in. Vi certe \^{s}ercas.'' He murmured to
himself. I could not understand his words, but the tone of his voice
conveyed the message pretty well.

``Neither me nor you are going insane. I am aware of how ridiculous it
sounds though.''

``I didn't say that! I said that I thought you were joking.''

``I tried to go by what the tone of your voice implied. The local language
isn't something I understand anymore.'' I felt sadness creep into my voice.

``You have to explain to me exactly what happened.'' He insisted. After a
pause, he added ``And whether it still is dangerous right now.''

``The change happened during the funeral of Susanne Greenville, which
happened after a rite she devised. Everyone who attended no longer
understands the languages he learned. We all however are able to communicate
in Unified as if it was the language we grew up with.''

``Diable!'' he cursed loudly. ``I knew that Unified was weird, but that it
could be evil, I had no idea of.''

``I would disagree on the part about evil. I think that the change of
languages was a sign of the divine.'' I stated. ``And, what do you mean by
weird?''

``It sounds and looks weird. And after learning it, I occasionally had to
remind myself that certain things make sense in Unified but not English.'' 

``Was it easy to learn?'' asked someone from behind me.

``Very much so. Far better than the... language, I learned at school.'' He
paused. ``Unifed does not actually have words for political unities, does
it?''

I stopped dumbfounded. She was right. The way to refer to a nation, state,
county, district or region was to refer to it from either your current
position or from other known positions. So far, it worked surprisingly
enough, but I would not want to write an essay about differences in national
economies in this way. ``I don't think so, you have to use something else as
reference. Like Va\^{s}ingtono country or Berlino country. So far it
worked.''

He nodded. ``And for peoples, tribes or ethnic groups also only exist these
strange ways of saying things?''

I thought about it for a moment. It was strange to attempt to think about
how these basic things in the language worked. ``I think yes. The higher
spirits surely want unity, not separation.''

``I... see'' He said, very unconvinced.

I would have loved to explain my newfound, badly defined religion to him,
but restrained myself from doing so. I knew that there was something to be
done and I did not want to alienate him by preaching. I explained him about
the issue we had. I asked him whether he could translate for those of us who
still had no place to stay. 

He looked not fully convinced that this was real, but agreed. the shop was
closed only a few minutes later and soon these people found a place for the 
next nights at a huge, charmless and overpriced hotel. 

Later in the evening, the group of Unified met in the central park. Sean
also decided to tag along because he wanted to see the entire group. Shirley
almost immediately hurried to him and started asking questions in quick
progression without giving anyone the chance to get a word across. I
listened to the discussions around me. Someone went into a near store and
bought sandwiches for those who wanted and so many people were in a somewhat
elevated mood. After the short-term plans were dealt with, more or less at
least, the discussions centered around the families, friends, lovers
(occasionally a distinct group from the people who they were rightfully
married with, but who was I to judge), children and other people they cared
for. The story of Susanne was a warning how the change can and will isolate 
people from the unchanged and we had to make sure not to repeat it (this of
course does not take into account that Susanne's ways of coping with the
situation were not usable for anyone who lacked the same reputation of
weirdness, she had worked on very long even before it). 

Apart from discussions about the future, the past also was talked about in
much detail. These were sad discussions. In each and everyone of them the
implication that it would never be like this was clearly audible. I couldn't
participate in all of them and no one forced me to. The day was just too
much for me. I wanted to go to bed, hide under the blankets and wake up when
sanity had returned to the world. I wanted this all to be a dream. I tried
to fight it, to help but now I was just tired. The group decided in my
absence to meet after breakfast on the next day, so I excused myself and
returned to the Funafutio strictly following the way I took to get here,
fully aware that there were shorter routes, but being unable to ask for the
way or hail a cab was very disadvantageous. My shoes were not made for lots
of walking, actually, they were not made for walking at all, they were made
for looking awesome and impressive. They were made by a famous, male
designer, so the chance that he actually had to walk a single step in them
was very slim. Despite my experience with these type of shoes, my feet
started aching. During the entire walk, I thought about kicking the shoes
off and falling into bed. Or if I had a bit of energy left: undressing and
removing my makeup before doing the latter. I pretty much did exactly that
when I eventually arrived in the Funafutio. 

The next morning, I woke up disoriented, I had the feeling something
happened, but could not remember what. I looked around, trying to remember
where I was. For a second, I didn't, then it all came back to me: the
Funafutio, the funeral, the symbols, the change, the issues. I cursed in a
way to make a sailor blush, if he was to understand Unified. I went through
the usual ordeal to look sufficiently beautiful for the day, then left my
room and had breakfast. Coffee is one of the pleasures life still had. Even
though my world pretty much was turned upside down, the smell and taste of 
coffee was still something to make me feel better. I smiled happily while
eating.

On the way to the park, I switched on my cell phone and was greeted only a
few moments later by its ringing. I never managed to set up the thing to
ring differently for different people sho I had absolutely no idea who
called. I ponered just ignoring it, but it could have been a call from one
of the members of the group. I sighed and answered the call. ``Karin
Greenville?''

``Saluton Karin, kial vi ne respondis hiera\v{u}? Mi penis telefoni vin
multega da fojoj.'' I recgnized the voice but I had no idea what was said.
The voice belonged to Grace, one of my best friends, despite occasionally 
being excessively na\"{\i}ve. 

``Hi Grace. I can't understand a word of what you're saying!'' I said into
the phone, despite the futility of it.

``La konektilo ne estas tre bona. \^{C}u vi eblas rediri \^{g}in?'' 

``This is of no use, sorry, Grace!'' I hung up. Doing so felt like leaving
her behind even though it of course could be an only temporary separation.
Actually: the right transmission of a videomessage could bring her onto the
same side of the language barrier I was on. This thought gave me an idea. I
would have to find the exact cause of the change and have it ready. This
would make it so much easier to spread the message of the divine language.
I knew that it would be hard to explain to others why this was of highest
importance, but I knew that there were people on my side. I imagined their
faces and their voices as well as their names when I could. The side who
would opposse it, come what may were mostly my brother and people who
subscribed to his deranged atheist viewpoint. I mean, I used to be as near
to atheism as I could come without actually caring. But to keep the argument
of the lack of evidence up despite not only having experienced one, but
being affected by it and sufering from its consequences and insisting on
retaining atheist beliefs was just ridiculous. What more did they need?
Others found some way to integrate the happening with their previous
religious beliefs, meaning mainly Christianity though one of the youngsters
was a Buddhist. They had no consistent explanation but apparently, someone
related the change with the glossolalia of the first pentecost. To me this
was not comparing apples to oranges, but to compare apples to toothpaste or
barbed wire. How could they even compare these uncomparable things? It
sounded like complete and utter insanity to me, like the absence of reason.

I tried to remind myself that I sounded like this to the other two groups as
well. When I wanted to prevent a splitup of the group, I would have to
restrain myself from alienating anyone. I would have to try to see things in
their way to be able to reach them. The group had no formal structures and
no leader, so it would be important to influence everybody.

When I reached the park, I heard faint music. I was surprised to see that
one of the youths who found the bilingual Unified-speaker brought a guitar
and was playing music, which I never heard before. It was a simple melody,
and occasionally he would get stuck on the text, but that didn't detract
from its uplifting quality. I smiled. When I came nearer, I heard that the
text was about drinking on a sunny summer day. It was not really fitting
since the weather required warm clothes and no booze was around. It seemed
to be rather the happy place of the singer. The dream he currently had of
the world - or at the time he wrote it. After it ended, we all clapped. Some
people asked for another song. Mark (as I suddenly remembered) said that he
had not written lyrics for any other song yet, but if we wanted to invent
something, we should feel free to. As he played, I had an idea and started
singing. It was not good. The message it sent was probably far from what I
expected it to be, my voice not bad enough to scare little children, but it
was not good either, the music sounded suspiciously likea song from a
commercial, but it was a happy song and it's melody was catchy.

After the song ended, we talked a bit. Mark told me that he came from the
continent but did not want to leave his guitar there, because he played in a
band and needed the practice. I only now realized what we were lacking since
the change: music. I asked others whether they could still remember any song
lyrics, but them it was like for me: While remembering the melody, die
lyrics seemed to be wiped from the mind unless they were not understood by
the person and only phonetically remembered.

I mentioned the idea of retrieving the cause of the change and distribute it
to others, whom I perceiced to be on my side with this. The reaction of them
was as positive as I expected. For some, it seemed not to matter as much
what was done as long as something was done. People were thrown into a huge
amount of insecurity by the change and one way to cope with this was by
keeping yourself busy. The first voices of dissent of course arose later as
well. Stephen was still blissfully ignorant and I did not plan to change that
until it could no longer be avoided. Mark also was interested in how to
retrieve the code, but voiced problems about the feasibility of it: ``You
really think that you can just walk into the house of her, get the program
and the parameters and leave? Sounds easy, except that it won't be.''

``I didn't plan that. I planned to use what changed us during the funeral
service and then refine it, remove the things, which were distracting.''

``Sounds feasible. To a point at least.'' he admitted.

``What do you mean?''

``How d'you know what's part of the active code and what isn't?''

``Everything Susanne had control over is intended. Everything else not. It's
as easy as that.''

``Okay, that's a way. There might be far too much data though.''

``Sure. But then, we have a moment where we felt the change. During the
second song, so everything after that can be disregarded.''

``Right.''

``Also, it seems to be independent of the row in which we were in, so I
guess a certain stability to variation exists. that means that we don't have
to capture it completely acurately.''

``I see where you are going to.'' He said. ``So you are going to get the
materials from the ceremony hall?''

``Yeah. Stephen and me rented it for a day more than needed so we could
procrastinate getting the stuff out.''

``Reasonable, yeah. How are you going to store it though?''

``That's kinda the issue. My phone has a camera, but I never figured out how
to use it.''

``You mean, due to the change you can't?'' 

``No, I mean, before it as well. I'm not good with technology.''

``Ouch.'' He looked as if he talked to a retarded person. I could understand
this to a point: camera phones are old news. However this did not mean that
I knew how to use one.

``Well, they \textit{are} hard to use.''

``You're right with that! The designers still don't give a damn about
usability. As long as it looks right on the first glance, it's okay. I hate
that mentality! These people always think that things need to be simpler and
shinier looking but that means that things are slower and harder to use.
`Designers' should be the ones first to be put against the wall when the
revolution comes.''

I was confused and a bit shocked. ``Which revolution\textinterrobang{}''

He grimaced. ``That was a reference to an old book. Nothing really
important.''

``I see.'' I said unconvinced. The word `revolution' was repeated in my
mind. Something related to it was relevant, but I had no idea what.

\chapter{Ken - together}

The ceremony hall was somewhat chaotic but seemingly unchanged. The canvas
with the writing was still visible. I wondered why I had not commented
earlier on the fact that it said `This is what is called the message of
change' in a very ornamental and overlapping, (almost caligraphically) 
handwritten font. I had not noticed it earlier. When I helped getting it up 
there, it looked like nothing but a jumble of lines in various shapes. But
then, at that time, I was still on the other side of the change, unaware
that such a miracle could even exist. Mark and (surprisingly enough) Shirley 
were with me in the ceremony room. Shirley showed a small music player. 
``This is where the music for the ceremony was put on. Susanne recorded it 
for me when she was still alive. I connected it to the speakers of the
hall.''

``Pretty neat. How much capacity did it take?''

Shirley shrugged: ``Not sure, why do you ask?''

``The higher the quality is, the more capacity it requires. So bigger files
mean a higher quality is required for it to work.'' I explained.

``I see. It fits on one disk, if that helps.'' She removed the small sold
state disk of the device and showed it to us. It was a normal disk of the
same form, music players and cell phones, even some forms of intelligent
paper accepted. It's capacity was ridiculously low in these days, but the
format was too ubiquitous and thus not likely to change soon. Mark put it
into his small computer. 

I suddenly got panicked: ``What are you doing there?''

He looked confused at me: ``Copying it. What else?''

I still felt anxious. ``Make sure that you don't overwrite it!''

``I do! Don't worry about that! I can operate a computer even without
reading its text.''

I tried to calm myself down while I watched him moving his hands over the
screen. I couldn't. I was nervously moving my hands and observing him as
closely as if I feared that he wanted to steal state secrets or, even worse,
my porn collection. I couldn't stop myself from fidgetting and biting my
lower lip. The entire time, I only thought of what could happen if Mark was
not as trustworthy as I thought he was. What if he thought that the Change
had to be eliminated and only tricked myself into letting him have this very
important disk. What if he was influenced by someone, and what if Shirley
was not as trustworthy as she appeared to be. It must have been most
shocking for her since she had lost most. Her family, her professional
ability, her language skills, probably her homeland. I cursed mentally. Why
did I have to be so horribly and utterly na\"{\i}ve? Why couldn't I think of
this before doing anything irreversible? Why did I have to \textit{fail} so
hard? Mark turned around to me, a slight grin in his face.

``How can I say it?'' he paused. ``I accidentally deleted the files!''

I shouted at him. ``What have you done\textinterrobang{} The files are now
lost! Forever! You are stupid, insane and probably morally corrupt as well!
If you don't know how to do something then don't fucking do it. Okay?''

Mark grinned even wider. ``Sorry, couldn't resist.''

I looked at him strangely, unsure whether I was justified to hope that what
I understood was what he just implied. 

Mark clarified: ``It was a joke. The copying worked just fine!''

I tried to calm down. ``Don't do that with so important matters, please!''

``It is really something you believe in? The higher spirits, the change, the
requirement to spread the language. This is what you really think?''

I nodded. ``It is.''

He smiled. ``I thought that your conversion yesterday to the religion of the
higher spirits was maybe too good to be true. Too much geared towards
converting others than showing your real sincereness.''

I thought back at how I felt in this seconds. ``I was hysteric, my world
tumbled down and I had to reassemble it somehow. Then I suddenly realized
that there was this one way and suddenly... suddenly everything fell into
place! I must have behaved in a pretty exaggerated way when realizing
this, but I knew nothing of the higher spirits and wanted them to convince
of the fact that this was for real.''

``I see what you mean.'' He paused for a while. ``Can you believe that I was
a Protestant before?''

``I can, it is popular in Berlino land, isn't it?''

``I mean... I was raised Catholic, converted and now can only ask myself why
on earth I did that, why I chose one brand of false over the other one.''

``Well, you lacked the knowledge you have now. Our decisions are only as
good as the information we have. The lesser we know, the worse we decide.''

``Wow, that sounds deep.'' he grinned.

``It was something Mum said before going ins... sorry, changing. I only
understand it now.''

He looked suddenly very sad. ``It must have been a bad time for you.''

I nodded. ``It was. Suddenly my mother cared so little about me. I had to go
to that boarding school, I didn't want to attend and my mother seemed so...
uninvolved. As if I was no longer her child. I had no idea what happened to
her. I thought it was my fault, but whatever I tried didn't work. It was all
in vain.'' I realized how the words flowed without having intended to say
all that. ``And I felt as if I could talk to no one. I was sent to an
all-girls school, Stephen to a school for boys. I was really alone, but when
I wanted to talk to people about this, they all seemed to think it was
unimportant. I was richer than them, well my parents were, so I had no
reason to feel bad. You see what I mean?''

Mark put the computer onto a bench, stepped to me and hugged me. I suddenly
could no longer control myself and cried. For a time, we stood like this. My
tears just flowed. For the first time, I did not have the feeling that it
was improper to feel sorry for myself. And I could feel sorry for my mother
as well, I no longer had to see her as the horrible creature, I saw her as
during her lifetime. I was able to do a small additional step towards
forgiving her. I had no idea how much time passed when the tears stopped. I
moved out of the hug and used a handkerchief. ``I am sorry for losing
control to a stranger like this.''

``You sang to the music I wrote.'' he stated simply, ``This means we are
hardly strangers anymore. We did already bare our hearts towards each
other.''

I smiled. ``That was pretty deep as well.''

At this moment, I heard a sound from behind me. I turned around and saw
Shirley entering the ceremony hall via the restroom door. I tried to look
less as if I just cried my heart out and excused myself for exactly that
place to fix my makeup. 

When I returned, Mark and Shirley were discussing something and using Mark's
computer together. ``Have you been successfull?'' I asked full of hope.

``Not really,'' Shirley stated. ``We suddenly realized that Susanne required
dawn and candlelight, so we are trying to re-create that for the image.''

I was impressed. ``Wow, I didn't think of that. How do you re-create that?''

Mark looked up. ``Image manipulation.'' he said, and immediately lowered his
glance again. 

I understood. Modern technology made the manipulation of images very easy,
though it occasionally was very hard to tell the program what exactly you
wanted to do. I assumed that the change made it even harder to create the
desired effect. The fact that the texts and menues of the program were
nothing but gibberish must have slowed down progress considerably. When I
loked at the screen though, the effect was convincing. ``Awesome!'' I
stated.

``I have some experience with this effect.'' Mark admitted. ``The band I
play in was pretty dark and I did the design-related tasks for them.''

I was surprised. ``Your music sounded not very dark today. I never would
have thought that you were in that scene.''

``For some reason, I didn't feel like sad music. The change brought people
together and I wanted to express that.''

``I see. I thought it was kinda imagining a better place.''

``Because it didn't express how the world was at that time? It was about
hope. The hope to remain with the group, and that we would stay together and
experience such a day free of troubles.''

``It is strange that you see it this way, but not in a bad way.''

``I thought you agreed. The lyrics you sung sounded similar.''

``They were kinda alike, yeah, but it was more or less spontaneous.''

``For music, that can be best!'' 

Shirley interrupted: ``Stop flirting, we need to finish this pretty soon!''

``We are not flirting!'' Mark and me insisted simultaneously.

``It looks differently to me.'' Shirley stated matter-of-factly. ``Very
different!''

``I guess, that I should start cleaning now.'' I changed the topic.

``That would be advantageous!'' said Shirley, so I grabbed the broom and
started sweeping. 

\chapter{Ena'het'ny - Required things}
\paragraph{Stephen:} I needed a good night's sleep. After all which
occurred, I needed to go to bed and not leave it until either hell finished
freezing over, or I felt somewhat human again, whatever came first. I should
not have drunken so much of the contents of the minibar, but being sober
seemed impossible on the previous evening. So much happened on that day,
that drowning it all indiscriminately in booze sounded like an excellent
idea. I had no idea what it was, that caused me a headache now, but I felt
as if someone used the time I was unconscious to beat me up. The light hurt
my eyes, but I had to get up to get some medication to shut the pain up,
which hammered against my skull from the inside, so I got up. I was almost
happy that I did not have dinner last evening. 

``Divineness! I'll never drink again, ever!'' I murmurred. Eventually, I got
up far enough to reach the pain medication and swallowed a pill without
water. I managed to get up and with insecure steps went to the window and
closed the curtains. The lack of direct light in my room made ít almost
bearable, only almost however. I crawled back into bed, while unable to
sleep, I might start to feel better later. My thoughts moved back to the
last day, I tried to fight it, but they apparently had other plans. It's
like that pink elephant. You can spend years without spending a second
thinking of pink elephants, but try to think not about pink elephants for
five minutes, and your thoughts will invariably have these creatures in
alarming numbers. My mother was a real antisocial idiot. She used her own
\textit{funeral} to seek revenge, thinly veiled under pseudo-moral ideas on
her own family. She caused us so much troubles for her stupid ideas of
`becoming a minority', had she no memory? Didn't she realize how much harm
she would cause? Had she become as completely and utterly morally bankrupt
as she always accused me to be? Had she lost her mind in a card game? Had
she become paranoid and demented? My sister of course swallowed her BS hook,
line and sinker. She seemed to think that whatever happened yesterday was
the result of some higher spirits, not of a scheming, dead motherbitch. 

\paragraph{Richard Monger:} It was almost noon when I arrived in the
Funafuti, a posh and expensive hotel, where Stephen Greenville resided in.
The cynical side of me thought that it was typical that he chose such a
place. The somewhat more human-friendly one said that he surely wanted
comfort in this hard times, if not psychological comfort, then at least
material one. My colleague Nguyen did not comment on that second hypothesis,
unless an annoyed gesture counts. Sometimes, I had the impression that I had
quite a number of disadvantages just because I had not completely given up
to cynicism and hatred of humanity. It seemed to be so much of a
professional disease for policemen that the opposite had become remarkable.
The receptionist asked us to remain discreet when doing what we had to
because the Funafuti had a reputation to lose, but gave the room number
without questions.

Nguyen knocked at the door of room 256 where Stephen according to the
receptionist still was. For quite a time, nothing happened. We already
exchanged glances wondering whether we should just write that we were unable
to find the person into our protocol and rush into the Dunkin' Donuts
nearby. Just before we wanted to do so, the door opened. 

Stephen Greenville looked as if he spent in bed until very recently and had
too little time to get up and ready when he heard us. His clothing was
hastily chosen and put on. He looked kinda shaky. He murmured: ``Su?''

``Mr. Greenville? Can we come in? We want you to answer some questions.''
Nguyen asked.

``Viije al. Xe'ma'ta 'hadada iln. Ulu mi'la'kidhi sijiv'het'jet sima.'' He
said in a confused and somewhat angry tone.

``We are aware that you speak English, Mr. Greenville, so please use a
better excuse.''

``Ytin'tan halen mi'la'ytin xe. Xe'jaku'ta kimda.'' He looked somewhat
angry but tried to remain calm.

I asked him in French, at least the bit of French I remembered from school.
He just shhok his head. Nguyen asked him in two languages, which I could not
understand. One ounded oriental, the other one more like guttural noises. 
Probably one of them was Vietnamese. Both times he just looked at us and 
shook his head.

We turned around and left. As soon as we did, he closed the door. Maybe it
was my imagination, but I thought that I heard a muffled shout when it
closed.

``Good actor, that guy!'' stated Nguyen.

I agreed: ``Could almost believe him if I didn't knew that he grew up in
the States and spent his last holiday in Portsmouth.''

``So. He's now one of our suspects as well?''

``Sure. I mean, there is no indication that he had a stroke or a mental
problem. So the way he tried to evade us is highly suspcious.''

``He sure had a hangover!'' Nguyed said.

``Yeah, drunk himself blind last evening, as it seems.'' I confirmed.

``We should check what he did during his holidays here.'' 

``Would have done that anyways, but now, it's priority. This guy behaved
suspicious 'n behaved about as guilty as a child with a hand in a cookie
jar.'' 

``There are children who manage to get out of such a situation better than
that guy. Two of them are mine.''

I grinned. ``By the way, which languages did you use earlier? The first one
was Vietnamese, I guess, but the second one.''

Now it was his time to grin: ``Klingon. I am studying for my intermediate
certificate of that language at the moment.''

\paragraph{Stephen:} I cursed as soon as the door closed. Loudly, Angrily.
This situation became worse than I expected. I was pretty sure that if I had
not been a prime suspect earlier, I was now. The truth of course was that I
was unable to understand anything these people said to me and that they were
unable to understand my ways to explain that. The truth was that this cursed
thing happened and after that, I was no longer able to speak their language.
It was not the case that I had no alibis. I had good ones, but they would
not help me in the least now.

I thought of calling Karin, but it would not be a bad idea probably. It
might lead to the fact that I would have to explain to her why I had been in
the vicinity earlier and that would have led to unpleasant revelations.
Especially now that she decided to love our mother again. I made an angry
noise about that. She lied to us during our entire childhood. Apparently
because she thought we might tell something about the change. Instead, our
childhood was ruined. Ruined by her lack of trust, her fear, her paranoia.
Maybe we would have understood this problem, maybe we would have worked it
out. But we had no chance of ever doing so due to the fact she simply
refused to speak.

I decided to get ready for the world and meet the group again. Maybe I could
get this taylor guy to translate for me. If I would explain this to the
police, they would not believe me, but if they got into contact with the
group, they might be convinced. Or if they get the symbols which caused the
change in the first place. Maybe, just maybe this change would be
reversible. 

I stopped myself from thinking in this direction. There was no need to get
my hopes high about something probably completely unfeasible. `Hoping, most
of the time is the first step to disappointment' was something of my mantra. 
Of course it was far too late in the day for breakfast, but a nearby
discount store sold sandwhiches and soda. I felt somewhat hungry by now and
the Aspirin made me feel like a human being again, not like some poor
creature killed by his own head. After a bite to eat and a bit of caffeine,
I might even feel something very similar to okay.

I was surprised to see Karin being absent when I met the group in the park.
Most of te group apparently decided to take up reading the texts of my
mother as a hobby: Many people were seen with that site opened in readers,
phones or intelligent paper. ``Hello! Am I too late for the exam?'' I asked
sarcastically.

``No exam oncoming. We are reading through her files in order to get some
hints on what it is we need to do now. Some of her stories are about changed
people. Others think that her political manifestos carry some required 
information.'' explained Martha.

``Required?'' I asked. ``For what?''

``Required for us in order not to make mistakes she thought of already. She
found quite a number of things which can go wrong.''

``Like what??''

``Like problems with the police.''

``Too late for that. I was visited by the police just now. Came here because
of it.''

``Oh dear! What did they want? What happened?''

``I have no idea. They tried to talk to me. Of course no success. Didn't
stop them for trying at least for one minute.''

``I am sorry to hear that. What did you do?''

``I tried to explain them that I didn't speak their language. Guess why they
didn't understand me?''

``Ouch. What did they do?''

``Ask again, several times. Probably several languages, eventually gave up,
must have thought that I only pretended not to understand them, or that I
was high on something.''

``Well, yes, you don't look well.''

``I drank. No idea how much it was, but today, it seems to be too much.''

``I can understand that. The only thing which prevented me from doing
exactly that was the lack of a minibar in the hotel.''

``Sorry to hear that. This stupid change is screwing us over big time!'' I
cursed, fully aware that such a language would normally be inappropriate
around such a nice, elderly lady.

She agreed: ``It indeed did. I hope Susanne thought at least about our
financial security. I know that it sounds cruel, but I am a public servant
with a meager pension, I can't afford keeping in touch with the group when
returning to my homeland and I can't live completely isolated like she
did.''

That sparked some of my interest: ``Has her testament been revealed?''

``I have no clue. No one here does. How should we?'' she asked rhetorically.

I ignored that fact: ``What's his name again, Gary? Any other poor sould who 
was forced to learn the language?''

``Haven't heard from them yet.''

``You think that we should contact them?'' I suggested.

``Definitely! They might be able to help us in this mess! Of course it'll be
hard to find them.''

``I know the address of one guy who used to work there. Might try to reach
him.''

``Address means postal address?'' she asked.

``It indeed does. We can contact him that way, maybe.''

``How do you know him?'' she asked.

I could use one of my excuses eventually. ``I spent my holiday nearby. I 
wanted to try to get over my strife with my mother, but it was impossible. I
met him at a pub in Portsmouth.''

``So... we need to take a train there?'' she wanted to know. ``Or do you
happen to have a car and are able to find the address without a satnav
device?''

``No such luck!'' I said. ``Might be able to find it from the train station
though.''

A short while later, Martha, Leonie and me were on the way to the central
station. Fortunately, the two people from Berlino country arrived by train 
and thus remembered the way to it. Actually, the name `central station' was
probably misleading since it was the only station of Soton after the train
stop near the airport had been closed when the airport did. So the station
could have been called just `Soton' but that would mark Soton as the kind of
tiny, unimportant town that it was.

Getting a ticket was a bit tricky, but not that much. There was a route plan
of the region in the area. I found Portsmouth on that and wrote down the
name of the city as well as a short explanation on how to get there. Martha,
the bravest of us went to buy the tickets with the help of that writing, and
her hands and feet. It worked, but I saw that she looked rather anxious
about the entire affair. Martha hugged her. 

The trip was strange. I had naver been on a train before and would not have
looked forward to it under normal circumstances. It was not as filthy and
overcrowded as I thought it would be. It still was loud and the constant
slight shaking of the train car made me feel uncomfortable. I had to admit
that the idea of not being able to control where I was going did so as well.
Whenever I drove, I could control my direction. It was rather fitting now to
find myself in a train, all control of my direction being taken out of my
hands. I felt my headache return and my painkillers were still in Soton. 

``You got that way from Berlino country to this one? I can hardly believe
this.'' I commented.

``Most of the trains were quicker than this.'' Leonie said, completely
missing my point.

``I mean, the shaking, the moving and the presence of so many people around
you. Also the smells and the lack of personal space... I am not used to
it.'' I explained.

``Flying has become more and more expensive.'' Martha explained.

Leonie added: ``Also, I like trainrides! If you fly, you don't see anything
of the landscape. Trainrides are also an excellent opportunity to meet new
people.''

Martha quipped: ``That are a lot of words for `I am afraid to fly', my
dear.''

Leonie laughed: ``Well, that too!''

I felt shocked about how different people were. I often simply assumed that
people around me were like me. The idea that someone actually likes
travelling in such an uncomfortable way made me shudder. Yes, Leonie might
have said that she was afraid to fly, but she also seemed to enjoy looking
out of the window and occasionally pointing out some oddity. Of course, I
mentally knew that people differed but emotionally, that fact seldomly
reached me. The only people who were different were different in a bad, even
despisable way. That people found something weird enjoyable but were not
antisocial lowlife like my mother was something I encountered not very
often.

Eventually, we reached Portsmouth. I drove to Ken's place with a rented car
during my vacation, but the directions were still the same, the way just
took horribly long. Once or twice, I took a wrong turn. Fortunately, Martha
and Leonie did not comment negatively about this. Instead they seemed to be
happy that I remembered it at all. Cities in this country looked weird to
me. They lacked the well-ordered grid of Va\^{s}ingtono country cities and
were tiny and crammed. The drivers in this country seemed to consider
traffic lights a suggestion, especially if they concerned pedestrians. As
soon as the pedestrians were no longer on the same lane as the driver, he
would ignore the color of the traffic light and just go. It was annoying. In
Soton it already was, but here, in a different city, where I never walked
more than forty two steps before, it was even more irritating. I tried to
keep my temper at bay about it due to its sheer futility. I had to remind
myself again that it was a difference in mentality.

Eventually, we reached the house of Ken Eschbach in the outskirts of the
city. I realized, when my hand came near the button for the doorbell that it
was shaking slightly. Only then, I admitted to myself how afraid I was.

\chapter{Xen'ehasalan - we increase}
\paragraph{Karin:} Soon, the room was in a presentable state. The canvas was
rolled up, the floor and the benches were cleaned, the candles removed and
the stains their wax caused dealt with. Most of it was done by me. Shirley
and Mark were trying to get the appearance of the graphic just right and
made a video of it. This was the reason why I was not angry about it at all.
I wroked happily and consistantly, trying not to constantly catch a glimpse
on the screen. Since I felt that work progressed, I helped as much as I
could by doing the menial labor. We finished at about the same time.
Actually: I was done earlier, but nervously kept myself busy in order not to
get into the way of the two computer wizards.  ``How does it look?'' I asked
excitedly upon hearing the news.

``I am not sure whether it is wise to watch it. It could do again what it
did earlier. Susanne was afraid of that.''

``We should test it! Y'all go somwhere and I watch it.'' I suggested. ``If
we remain compatible, it works only once.''

``Or it doesn't work at all.'' Shirley cautioned.

``Well, yes, there is that.'' I admitted. ``No idea how we are going to test
that without an unchanged volunteer though.''

Mark interjected: ``I do see a benefit in establishing whether it is safe
for us, but can't someone else watch it?''

``You volunteer?'' asked Shirley.

Mark nodded. ``Of course!''

I shook my head. ``It is nice of you to play the selfless hero, willing to
sacrifice himself for the cause, but I have two objections to you taking
this role: You are irreplacable in the group, they need your music and your
optimism. No one else plays an instrument or at least has one here. And the
second reason: That role is mine.'' I grinned.

Mark looked at me, still unconviced. ``Are you sure that you want to do
this?''

I nodded again: ``That is my role in the group, right? That of the religious
zealot who does crazy things because she firmly believes that the spirits
will protect her.''

Shirley looked at me sincerely: ``Are you sure that you want to do this?''

``Yeah! I am.''

Mark opened a simple card game from an icon. ``Play one instance of this
patience game. When you are done, switch between the windows,'' he
demonstrated that, ``and start the video. When you are done, no matter what
your state, come to the toilets. We'll be there.''

I smiled. ``Why the game?''

Mark grinned: ``It's just a simple timer to give us both time to get away.
There's no other purpose behind it.''

``Excellent.'' I said and started to move the cards of the game. Only after
I solved the game, I started the video. It went for quite a while and even
though I wanted to concentrate on it, I got distracted. There was nothing
happening on screen but the slight flickering of candles which could not be
seen and a slight, almost unnoticable rising of the general brightness, only
visible if you know about beforehand. I forced myself to look at the video 
despite that. Watching this video was not a question of entertainment but of
safety for the group. The music at least was soulful. I concentrated on it
to understand its beautiful metaphors, metonymys and symbols. I got lost in
the music. When the music stopped it was like waking up from a state of
amazement. Only then, I noticed that someone was watching over my shoulder.

The person looked at the screen with an expression of curiosity. He stood
absolutely motionless, leaned forward as if bowing. I moved my hands in
front of his eyes but got no reaction at all. I knew that he would wake up
out of the state if it all went correctly and thus waited. Once again, I
switched between the windows and played a session of that patience game, or
three. Then, I noticed a movement in the corner of my eye. The person got up
again. I asked: ``Are you alright?''

He looked at me strangely. ``Now I am. I don't know what happened to me.''

I could hardly stop myself from cheering loudly. ``It is not that easy to
explain what happened. Let me just get my friends to help explaining. Please
stay where you are.''

``Please tell me now! Was it something bad what happened?''

``Definitely not. It was something divine. The higher spirits graced you
with an understanding of the Unified language.''

He looked at me as if I lost my mind, thus, I excused myself and knocked
onto the doors of the male and female toilet.

Shirley immediately asked: ``Did it work? Can you understand me?''

I nodded: ``I can understand you well. There is a problem though.'' I paused
and made a vague gesture.

``Yes?'' asked Shirley nervously.

``Someone watched over my shoulder. Can I just state that the video does
indeed induce the change?''

The linguist cursed. ``He could communicate with you?''

I nodded. ``Without any problems.''

Mark came and suddenly hugged me: ``Great to see you on this side of the
change!'' I enjoyed the hug, but was very aware of the amuzed grin of the
linguist who was watching us. 

When we reached the ceremony hall, the newly-changed person immediately came
to us. ``Welcome on this side of the change.'' Shirley said. ``Has Karin''
she made a motion into my direction, `` already explained what the change
is?''

He shook his head: ``She said something about a `divine language', but I am
not sure how to understand that.''

I tried to explain it: ``It means that you are able to understand and to
speak the divine language the higher spirits revealed to us via their chant 
and music.'' I paused a little bit before adding: ``and only this one.''

He looked at me suspicious: ``This is a joke, right?''

Shirley explained: ``It is not a joke. It is as real as it gets. We all were
changed recently. We tried to isolate the cause of the change, and, well, we
wanted to check whether the change would affect those who are changed in any
way. We were not aware that someone was watching, were we?'' She glared at
me.

``We weren't!'' I confirmed, ``I was lost in the music. I didn't hear anyone
approching.''

``Well, yes, it was loud,'' came he to my defense, ``and I was curious what
this music was. It sounded pretty awesome.''

``You should meet the group.'' suggested Shirley. ``It will be quite a shock
to have gone through the change.''

``You are doing a big practical joke here, right?'' He still was
unconvinced.

Shirley shook her head sadly. ``We are not. We all were changed yesterday.
Some of us think that it is a sign of the higher spirits, others just have
no idea what this is and try to get by, pick up the ruins of their lives and
all that.''

He looked at her in a strange way: ``You are serious about that?''

She nodded: ``Completely so. We are a small group of people who got affected
by this cause. A little more than two hundred people who have to put
together an entirely new life. Karin here copes with it by seeing it as work
of the divine, I by burying myself in work... Mark here just celebrates
every day as it comes. What is your name, by the way?''

``Yorke, Sean Yorke.'' he said, imitating an old, classic film.

``Nice to meet you!'' I said and Mark as well as Shirley echoed that
statement. 

``I still fail to believe you! You do not mind if I check, do you?'' Sean
asked.

``Of course not.'' I said. ``It was hard to believe for us as well.''

He took a piece of intelligent paper out of his pocket and opened it. I
could see the rather explicite picture, it showed. In other terms: it was
porn. There is of course nothing wrong with it, in fact, I prefered the
relaxed British and European stance towards it over the often paranoid fear
my homeland had about it. He navigated away from the beautiful lady to a
site with only symbols. His eyes widened in shock. He tried other pages from
his bookmarks, neither of which seemed to work. ``Okay, is that a hack going
on\textinterrobang{} Am I on hidden camera\textinterrobang{}''

``No, it is what we said.'' I explained. ``Try anything: Ads, roadsigns,
government annoucements, a chat with your loved ones, anything out there
which requires communication by anything else than body language or
expressive dancing. It will fail.''

He stared at me for a second, then took out his phone and dialed a number,
which he apparently knew by heart. I heard him talk to someone. Or attempt
to. He failed to be understood. After two or three exchanges like that, he 
threw the phone away and started to cry. I stood there dumbfounded. I was
not sure how to react to a crying man. I averted my glance and looked 
through my pockets for a handkerchief. I gave one to him when I found it. 
``We're now on the other side of the change, the advantage of this is that 
we have been touched by the divine. It might have a purpose we don't 
understand but it is an experience only few have. It is sad to be removed 
from whose who you love though. It still is for me as probably for everyone 
here.''

``It is a piss-poor advantage, if you ask me.'' he said angrily. 

``Well, also, the separation might only be temporary. It could very well be
that the higher spirits decide to grace those who you love with their
language. Then, you can communicate again, probably in a better way.'' I
remembered something: ``Also, for the unchanged, the Unified language is
rather easy to learn, so the separation might only last a few weeks.''

\chapter{Ohix'het'ny - Difficult things}
\paragraph{Stephen:} For several minutes, nothing happened. Then, a young
lady opened the door a bit and looked at us suspiciously. ``Ken Eschbach,''
I asked, ``is he there?'' 

She replied. ``Vi volas babili kun Ken \^{c}u? Li estas tie. Bonvolu atendi
io momentoj.'' Then she closed the door again.

She did not actually make gestures to indicate the opposite and understood
the name, so I decided to see this as a good sign. ``I guess we need to wait
here.'' I guessed. ``We can try later if nothing happens.''

``Are you sure that this is the right house?'' Martha asked with lots of
doubt in her voice. 

``I am not completely sure, if that is what you ask, but I am sure enough.''

Leonie turned to Martha: ``Don't make him feel guilty. I actually didn't
even expect to get that far.''

Martha chose not to comment on that, so we waited a few long minutes in
uncomfortable silence. I still was not sure that the whole enterprise made
good sense. However, what other chance did we actually have? What else could
we do? Could we do anything? Was it a good idea to stay away from the
authorities or should I have walked into the nearest police station, accuse
my mother of exactly what she did to us and let them attempt to figure out
what I meant? Susanne's argument about fearing the technology to be abused
was not a good one. Of course tech could be abused, but this could hardly be
a reason to exploit it yourself. Of course she might have thought that it
was a nice exploit to show others the danger of this technology, but then,
it might have been good for those who want to make sure that someone does
not talk, say a mafioso or a NSA agent, to hear about the availability of 
this method. And this stunt of course proved its effectiveness beyond all
doubt. Of course, Susanne could have her way and propagate the change, but
what would that actually mean? It would mean that millions of people are no
longer able to participate in the world around then. The people on our side
of the change would lack the means to do business, to communicate, to chat
up nice ladies, and to learn things Susanne did not translate. It would also
not allow people to fully appreciate the works of culture, though that
actually might even be something good. I imagied a Unified class actually
reading all literary Unified texts which exist and still have much free time
in the schoolyear. He had to admit that this would be one advantage of the
change.

Just when I was in these weird thoughts, the door was opened by Ken.
``Saluton. Kial vi iris \^{c}i tien? Kaj kiu estas la inoj?'' He said in a
quick and slightly nervous tone.

``You have to speak Unified with me. We need to talk. About my mother.'' I
explained. 

He sighed. ``Come in.''

We all went into his living room where the TV was showing something which
looked like a soap opera to me. Ken turned to the woman who opened the door
earlier for us and now sat on a couch, engrossed into the action. ``\^{C}u
vi povas iri dormejon por televidi?''

She turned around, apparently surprised. ``\^{C}u? Kial? Ho, jes.'' she then
left the room with unclear destination, but not before giving us all an
angry look.

``So, tell me what's up? What is so important that you interrupt the soap
opera of my girlfriend?'' He was impatient.

``The issue is that Susanne got her final revenge on us. And by us, I mean
everyone who attended her funeral. We all are unable to speak and understand
any other language than the Unified one.''

``Listen... if this is all a big joke you are going to pull on me...'' he
seemed angry.

I shook my head. ``It isn't. These two ladies never heard of Unified before
and now they are unable to use anything else. I am telling the truth.'' I
realized something. ``I forgot to introduce them: Martha, Leonie, two
sisters of Susanne.''

``\^{C}u vi perdas vian sa\^{g}on?'' he whsipered. 

I knew that he had a reason to be afraid, but this was not why I was here.
Thus I had to try to calm him down without raising suspicion of the women.
``I am not joking, I am not telling lies, this is nothing which relates to
anything in the past between us.''

Leonie continued: ``This is also no hallucination, dream or drug trip.''

Martha looked at Ken who was skeptically looking at me. She explained: ``I
have no idea what happened between you earlier, and to be honest, I could
only care less if I tried very hard! We are currently in a pretty crappy
situation and need assistance.''

He looked somewhat unconviced about the entire situation. ``Well, you have
to agree that this is hard to believe, don't you?''

I nodded. ``Maybe I can help to convince you.'' I took a piece of
intelligent paper out of my pocket. ``Here are more than one hundred names
and their phone numbers. Call at random. If any of these people answers the
phone in another language than Unified, you won, then we are liars. If not,
then believe us, please.''

He studied the list of numbers, then took out his phone and called a number.
He exchanged a few words with the person on the other side, something about
having called the wrong number and then hung up. He scrolled through the
list and tried again. After that, he did something with his phone before
trying again. I had no idea what he did, but after this and another call, he
eventually seemed to be convinced. ``Okay, you win. What exactly happened?
And how on earth did that happen? And why do you come to me of all people?'' 

``That are three questions, so let me attempt to answer them in order. What
happened is that during one of the weird chants during the funeral service
for Susanne we all felt paralyzed. When we could move again, we no longer
understood or could speak any language other than Unified. How this happened
is not quite sure. It probably has something to do with the music or the
symbol or both. And we came to you because you are the only one who can
speak the language of this country and Unified. Thus, I thought, you could
help us to stay in touch with the real world. Many people are stranded in a
foreign country, like me, and even those who are from here are afraid to
return to their families. We all are in Soton without any idea on what to
do.''

``Well, some of you are in Portsmouth with no idea on what to do.'' he
quipped.

``Point.'' I admitted.

Leonie said: ``Is there any news on what was in her will? We thought that
this might be something which could prove important to decide on how to go
on.''

He looked scared for a moment but then immediately controlled his expression
again. ``You have not heard the news? She was murdered. The police are
searching for the murderer and until that, not a single currency subunit
gets distributed.''

I cursed. ``So, this is why the police came to my hotel room this morning, I 
guess. They probably wanted to ask questions about that.''

He made a nervous gesture. ``So. What did you say?''

I tried to remain calm as well, to prevent to be completely unrelated to the
entire situation: ``I said that I didn't understand a word of what they were
saying and since this was after the change, I said it in Unified. They had
no idea what I tried to tell them, as you can guess.''

He grinned. ``I can. So, they learned nothing?''

``They indeed didn't. It must have triggered all kinds of suspicious
behavior indicators though.''

``Well, the change will become public soon, I guess.'' said Ken.

Martha shook her head. ``Not if the majority of the group has its way. They
think that Susanne's ideas have precedence and she was afraid of being found
out by the authorities. In her texts, she seemed to highlight the idea that
the Unified should become a significant minority before actually revealing
themselves.''

Leonie nodded. ``And some people here believe that she has a certain status
because she was the first to be touched by the divine, so they take what she
says very seriously.''

Martha explained: ``They think that the change of language was caued by
something beyond the world we life in. They call that the higher spirits. I
am not too sure what to think of this.''

``These people want to muddle through without knowing the language?'' Ken
asked, in a tine indicating that he was barely able to believe it.

``One linguist in the group apparently wants to make sure that they can
understand and speak some English. She just has to learn it herself first.''
Martha explained. 

Ken sarcastically commented: ``That sounds like an excellent plan to me.
When will you be able to say something? In six months? In one year? Later?''

I did not quite know why I defended the plan of my sister but I still did:
``She cooperates with someone who speaks the language fluently, at least
this was the last thing I heard. That way, she could get a hold on the
language much quicker.'' I paused. ``It would be easier if we found her
material on English in her house, of course, but I guess this will not
happen for quite a while.''

Ken shook his head. ``Why should she have material on English in her house?
It was a language she spoke. Well, at least somewhat.''

Leonie explained: ``Because she went through the change herself. She was 
exposed to something which triggered it in her. She had to re-learn English 
and thus she should have some material on how English works. Even though it
is probably in Esperanto instead of Unified.''

Ken looked at her as if she had gone crazy. ``Where do you have that from?
She never explained to anyone I know why she was so obsessed about the
language.''

Leonie nodded. ``That is true, but she did write it on her webpage in the
section of texts in the Unified language. She explained that she tried to
learn Esperanto first and English later after being exposed to this
change. I wonder why she didn't assume that she just had gone completely
mad. It would have improved our entire situation.''

``Remember that this probably happened after \textit{that} incident. And
there were quite a number of known incidents of abuse in the media at that
time. So I guess that she thought that as long as she can muddle through,
there is no idea to see a psychiatrist.'' Martha reminded Leonie.

``\textit{That} incident?'' I asked.

Martha made a vague gesture. ``We were supposed not to tell a soul about it.
We promised it to her.''

I raised my eyebrows. The last two words had given me a pretty good idea
what they promised to keep under the seal of silence without actually
revealing it. `So my mother was in psychiatry once, or in psychiatric
treatment. What a nice thing to keep secret of your family!' I thought
sarcastically. Just when I thought that my opinion of her had reached rock
bottom, it started digging. I wondered whether there were actually some
things, she did not fail at horribly. 

Ken interrupted the thought-filled silence: ``It was really a risky thing to
do! Not just for y'all but also for employees like me.''

``You fear that it could have changed you as well?'' I asked.

``Yeah. Of course I do. I mean, several people did comment that learning the
language was an odd process, that after a certain point, it was really easy.
People occasionally used it outside of the Madhouse among themselves because
it felt more natural. Even about things which were unrelated, like for
dicussing plans for a party. It wasn't that someone shouldn't hear it, it
just felt easier.'' Ken explained. ``It could very well have... went further
and mde us like y'all: unable to understand your native language.''

Martha seemed immediately interested: ``You are implying that it would be
very easy for us to find people who are able to translate once we have the
teaching materials she used, right? That would be inanely useful for us.''

``Well, yes, though I wouldn't recommend exposing too many people to it. We
are dealing with something really weird!'' Ken warned.

``I know, I know,'' Martha tried to ease Ken's worries, ``but that plan
would be better than Karin's: use of the change offensively.''

``What\textinterrobang{}'' Ken could not believe his ears.

``Her plan is to make the changed a sizeable minority.'' Leonie explained.
``She is trying to get the set of perceptions that changed us and probably
will make sure that it is spread far and wide.''

``We should tell the police about that!'' exclaimed Ken.

``Only that no one would believe us.'' I said.

Ken nodded. ``Well, yes. And add the fact that I can't contact them because 
they sure would be interested in my... history if I did and you see the
issue.''

Martha and Leonie exchanged confused looks. Then, Leonie's expression
brightened in understanding. She whispered something to Martha, who nodded.

Martha bit on her lip, apparently thinking of something. She then turned to
Ken. ``I think it is best if you follow the news closely. As soon as the
change makes national news, contact the police from a phone booth. Best in
another part of the city. That way, they will get the information without
your... residence status becomes known.''

`Oh wow, they completely missed the point here!' I thought. Apparently, they
understood his unwillingness of getting into contact with the police as not
legally being in the country. I thought of correcting them, but decided not
to. Anything I could say, which would not get me into trouble myself, was 
just a different lie.

Ken apparently thought the same about the situation and remained quiet about
the mistake. ``That might work, yeah.'' he admitted.

A while later, we were on the way home. Fortunately, Ken insisted on driving
us, so that he could see the group and we were spared the annoying and
humiliating expressive dancing performance to get the tickets back to Soton
and of course the annoying trainride. Leonie did not seem too disappointed
to be spared buying the tickets again, though she explained that it was
easier here than on her way to Mandalaj. I would never have assumed that
this little old lady was somewhat of an adventurer, but now she told me of
her trip to Pyinmana country. I had to realize that I again had applied a
stereotype which did not fit. I again made a mental note not to
underestimate her again, just because she was old, female, small and
well-mannered. After Ken mentioned that he never expected her to do such
things, she started telling us about her trips. She had been in a lot of
places: She had been on every continent and it seemed that Pjongjango
country, Mogadi\^{s}o country, Rijado country and Jerusalemo country had
been the only places of the world she had not visited yet. When I 
mentioned that to her, she laughed and told me that she was in Rijado 
country before they went completely isolationist. 

The group was in the state of heated discussion. Ken was amazed by the fact
that Unified was used by so many people and that it was used apparently to
hurl insults at each other, among other things. The discussion seemed to be
close to escalating into violence. While I had no idea what it was about, my
self-presevation instincts told me to stay clear and get back to the hotel,
my sense of pride told me however that I could not admit that in front of
the two ladies. Even though they were both far beyond my preferred age, I
did not want to be considered a wimp by them, no matter how justified it
might be. Thus, I was very relieved when Martha asked Ken to bring them
directly to their hotel. This way, I could simply state that the Funafutio
was on the way and wait for them to get the hint.

The evening again had excellent opportunities to get drunk and watch
softporn, which did not require me to understand anything which was going
on.

\chapter{Inta'tan - Coalescence}
\paragraph{Richard Monger:} The day again was hectic. After the Greenville
person had refused to be anyhow helpful, Nguyen and me had to sift through
lots of information to find out what and probably whom he did during his
vacation nearby. Fortunately, most institutions kept records for all
transactions and had no problems with the police accessing them. During the
early years of my carreer, the problem would have been the dearth of data,
now it was the plethora of it. It was hard to find the interesting bits of
it among the typical things. It took most of the afternoon to establish some
basic facts. Most of it was that he did pretty expected things: stayed in a
posh hotel, drove in a rented car, visited museums, Stonehenge, pubs, and
famous churches. He made use of the laxer laws against alcohol and prefered
Australian beer over British brands. He was in Soton a few times, but the
tracking system there didn't work on street level yet so not much could be
found out except for the times he used the Itchen Bridge. He had a cellphone 
and organizer, but routinely left both in the hotel, both on normal days as
well as on days where we had not yet found out what he did. He called
American numbers every evening, most of which belonged to beautiful American
ladies, only barely over the age of majority. It was all well, but to find
out which parts of this were relevant, which were irrelevant and which ones
consciously set up decoys was hard. The day thus was not very eventfull and
also not very successfull. Of course, we found a lot of data, but we still
had very little clue of anything which happened.

I was happy when I was able to take a short break for a donut and a coffee.
I was confused about the amount of noise and confusion, which happened
around me. The level of noise almost matched that of an average premier
league soccer match. I found a colleague who seemed to know what was going
on, and asked her what made hell break lose here.

``You don't know?'' he asked.

``We have, like a huge number of people, who went crazy. Mostly young
people.'' explained Layla.

``That happens every day, doesn't it? If we made such a commotion here
everytime there was a new wave of crazy among the youth... I would fear for
my ears.''

``I mean, they really went mad, aggressive, angry and shouting gibberish. It
was insane. Parents called the police because they no longer could control
their children, because they no longer listened to reason.'' she explained.

``You mean, today, \textit{youths and adolscents} decided to become randomly 
aggressive?'' I asked. I did not like the fact that people who were almost
old enough to vote were still called children and that the term was expanded
to the kind of people who even were allowed to vote, but only barely. It was
one of my pet peeves since it was a manipulative use of language.

``Yeah! The entire day, we got calls. Actually: Last evening, the first one
happened, but we thought that guy was high on something.'' she replied,
blisfully ignoring what I wanted to correct.

I uttered a number of words which would have resulted in an ASBO in case
anyone below the age of majority would have listened. Of course, these rules
were pretty unenforcable and so the youth still cursed however much it
liked. ``Does this only happen here in Soton?''

She shook her head: ``It happens everywhere, from Cambodia to Canada, from
Uzbekistan to the UK, from Germany to Guatemala and from Japan to Egypt.''
I knoew that she had an unhealthy obsession with alliterations and smiled at
her use of one.

``Japan and Egypt don't even try to start with the same letter!'' I
corrected her.

``Oops, Japan to Jordan and Egypt to East Timor. I am so confused about the
situation that I even mess up these things.'' She admitted somewhat
embarrassed.

``So, how many cases did we have here in Soton?'' I wanted to know.

She mumbled something. Only after I asked her to speak up, I got the info:
ten cases.

I shrugged. ``I do see your problem with this, but isn't the panic here a 
bit much? Assuming the rates in other places are similar. A few people go 
temporarily insane every year, often triggered by downtime of their 
favorite online games. You know that type.'' 

``I do, but this is... different.'' She insisted, ``This is far too
simultaneously to happen by accident. The children are not all part of the 
same subculture.''

``Parents often don't know what their children do. This can mean very
little. Think of the case of Joerg.'' Joerg was a youth who disappeared as
it seemed first without a trace. Then it was discovered that his parents
just forgot that he had a school trip. It created quite a media outrage as
these things normally do. The parents were forced to move somewhere else,
probably they even left the country.

``You forget that these people seem to be unable to listen to reason or to
any way they are verbally addressed. It is as if they spoke a completely
different language. Not like some people who spent too much time in virtual
communities. Even people who were cut off from their community normally
still understand you. These people act to their native language as if it was
klingon.'' she explained.

I replied with only three letters: ``ARG.'' Alternate Reality Games are
games which happen partially in the real world. People play specific roles
there and interact with other players or hired people.

For the first time, I saw a glimpse of doubt in her expression. ``Maybe,
maybe not. It seems to be really worrying.'' 

``Well, yes, but blind panic gains you nothing.'' 

``So, what wuld you do? Wait?''

``First of all find out what exactly is happening here. Everything else
comes from that.''

``It might take months to do that. These people exist right now.''

``Has someone removed all police procedures and not old me of it? We do have
methods to deal with these people.''

She shook her head: ``You are too rational for your own good! Are you sure
that you are not a Vulcan? Or an AI?''

``What is it with this place and Star Trek?'' I asked with a slightly amused
tone in my voice. It was a question I often asked, always without an
adequate answer.

``Rumor goes that HR was assimilated by Trekkies. To get a job here, you
need to be a Trekkie. You are the exception, as are a few others, but you
all were just hired to prevent these rumors from springing up.'' The scary
thing was that it was even possible that the question whether one liked Star
Trek influenced hiring decisions. Of course, not a human but a webcrawler
compared what it could find on the best performing employees and then base
their hiring decisions on that. It was supposed to prevent discrimination,
which was by the various government institutions loved it, but tome it made
almost no sense. It should not matter how you spend your free time on
whether you are fit for a job.

I made a gesture of mock disgust. ``Would you really resort to Borg
tactics?''

She grinned: ``It works, nothing else matters.''

This evening, I debated with myself not to switch on the television. If the
police already freaked out, what would the media do? They already cried wolf
about much lesser things, it was their job to create a panic. They would not
pass up the chance to do so. However, the TV was one of the few things, in
my house, which actually provided distraction and entertainment. Other than
that there were a few books which I wanted to have read but not actually to
read: A few classics by well-respected authors like Rice, Orwell, Goethe and 
Funke. Also a few Twilight books of a former girlfriend, but I could not get
myself to read beyond the first few pages before wishing the author
Stephenie Meyer was never born. I eyed the books critically. They ignored
the looks, dispassionate as always. Then I switched on the TV. BBC had not
profited from the budgets cuts which the current government passed: They
showed mostly the kind of shows and movies, which were not as interesting
for the private channels to hog the broadcasting rights and cling to them
until the heat death of the universe. However, the lack of advertising made
them bearable.  

When I switched on the TV, it showed a special alert about what they called
`youth madness'. I wanted to switch the station, but then thought that I
should at least know what everyone would freak out about tomorrow. The
newscaster cited statistics of the `issue'. Even I saw the glaring holes of
the ommitted and the skewed data. If statistics was a person, not a
discipline of maths, whoever did this broadcast would be arrested for rape.
I winced, whenever something blatantly wrong was said. Then they showed the
arrest of an affected teenager. I suddenly understood why they were so
concerned about the situation. This person didn't appear to  be your average
drunk, angry teenager, there was an expression of sheer panic in his face.
His voice trembled during the arrest, but it was clear that it could not be
more scared if he was just sentenced to die. ``Xe'aru'ta ojyu! Demna'het'xe
mi'leji! Visko'iln xe! Sidekhir'iln xe!'' he shouted.

I wondered where this broadcast was recorded. To me this language sounded
like something an immigrant from the Eastern block would use to hurl insults
at me. The statistics-molesting announcer explained that it was recorded in
Germany. That information confused me. I had dealt with a share of Germans
in the country. The Schengenization of Europe made the national borders less
and less relevant and thus quite a number of Germans came to Soton every
year. This person sounded nothing like a German. Of course, Germany was in
the EU as well, so Eastern Europeans settled there as well, maybe even more
than here, but the sounds still were somewhat... too weird. I decided to
stop worrying about that. Given the fact that these people showed that they
were unable to handle primary school maths, failing primary school geography
seemed very likely to me. I changed the channel and let an action movie
capture my attention. 

On the next morning, the newspapers had discovered the `epidemic' as it now
was called, completely ignoring medical terms. They all had no idea what it
was, didn't even have a clear idea of ho9w it manifests, but considered it 
harmful nontheless. To me, it was still hysteria. They couldn't even agree
on the kind of symptoms, which formed part of this madness, which meant that
statistics could not be compared between areas with different definitions, a
fact which the media happily ignored and mashed statistics of various places 
together. I sighed and navigated to other sites.

\paragraph{Karin:} I felt a twinge of guilt about the things I did, but
tried to concentrate on the positive things. It would bring many people to
the change. It was so easy to get the video onto the various video sharing
sites. After the actual change, Mark and I inserted a plea to spread the
video to friends as well as a short guide on how to do it under various
systems. Before the video which triggered the change, a short explanation of
it was written in the Unified writing. If anyone wanted to watch this video
a second time, they would see an explanation of the change and the
objective. 

Some people of the group didn't like the idea for a number of reasons. Some
still adhered to their old religions, some doubted that mother's calls to
form a minority were divinely inspired, some just thought it was too early
for such a decisive action. These people would always say that. Even after
one month, even after one year, even after ten years. The others at least
had reasons and not a simple emotion as argument, which meant they could be
reached. The eternally hesitating ones, probably were a lost cause. The
discussion was eventually won by those on my side, but it was not a win, I
felt proud of. It was too close to a schisma so early on. For some reason,
the idea of a schisma sounded revolting to me. It was not something which
made me feel as if it was divinely acceptable. 

The next day not very eventful. There was still the bad mood around from the
recent occurance. On the bright side, Shirley found a dictionary in Unified
and the language of this place. Even though our grammar still was very far
off, this meant we had a chance to get a meaning across to a certain point.
Of course, this would be worse than the translation of certain websites, but
to have people explain where the toilet was, it hopefully sufficed. The
dictionary was clearly made for people who had to do various nefarious
purposes. It had words for many things, which I couldn't see the reason for
otherwise. When I discussed that with Mark, he understood it completely
diferent: He said that this indicates that Susanne predicts persecution and
attacks. Thus many words of that to explain to police and other institutions
what happened. I had to admit that it made more sense than my initial idea,
but it scared me. 

What we did however was to learn. And a few computer enthusiasts tried to
set up a system of communication not reliant on being near each other. I had
no idea how it worked, but they seemed to be fully aware of what they were
doing. I found it amazing that they found their way back to it so quickly,
but then, programming had become more and more graphical, so there probably
was no reason why not. 

\paragraph{Stephen:} I understood the situation of the group only when I
asked around. It turned out that my glorious sister not only found the code,
which was responsible but also spread it on that very evening. It was very
unresponsible of her. And I had to admit that it made me really angry. I
barely resistedthe temptation to go to Karin and beat the everliving bad
place at the end of life out of her. Only the fact that the support she had
in her group would mean that people would beat me up first was what kept me
from doing it. I was not the kind of person who risks getting his backside
kicked not only by a girl but also by the younger sister. During my
childhood, this might have happened but not now. Actually, I was not fond of
having my ass kicked by anyone. Call me a coward, but that beats being a
vegetable or a corpse. When Shirley found the dictionary in the hindmost
corner of the homepage, I felt suspicious. It was a far too convenient time
to find this to distract and appease those who were against the spreading of
the change. It could have been completely made up and we'd only realize it
far too late. I decided to test the dictionary. It was a simple thing to do.
I translated words from the dictionary and asked by showing the symbols. It
was not easy to find the right terms. Often, a word seemed to have several
translations. `Probably to explain why I won't be understood' I thought
cynically. It would made excellent sense if you were in need for an excuse.
But then I realized that this kind of system would have taken too much time
to create. 

Thus, I found myself showing a clerk in a fashion store the word `necesejo?'
on a piece of intelligent paper and monitoring her reaction. I tried not to
make it show how horribly nervous this made me. She reacted surprised, but 
then created some runes on the intelligent paper which I could not hope to 
decypher from my position. When she handed it back to me, she drew a map of 
the store and a line between two points, one apparently my position. I felt
relieved when I realized that, very relieved. Then I reminded myself that
the last test was not done et and tried to follow the line. The first
attempt led me the the section of the store selling hats. I cursed, fully
aware that no one would be able to eavesdrop. Only then I reallized that I
might simply have misinterpreted the drawing, or it might have been
inadequate. I went back to a place where I felt a bit unsure the first time,
I chose my direction and chose differently. This time, I found the symbol
of a woman and a man. Realizing only now how nervous I had really been and
how much weight and worry had been lifted from me, I decided to visit the
location. Being there, I suddenly had to think of the fact that protagonists
in books and movies never visited the toilet except for purposes which had
nothing to do with using it. This realization made me chuckle because it
meant that despite everything which happened to me, I could not be a
character in a movie or a book.

A few additional tests succeeded and I returned to the place, the group met.
I told others that the dictionary really seemed to be usable. Even some of
those on my side thought that I was a bit or more than just a bit paranoid.
Yes, Karin was my sister, but that does not mean that I felt that I could
still trust her after her complete and utter change after converting to the
fictional religion of my mother. She seemed to have become a completely
diferent person after the change. I mentioned this to Martha and she nodded.
Then, she thoughtfully added something which would keep my mind busy the
entire day: ``It can very well be that we all are changed in more areas than
just the language we use.''

After she said that, I wondered how I could be sure to be myself. How could
I be sure not to have changed? Most of the people who knew me were not here
and even if they were, they would not understand me anymore. If they went
through the change themselves, their own perception however might have been
skewed in one way or the other. It was a scary thought. I could not
concentrate on trying to learn the weird, unconnected letters, because the
thought kept me busy. In the evening, I confided in Martha. I told her about
the strange, unclear and worrying thoughts I had about the question on
whether I was still myself. I almost expected Martha to say that it was a
stupid thing to worry about, but to my great relief, she did not. Instead
she said: ``You are of course not the same. Physically, quite a number of
skin cells died and was replaced, mentally, you went through a crisis. Even
if the entire change was nothing but a hoax, you would no longer be the
same. Even if the change never happened, you would still change every day
and when going to bed never be quite the same person who got up in the
morning. Every time you make an experience, you change, every time you
breathe, you allow new molecules into your body or release those which were
part of you into the world around you. Identity is mostly smoke and mirrors
for those, who do not want to accept the changing nature of the world around
them.'' She paused.

``What do you mean?''

``That it is a fiction. A useful fiction, but it is something which has to
be assigned by someone because it does not arise from the physical
circumstances. You are only the same person because you have the feeling of
identity. This feeling is something which makes sense to assign, but it does
not actually make sense.''

I still was confused. ``You are saying that there is no way to be the same
person over any course of time?''

``I indeed do. Let me demonstrate it. Think of a childhood memory please.''
She paused. I thought of a moment in school when I beat someone up for
trying to beat me up as if I was a weak nerd. I smiled because after this
incident, no one treated me like a failure anymore. Martha continued
speaking: ``Almost no atom of you was a part of you when this incident
happened. You probably no longer have the same ideals, surely learned a lot
and your character probably changed more than just a little. But you are
still the same person, even though this is by nothing else than decree.''

``This is a... strange... way to think of it.''

She nodded. ``It is. I don't like philosophy very much and so I normally try
to find the most pragmatic ways to look at situations. If I wouldn't there'd
be no way out of questions like: How can I be sure that I was not scanned
and uploaded into a simulation which is exactly the same as the physical
world within the time I spoke this sentence? This way, I can say: As long as
I see no difference, there is none.''

I looked at her in a strange way. ``This makes sense, I guess. At least it
is a way to see the world, I can agree with.''

``Great! Then the philosophy courses, I had to attend are not fully in
vain.'' Upon seeing my perplexed expression, she explained that she had to
learn philosophy to teach ethics when there was a dearth of teachers in that
subject. She did not like it, but managed to stray off the curriculum enough
to debate current ethical issues with the pupils and voice opinions, which
were far off the mainstream just to react the shocked faces of them. 

\chapter{Linux'he'ny - Freemen}
\paragraph{Liberty M\"{u}ller:} School had been a chore again. I really
despised the boring teachers and their annoying classes. Not that I disliked
learning, but I hated the insistance that things had to be like this and not
like that and the only stated reason was `because I said this and I can
force you to write the school rules 90 times with your own hands, legibly'.
I liked learning about things which were not taught in school though.
Encryption had been an interest of mine since quite a time, but when I made
the mistake to ask my maths teacher about something I did not understand in
relation to an algorithm, he reacted as if I called his mother a whore. It
was seriously uncute. Mum always laughed when I told her about such
incidents, saying that I acted my name. She seemed to be proud of this kind
of `incidents' though she never would have admitted it.

While I was walking home, I heard my Instant Messenger beep. I keep logged
in even at times, when I really should not be online, not only in classes 
(where I muted it and kept it out of the view of the teachers), but also
when I was riding my bicycle, or practising music. To the consternation of 
my parents, I also left it on and with me during so-called quality time with 
the family. I checked the device and saw that a friend, Sarah sent a message
containing just a link. I first thought that it was spam, but it must have
been sent by her client since it was signed by her. The link was to one of
these weird video sites, which most people still loved, but I often felt a
slight contempt to. Most of the videos were just so long and always left me
with the impression that it would have sufficed just to write down the gist
of them and let me read it. While reading was considered uncool by most of
those of my age, I liked it because it was a fast way to convey information.
I also did not like the fact that these sites could not be accessed while
walking since that was the time, I needed distraction most. But at these
times, I had to look at the road ahead of me. Thus, all I sent back was
`later, am walking home!'

``Liberty, where have you been again?'' asked my father angrily as soon as I 
entered the door. Since he lost his job and had to become a househusband,
his behavior worsened and his alcohol consumption increased. At least he
seemed to be sober right now.

I also answered in an annoyed tone: ``Where should I have been? I came from 
the Marie Curie Sekund\"{a}rschule just after my classes ended. If you want
me to skip the last class, do tell!''

``You have six classes on Fridays.'' Dad shouted angrily, pointing to my
schedule on the wall.

``I indeed do, if nothing is rescheduled, which happens like every second
day. However, today is Thursday, not Friday and despite the rescheduling
which indeed did happen, I had classes until now.'' I pointed to the 8
classes of Thursday on the schedule. In earlier times, he would have made a
joke about the entire situation and be done with it. Now, he saw every
correction as an attack against himself.

``Don't think you can be so smart all of the time. If you insist on being a
smartass, you will die lonely. You know that, eh?''

I rolled my eyes. ``I do, Dad.'' I did not tell him that I prefered that to
living together with a chauvinist, semi-retarded person, who confused the
day of the week.

``Listen, no man likes a smart woman. Those who do are deceiving themselves
and as soon as they realize that they did, they will leave you. Especially
seeing that you are not beautiful enough to compensate for that.'' 

The comments of my father used to sting, but they had become just another
routine for me. ``Yes, father. In other news: the earth is in the shape of a 
donut, the pensions are safe and Leverkusen will become German champion.'' 
The last words were intended to be bitter for him, being a steadfast Bayer 
Leverkusen fan.

``You will see who has the last laugh.'' He said in a way which I perceived
as threatening the first few times. Now, I only felt like a video game
character stuck on the first level of a boring game. 

``I'm in my room. Homework, stuff, you know.''

Dad grabbed my arm. ``Not today, my dearest. You have heard about the
teenager insanity epidemy? I want to keep an eye on you!''

I rolled my eyes again. ``These people probably went insane because they
thought the Lalahouse is a better place than their controlling parents.''
The term `Lalahouse' was a local term for the psychiatry. I did not believe
in this mental illness which the media talked about day and night during the
last days. To me, it sounded like a cunning plan to control youths even
more.

To my surprise, Dad's expression changed suddenly. The generic expression of
anger, which I had seen far too often since he was fired was replaced by
what seemed like genuine worry. ``Do me the favor and stay here. I don't
want to worry about you the entire time.''

I tried to calm myself down a bit as well. ``Dad, you let me go to school
without insisting on coming with me. You also let me walk home even though
traffic accidents injured more people than the number of people who went
`insane'.''

He nodded. ``I was going mad while waiting for you. I thought you would go
insane, attack people, scream, be committed to \textit{that place}. I don't
want to worry now.''

``What do you want to do? Follow me to school? Onto the toilet? And how
long? Until I am eighteen? Twenty? Sixty?'' I taunted him.

He seemed hurt. ``Why are you always like that?''

I gave him the most honest answer I could say without using the words `you
fail at life': ``Because the things which you seem to care about are
ridiculous to me and the things I care about are apparently as ridiculous to 
you. We just aren't compatible and either we finally try to make steps
towards each other, or we call off the charade and accept that we live in
the same house but not together.''

``So, let's start caring about each other.'' he said, taking the only thing
out of my speech which he wanted to hear.

``Not right now. I have not made my homework yet. If I'd make it in the
living room, the TV would distract me.'' Now I passed the ball to him. He
spent so much time in front of the idiot box, that I wondered whether he was
able to spend time on his own. Thus, I challenged him by bringing his
interest in my mental health and his desire for the TV into conflict. If he
would actually decide to let the thing switched off, I wouldn't have minded
so much spending time with him.

I could imagine the bits in his brain moving, while he seemed to think about
how to answer least bad. ``Okay, do the homework first. You can come
here later.''

I was disappointed a little bit. A small part of me had still hoped. ``Okay,
I'll go into my room and mad.'' I stated slightly sarcastically.

I was happy when the door to my room closed. The room was tiny, but that
did not matter in the least. It was confined space where I could do the
things I wanted to (within certain limits of course). It was the place where
no one would comment on the fact that I read the wrong books, listened to
the wrong music or wore the wrong clothes. (My comment on the latter often
was that if humanity had spent all the effort they spent finding ways to
drape cloth on their bodies on something worthwhile, we'd have colonies on
Mars by now.) It was the place where my parents normally not entered. If
only because I nicked their key to my room and hid it in mine. 

I dropped onto bed. Only then I remembered the link I was sent, took my IM
and opened said link in it. I decided to nap either after or while watching
the thing, depending on how boring it was. My first impression after
starting it was that I would be able to fall asleep earlier. There was
nothing to see but text in a weird alphabet I didn't know. It worried me not
to know the alphabet. I normally could identify about every alphabet out
there on the 'net. This however looked like some weird symbols which were in
the private use area of Unicode. I suspected that they were introduced to
test the font rendering of Greenware OSes and that someone forgot to remove
them from the release fonts. I never heard of anyone using this alphabet in
real life, but I had to admit, it did not look that bad. 

When the text disappeared, a strange graphic was shown and weird music
played. I waited for something to appear. Pretty much anything was okay. I
decided to wait through the ordeal in case that suddenly a pig would fly by
or the graphic fall down and reveal something incredibly embarrassing, 
something in that order of magnitude. However nothing happened. I started to
fear something: My friend linked me to this for no other reason than the
music. While I normally tolerated all kind of music, they all were annoying
to me when I was exhausted from school. I just wanted to have some peace and
quiet right now. After being forced to deal with all the things others
wanted from me, hae some time doing what I wanted, even if that was taking a
nap. There was nothing wrong with that. I realized that my eyes fell shut.

The next thing I remember was waking up again. Apparently, I missed nothing
but a seemingly endless repetition of a few syllables in combination with
weird music, which reminded me of the microtonal music, we had to suffer
through in music class. With the only exception that this music was not
created by synthesizers, but by what seemed to be a real flute of some kind.
It was not completely uninteresting, but I would have prefered to read about
this music than to hear about it. Then, the music ended. The text which was
displayed now was readable. This did not help it since it was horribly 
new-agey.

I put the thing away, seeing that there would most likely not be any flying
pigs or major misfortunes. I turned around and closed my eyes. 

The stupid phone started ringing just as I fell asleep again. I pondered
ignoring it, but the annoying thing just kept and kept on ringing. I
answered it just to shut it up. ``What d'you want?''

The voice on the phone was that of Sarah, but she sounded panicked:
``Liberty, I fucked up, and by that I mean, big time!''

``Heh, calm down, Sarah, just tell me what happened!''

``I was sent this link, stating it causes hallucinations, loaded it, watched
that weird chant and that nearly dark screen, no idea what happened then,
but suddenly things looked pretty weird to me. Text like gibberish, music
pretty fucked up, so I thought this was working and sent it to fuckloads of
people, including you.''

``Yes? So what?''

``It does not stop. It apparently is not supposed to. I need you to help me!
Nothing makes sense anymore.'' she sounded as if she was on the brink to
screaming incoherently. 

``Calm down, Sarah, k? You probably smoked something definitely uncute.''

``For fuck's sake! I told you that I quit! Why don't you believe me?''

If she was not a friend, I would have said `because you are like a bumerang:
always returning'. Instead, I changed the topic. ``So? You are clean,
reasonably sure that no one put something into your food or drink and
sober?''

``Fuck, yeah!'' she shouted. ``Sober as a ref!''

``Have you slept sufficiently? Lack of sleep can make you hallucinate pretty
well. LAN party syndrome, you know.''

She snorted: ``I slept this night some. It has to suffice.''

``I'd come over, but Dad has been pretty bizarre lately.''

``Tell me, is everything okay for you? Or has this thing fucked you up as
well?''

``I have not noticed a thing, but then, I tried to sleep.'' I hinted very
unsubtely.

``Check whether you can listen to your music and still understand it.
Seriously. Do it now!''

``Ya, will. Really Soon.'' I murmured sleepily.

``Fuck, I know that you spend the nights with your Asian lover, but still
try to do this now!''

I felt the urge to hurl a few colored metaphors to her. ``He's not Asian,
he's in the middle east, and you know this.''

``Same difference! How could you fall for someone who works in Jerusalemo
country of all places as development aid worker?''

``When I met him, he still lived here. In Duseldorfo, even, which is
not that far away. But, yeah, I will listen to some music, nap and call you
back.''

``Call back before you are away and dreaming of him.''

``Meh'' I said, defeatedly and hung up. I considered just falling asleep,
but I could not help worrying whether her hallucinations had anything to it.
She liked to alter her consciousness, but she never lied to me about her
consumption habits. If it was really a video, and a boring one like that she
linked, which made her hallucinate, then it was something powerful and it
might have affected me. I let my IM play a random song with a simple
gesture. Then, I covered myself with a blanket and closed my eyes. The
music, which started playing was a simple song with a catchy melody and
lyrics about copulation, making it not only not allowed inside of the walls
of a school, but also shared exactly there by pupils of every age. I could
not resist humming the melody. When the lyrics started, I suddenly felt
scared. These were not the lyrics, I remembered. Actually, I did not
remember the lyrics, but these were seemingly random syllables, which did
not make any sense. It was pretty weird, almost trippy. The music was
unchanged, but it still was like listening to a completely different song.
I checked my IM to see whether someone uploaded a tame version of the song
to it during school. Suddenly, a shiver ran down my spine. The IM showed no
real text, only unreadable characters, unicode soup.

I should have been worried, but I was too much of a geek for that. I
remembered seeing these characters already, but I had no idea where. I
started the unicode map from the preferred applications menu. I used this
program far too much, though I tried to keep my interest in it secret from
others. My friends thought already that my interest in cryptography was
weird (but useful), but that I was interested in alphabets and writing
systems was nothing they had to know. People are remarkably intolerant, even
if they themselves are not quite mainstream. Of course, the program showed
only unicode soup. I scrolled down through the long series of weird
characters. I noticed that apparently only the base character was changed
but the diacritic forms were derived regularly. `Weird', I thought, but to
have a theory of what was going on gave me confidence. 

Scrolling down further revealed the foreign characters in their usual form.
This made sense to me. It would cause too much effort to mess up all areas
for a hacker. Just messing up the Latin alphabet would mess up the system
well enough for most of the world's population. It would mean that the
destruction/effort quotient would be highest. I stopped idly scrolling
through the list and went back, I thought that I had seen something there,
which was not right. I found it a few pages earlier in, what I thought must
be the first private use area. The system showed readable letters there. I
breathed in. I could not quite understand what I saw there right in front of
my own eyes. The letters were right, they belonged into exactly this place
in this font (the private use area was highly dependant on the font which
was used). The letters were simultaneously very wrong, because I had a
feeling that they were known, that they had specific ways to pronounce them,
that they belonged to three different series, even though they were only
lines to me a short time earlier.

I cursed. Something was definitely off here. I called Sarah. She answered
the call immediately. ``Who's there?''

``It's Liberty. I think you're right, something is definitely off here, big
time! I thought someone mapped the fonts on my IM differently, but that was
not the issue. I found readable letters, but they were in the private use
area of the unicode table.''

``Now, now, speak the language of this country.'' she interrupted me.

``I think we both don't anymore. This song about sex was only gibberish to
me, though I recognized the melody.''

``Fucking shit!'' she commented eloquently.

``'xactly that, even though I would have chosen other words.'' I said, then
explained to her what exactly I found out in laymen terms. After that I had
to repeat the explanation in complete idiot terms because she still did not
understand. 

She commented by another expression which afternoon television would bleep
out. ``Are you serious here? I mean, completely serious?''

``I am. If I wanted to tell something outrageous to you just as a lie, I
would have waited for a better occasion.''

``True. What do you plan to do now?''

I stepped to her level of language usage: ``Fuck me if I know!''

\chapter{Slani - [Expletive Deleted]}
\paragraph{Richard Monger:} I wrote several letters to the media correcting
the most blatant statistical errors in their reports. I had to do it to keep
my sanity and not completely destroy the image of my employer. The media of
course blissfully ignored it and continued the same errors again and again,
but they printed my letters to the editor. Maybe someone would read them and
see how distorted the facts were. 

I thought of nothing bad when the boss walked in on me wading through
intercorrelations, which had the chance of delivering important information
about how Stephen Greenville spent his time in Soton. Mr. Baron had an
unamused expression in his face, but I expected this. I had not really much
to show in terms of results. I would have expected at least some financial
transactions leading me to a conclusion, but this person insisted on doing
his monetary transactions in cash as it seemed and never in suspicious
amounts given his standard of life. 

``Richard, I heard that you wrote letters for the editor to the `Sun', the
`Mirror' and various television stations concerning the epidemy of
insanity?'' He asked without bothering to greet.

``Good morning. I indeed did that. It's still legal when you only use
publically available sources, isn't it?'' I replied.

``It is still legal, but it can bring you in all kinds of trouble. And now
guess why I am here.''

``To tell me to stop writing because it is against the official line of the
police which does not exist?'' I guessed.

``Even worse. The government is setting up an investigation group about the
issue and they're interested in your assistence.''

``What\textinterrobang{} Do they really think that I have some information 
they lack even though I just looked at official sources?''

``Apparently, yes. Or they just think that you have common sense. I have
heard that is severely lacking on certain levels of government.''

I made a vague gesture. ``Maybe. What'll happen to this case? I thought it
was more or less prioritized.''

``That is even higher prioritized, so Nguyen and Mirza will have to muddle
through.'' He simply stated.

I cursed under my breath. ``I suspect, that I have to be in London by
tomorrow?''

``Something like that, yeah. Yesterday would be good, last week would be
better.''

I grimaced at his pathetic attempt at humor. ``Most excellent. That's three
hours trainride in one direction.'' I owned a car, but did not plan to drive
into London. They tried almost everything to deal against the traffic in the
city and while it still was congested and full of traffic jams, those from
outside the city had to pay an arm and a leg to get into it. 

``You'll move to London for the time being. In a hotel or something. They
have already taken care of that. Just pack your stuff and be there.'' He
sent me the relevant data over (not without disproportionate amount of
struggling with the technology). 

I was irritated on the way to London. There was no good reason why I should
be there. There were however a lot of reasons why me and not Mirza should be
in Soton trying to find out who killed that Greenville Lady. I bit my lower
lip. I knew that it was a bad habit, but under pressure, I tended to do
weird things. To me, it seemed as if someone pulled a few strings to make
sure that he would not be found out. And what should I do instead? Deal with
the delusions of a few journalists and parents? I had problems believing
this. The entire situation sounded ridiculous. If this happened in a book, I
would have strongly suggested that the author should stop smoking, ingesting
or injecting substances, which would land him or her in jail for more than
one period of legislature, that he should stay away from the
doubleplusungood stuff. Of course, the ways of the Lord and the government
are unknowable for mere men. I rememberred a lot of government decisions,
which made no sense on first glance, continued to make no sense on second
glance and stayed that way until they were replaced by an even worse law or
regulation. There were times when anything coming from `them' in London and
Brussels should be the cause of unannounced tests. I just was not sure
whether the drug habits or the IQ should be tested. On the other hand, if 
they needed a contact to the police, they probably would want someone who
showed interest in the affair and the supposedly common sense.

The hotel, I checked in was part of a chain. The exactly kind of hotel
existed in Soton, Paris, Rome and a lot of places, I would rather be at.
London has showed its lack of charme all too overtly. During the trainride,
the dusk and heavy rain started. The city itself appeared crowded and loud.
The underground was designed in times when obesity rates were lower and
stairs were not considered a chore. With a suitcase with lots of various
stuff, this was different. I cursed myself for not taking a cab. I was
almost happy when I could fall into a foreign, somewhat hard bed. I had no
idea what kind of excrements tomorrow would throw into the direction of
electrical fans, but I could attempt to make sure said fans would be
switched off. 

On the next morning, I walked to the grey, nondescript building nearby. I
showed the receptionist, an lady who seemed to be older than the European
Union the invitation, my boss handed to me. She asked me for a proof of
identity and I showed her my passport. She seemed to be satisfied with that
and typed something into a technical appliance of some sort. Only a short
while later, a person in an expensive suit appeared via a door, I had not
noticed earlier. He greeted me: ``Mister Monger, I am happy to meet you. My
name is Ray Sily. Like the insult but spelled with only one 'l'.''. 

We shook hands. ``Nice to meet you, Mr Sily.'' I said, feeling slightly
awkward about the name.

``You are the first of the team. Let me show you the area where you will
work.''

I nodded. ``That would be advantageous.'' I realized how much like a bad
reference to a film that sounded, but only after I said it. 

``Follow me please.'' He said and then opened the door by putting his finger
onto a sensor. The sound of that door reminded me of Star Trek, but I made
sure not to mention that in order not to be considered a total dork. On the
way through a maze of little twisted hallways, all like, Mr. Sily started to
do the usual small talk. I never was too good at that discipline, so I had
to concentrate not to make any more stupid mistakes. 

Eventually, we arrived in a big office with a big, round table in the middle 
and a number of desks with various pieces of technology, not all known to
me. He asked me to sit down and sat down on next to me, turning directly
towards me. His body language changed. He was ready to stop exchanging mere
words but to talk business. ``You might wonder why we invited you into our
team.'' He paused as if he was not sure himself before continuing. ``The
reason I wanted you to be in this team which examines the new form of
juvenile madness is not easy to explain in two sentences. It is mainly
because we need a perspective of human behavior, which is not blurred by
decades of reading about child psychology, which tell you how a person
should work but does not. I also need someone who can parse statistics
correctly. Even on professional level, people often do not realize how they
are being lied to by statistics, espcially if said statistics come from
sources which cannot be classified as neutral. The third reason is that you 
know quite a bit of communicating risks.''

I was surprised at all of these reasons. ``I am flattered by this
assessment. I am not sure what you mean by the last statement however.''

``You are able to convey the right message about how likely things are. I
have noticed that earlier already. You have quite a history in critizicing
the priorities of newspapers, right?''

I nodded sheepishly. ``I can't resist doing this whenever my temper gets the
better of me. It beats random acts of aggression or alcoholism.''

He smiles slightly. ``Surely. It is a good thing to have an opinion and be
able to voice it.''

I changed the topic: ``Who are the other people in this team?''

He started listing a number of names, none of which I recognized, every
single one with academic titles of some form or another. I felt as if I was
in the wrong movie. This person had listed a few reasons why I should have
been there, but I could not actually believe that thee reasons were the
whole truth. If he would have said that he wanted me away from my pen and
paper to compose letters to the editor, or something like that, I would have
had someformof understanding for it. But only calling me off an interesting
case because of common sense sounded odd.

``Sir, I know none of these people. As you might know, I am a policeman, not
a university professor.''

``Sorry, they are specialists in the area of medicine, sociology,
psychology and psychiatry.''

``I feel completely out of my depth from just hearing this.'' I said
slightly embarrassed.

``No one has encountered such a phenomenon before, so they will be as well.''
he said. I guess he wanted to give me courage but it backfired. I did no
longer feel like among a group of chemnist, but like a group o chemnist
discussing an artifact from 500 years into the future.

I did not know what to answer and instead uttered a grunt to indicate that I
paid attention and understood.

A while later, the others arrived and talked among each other. I felt
excluded, because when I was asked why I was among the team, I explained
what I did until the day earlier. This always made people lose interest
immediately. I observed the group of about a dozen grey-haired men and women
from an uninvolved position and tried to ignore how uncomfortable they made
me feel. They interacted with professional interest and were all eager to
find something to prove their favorite hypothesis. Most of what they talked
about apart from the smalltalk could have very well been in a foreign
language.

Mister Sily started the official part of he meeting at exactly nin o'clock.
He held a wordy introduction on the cases. Most of it was just repeating
that these people suddenly panicked, apparently out of the blue and refused
to speak English or any other language apart from the gibberish they
spouted in agitated voices. I noticed that no one of the people in the group
were linguists, but I kept quiet about that. When he ended the presentation
which dealt mostly with the spread of it in the UK and world wide. He spent
a disproportionate amount of time on talking about the lack of any pattern
to the spreading. I tried not to zone out while he talked about the classes
of people who were or were not affected disproportionately. It might matter
to these people but to me the difference between some of the classes was
minimal at best. 

Eventually, the presentation ended and an open discussion emerged. I again
tried very hard not to zone out as the sociologists were having a field day
examining the data from several angles. I wondered why I was invited at all
instead I diminished amount of the available coffee quite a bit, doodled
into my notebook and thought of the Greenville case. After, what felt like
ages and probably only was one or two hours, I decided to raise my hand and
ask a question myself. ``I notice that this group does not contain any
linguists, but I wanted to just be sure about something. Excuse me if this
question is stupid but are these people able to understand each other
mutually?''

I heard people fall silent while others gave me a look they would give to
the mentally impaired. Mr. Sily looked as if I asked him for the color of
the sky while outside. Then he stated: ``I cannot imagine that these people
can understand each other given the situation.''

I nodded and then proceeded to ask new: ``This means it was not tested
yet?''

Mr. Sily nodded. ``I can't imagine any benefit to this.''

``We often work from assumptions. We often don't realize that we do it and
how bad they are but we do and occasionally, they get in the way. Just
because we think certain things are impossible, it does not mean that they
are. The idea that we are seeing the curse of Babel being reversed might be
insane, but it is not stranger than some of the hypotheses I have heard
today. The measures some of you are considering to find the cause will
pobably cost millions of quids. Just putting two of these people into one
cell and see if they communicate is at least not expensive and might clear
things up a bit.''

Mr. Sily seemed to ponder this for a few seconds. ``Maybe you are right
about this being a hidden assumption. I will relay this idea to the nearest
correction facility for implementation.'' I had to restrain myself from
rolling my eyes when he used the politically correct term instead of calling
it a prison like everyone else would do. It was one of the things I hated
about political correctness: the assumption that things would change if the
terms for them were replaced, the idea that a prison would stop being a
prison and become a magical facility of rehabilitation if called like this.
These people gave language far too much power or at least blame.
Nonetheless, I was happy that the idea was accepted.

After a short break, which I used to again make sure that I was not a
character in a movie or book by visiting the restroom, we could see the test
projected to one of the walls of the room. I was cynical enough to assume
that this was to humiliate me more if the answer whether they were able to
understand each other was no. The picture into the cell was that of a
surveillance camera on the ceiling. It was strategically located to keep
almost everything in the cell in its visible area. The cell had two beds, 
one of them occupied by a girl, or rather, a young, blonde lady. According 
to the information, which Mr. Sily provided, she was only a short while 
before the age of majority. She was not sleeping but fidgetting and
murmuring something to herself. The person, who was led into the room was of 
the same age but looked frail and her short, black hair was a mess.

The guard opened the door and said: "Hera, this is your new cellmate
Harmony." The blonde person looked up and pointed to the black-haired girl
with the neohippy parents, then in vague gesture around herself and tilted
her head. The guard ignored her attempt at communication, shoved the
hippydaughter into the room and closed the door. Both people eyed each other
critically. I realized that I again bit on my lip an tried to stop this bad
habit again. The blonde said something in a somewhat hoarse tone, but with
an inflection indicating she did not actually care: ``Hejida. Xe'enu Hera.
Il su?''

Immediately the facial expression of the other person changed to an
expression of utter surprise. ``Su il'oki'hadada xe? Xe'ma'ta 'asavleji
jilih!''

The blonde reacted in a shock. ``Ve. Xe'hadada il ji il'la'hadada xe. Il'aru
hej mje'he ,mi'hadada xe, jilih. Xe'la'ut 'lelej.''

The other girl nodded. ``Xe'la'va jilih aji. Xe'la'asavleji ,xe'la'vasu
vkemi al, het. Kiu, xe'enu Harmony.'' 

The blonde girl got up and answered: ``Xe'la'oki'hadada jilih aji
,olsadi'he'ny'xe min'la'lija ,xe'rala'imji, het ,xe'la'najny 'va dimis
min'han, la, venil.'' 

Harmony made quick steps towards Hera. I heard a gasp, which must have been
from the room I was in, not the cell. Hera and Harmony hugged each other.
``Hanan, hanan!'' the black haired girl said repeatedly. Maybe it was only
an artifact of the compression, but I thought that I saw her cry. 

I looked around and saw the sociologists, biologists and other experts 
staring at the scene in a mixture of amazement and disbelief. I started 
smiling. ``I think this clears things up about whether they can understand
each other. It would probably be advantageous to have linguists in our team
as well.''

Mr Sily stopped focussing on the screen and looked at me. ``It is an
important discovery, you have made here, Mr. Monger. You revolutionarized
our understanding of this phenomenon in the first sentence you uttered to
the group. This should clear your doubts on whether you belong into this
team.''

I felt as if I blushed. From one of the scientists, I heard a muffled
curse.

\chapter{Han'xen - Let's go}
\paragraph{Liberty M\"{u}ller:} I climbed out of the window. realizing that
I had gained quite a bit of height and weight compared to the time I did
this for the last time. Only due to lots of luck the branch of the apple
tree near my window did not break. I cursed myself for the entire time while
I clumsily moved onwards to sturdier parts of it. Why had I been stupid
enough to do this? I tried not to look downwards, but I knew that a fall
from this height might suffice for a broken limb or two. I tried not to
notice the pain in my hands caused by the bark of the tree or that in my
arms from trying to hold myself. After what seemed to be like ages, but
probably was less than one minute, my legs found a branch to stand on. I
sighed in relief. 

Only a short while later, I was able to climb down the tree and then jump
down. I almost lost my balance when reaching the ground and hoped the loud
noise would not distract my father from watching his television show. My
hands hurt. I cursed when I saw a drop of blood running down the thumb of my
left hand, then realized that not only I lived but also that I lived
dangerously as long as I was not away from my parents' house because Dad
might still listen or Mum return from work. I hurried through side streets
to the bus stop. I could only see the back of the bus when I arrived there.
I sighed, remembering the long wait between two busses. I estimated that it
would be easier to walk to Little \.{I}stanbul. Sarah and her weird family 
were not from that country but immigrated from Harareo country. However they 
live as minority among a minority for no other reason than the low rent and
the opportunities to work. 

I probably did not explain her family correctly when I just described them
as weird, but they were even if not in a bad way. Sarah's mother came to
Harareo country to work for a bank in the capital. The big, international 
chain which was bought by another, even bigger, international chain had been 
one of the few to actually do business down there. Sarah worked for this
bigger chain in some kind of IT position and originally came down there to 
help with the rollout of a new software system, but met Sarah's father and 
decided to stay there with him. After a number of years and a new economic 
crisis in that place, the bank closed its doors and the family returned to 
her home country, a land which they were supposed to feel at home in despite 
either having prefered a random 3rd world country over it or never having
been there. 

The pure description of the history of the family can't fully explain the
weirdness though. Sarah's father works as musician and the music he
participates in sounds like nothing I ever heard before. They all hold
rather unconventional viewpoints on many issues. You might talk about
something which occurred on the way to Little Turkey and suddenly find
yourself in a discussion on why driver's licenses should exist. When Sarah
started doing drugs, their reaction was to inform her about the medical and
possible legal consequences which might occur (not without explaining her
that they opposed them being illegal) and left the choice up to her.
Apparently it worked since she never did the really bad stuff and stopped
doing the not-quite-good stuff as well (quite in contrast to some of my
classmates). Also, while many people are broke only a short while after the
first, only very few are because they buy most of the things they need for
the entire month on the first out of a deep-seated but completely irrational
fear of sudden doubling of prices and rationing.

I felt rather insecure when ringing the doorbell, but there would be no way
that I'd climb the three storys upwards to Sarah's window. What if her
parents used the intercom instead of her. They would see it as a hoax if I
was lucky or as a reason not to open the door if I was unlucky. Sarah's
father would see it as an insult to his heritage if I was really, really
unlucky. The intercom started crackling and humming. Then I heard a voice,
at least I hoped so. The quality of the intercom had always been bad and
only decreased over time. ``Lib-Dem?'' asked the voice. I had no idea who
that was, but recognized the nickname I was teased with by the entire
family.

``Exactly her!'' I shouted.

The door hummed. I opened it, took the lift to the third floor and then went
to the flat Sarah's family resided in. Sarah waited for me at the door.
``Hey Lib-Dem!''

``Hi Palin!'' I quipped back. The Va\^{s}ingtono country vice-presidential
candidate was about the complete and utter opposite of her. Discovering her
was one of the few good things about history classes.

We went into her tiny room, in which little more than her books and her
bed had space. After she closed the door, she tried to force herself to say 
something. ``Liberty, if I knowingly and willingly screwed up, would that be
bad?''

I imagined a lot of things she could have done, then asked:``What have you 
done, Sarah?''

``You know that I use the computer in the living room... Well, I maybe
should have shut it down or navigated away before going into my room to call
you. The noise I made apparently caused my mother to check what I watched.
With expected results.''

I cursed, relieved that I did not have to watch my language here. ``You mean
that she...''

Sarah interrupted: ``And Dad.''

``I think there is a word for this kind of situation in the dictionary, and it 
is not `good'.''

``Feel free to say it, no one can understand us anyways here.''

I grimced at that. Of course she was right in the current state, but it was a 
clich\'{e}ed phrase since she always said it when I paraphrased a curse.
``I wouldn't be so sure that the video didn't reach any neighbors. By the
way, where are your parents now?''

``In the city. They didn't believe me when I told them what you told me.''

``Most excellent!'' I stated sarcastically. 

``Yeah. What the fuck do you think we should do now?'' she said. 

I noticed how angry she still was about the entire situation. I was as well, 
but mostly confused. `People don't easily forget their native language, do
they?' I thought, for what seemed like the tenthousandth time. ``What have
you done so far?''

``Beside panicking?'' she asked.

``Yeah! That's implied!''

``Prepared dinner.'' She seemed to notice my critical looks. ``Look, cooking
kinda calms me down, also this means that you can have dinner with us as soon
as my family returns.''

``Didn't mean it like that. It's just a tad unproductive, ya know.''

``It produced a meal.'' she shrugged.

I grinned at her comment. ``I tried to think a bit on the way here. I mean
more than `Oh higher spirit, we're fucked!'. Have you tried to get onto the
'net?''

``Well, sure. Not really easy if you can't enter a simple address, though.''

``Don't despair, I know unicode.'' I said, fully aware that I was refering
to a comic she did not even know existed. I explained her what unicode was
and how it worked. To my great satisfaction, she did not immediately brand
me an irredeemable nerd. She waited until I finished explaining until doing
so, but with a grin on her face that showed that she did not mean to insult
me. 

The operating system, the family computer used was the same which my school 
used: a crappy, overpriced operating system from a competitor to the crappy,
overpriced operating systems Verdvaro produced, thus I started my pad and
opened the character map at the right position. Sarah was amazed to see the
letters: ``Wow, how did you make them readable?''

``They are some weird characters, which are in a certain area of unicode
which is used for nonstandardized uses. It is only that we now do assign
something to them, apparently to the point of reading them fluently.''

``Wow! That's fucking amazing! How did you find that out?''

``I wish to be able to say that I was just that amazing, but it was nothing
but a lot of luck!'' I admitted with a slight grin. 

``Whatever works!'' she said, grinning as well. It looked a bit forced by
her as if she used it as a mask to hide her real emotions.

``Now, let's look what the `net has to say when we feed it with a few search
terms.'' I suggested and opened a browser. ``What should we search for?'' to
my shame, I never was good with coming up with search terms and for the
current situation, I was drawing a complete and utter blank.

``You are not going crazy.'' Sarah suggested. 

``You think that it is a form of crazyness which afflicts us?'' I asked
while typing the search terms into the search field of the browser. I hit
Enter and held my breath until the results appeared. Only then I realized
what I did told myself to calm down `for the sake of all that is cute and
cuddly'. Various sites appeared. Mostly threads in internet forums. A few
clicks revealed that we were not the only ones who had these issues. Many
people convinced themselves that they had not lost their mind. The sentence
was used verbatim several times. We tried a few other terms. Terms like
`What happens here is' or `this is what we should do' yielded results but
not many and none which were applicable for our situation and provided any
insight. 

Suddenly, the door was opened and Sarah's parents came into the house. They
looked as if either someone tested a new method of traceless torture on them
or as if they had been completely and utterly humiliated. They greeted me
and I answered the greeting a bit nervously. I felt as if I was caught
following one of my obsessions by one of the idiots in school, who made sure
that my life was hell just because they could. Sarah made a gesture towards
me which I did not understand. For her, this was nothing but a reason to do
it again, only more intensive. ``What are you doing?'' I asked after I was
afraid that she'd damage her hand if continuing.

``Lib-Dem, can you maybe leave for a while, I need time with my parents.''

I felt dumbfounded for not having gotten that hint and excused myself. The
restroom of the family was not really impressive, but I had to visit this
location anyways, so I went there and locked the door. sitting on the
`throne' I realized that I should have brought my system with me to try a
few additional queries. I had nothing to write things down, but maybe for
once my memory would not disappoint me.

Of course it did. As soon as I was on my computer again, I only remembered
half of the ideas I had and about a tenth of the good ideas which sprung up.
I tried to calm myself by the thought that one of the other ones very likely
would have led somewhere. It was however Sarah, who had a better idea. ``We
should search for something which the others have not thought of yet,
something completely weird. Like, I don't know, `I never thought the answer
would be this lame'. Something like that.''

I typed the suggestion into the search field. Immmediately a short list of 
results were shown. One of the links caught my attention immediately: It had
an URL with was partly readable. I clicked it. The page which was loaded
surprised me. From the first glance, it looked like one of these stories on
the erotic fiction archives, which don't give a damn on how their formatting
looks like. I glanced over it and noticed the distinctive lack of romance in
it, let alone sex. `Liberty, you have to stop having a mind as dirty as
this, immediately.' I tried to read the page. As the first page already
revealed, it was a work of fiction. I cursed. ``It's fiction!'' I told Sarah
and her family. 

``Fuck!'' commented Sarah. Then she saw something. ``There's a link to the
index page. Click that. At least it will tell us who writes such a long
story in that language.''

I did as she said. I gasped at what I saw. It seemed as if this person did
nothin else with her life to write in this language. Also, and more
disturbingly, it seemed as if she considered this language a constructed 
language. I knew  some constructed languages from the private use area of
unicode, but it didn't sound good. I told the group what the page contained.
from fiction and political manifests to texts about biology, chemistry the
last link led to a guide to a city. It looked so out of place that I had to
click it. 

``Have you ever been to Londono country, Lib?'' asked Sarah who peered onto
the screen as well. 

``Not yet.'' I admitted.

``There is a travel guide to Soton, a city in south Londono country on this 
page. I think that we all should go there. It might be the only place where we 
can get answers. Whoever worked on whatever changed us lives there.'' She
explained to her parents. 

They asked for the computer which I gave them. I watched them both reading
the site. Sarah's mother eventually nodded: ``I will so get fired for this,
but I will get fired anyways now that I can't speak to anyone anymore. I'd
say we should go!''

``What about my parents? What will they say?'' I wanted to know.

``They will worry very much about you, sure. Do you see any way to contact
them? Or contact the school?'' commented Sarah's father.

``No, I don't. Except for sending them the video.'' I made clear by my
inflection that I did not consider this a good idea. Or a mediocre idea. Or
an idea at all.

``Good, it's decided then?'' Sarah asked.

``I guess so.'' I grinned slightly. ``Though my parents will move heaven and
hell to get hold of me. They think that they have to protect me from this
teenager insanity.''

``It is too late for that. You are aware of that?'' asked Sarah's mother.

I wanted to object, but I realized that it was true. This must have been the
change others experienced. It was described as aggression and madness, but
this could very well be caused by the fact that they were panicked and tried
to make themselves understood. I saw how badly Sarah freaked out, and could
exptrapolate what those without someone to listen would do. These freaked
out kids were probably only a part of those affected. Even though most would
probably not react like this and seek hospitals or their parents' help. And
as the various forums showed, some searched the encouragment and support of 
their internet pals more than anything real life could offer them. Nothing
bad with that of course. I suddenly realized that I could have easily
avoided the change if I only heard of my father and did my homework
downstairs with them. My father had no idea what the change was, but if I
listened to him, I would still have able to understand the language of this
country. Instead I was completely and utterly screwed over by a stupid
ridiculou link I was sent. I suddenly felt very close to crying or
screaming, or maybe doing both simultaneously. ``I should have brought my
plushie.'' I said. I realized how ridiculous this must have sounded to
others, but I never had been away from home without my plush devil or in
earlier years, my plush teddy. The devil only bacem a replacement when the
teddy (who was named Teddy) was too old and too frail to be cuddled. On
certain parts of his body he had holes, which had proven to be unfixable.
Thus the plush devil named Chucks had been under the Christmas tree a few
years ago and even though it was be considered a joke and that I was too old
for it, he became my new favorite plushie.

``We can't actually come and take her, can we?'' Sarah pondered. I once
again felt happy and slighty confused about how accepting they were towards
such childish things.

``It would bring us into all kinds of trouble.'' Sarah's father stated.

I grimaced. ``Sure. I can't actually climb back into my room again, get him
and leave. Am not crazy enough for that!''

Sarah nodded: ``Would be best, but first we all should eat something.''

We had dinner. You would expect that the dinner was something exotic, seeing
that the entire family was from Hararo country, but this was not the case,
instead we had noodles with a tomato sauce. This was like the most typical
food you could have here (even though it originated from the south). We
discussed during dinner how to get to the city. We carefully left out what
we would do when we would reach the city, but it was in the far future.

After dinner, we washed the dishes, then we packed our stuff. And in my
case, took a trip to the nearest supermarket to buy a toothbrush. It was
weird to do that. It was really weird. I occasionally bought my ramen at an
asia shop where almost everything was written in Asian alphabets,
syllaberies, abugidas and ideographic writing systems, but there I didn't
expect to understand anything. I did expect to be able to read things at the 
local discounter. I still somehow managed to find toothbrush, get it and pay 
for it. It was a weird process though. It was not like during holidays in a
neighboring country in the west, where I still was able to decypher some
things on the similarity of the words. Everything was different, from the
words to the letters, to the alphabet which was used, over the differently
written numbers. I had no idea how much I paid for the toothbrush except
that it was not a double-digit amount of units of currency.

When I returned to Sarah and her family, they were packing bags of clothes 
into their old, pink car. They were the only ones I knew, who bought a car
based on its color. Of course, this made the car easily recognisable but I
still thought that the color was rather weird. Sarah had suggested that I 
could wear old clothes of her mother, since I only had the ones I was
wearing. I winced when I heard about that. In certain respects, I am rather 
weird and one of them is that since I started doing my own washing and
ironing, I started to dislike wearing clothes other people touched, let
alone wore. It was just icky to me. I resolved to wear the clothes I had on 
my body until they'd start to smell badly, probably even longer. 

Before we left, we conidered leaving our computers and phones behind in order
not to be tracked. I was very steadfastly against this idea: Without my
computer, I'd feel almost naked. Also, it would probably make no difference
since the police could easily find out where we were unless we refused to
use the car and instead used the train and paid the tickets in cash and took
the cash we needed from a place which was not near the station. For a while,
this was considered. It would not be easy to get tickets, changing trains
would be a royal pain in the lower back, and the face recognition systems in
the train and the terminal for the Eurotunnel might still be able to find
us. Eventually, that plan was binned, we got into the Pinkmobile (as it was
called by the family) and were on the way to Soton.

\chapter{Tani'het - the country}
\paragraph{Karin:} I tried to follow the spread of the video, but it was
difficult. People re-uploaded it, sent it via instant messengers or by mail.
People watched it on the same computer. I could read the stories on the
various forums, which people could still access. It was amazing how many
people logged in automatically to the internet forums they frequented or
even visited only occasionally. It might have been bad from a security
viewpoint, but it became the only way for these people to post on forums
which required a login. I started frequenting various of these forums, then
I had an idea: I saw how certain forums locked and deleted the Unified
threads which came into existance there, so I had the idea of creating a
forum, which would be entirely in unified and offer support for the Unified
worldwide. I had no idea how such things would be done, but I knew someone
who could help.

``Interesting idea! It'll surely be possible, but probably not exactly
easy.'' Mark said after listening to the idea, most of the other computer
enthusiasts were currently trying to make a decentral communication system
based on, from what I understood, cleverly combining applications, which had
parts of the functionality. Mark had to admit that much of what they
discussed now went over his head so he dropped out. He did however set up an
internet forum already. 

I was surprised how easily he clicked the basic functionality together. The
hard part was to find the file which contained the texts and hack together a
translation. The dictionary helped but it was still hard. In the language of
this country, one word often does not suffice to convey meaning. Instead, we
had to try to look for several words occasionally, not to forget that the
different translations we would get otherwise often had no relation to each
other. It was strange how many different meaning the people of this land put
into one single word. When we translated something, we tested its effect on
the forum. quite often, the translation made no sense in context, because we
thought it belonged to a completely different position. Eventually, it was
possible to register, login and post messages. That was all we needed. We
started spreading the link on various internet pages, especially the video
sites where we uploaded the video. Only then we realized that the forum had
only its default name in the unreadable alphabet. Mark had the idea to call
it `The Virtual Unified Nation' and I liked this idea. Currently, this forum 
had two subforums: `Serious Things' and `Enjoyable things'. Now, Mark also
included a third forum: `National things'. I inwardly groaned about the pun,
but did not voice my opinion. It was his domain, where the forum was hosted.
Instead, I asked something different: ``Do you see this really as a
nation?''

``I think that the Unified will become a nation. These people all awere
removed from the places they belonged to, not physically but socially. They
probably will see themselves as one people.''

``I never saw it like this.'' I admitted.

``It makes sense though. These people have no real place in society anymore.
They are often seen as dangerous.''

I was shocked. ``Why are the Unified considered dangerous? The change does
not make these people more aggressive, it just changes their language.''

``Well, you reacted pretty emotional as well to being changed and you had
the group around you. Others suddenly felt themselves unable to move, later
to read and to understand the language around them without anyone who
understood. I think you can understand why they reacted by freaking out a
tad. Can't you?''

``Well, but this should not be a condition which declares them to be
dangerous. It is a phase.'' I defended myself and my actions.

``But the mundanes don't know this. They don't understand what is happening
and the fact that they don't scares the everliving world beyond out of
them.'' Mark explained.

I felt a bit stupid for not considering this. ``Where did you get these news
from?''

``I get it from Gary, who occasionally translates something of this for us.
He seems not to like your idea all that much.''

``I guess, but it is the only way for us to become the minority my mother
spoke of. The ends occasionally do justify the means, you know?''

``I do see it. He is somewhat critical about the manifestos. He says that we
can't be sure whether they are really divinely inspired or just a part of
human imagination, Susanne's.'' He explained and shrugged.

``I know. No divine revelation can be tested for authenticy. What some
people expect from Susanne is just too much. She already left us a miracle,
what else do these people need?'' I was slightly annoyed by that.

``People seem to understand the parts of any divine text as not relevant if
it requires too much of them or makes them feel uncomfortable.'' Mark
stated. ``I was a catholic and this tendency made me uncomfortable, well,
among other things. I became a protestant and experienced the exactly same
tendency there. So, I guess it is something expected that the people start
re-interpreting Susanne's manifestos. It had to happen. Remarkable is only
that they started to do so only a short while after their discovery.''

``I guess you're right.'' I said, then realized how much we strayed
off-topic. ``Do you think Gary will continue helping the Unified,'' I
paused, ``or the unified nation if that will ever happen?''

Mark nodded: ``Money doesn't stink. He seems to dislike his job too much to
alienate the Unified. Even if he did, there would be others to fill the
gap.''

``Susanne had quite a number of people working for her, yeah.'' I suddenly
had an idea: ``Also, they say that Unified is very easy to learn, so we
might be able to find people who are interested in the unified case and
willing to support it as translators.''

``Interesting idea, Karin!''

\paragraph{Richard Monger:} I was amazed at the speed by which linguists
were added to the team. To my displeasure however, the sociologists were
also retained despite their utter uselessness. I disliked the way they tried
to see everything as a matter of class, even though this was no longer true,
especially not among the youth. What probably used to be a reliable system
in 1950 fell on the wayside when society fragmented. The advent of the
internet turned small subcultures into unconnected sets of worldwide
subcultures with different systems of values. During the entire time, I
heard the sociologists speak, none of them considered where these people
fell in terms of subculture ideology apart from a few stereotypic,
marxist-inspired comments. Hadn't these people realized that Marx was about
as deprecated as vinyl disks and telegrams? They had their ideas what should
be done all of them involved banning of various media, and when facts arose
which might have invalidated their approaches, they were very deep into
`that river in Egypt'. 

The linguists were a welcome addition. They also had a number of terms which
they used to describe the things they saw, which no unitiated could
understand, but I could sense that there was something behind these terms
(for no other reason than that I saw how they made people change their views
not due to rhetoric but by cold, hard facts). 

However, the next breakthrough came not from them, but to my shame from one
of the sociologists. She was one of the people who were for the ban on about
all kind of things youths do for fun from what I had heard on that day. The
kind of person who causes unnecessary legislation and thus unnesscsary 
workload for our constabulary. Her motives were completely transparent to me
when she asked what the people, who suddenly `turned foreign' did before the
act. 

``I think at least parts of this can be found out, but not without a 
warrant.'' I said.

She immediately perked up. ``Why do you need a warrant?''

``Because there are laws, which exist to protect the privacy of people. And
many people were outside of public spaces where it would have sufficed to
ask nicely for the data. Also, just based on the places they were before
`going foreign', they did quite a number of activities: Going to school,
pretending to work, being on the bus or other means of public transport,
sitting in the back of their parents' car, being in their room. Thus, in
quite a number of times, to get possibly available surveillance data would 
require a warrant. Sorry, civil rights can be pesky.'' I added
sarcastically.

``That can be arranged, you are aware of that?'' asked Mr. Sily.

``I am fully aware that this is possible. I am just reminding you that the
laws exist and that they do that for a very good reason.'' I said.

``You are aware that we are talking about an emergency?'' asked that
annoying sociologist.

``I am aware that a number of people lost their ability to speak the native
language for some reason. We do not know the reason, there is not yet any
indication that this `turning foreign' is an emergency. It is important, I
admit, but I doubt that it endangers the existance of the United Kingdom. I
do not want to be one of those who might be jointly respnsible for the
emergence of a new... regime by setting a example.'' I stated matter-of-factly.

``Don't worry about this, Mr. Monger. It is already being dealt with.''

``After it is being dealt with, I can actually find out what happened.'' I
explained. Normally, I would not care so much about all these procedural
issues, but this sociologist annoyed me royally. I did vote for Labor in the
last election, but the amount of Marxism these people spewed was
indigestible for me. I liked a certain amount of social equality, but I did
not like institutionalised self-deception and exactly that was what I saw
there. Even worse than that was that their neo-marxist, pro-nanny-state,
`think of the children' views were taken serious and influenced politics.
Even that would be acceptable, though not actually something I would like if
they would give us the means to do our job. Instead, the priorities for our
job were often so screwed that I had given up searching the sense behind
them. It seemed that there was almost no way to grow up in these times
without getting at least three ASBOs\footnote{AntiSocial Behaviour Order}.
It was so bad that employers stopped using them as criteria. Simultaneously,
the really important cases would not get solved. This was not why I joined
the police: I wanted to make the world safer from criminals, not get
unlucky teenagers into trouble.

It was only a short while later that I was passed a piece of intelligent
paper with a message on it. It was digitally signed by the Ministry of
Justice. I copied the message onto a trusted system and compared the
checksum. I ran a few more tests, not only to make sure that everything was
fully legally correct, but also to enjoy the angry looks of that
sociologist. I made sure to smile slightly when looking into her direction.
Only then I opened the message. I read it, gasped, then re-read it. I cursed
in surprise. This was not what I expected, far from it. I would have
expected that they would get a bureaucrat there with barely sufficient
privileges authorize actions. I didn't expect the minister of justice
himself to pretty much greenlight all kinds of actions to find the cause of
the disease as he called it. Mr. Sily noted that they had set up a system 
with access to the different police networks to get the information. 

It was not easy to crosscorrelate this amount of data. In the evening I
would read about all kinds of problems in the police network, mostly caused
by high latency and high system load on the mainframe and seriously hope not
to be the cause of it. After I started the operation, I went to get another
coffee. The sociologists would have to wait until the computer would have
finished, but to them I hoped my forced calmness would appear enraging.
Apparently, and to my great pleasure, it did. I found some... interesting
data. Apparently, most of the people visited video sites. Not these kind of
video sites, mind you. Normal sites which all kinds of people used as blog
or as soapbox or to promote about anything from operating systems to toilet
paper. Apart from that, the statistics were highly divergent. Some people
were on the site for hours, some only watched one video, which they reached
via a direct link, some followed chains of `related videos', others their
friends and again others links which they got from God knows where. There
was no kind of pattern to it, especially if you'd take into account that
million of other visitors did the same without being affected. I decided to
check what kind of videos they watched. If this meant one thing then it was
yet another wait. I leaned back and closed my eyes, giving any impression of
a person who had too much work and passed out from excessive work and
excessive demands of others. I did not have to feign tiredness. It was late
in the evening already and no one yet had thought of calling it a day yet.
While caffeine can help to a certain point, it was not a miracle drug
against tiredness or even sleep. to make things worse, I could not sleep
well in the bed in the hotel. I was slightly annoyed when the computer
beeped indicating the end of the search. I had expected to see only one or
two hits. I had not expected to see a huge list of videos. It seemed as if
there was nothing, which the people who suddenly went foreign had in common.
Except of course if the videos were different versions of one subcultural
message. I pondered just clicking one at random. I normally would consider
myself to be strong enough to resist messages of the media. This time,
however, I was not so sure about my own ability. I could not imagine that
all others had only been either willing or weak. Suddenly I had to stiffle a
laugh. Of course, it'd been a good idea to let the sociologists each try one
video. And a pretty hillarious one at that. However, I suspected that their
families might mind the loss of their breadwinners. The loss of a
significant part of the marxist, patronizing, nanny-state-supporting
propaganda might however be worth their anger and mourning. I sighed and
decided to stop dreaming about this.

The tool to download the videos without having to watch them was illegal in
more than thirty nine nations, including the European Union, which counted
as only one nation here. Nevertheless, it worked fine. Then I examined the
videos. It was a discouraging job: They all had no tags, which might give
any hint about the creator, no usable static, which could give any ideas on
where and with which device it was recorded and their sizes differed, even
though their lengths did not. This meant that the vidoes were either
different versions of the same one, just re-encoded several times or that 
they were videos of some subculture organisation with very strict corporate 
design guidelines. I sighed and told the group about my findings.

``So, you didn't look what's actually in the videos?'' asked one
sociologist after my presentation.

``No, I didn't. I had a bad feeling about them. Call it a hunch.'' I
admitted.

``And your `hunch' has made you refuse to do the work you were supposed to
do?'' that certain person asked in an icy tone.

``I have heard of my share of cases of illegal propaganda. Everything from
communists to the religious and crazy to the anti-vaccination hysteria. None
of them had quite these effects.'' I paused, unsure of how to explain
myself. ``So, well, I chickened out. Better a coward for five minutes and
mad for a lifetime.''

``Interesting approach.'' she said with dripping sarcasm.

``Feel free to watch them. I'll transfer them immediately.'' I said,
throwing the proverbial ball into her part of the field. 

For a short time, her eyes opened widely in shock, then she caught herself.
``I think I should not be doing your job.''

Mr. Sily butted in: ``I think that it is important that we know what is on
these videos. So either you should find this out yourself or let some kind
of software do it.''

I could barely resist rolling my eyes. ``I don't think that the kind of
software I would need exists! But I can find out about this.'' 

``Remember that this not your average underfunded police project. We are
funded very well by the government and after the revelations of today reach
them, this surely will not change downwards. Money is not an object, time
is.''

I nodded. ``I am aware of this. I won't cause any undue delays.'' 

I found a motion-detection pogram among a list of software, which this
government facility already licensed and used it on the videos. Then I
waited for quite a long time until all of them were processed. My first 
hypothesis was apparently correct: All movement was more or less 
simultaneously apart from the odd compression artifacts. This, of course had 
very little indication of what actually happened on screen, but confirmed my 
suspicion that something was deeply wrong with the thing. I did what I
always did when not knowing any further: got some coffee. With the nectar of 
the gods, or at least the overtime-workers next to me, I started to actually 
interpret the movement profile of one of these videos. I was no expert in
this, but the program gave me a few pointers on how to interpret its output. 

After a while, the cup of coffee was empty and I still non the wiser.
Apparently, I completely misunderstood the guide. It talked about certain
structures, and symbols without showing any example of them and that made
any guesses I could make very uncertain. I was rather sure that I got two
scene-breaks, everything else could be meadows and unicorns or violence and
gore and I would be unable to tell the difference. I cursed. I pondered
really leaving the video opened for over-eager `volunteers', but decided
that the trouble I would get in was not worth it, thus locked the screen
before going to a certain place.

When I returned, a group of people were standing around the system and
waited for me. I mentally cursed. This sounded like very bad news. ``What's 
going on?'' I asked.

``We wanted to know what you found out so far, nothing more.'' explained one
of the grey haired people.

``The videos seem to all be variants of the exactly same video.'' I
explained. ``This makes the content even more suspicious in my opinion. I'd
love to not touch at all, but I tried analyzing it.'' I shrugged.

``What do you mean?'' Another grey-haired person asked.

``This video is apparently one of the things, which made these people...
act out character. I suspect that it is at least partially responsible for
this. And the thought of this scares me. I think you can understand that.''

``Well, I think the myth that seeing certain things can drive you mad has
been falsified quite a few times. Movies like The Ring are not a depiction
of anything even close to reality. You are aware of that, aren't you?''
explained this person, whom I now vaguely remembered as biologist.

``I am aware that this is what science thinks right now, but I can show you
the statistics. A very large majority, close to ninety-six percent of the 
people who became unable to understand English here in the UK watched the 
video.'' I offered.

``Sure, sure, but how many people people watched the video without any
effect?'' He asked.

I was dumbfounded. Normally, it was me who found these errors, not made
them. ``That is something I had not thought about yet. I will collect the
data immediately.'' I think that I actually blushed.

``That would be good. If the numbers are low enough, I very well can
volunteer to watch it.'' 

A short while later, I had the data. The issue was not to get the number of
views, but to get get the amount of views from the UK. Normally, this data
would have been almost impossible to get, this time, a simple mail to the
administrator with the attached credentials (from the mail I received
earlier that day) sufficed. It even sufficed for an almost immediate reply.
It took only about two minutes until I had detailed statistics about not
only how many views were from the United Kingdom but only from where exactly
they were. The numbers of views were rather high. I would have expected a
much different geographical distribution of views. It seemed that these
videos were mostly propagated locally or at least on national level, not
internationally.

I did the math which had to be done, even though a cursory glance onto the
numbers already told me that most people who watched the video did not go
mad or foreign. I found the biologist and presented the numbers to him. 

``See, less than ten percent actually show symptoms, there is a ninety
percent plus x chance that I can watch the video and tell you what is
happening in it.'' 

I had the feeling that somthing was wrong with that statement, but I could
not think of what exactly it was. I tried to ignore my gut feeling right now
and instead changed the topic a bit. ``Talk to Mr. Sily about this. I do not
want to get into trouble if you don't make it.''

``If I will go foreign, I'll be in good company. The big problem of these
people is not the fact that their language was changed but their isolation.
This will however be only temporary. It will mean that a new community will
inevitably spring up. Maybe in the long run a new people or even a new
nation.'' He explained. ``Also, I will know what happened. This is very 
different from people who thought that they went insane.''

I again had that feeling in my gut which I could not place, the feeling that
I forgot something important. Something like putting on trousers before
leaving the house or switching on the TV before trying to watch it or
anything else which would label me as a complete and utter retard if I told
others about it. I just was not sure what exactly it was. Someone else saved
me for now by suggesting he should have his brain activity monitored while
he was watching the film. Since this would take some time to set up, I was
saved for now. Like a larger group of people, we decided to call it a day
and return to our hotel.

\chapter{Neteva'he'ny - Travellers}
\paragraph{Liberty M\"{u}ller:} The pinkmobile soon left the limits of the
city and entered onto the nearest \^{s}oseo. The lack of a speed limit on
these kind of roads meant that the travel could go quick, in theory at
least. In practise, we ended in a traffic jam almost as soon as we got onto
it. Sarah's mother, who drove the car, cursed like a sailor. Sarah's father
absent-mindedly tapped a rythm onto the plastic of the door and the
entertainment console in front of him. Sarah sighed when she saw the traffic
jam and then seeked a conversation with me. We did not actually discuss
anything of any interest, we just both could not bear the silence around us
and our own thoughts.

The pinkmobile lacked entertainment consoles which actually worked and it
also lacked any computer-aided driving capabilities. This made the entire
situation appear even more unreal as it already was. It was not only a trip
into a foreign country (even on a school day and without delievering any
statement of absence to them), it was also a trip in a scaringly deprecated
vehicle. Sarah's family did not trust computer-aided driving any little bit.
When I asked, Sarah's mother explained to me that she would not want to let
a computer do something as dangerous when she was perfectly able to do it
herself. She started telling anecdotes of computers developing horrible bugs
over the course of her time in the banking sector. Of course, she added, her
services were only required if things went pear-shaped so her view was of
course biased, but when even banks occasionally are in serious IT trouble
(she illustrated that by explaining how she once had to battle against a
crashed server and its crashed backup system to be able to transfer money
outside the limits of the chain again), who said that cars would not be?
``Especially,'' she added, ``since there are more cars than banks.''

At one point, we started playing all the kind of road games, which parents
normally do with their children to calm them down during long road trips
when an entertainment system was not an option. 

Eventually, after what subjectively seemed to be hours, the traffic jam
ended and Sarah's mother (from the talk among Sarah's parents, I figured 
out that she was called Sabine) was able to go about as fast as the 
pinkmobile could. As I found out the hard way, this was quite a high tempo. 
I felt quite uncomfortable about this because I trusted computers actually 
more than I would trust humans to handle these speeds. In an automatically 
driven car, I would have relaxed and enjoyed the view, but despite the 
rhetoric of Sabine and her husband (who was named Gideon), I was not
completely sure that humans were able to react quickly enough to safely
drive a car at this tempo. Despite the gut-wrenching speed we were going, 
the pinkmobile was routinely overtaken by other cars, automatic ones, I 
guessed. I seriously hoped that there were no people who travelled at even 
higher speeds and steered by hand. As if she sensed my unwellness, Sarah
told me that there were car races, where the maximum speed was almost twice 
as high as the one, we were going at right now and that it had human
drivers. I shuddered about this and soon, the entire family told me about
the so-called Formulo one races. Of famous drivers, famous tracks and famous 
crashes (which was not reassuring to me at all). They also told me that they 
used to be indifferent towards it, but then the various governments started
to take action against car racing (due to completely jusitifed reasons like 
the associated dangers with it) and in the weird logic of Sarah's family, 
everything the government does not like must be good. Thus they got
interested in the sport in its last season ever.

According to them, no matter how dangerous and seemingly pointless something
was people did to themselves or to people who volunteered to have it done to
them, it should be allowed. People might appear to be stupid creatures, but
according to their point of view, even the seemingly most retarded of them
were geniuses in so far that they could assess what was best for them and
which decisions so take in their lives. I was not even sure how to comment
on that. We all have met people who would be going to waste their lives if
they had the chance to decide what exactly they would do with it, like my
father who was at this time probably in from of his TV, watching news or
soap operas.

The journey became uneventful after a while. I even got as used to the
tempo as possible. Sarah's mother seemed to know quite much of the way and
suddenly we found ourself on the \^{s}oseo of the neighboring Bruselo
country. Or probably, I should say sub-country of the E\v{u}ropa Unio. The
borders had been open between the two countries for a longer time than I was
born. The border, most of the time was a simple political fiction which was
even more unreal than most of them are. Most of the important political
decisions for Berlino country were made in this one since it was the place
where the EU had its capital. The major difference between the two countries
were the languages spoken there. Berlino country had one national language
while Bruselo country had at least two. Maybe enough people would be changed
to make that three in the near future. 

This made me think of the Unified language again and its political 
consequences. I had read of languages which were designed to faciliate the 
communication between the people of all nations and that their goals had
failed so far. What would the consequences be of a method of communication,
which aggressively like unified would become a world language? I would
assume that science would suffer unless someone translated every little bit
of scientific knowledge into the new language and made sure that the 
translations were failthful. Businesses would have to re-negotiate their 
contracts since on both sides no one would be able to understand what it was 
exactly which they signed anymore. Lawsuits would become a \textit{very} 
interesting affair. I could imagine lawyers, judges and attorneys being 
suddenly forced to learn the old languages of the their respective
countries. Or maybe, the change would mean that such things were
reconstructed from scratch. Maybe instead of the old tax laws, new ones
would be constructed from scratch. It could only help their readability. The
fact that old literature would be something completely and utterly alien was
not a thing I feared. I liked the idea of not having to read Goethe,
Schiller and H\"{o}lderlin anymore. Yes, it would mean that schools would
have to find another inspiration for names than the old writers of 
sleep-inducing (in the best case) or anger-inducing (in the worst case)
texts. But no longer being able to read my favorite texts on writing systems
of the world and their representation into unicode would annoy me. There
were also the mundane issues. The fact that all electronic devices lack a
Unified language version. New technology would very quickly be translated,
but there is a saying in computing that nothing is as long-living as a
temporary solution. It would be very interesting to see whether people would
translate these kinds of hacks, replace them with better solutions or just
live with it for the time being. 

``What are you thinking about, Liberty?'' asked Sarah. 

``Not much. The Unified language and what would happen if the entire world
would be changed.'' I replied.

``It is an interesting thought, isn't it? I also thought about this a bit.
It would mean that the human civilisation as a whole would have the
once-in-a-lifetime chance to re-invent itself. Think of things like
ideological texts. They all will suddenly be deprecated like a steam-powered
car on a modern \^{s}oseo. Humans will have the chance to look at things in
a new way without being blinded by ideologies.''

``This would mean that you would have to read the communist manifesto to
become a communist. I doubt this very much. Most communists have not read it
but know communism more by word of mouth than by actual careful study. Islam
will have a serious issue. Their qur'an will be only little more than a
series of incoherant squiggles to them.''

``So will the bible be. And the other religious texts.''

``For most of the christians, a translation of the bible is just as fine as
the real thing. They have no language requirement like the Muslims do. You
can imagine how interesting it will be if the number of arabic-speakers
suddenly drops from whatever its amount is now to 0.''

``Ouch! I see where you are going to. That would lead to quite a number of
horribly embarrassed imans and muftis.'' said Sarah, grinningly.

Gideon commented: ``I think that they will find a way to deal with this.
Translations are not explicitely forbidden and thus I guess that many people
will ahve the divine revelation that the Unified translation of the qur'an
is just as valid.''

Sarah's mother could not leave this unchallenged: ``Some sects will still
try to re-learn it. I have read somewhere that the Sufis think that it is 
better to just look at the Arabic caligraphic writing of the qur'an without
understanding it than reading any translation of it.''

``So we'd get another split-up?'' asked Sarah.

Gideon agreed: ``Every religion will probably get them if there are several
translations of the holy texts or if certain concepts don't translate well
into Unified.''

``Sounds like lots of bloodshed, civil wars and other horrors.'' Sarah
commented.

``Well, that is one of the challenges. I just hope that there will be areas
of atheists, agnostics and apatheists who have peace, tolerance and
prosperity while the zealots of all kinds will smash their heads in.'' I
stated cynically.

``That repository of texts had also spiritual ones, so I would guess that
there would not be a dearth of choice for the spiritually inclined.'' I knew
that no one in the car was religious, so I felt safe uttering my own atheist
beliefs about the matter.

``Talking about it, Lib, have you linked people to it?'' asked Sabine.

``Not yet. I thought I could do it during the car ride but I forgot to do
so.'' I confessed, slightly ashamed.

``No problem, but maybe do so now.'' Sarah's mother commented.

``I am not really a member of many online communities. I think Sarah is `on'
for social reasons much more than I am.''

Sarah said: ``Might be, give me the link and I will relay it was well.''

I transferred the link from my system to her deprecated one, which had about
the same color as the pinkmobile. Then, we both started navigating to the
places we knew and looked whether there were readable threads. On one of the
language-forums, I belonged to, I found one immediately. It was probably one 
of the most active ones in the forum history, given the four-digit amount of
replies. I chuckled when I saw many posts in other languages interspresed in
it. I was sure quite a number of people would be wondering what language
this was, discuss hypotheses and come to their own conclusions. I posted the
link with a description of what it contained. Only less than one minute
later, I saw that the first poster had replied and thanked for the
information. The next forum, I logged in automatically was a, well, not so
repectable place of the internet. Or in other words, it was a forum which
was about a very specific kind of stories and pictures. It was a forum about
a science fiction book, I liked and its related fandom material. Fanfiction,
discussions about which of the characters was cuter (I stayed clear of these
threads), discussions about other aspects of the story and its universe (in
those, I participated frequently) and lots of other fan-created material. In
one of its subforums a thread with the headline `What the fuck is happening
to me?' existed and got a surprisingly high amount of views and posts
compared to other posts in that forum. I copied my message there but edited
it before submitting so that even the average denien of that fotum could
understand it. Some of them had the hard-earned reputation of being so dumb
as the night is dark. They were barely teenagers who just really, really
liked the cool starships. It was almost depressing that the book had this
kind of audience. I then ran out of places I could post it to. Sarah of
course didn't. She posted on all the countless brightly-colored social sites
she belonged to. Sites which had no other purpose than the contact between
humans. Sites, which I hated for exactly that reason. 

As I feared, one of the dumb people also posted there in Unified. I
immediately recognized him by his avatar: a strange, dancing ostrich. I
groaned when I saw his comments, but I had to admit that he made as much
sense as the others did: he was not trollish and too lewd to be allowed
outside in the presence of minors but honestly scared. I could imagine why
very well. He had no one to talk to in the so-called real life, his only
contact into the world was copying and pasting letters from a video site, of
course he was scared, panicked and thinking that he would go insane. Who
would not be? I decided to tell him and the others of my trip to Soton. The
forum immediately argued about the risks and benefits of the endeavour.
Others immediately suggested a forum-meeting in Soton. Uniksisto82 (he
mentioned his nick in his posting) commented that posting by `Now I see why 
the change happened: to make this forum eventually meet in real life.' 

I laughed out loud about this. If I would have had the space, I would have
rolled on the floor while laughing. Sarah joined in after being told about
this. She knew of our problems to have a forum-meeting. The forum was very
international, thus we never could agree on a place. It would be pretty
hillarious if the change would mean that I would meet the `usual suspects'
from there in real life. Sarah's communities reacted similarly
enthusiatically about the idea of getting to Soton. Not only because of the
chance to find something out about the change but also because it would get
them into contact with others who were changed. Many people were alone,
barely able to make it through the days in front of them. The idea to get to
Soton did not only offer knowledge, but and mostly the chance to find others
like them. Soon, people discussed how to book flights, to board trains and
to hitchhike to Soton.

A while later, we stopped at a gas station to get fuel and a map. Sabine had
to admit that we went further than she knew from her various trips to Pariso
country. She managed to return in a surprisingly short time, even though she
said that she even had been in the restroom. She explained that the people
from Bruselo country were used to people who did not understand their
language. A while later, Sabine had found out how to find Kalezo though I
was not sure on how she did it so quickly. She herself just explained that
she found it since `it is near Dovero'. Sarah immiediately asked how she
found Dovero and she explained that `it is easy to find since it is near
Kalezo'. After that we both decided not to ask any further. I assumed that
she just found the cities based on their location compared to each other.
Since it was already rather dark, Sabine and her husband changed places.
Gideon would drive and Sabine would look at the map to tell him where to go.

Before we left, we let Sabine explain to us where exactly the restrooms were 
and then followed her description. When we returned, we could not find the 
pinkmobile because it was dark, which turned the pinkmobile into nothing but 
an ordinary vehicle. Its vibrant color was about the same grey as the other 
grey, white, blue and red cars around us. I started to feel anxious when I 
realized that I was in a foreign country, unable to speak its languages and 
without anything but the clothes on my body. When we thought that we had 
found it, we saw that a man was standing on the side of the driver and 
arguing with him or her using wild gestures and a subdued voice. When we 
came nearer, we heard him speak: ``Please, I am sure that there is a way. 
I pay for the gas, if that is the issue, but reconsider the situation, 
please.’’ He sounded very desperate. If the driver would have asked him to 
repeat the entire litany on his knees, he would probably have kneeled down 
and done so even if he knew that a dog had relieved himself just there. Only 
after thinking that, I realized that I was able to understand him. I saw two 
ways how this could happen and both sounded very good to me. We approached 
the man and caught a glimpse of the driver. I took a breath in relief when I 
saw Sabine there. The man noticed us. ``Are you her... family?’’ he said
with hope and fear in his voice.

``Yes, we are.’’ answered Gideon for us with suspicion.

``Can you maybe make room for another passenger? I am pretty much stranded 
here and need to get to Pariso country.’’

``This depends on whether Sarah and Liberty are able to make room for
someone else.’’ He said and looked at us. I was sure that Sarah was able to 
decipher the look as if it was already plaintext, for me however, it was 
better encrypted than messages of intelligence agencies. Thus, I kept quiet 
and let Sarah answer first. Sarah grimaced. ``Might work. As long as you, 
well, keep your hands to yourself.’’

``Of course, of course! Don’t worry about that.’’ He was eager to say. ``I 
would never do such things to people, especially not to those who helped 
me in need.’’

Sarah and Gideon looked at me expectantly. I shrugged: ``I guess it should 
work, seeing that it probably isn’t tat long until we reach the border.’’

``Great!’’ he shouted. 

The pinkmobile was rather cramped with five passengers, but it was not 
unbearably bad. Soon we were on the way to Kalezo again. During the drive, 
the hitchhiker told us that he was called Pierre, that he was from Pariso 
and wanted to return to his family. He had been on the way back there but 
he lost the group he was travelling with. He did not understand when he 
should have been back after the pause and apparently, the time he took was 
too long. His coach did not wait for him and his mobile phone suddenly 
malfunctioned so he could not call.

I asked whether he saw any videos on the bus or during the pause. 

He nodded. ``Someone linked me to a video of some weird form of chant and I 
watched it on the bus. Why do you ask?’’

``I think you have a bigger issue than just losing your group.’’ I said, 
then explained to him what happened to us all. Of course he did not believe 
it. I would not have believed it myself if I was in his shoes. We tried to 
explain the situation to him repeatedly. Then Gideon asked whether he was 
able to read anything in the roadhouse. He shook his head. ``I thought I 
would but I couldn’t and the employees were unable to understand a word of 
my native language. I thought Bruselo country used the same one, at least 
in parts of it, but there seemed to be exactly zero people who have heard 
of the native language of Pariso country.’’

``Not the native language of the Ndebeloj of Harareo country?’’ Gideon
asked. ``Because to me it sounds like that and talking to you feels as 
if using my native language.’’

``What\textinterrobang{}’’ He looked as if he suddenly and completely 
unexpectedly found himself on the moon. ``But... why\textinterrobang{}’’

I tried explaining him the situation: ``I told you that we all lost the 
ability to speak our native language. But we all understand each other. 
It doesn’t matter whether we are from Berlino country, from Harareo 
country or from Pariso country. We are on the way to Soton in Londono 
country to find out what happened to us, who seeded the videos, why they 
did it and how we can re-gain compatibility with the rest of the world.’’

``You’re completely and utterly honest about that?’’ he asked.

``Completely and utterly so. I am not telling anything but the complete 
truth.’’ I emphasized. ``I would wish too that this was a big joke.’’

He seemed to slowly believe it. We tried to convince him be showing him 
the forums, we used to seed the messages in. And checked the replies while 
we were at it, of course. The replies were pretty much the expected ones. 
A number of people argued on how to get to Soton. In some of the forums of 
Sarah, this even got its own thread. Then we reached the French border.

\chapter{Uljija – for any reason}
\paragraph{Richard Monger:} The night had been short, or long, depending on 
whether you count the time I had been asleep or awake. The bed in the hotel 
still felt like a method of torture, devised by insidious government agents 
who wanted us to function and not to be awake enough to ask any questions 
which did not relate to the problem they hired us for. The breakfast was not 
bad, but I would have preferred a coffee and a cigarette at home over being 
there and eating real food. And that despite having given up smoking years
ago. I pondered phoning Nguyen, but thought that I did not want to put him 
under too much pressure or inform the wrong people that I still cared.

I suddenly realized very harshly that I had no one who waited for me at
home. I felt overwhelmed by a feeling of sadness and self-pity. I wanted
someone to share my life with but it never worked out and at some point, I
gave up, threw in the towel, burried myself in work, anesthetized myself
with TV and alcohol and told myself and everyone who would listen that I was
single and contend. Maybe eventually I would even believe it. I sighed. 
Burrying in work sounded promising again and it sure beat the alternatives. 

The conference room was already crowded when I arrived. Mr. Sily greeted me
in a friendly manner, but his eyes and face spoke another message. I
seriously considered telling him in no uncertain terms where to go, but 
decided not to. `Eagles may soar but weasels don't get sucked into jet 
engines' or something like that. The mood in the room was tense and
excitement was so present that it was almost tangible. Most of the people
wanted to find out what would happen when the biologist would watch the
video. People expected new insights into how the brain worked, an insight
into the language of those who went foreign, to hear about the contents of
the video or just wanted an opportunity to gloat. I felt the excitement also
creeping up on me, though there was no reason for it. I had done my part of
the work and found the video. Whatever the rest of these people did could be
something I would not have to care about.

The biologist who volunteered looked as if he went to his own execution. He
tried to show optimism and confidence with his words, but his facial
expression and his hectic and jerky movements told a completely different
message. I was as sure as I could be that he would not hesitate one
quartersecond if he found a way to save both his ass and his reputation. The
only reason why he had not weaseled his way out was because he failed to see
a way to accomplish that. The rest of the group remained (probably
intentionally) completely and utterly oblivious to this fact. I felt
sympathetic to him and tried to give him an encouraging smile.

A while later, he was connected to a strange machine which looked like a
prop from a science-fiction film. Except of course that this device lacked
the many, blinking lights. The output instead went to a console hidden
behind a group of excited biologists. The test-subject was wearing
projection glasses, which were shielded as to not accidentally expose anyone
else to the picture they projected onto his retina. He was also wearing
headphones, which were huge. He crossed himself then made a thumb up
gesture, which was agreed on to start the video. We would not see anything
of the things he saw or hear anything of the things he heard. This made the
entire scene rather boring for the bystanders. Someone showed the remaining
time in a progress bar which he projected to a wall. The time seemed to pass
slower. I decided not to let myself get sucked completely into the mood, but
instead went for another coffee. Many others looked instead at the
biologists, who were trying to understand the output and tried to understand
their reaction. I sat down instead and tried to become at least a bit awake,
so that I wouldn't fall asleep during the day. I cursed again about the bed
in the hotel, which was hard and uncomfortable and made my back hurt. A
series of shouts, gasps and other sounds of excitement came from the
direction of the biologists but I decided not to bother looking. Whatever
would happen now had to be translated into layman's terms for me anyways and
at the moment, these guys had other things to do than to translate. Instead,
I watched the other people freak out. Noone of them knew anything but they
all thought that someone did and started shouting among each other. It was
even somewhat funny, but I could feel myself getting nervous as well. I
concentrated on my breathing: `breathe in, count to three, breathe out,
count to three...'. It worked, not well, but it at least somewhat relieved
my anxiety. Still, if something went wrong, I probably would be the one held
responsible for it. I told him about the risks and yesterday he seemed to be
fully aware of them. However, I knew that the first reaction to any crisis
was to find someone to blame. In this case the blame would fall onto me. It
was as sure as the fact that bears shit in woods. I was the one who
discoered the video. I also was the one who did not belong into the team of
uniersity-educated scientists. As if that was not enough, the one, who
wanted me in the team was probably angry about me for coming late today. It
was a very good thing that I had not any reputation here, that I might lose.
All I really could risk were legal consequences. I personally thought that I
had very little to fear, I was aware that the law could be adjusted if the
need for a scapegoat became more pressing.

I thought worse terms than criminals say after getting caught. I realied
that I was in a really bad situation, a GAFU: goverment-authorized fuck up.
The only hope would be that the video would turn out to be a dud. That this
person whose name I still did not know would step out of the contraption and
tell us what exactly happened or did not happen in it. I would be considered
a laughing stock, I would lose the reputation I had, but I would not lose my
freedom. I watched the progress bar as it slowly moved to one hundred
percent. I knew the applet and thus I knew that the progress was completely
linear but I could have sworn that it refused to move at all when I looked
at it and only when I directed my attention away from it, it moved (of
course, even then it never moved much). However, eventually the progressbar
reached the rightmost position. Nothing can last forever no matter how much
you want it to. The biologists freed his colleague from his technical
attachments. The testsubject yawned. He said in a voice as if he just fell
out of the bed: ``Jilih mi'la'kaladek ji mi'la'oki'dimis'ta.''

The group gasped. `Shit, shit, shit, and shit!' my thoughts screamed loudly,
well, in a way a thought can feel loud even though it of course was
inaudible. At least this meant that I could claim that my intuition was
right, whatever much it helped me. I assumed not that much since the
sociologists would for some odd reason not remember supporting me watching
the videos myself. It was like people who said that Lithuania would be
chanceless against the Brazilians that one fateful final. Of course, after
the narrow upsetting victory, many of these people claimed to have supported
the Baltic team the entire time and claimed to be convinced that they would
win. Or as a proverb: Hindsight is always 20/20. I watched the various
biologists almost go crazy about this. The sociologists, linguists and
others were unable to believe what happened. They shouted at the poor guy to
start speaking coherently, that it ceased being a joke. The biologist
however seemed not too phased about it. Instead he looked calm and maybe a
bit happy. Someone suggested to show the recorded scene of the two inmates
to him to see whether he could understand them. Someone found a recording
and projected it to a wall from his phone. The image shook and moved since
the person help the phone in his hand and the companies, which made them
still had not included a kind of image stabilisation which actually worked
instead of worsening things even more. The voices however were heard as
clearly as they can be if someone has the hand over the speaker. The test
subject looked at the source of the voice and showed a thumbs up gesture.
The linguists cheered loudly. 

Mr. Sily tried to get information from about everyone on what happened,
despite no one knowing anything more than what he saw. Suddenly, he took his
phone and shouted into it. It seemed to be completely incomprehensible and
unjustified. His face turned red. I backed away from him. I wondered whether
he watched the video himself and now went foreign or if simply the anger he
felt cut down on his ability to use grammar. Then I understood one sentence:
``I want this filth off the net right now, yesterday would be even better!''
He listened to a reply then shouted: ``I don't \textit{care} about civil
rights or the fucking, nonexisting constitution! If you have to cut off the
entire freaking country then for fuck's sake do it!''

`Ouch!' I thought. Someone was very badly treated on the other end of the
connection. I would have normally groaned about his angry pro-censorship
talk but in this situation, he might have been justified. I mean, this video
could hardly fall under the laws of free speech. At least not like this. It
could very well be that there were people who wanted to be changed and who
wanted to watch the video, but I was sure as heck that this would not
justify having it legally available for any moment longer than required to
ban it. This would pose a lot of legal issues for lawyers to fight over, I 
realized: How could it be determined whether a movie showed something
harmful or something which just someone in the government seriously not
liked? What would spreading this video mean legally? Assault and battery?
Malicious injury? Proliferation of pornographic material? The latter even
sounded not too far off due to a tendency to label things pornographic which
are not, not by any stretch of the word. It seemed to my that
anti-pornography laws in this country were applicable to almost anything but
pornography. While the naked ladies on the internet and in magazines were as
easily accessible as always, the ickyness of the term pornography kept civil
rights activists from screaming too loud when things were removed from
public availablity and those who proliferated it were jailed. I even foggily
remembered that someone told me that of those who went to jail for
proliferation of pornographic material, noone had distributed anything which
could qualify as pr0n in any sense but the complex legal one. The legal
experts would have lots of fun with this video, I was sure about that.

A short while later, Mr. Sily, who had calmed down a bit wanted the complete
list places, this video was located at. I breathed in, collected my thoughts
and only then answered: ``You are aware that this can't be done?'' To myself
I thought something different: Mostly insults about the fact that people
still had not understood the internet. At the change of the century, people
apparently believed that the new generation of government employees and
politicians would be one which understands the internet, of course this did
not happen. The computer geeks went on to get carreers in the private sector
and the politicians remained the same heap of deluded, intellectually and
morally challenged people as it always had been. Those who were after power
were not the ones who had heard about the Streisand-effect, which said that
the attempt to prevent something from spreading would only make it spread
more. Despite its datedness, despite all attempts to regulate the internet
it was still as true as it could be.

``What do you mean? You had a list.'' he asked as if this was a personal
insult.

``I had a list of a number of places where that video was hosted. It was
neither a complete list nor would it be up to date now even if it was. I
compiled it last evening. That means that it had one entire night to
spread.'' I explained.

He looked at me as if I was difficult on purpose. ``You have to work better
then!''

``The old hackers had a saying: `The internet sees censorship as damage and 
routes around it'. It is still very true today. If information is attempted
to be spread it will be.'' I explained. I was attempting to be patient to 
someone who surely heard all the arguments already but chose not to listen.

``Censorship worked against the spreading data of the Zandini incident.'' he
proclaimed with unprecedented na\"{\j}vety. The things which happened in the
small village called Zandini were public knowledge.

I entered a search term via the chorded keyboard of the system near me. I
then pointed to the list of results. It was so much that the search engine
listed only the first twenty million hits. ``It worked amazingly well.'' I
stated with thick sarcasm in my voice.

When he answered, his voice was still unfazed but his face told a completely
different story, one of confusion and shock. ``So? What will you do? Spread
it yourself? Just let it happen?''

``No, we need to take down what we can find, sure. We just can't think that
this eliminates the issue. There have to be additional meassures. Education
for example. People need to know the danger of these videos. They need to be
aware that a video, which was sent by someone, even someone they know can
mean harm in an almost unprecedented way.'' I explained things which should
be obvious to virtually anyone who had not used his (or her) sanity as bet
in a game of poker and lost it.

``This is supposed to work?'' he asked critically.

``Not in all cases of course, but the population has a right to know why it
is not allowed to see this video. People are not as much against
restrictions they understand as against these, which seem arbitrary to
them.'' I explained.

``Maybe. But give me everything you have on the videos.'' he demanded.

I sent him the addresses and the characteristics of the analysis program so
that new versions of the thing could be eliminated as soon as they popped up.

\chapter{Odis'he'ny - Citizens}
\paragraph{Liberty M\"{u}ller:} Pierre decided to come with us to Soton. All
of our explanations did not help as much as a short talk with a tollbooth
operator. Or rather: an attempt of such a talk. No information was
understood in either direction. After this encounter, he almost begged not
to be left alone. I could understand him. We were the only ones whom he
could talk to and be understood by. After quite a number of wrong turns we
took, we arrived in a town which was very likely to be Kalezo. Sabine
managed to steer Gideon to the port and Gideon managed to explain to a very
tired and annoyed looking clerk that we wanted to get to Londono country.
It worked after a while. We had to wait quite a time for the ferry. More
annoying than the wait was the fact that no one knew how long it would take.
Gideon used the time to get some shuteye, while Sabine and the rest of the
group got out of the car and severely dminished the supply of food in the
car (but making sure that Sarah's father would have breakfast and lunch).
Pierre and me looked through the forums for new replies (in the meanwhile, 
Sarah looked for a restroom or sufficiently thick shrubbery). It was quite 
funny to see how many people decided to try to reach Soton by any means 
possible. I was amazed how many people made it there already. Some of them
were from the same country and reaching Soton required a trainride or just
good shoes and stamina. Others came from far away, but had the chance to get
a flight to Londono and were now posting updates from the trainride.

Eventually, the ferry arrived and after what appeared to be the better half
of eternity but probably was less than 2 hours, we arrived in Dovero. Gideon
and Sabine both were tired, but wanted to get to Soton as soon as possible.
A quick game of `Rock, Paper, Scissors' solved the question who should drive
the last part and made Sabine the designated driver. The rest of us tried to
lead her correctly. To save our reputation: we did arrive in Soton, even
though there probably was a more direct route. Since I could not read the
map well, not due to the change but due to my visual impairment, I could no
longer be a firewall between Sarah and Pierre. Now, it only was a matter of
Pierre's decency not to touch Sarah. Apparently, he was decent or desperate
enough to keep his hands of her. This meant that either he was gay or
asexual or that he was very much in control of himself. How else could he
resist the beauty of such a remarkable young woman as her. She was aware of
her effect on men very much. She also was aware that I had been very jealous
of her looks until I met \textit{him}, the person who Sarah always called my
`Asian lover', Shevek. Of course, we were separated by quite a distance, but 
he was the one, I wanted to grow old and grey with. I realized that I had no 
idea whether he was well and on which side of the change he was. I felt as
if my mind so far shielded me from that thought, but now that my tiredness 
made quick work of any remains of sanity I had, the thought felt painful. So 
far, my thoughts were too egoistically centered around my own family, now
that I realized that I was not in the chat at the arranged time they were 
dragged to him.

It was hard to get onto the chat system. I could not use my nick because I
didn't have it on autologin. In fact, it was one of my most secured
accounts. I could deal with someone impersonating me on one of the other
forums, because they were not places, which Shevek visited. I watched the
progression of unreadable lines for a while, feeling like a stranger in
Moskvao. My nick was a combination of random low-unicode characters after a
translation of my pervious nick into the new alphabet failed. Noone would
recognize me as my previous self. Noone used the new alphabet here. After at
least five minutes, I decided to greet the channel I was in. Only a dozen
seconds later, I was booted from the channel. I turned myself away and
started to cry silently. Sarah noticed this and put one of her arms on my
shoulders in an emulation of a hug. She said nothing, which was something I
was happy about as every word would just bring my state to the attention of
the others. At some point, I ran out of tears and just felt sad until my
head sank onto the window and I fell asleep.

When I woke up from incoherent dreams, I had no idea where I was, what
happened and why my computer chair felt like it was moving. Then it all came
back to me. This was not the chair in my room, this was the pinkmobile. Also
I was not in the country I woke up the time before but in Londono country.
`This fucking video!' I cursed when I remembered that I wouldn't even
understand the language I emulated to understand (real understanding would
only come after the second cup of coffee) last morning. The moving landscape
outside looked different in a weird way, which probably only stemmed from
the realization that I was in a different country and the fact that the cars 
drove on the wrong side of the road was highly confusing.

``Good morning, Lib-Dem!'' Sarah said almost painfully cheerful when she saw
me moving.

I groaned: ``Already? Where is the sleep button on that damn alarm clock?''

``There is none, you have to wake up and face the day.'' Sarah said.

``So, we are in Soton now?'' I wanted to know.

Sabine confirmed this: ``Very near it. We should already think of what we do
when we get there.''

``Sleep!'' Sarah, Pierre and me stated simultaneously.

Sarah laughed. ``I surely won't disagree with you on that! I could sleep
until Reunification Day.''

``Wasn't that a week ago?'' I asked.

She yawned. ``Well, yes, but I mean the next one.''

We giggled or laughed.

The tourist guide to Soton listed a few places where we could stay. We even 
managed to find one of these and not get ourselves killed by the traffic.
There was a surprisingly high amount of people who queued at the reception
of the hotel we selected (mainly because two other hotels were right next to
it so in case it would not work there, we could choose another one easily).
Most of those waiting were youths and young families. People were silently
queueing, exchanging glances and studying their means to get online,
occasionally looking at the rest of the queue suspiciously. You could say
that they were doing exactly the same things, which we did. A receptionist
was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he or she was dealing with some kind of issue,
maybe he or she visited a certain location, maybe he or she needed caffeine
at this far too early time of the day.

One of the families had a young child, four years at best. He was obviously
bored and much more awake than I felt I could be anytime soon. He ran
around, played pretend-games with his plush bears and apes and showed much
interest on the potted plants in the reception area. The people who must
have been his parents made tired gestures at him, which he ignored with
childlike innocence. I did not pay too much attention to him since his sheer
vitality made me realize my own tiredness and exhaustion. I felt like
collapsing right there on the ground despite having had some sleep.
Unfortunately, none of the supplies Sarah's family brought were caffeinated.
Otherwise, I could have emulated at least something similar to sapience. I
was woken out of diverse, dark and almost depressing thoughts by a shout.
``Hemant! Stop that!'' I looked around and saw the little child with both
hands in the soil of one of the potted plants, looking very sheepishly. I
wondered what he wanted to do with that plant, its soil and his hands. Only
then I realized that whoever said that, most likely the parents, spoke my
language.

``Another Unified-speaker?'' I asked with tiredness-affected minimal
grammar.

``Yeah, we heard about the origin of this change being this city here and
decided to come here for information.'' explained one of the people in the
queue.

Others agreed. I opened my eyes completely, not believing them or my ears.
It seemed everyone in the queue was a Unified-speaker. People started to
chat about where they were from and how they got changed. They started to
exchange names and contact information. Those of the group who came here
(Sabine decided to call it a day and try to get at least trace amounts of
sleep in the car) participated. I was amazed at some of the stories, but I
was even more amazed at the fact that many of those who came here found out
about it on an internet forum called The Nation. From the tales of others,
it was a forum completely in the Unified language. I was immediately
interested in it. It turned out that we were the only non-citizens of the
group, so we were given a link and help to register there. 

The choice of nicks for forums is normally a big thing for me, something, I
could spend hours pondering about. This time however I was tired enough that
the first idea sounded hillarious to me. Thus I chose: Nick of Liberty. The
rest of the group was less reason-impaired and came up with variations of
previous nicks and in Gideon's case a statement against the current regime
in Harareo country.

The Nation had the appearance of something hacked togeether in fifteen
minutes with only minimal knowledge of the system involved, but it
compensated that by the sheer fact that it existed at all. Yes, the terms it
used in certain places were awkward at best, but a list of Frequently Asked
Questions explained that this was only the case because the terms were used
at several places followed by a few colorful metaphors about the original
software and its implementation. What immediately caught my attention was a
`missing person' thread. It looked as if I was not the only one who had lost
contact with someone due to the change. Parents enquired about the state of
their children, children about their parents, husbands about their wifes and
occasionally mistresses (or about their partners of the same gender of
course), wifes about their husbands and also occassionally their
extramarital relations (some of the partners here were as well of the same
gender) and friends about friends. I posted my first posting there asking
for information about Shevek (which was his real name since his parents
loved social science fiction) in Jerusalemo country. I added a few personal
anecdotes he would immediately understand and told him where I currently
was. 

The forum had a weird religious bent to it which I could somehow understand
rationally but not emotionally: Many people in this forum, many citizens,
saw the change as a sign of the higher spirits. Emotionally, this made no
sense to me and rationally, I could see the parallels with other miracles
but failed to see them as convincing. We had no idea what caused it but it
seemed wrong just to assume that it was a miracle. Also, well, which
self-respecting higher spirit casts its (dis)grace only in combination with 
the exposure to a certain video? It sounded completely insane to me.

Eventually the surprisingly young clerk returned, looking slightly shocked 
at the commotion in the hall. Someone (I was quite sure that he was not the
first in the previously existing queue but just the bravest among us) showed 
the receptionist a sheet of intelligent paper. He translated to us all what
he had translated with the help of an online dictionary: ``We are a group of
travellers who are not able to speak or understand this language. Do you
have room for us?''

After a long and complicated discussion, we would get rooms for the night.
We all were assigned rooms and at least some of us fell asleep there
immediately. I did not. I first woke up Sabine and brought her into the
assigned room as well. Only then I did what I really wanted to do after a
night with only a few hours in dreamland.

The light had changed the next time I woke up. It was still day, but much
later in it. We woke up, ate something and discussed how to go about
searching for information. Then I heard a sound signalizing an incoming
message in The Nation. Its sender had the nick ObviousLeGuinReference.

\chapter{Santu'het - Warning}
\paragraph{Richard Monger:} I saw the BBC logo on the screen while something
loaded which Mr. Sily said we all should see. The process took quite a long
time, which meant that either the video was long, of highest-possible
quality or hosted in southern Swaziland. In this case, it must have been the
quality since after the video started, it looked like a typical government
information video. The fact that it was from Mr. Sily also implied a
British or EUropean source, not an African or Middle East one. The length of
the video was short enough to justify loading times in seconds, not minutes.

The video showed a very attractive young lady in a house, which looked posh 
and upperclass. She held an xessPhone in her hand, from what I could gleam
the newest model. It made its distinctive, melodic beep indicating an
incoming message. She opened the message with exaggerated movements, then a
cut to the screen showed the content she received. It was a simple link to a
well-known video site. As a hand, which was rather obviously not hers opened
the message, a voiceover was heard. ``Millions of people open links without
knowing their dangers.'' The video opened and showed weird letters. ``A new
danger comes from seemingly innocent videos, which start by showing these
letters: The recent cases of teenage madness relate to watching these kind
of videos from video sites or mediaMessages.'' The video showed the
exaggeratedly shocked woman. ``To prevent adverse effects, please ask what
the contents of a link are before clicking it and stay clear of videos
starting with this sequence of symbols.'' The weird symbols were shown
again. A NHS disclaimer followed. 

I was not impressed in the least. ``I hope this didn't air yet?'' I muttered
quietly.

``It already did. What is your issue with it?'' Mr. Sily asked.

I could smack myself for apparently having said that out loud, but now
probably should just speak my mind. ``It looks not in the least convincing! 
People will laugh about it. For now, it might be okay, but I would use it
only as a temporary solution.''

``What do you mean?'' he asked.

``I mean that there is at least one continuity error and the gestures are
too exaggerated to be believable. Add an annoying product placement to this
list.''

He again gave me one of these looks which seemed to indicate that he hated
me being difficult: ``I do not see the issue.''

I sighed, decided that this person was either difficult on purpose himself
or just so used to everyone agreeing with what he says, that factual
criticism was an attack on him, not just a correction. I wondered whether it
would make sense to explain this difference to him or whether he would not
hear it unless shocked to attention. I knew that each option had a downside:
Not saying anything would make many more people go foreign maybe even
endanger the existance of the nation, saying something would cost my ass, which
was something, I was not willing to risk. ``Ask the sociologists
here.'' I answered.

\paragraph{Stephen:} The Nation was apparently the new hype among the group
and everyone who was changed by Karin's stupid spreading of the video.
Nothing bad with new hypes of course, if they have any advantage, but the
nationalist tone of this forum was something, I could not stand. Since when
did Karin become a nationalist? Wasn't this against her ideology? Or was
someone else behind the forum? I had no idea. Administrators were `Musician'
and `ThatGirl', which left many possibilities as to their identities. I did
not feel like being outside for a long time after the police incident and
the fact that the video was leaked. It seemed to be far too risky at the
moment to leave. Not that there was much more safety here, but I would not
feel completely exposed. I was again busy hiding from the world when my
phone rang. It was Ken who called. After we tried exchanging niceties for a
while, we explained why he called: ``I tried explaining people what
happened. Of course no one believed me.''

``The police thought that you were smoking something?''

``Smoking, taking, injecting, not sure about that. They didn't believe me at
all. Have you watched BBC lately?''

I made a sarcastic sound reminding of a laugh: ``I would if they spoke my
language. They seem to have problems with that lately.''

``You don't need to understand a thing, just watch, listen. These people
don't understand what is happening. They see it as a kind of insanity which
affects youths.''

``What the fuck\textinterrobang{}'' I exclaimed, surprised, how far people
can be off. ``What exactly gave them this idea\textinterrobang{}''

``Only seeing those, who thought they had a stroke or something like that
and losing it. Not seeing those, who so far somehow got by.'' he explained
laconically.

``Makes sense.'' I had to admit. ``So I guess they don't know about The
Nation? Or the group here in Soton?''

``They don't know about you guys, but what is The Nation?'' he enquired.

``It is a forum of Unified speakers. I can transfer the link to it.''

``Go ahaed!'' he said.

I transferred the link with a quick movement. ``Here it is! No idea who is
behind it.''

``Wow! That is quite a number of people who were changed.'' he exclaimed.

``They are from everywhere and quite a lot of them is on the way here. They
found the city guide to Soton and now try to use it to find information
about what changed them.''

``Really? Oh dear!''

``Yeah, despite the fact that everything we know is on these forums, except
maybe who changed them.''

``Fuck! That means to stay clear of Soton then until they returned?''

``You probably should not. I mean, think of it. They will need translators
badly.''

``They might riot as soon as they get the information they want. And I don't
want to be in the same city as they are if they do. Fuck, not even in the
same nation!''

``So, you get the out of the E\v{u}ropa Unio?'' I asked.

``I would, if I could afford it! This is a big shitstorm waiting to happen!''
He said angrily.

I made an annoyed sound. ``I don't think that this is a good idea. These
people are separated from the world so the course of action should be
integration not getting away and causing them to be even more separated from
everyone around them.''

``You play the hero! I do not plan to risk my life there.''

I suddenly was hit by an idea: ``Help people via The Nation! If you offer to
translate for people, they will not feel as isolated and maybe not feel as
willing to riot when they find out.''

He sarcastically commented: ``Yeah, it's just a so high number of users that
the forum deactivated access to the memberlist. It should be done easily!''

I interrupted the rant: ``Do you still have the material you got for
learning Unified? Put that into a message with a short explanation and let
them send it. Or just refer to the content on the web! If you allow people
to communicate with their changed loved ones, you don't have much work and 
the government will have to accept the nature of the change.''

``You're not as dumb as you look like. I am registering on The Nation right
now.''

I laughed.

\paragraph{Karin:} I spent quite some time with Mark lately. Of course the
pretext was working on the forum and learning together, but that was not the 
real reason and we both knew it. Instead, we started liking each others
presence and used every possible excuse to spend time together. Shirley and
others occasionally made comments about that, but I chose to ignore it. Of
course, besides moderating and learning vocabulary, we also made music and
had long talks. Then the threads started dealing with trying to get to
Soton. I have no idea where that meme came from, some people say that it
originated from an anime forum or from the chat of a major Swedish party.
This was not what I expected, far from it! I hoped that they would convert
those around them and form their own communities. I would not have assumed
that a huge group of people made it to Soton for knowledge and probably
revenge. I tried to tell myself that I would not fear death. Of course this
was wrong. I was scared shitless. But I was aware that I found something
bigger than myself, and I realized that I was willing to risk death for
this.

I discussed the way to go on with Mark. I had an idea what to do, but I felt
that it was not necessarily the right one. He was not sure about this. I
tried to explain it to him: ``For me, the cause is more important. If this
will lead me to getting killed by a mob, I can accept it as long as it helps
the cause. I think the people will profit from knowing the truth.''

``Even if they decide to disagree and try to integrate into society like
Susanne did?''

``I am convonced that the beautiful truth will prevail even if some people 
disagree now.'' I stated simply.

``I can't really get myself to like this. Mostly because I think we should
have more time together.'' He looked seriously sad about this.

Out of an impulse, I said: ``We still have the entire night!''

But before we did what you expect that we did, I posted in the Nation that
the person who had caused the change to spread will hold a speech on the
speaker's corner of the park in Soton at tomorrow noon.

\paragraph{Richard Monger:} It was another presentation to the group, this
time by one of the linguists. He kept it fortunately very conscise: ``The
language is definitely something you could expect to emerge, it does not
have the feeling of something artificial or of a code. Instead, it appears
to have its own system of meanings. What I mean by that is that every term
occupies a certain area on the plane of meaning. A code would have all of
these areas correspond.'' He paused. ``I guess that I have not explained
this well enough. Let me use an example: The German language has two
translations for the word `to know': one for knowing a fact and one for
knowing a person. In contrast, English has words with a much narrower
meaning as their German counterpart. This is what codes and so-called
relexes lack. The language X has a set of words which correlate in certain
aspects with certain English words, in others require completely different
ones. This is not some kids playing an RPG, this is something serious.''

Someone asked: ``How far are you with deciphering the language?''

``I don't think that I will be holding this conversation in language X in
the near future, but thanks to the international cooperation, we are making
remarkable progress.''

Another interruption: ``International cooperation?''

``Of course. Every country on this planet is affected. It is most logical to
cooperate. It saves us the work from re-doing the work of others.''

``The language is the same in every nation?''

``It indeed is. I have seen the records of Korean linguists who worked on
their language X and it did not only conincide but was extremely similar.
Formerly monolingual speakers of Urdu were able to communicate fluently with
Swiss-Germans who never heard a word of Urdu before. It was quite amazing. A
similar test was done in Venezuela and Azerbaijan with the same result.
There is no accent of national origin even though the phonotactics of
language X are often sufficiently different from the native languages to 
warrant that.''

``So, do you think that there is a biological cause for this?''

``You better ask the biologists in the team here. I know about as little
about biology as a cook about food chemistry.'' he confessed with a smile.

One of the biologists saw this as a time to explain his findings: ``It is
likely. There is a difference in the pattern of brain activity between
speakers of language X and of natural languages. The language centers of the
brain show a significantly different pattern of activity. It seems not to
affect other parts of the brain significantly. There is no significant 
difference in culturally neutral IQ-tests between the average of speakers of 
language X and the expected values.''

``So, this language is not so much of a language as a brain disease?'' asked
one of the sociologists.

``It is a difference. I would not call it a disease per se. It is more of a
social impairment since it removes the knowledge of the previous language.''

``How is that not a disease?'' asked the sociologist.

``You are aware that the knowledge of the native language can be impaired
by, for example, living abroad? If we declare this difference as a disease,
we would enter slippery slope, I don't want to step on.'' he explained.

``Ethical questions aside. It is a severe impairment having to relearn the
native language. Especially if it is transmitted by a video. It is something
extremely dangerous!'' Mr Sily said.

``I won't disagree on that.'' the biologist stated. ``However, normally
diseases are not so... constructive. They don't create something as complex
as a language.''

``It is good that we don't disagree on that.'' stated Mr Sily omniously.

\chapter{Vasina'tan - Love}
\paragraph{Liberty M\"{u}ller:} I blinked at the message. I read it, then
re-read it. I could not believe it. By all counts I had no reason to be so
damn lucky. This had to be fake. I could not believe my eyes and when Sarah
read it to me my ears. The message was very short: ``I am coming to Soton
from Londono! Can you pick me up at the train station? I even brought our 
plushed penguin. I love you!''

I knew whom the plushie referred to: A little penguin with a yellow beak and
yellow feet, close to the Linukso penguin, but not quite it. She had no real
name, instead we imitated a penguin-squawk when `calling' her. The plushie
travelled with him to Israelo, when he went there. She survived the entire
crap he endured there even though, as Shevek often stated, it missed the
winters and having a refrigerator to hide in during the summers.

I sent a message back: ``When will you be there?'' Then I went with the rest
of the group to the fountain in the central park of the city. It had become
a popular meeting point of the changed, from what we read on the forums.
Since tomorrow, the person who spread the video would give a speech, we
could do a bit socialising. I kept the intelligent paper in the inner pocket
of my jacket so that I would notice it signalising new messages.

The park was not one big unity, but separated by several roads. It had the
approximate shape of a line with a nub on one side. We met in the upper part
of that nub. I was anxious about going there: Getting to know a group of new 
people had for me always been the first step to either getting shunned or 
bullied. School had been especially bad in this respect. I never was long in
one place since my parents thought the only way to deal with bullying was to
move me to another school. Thus, I knew all of the schools in my area. I met
my only two friend Sarah and Shevek outside of group situations. I had
explained my fears of group situations earlier to Sarah and she simply could
not believe that it really was that bad. 

I should not have worried as much. The group had something of a group of
people staying together to fight a flood. They could not afford too much
infighting and alienating people. I suspected that this was the reason why I
was treated like a human being instead of a piece of furniture or a punching
bag. People seemed to be genuinely interested into getting in contact with
me and after a bit of paranoia, I could relax and just enjoy the presence of
so interesting people. 

Despite that, I almost jumped up when I felt more than heard the sound of an
incoming message. I checked and to my great pleasure, it was
ObviousLeGuinReference and he told me that he got onto the train to Soton
and asked me to be there in about one or two hours. I sent him the message
that I was almost on the way there. Sarah explained the shape and function
of the `Do not disturb' sign to me with a big grin and intentional innuendo.
I blushed. Sarah's mother saw that and told me that she knew that a certain
chain of stores sold condoms. I blushed even further. That was no longer
innuendo but the assumption that I would immediately jump into bed with
Shevek. I was not that kind of girl, definitely not. Not that I did not love
him or the age difference creeped me out, I just never imagined myself doing
it. I liked watching people who did it, I mean, like every human being, but
actually doing it sounded as realistic to me like getting a ticket to the
space hotel.

I left to the station immediately. I had seen it on the way and was aware
that the wait would be long, but I did not want to risk being too late.
There was no waiting area, only a featureless room with neon light, ticket 
machines and the booth of a clerk who would provide information or help with 
the turnstiles if required. I wanted to squat on the ground, but then
rememberred that train stations often relie on computerized motion detection
to detect the homeless who might have tried to flee the cold there. Instead
I started pacing to and fro. While the motion detection software seemed to
consider this behavior acceptable, I realized that the clerk did not. She
looked at me as if I lost my mind. I knew these stares, far too well. So
well, that I was not sure whether I really saw them or imagined them. I 
chose to pretend they did not happen and kept on pacing as if there was no
tomorrow, ignoring the darkening sky and despite the fact that my legs
started to hurt.

In my mind I imagined being with Shevek again. I imagined the time in
Duseldorfo and Kolonjo before he left the country and went into the third
world for his job. I just turned my back onto the turnstiles for what seemed
to be the n+xth time when I heard a shout. ``Liberty!'' I turned around, saw
Shevek and hugged him before he even gotten onto my side of the turnstile.

``Shevek! I am so happy to see you!'' I said.

He replied by giving me a kiss which felt awesome.

We went to the hotel and into the room I shared with Sarah and Pierre. As
Sarah suggested, we made use of the Do not disturb sign. 

When we were feeling somewhat sane and were dressed again, we opened the
door. Sarah grinned at me knowingly and I grinned back. Of course, nothing
of what she thought did happen, but there was no reason for her to know that
we only carressed each other (of course neither of us had thought of condoms
and my HIV-vaccination was not up-to-date).

\paragraph{Richard Monger:} After this day, I only wanted to go home, only
go into my boring, empty home where only the TV waited for me. I felt as if
I was wasting my time there, like a dodo amongst eagles. I decided to call
Nguyen. It was better than getting annoyed about this silly
second-generation Romanian immigrant with the fitting name or feeling
generally useless. It was late, but I needed the social contact.

``Hi Richard! What's up? How's London?'' he sounded still awake.

I grimaced. ``Haven't yet had the time to see much of the city. I have to be
there despite being unable to contribute a thing. Stupid situation. I'd so
want to catch whoever murdered that Greenville person.''

``No such luck! We are still in the pitch dark about that.''

``Sorry to hear that. What's new in Soton?''

``Not much.'' he said, ``One Saints player was drunk behind the wheel.
Fortunately, the policeman was a fan.'' I could hear that he grinned.

I grinned as well. There's nothing like a bit of adjusting the law
occasionally to protect your family or your football team. ``Good to hear
that everything is as it should be! How's the state of the city's youths?''

``Lower amounts of people do insane at the moment.'' He paused for a moment.
``Are you involved in the creation of that government information video? It
sounds pretty insane.''

`Ouch!' I thought and winced in pain as if I was in a sudden bout of
inexplicable pain. ``I saw it, but I could not intervene in its creation.
Wanna know what's scariest? It isn't even complete disinformation.''

He sounded as if he could not believe that: ``What do you mean? Videos and
teenager insanity have something to do with each other?'' 

I never had to sign a NDA of any kind, so I felt save disclosing things:
``The are videos out there, which apparently reprogram the brain to speak
and understand only a certain language. As you can imagine, people reacted
badly to the loss of the native language. You might be slightly panicked as
well if you suddenly can't understand anyone anymore. These people can
understand each other though for some odd reason. Even if there was no
reason why they should. Even when they are from different countries and
never heard a word of the language of the others. It is scary! Very much
so!''

``You're joking, right?'' he seemed unsure of either possibility.

``I am not. I have actually seen the effect the video had on a volunteer. It
was really frightening to realize that he no longer understood us.'' Most
frightening to me was the silent satisfaction, this person showed. He seemed
to be happy to be in this state. I could not imagine what someone had to
feel about the world to be happy about the separation from it.

``Ouch! You didn't catch a glance onto it, did you?'' he asked.

I was confused. ``Why do you ask? Am I speaking Greek?''

He laughed. ``No, I just want to know how something looks which can do these
things to your brain. Seeing is believeing, ya know?''

``I don't wanna see, seriously! Search for it if you want to risk it but be
aware that you are risking your ass with that! I don't want to have anything
to do with it.'' I felt that I was overlooking something, but was but sure
what it was. I could curse myself for that. My gut wanted to tell something
but only managed to sweep a big amount of insecurity over me. Stupid
gut-feeling!

``You are, like, really confinced of this? Christ!''

``I am, yes.''

``And... it works every time?''

``I am not sure in which percentage of the cases it works!'' There was this
feeling again. ``The person who thought that it was safe is now unable to
speak a word of English! We're trying to remove these `things' from the
'net.''

``Good luck with that!''

``China simply blocked all video content. Tuvalu did something similar. I
guess with less citizens than Soton, protecting the national identity is
more of a priority. Turkmenistan even banned all images as well. These
nations can do it though: only one ISP and they were already censoring
heavily. So, if you care fuck all about your population, you can do it.''

``I suspect that it's still ridiculously easy to get the video into one of
these nations. Satellite phones are the easiest method probably. Other than
that: tunnels, archives, steganography, filesharing networks, the
Interchange network...''

He was right, of course. Despite all attempts of regulation authorities to
change it, the internet remained free. And in places where it could not be
easily kept free, activists created the decentral Interchange. ``Sure! If 
you want to ruin your life, you will find ways. I think that we thus have to 
make people stop trying to ruin their lives, inform them, scare them, if you 
wish.''

``Scare them?'' he asked critically.

``There are always different ways to present a risk. You can very easily lie
with statistics.''

``You're sure right about that!'' he agreed. ``By the way: how does the
language sound to you if it is not panicked screams?''

I pondered this question a bit and thought back of the fragments of language
X I heard today from various places. ``It sounds weird, vaguely like German,
but not much. It does sound somewhat harsh though, even when it is not
indended to be harsh. And it's always rising or falling in pitch drastically.
I never heard anything like that before.''

He pondered that information for a bit. ``Sounds like the tourists here in
Soton.''

I was confused. ``What are you talking about?''

``There's quite a number of tourists in the city who seem to speak like
that. When I heard that weird way of speaking for the first time, I thought
it was used as method of intimidation.''

``Speaker of language X in Soton\textinterrobang{} You really mean
that\textinterrobang{} It sounds impossible!'' Again a wave of this weird
gut-feeling went through me. ``I am sure you are misled with that thought.''

``I'll send you a recording!''

\paragraph{Karin:} I was aware of the knowing glances when Mark and me went
to the hotel. Mark seemed to be very self-conscious about this. I grinned at
him and said. ``Don't worry! You're not going to suffer in terms of
reputation from going into the room of a hot girl.''

He seemed to blush a bit about that. ``You know, my parents would think
differently about this.'' 

I remembered his parents. They did not seem to be overly strict. ``Really?''

``They were quite annoyed when The Sun reported of your... parties.'' he
confessed.

``That was in another life.'' I said. It was not just a phrase. My life had
changed completely since the change. It was not only a 180 degree turn, it
was a turn into a direction, which I never even seen. It was like in that
book Flatland when the square experienced the third dimension for the first
time.

We reached our room. I opened the door via the biometric lock. When we were
in the room, I noticed how nervous he was. ``I won't bite, my dear, unless
of course you want me to!'' I tried to ease his aniousness.

``It's not, well, that. It's just that I am still a virgin.'' He admitted. 

This was a revelation which surprised me. He was quite a few years over the
age I lost my virginity. I would have thought that he had at least four
girlfriends or boyfriends if he was so inclined. Especially since he was
guitarist in a band. ``I wouldn't have imagined it from such a handsome man
like you. But it is okay... I will attempt to make it especially enjoyable
for you.''

We undressed each other. Mark struggled a bit opening my bra, but was far
not as clumsy as certain people from another life who actually had
experience. He started carressing my breasts, which now were free from their
prison made of cloth. I moaned in pleasure. I carressed his tan, soft skin.

We kissed, our tongues feeling each other. It felt amazing to me. He was a
really good kisser. I felt his muscular body on the most sensitive parts of
my chest. I could also feel that he has about as eager as I was. His manhood
already stood to attention. After the kiss ended after what seemed like a
very long but very enjoyable time, we moved towards the bed. We carressed
each other. It felt so good to have his hands on my skin, to feel him
carress my eager breasts. Our breath was getting heavier and more excited. 
It was so good that he cared for foreplay and made it enjoyable. He did
tickle me but immediately understood that this was not enjoyable. 

I felt his member sneaking between my legs and took the hint. ``I should lie
on my back for what you are planning here.''

What we did, with the slight problems which do occur when one partner still
is not experienced, was using the position, which the magazines and the
experts often label boring. This did not mean that this was true for the
sex. Mark was a great lover. Our lovemaking was simply too good to express
in words, no matter whether Unified or English. 

The climax was incredible. It was not quite a simultaneous orgasm, it was
feeling that his manhood pulsated, that he came, which brought me over the
edge.

After the wonderful act (and after he threw away the condom, he was of
course wearing since even the HIV vaccinations did not work in all cases),
we fell asleep in each other's arms.

\chapter{Sijehi - Tomorrow}
\paragraph{Liberty M\"{u}ller:} I woke up in a strange bed. In the first
seconds after waking up, before rationality sets in, I felt sad for
something. I tried to remember whether there was anything to feel bad about
in the previous day but could not think of anything at all. I chalked it up
to one of the ridiculous dreams, I occasionally had. At least it was not a
mightmare. I really would have hated to wake up the room by screaming
because a faceless, humanoid shape chased me through a foreign city. One
which looks more like the model of a city, an architect or city planner
might make.

I tried not to move since I was sharing the bed with Shevek. Sarah insisted
on reminding us both to keep things safe for small, innocent kids like her
several times last evening. `What a kid!' I thought about this. For some
reason, I was aware that she did not really think we would jump onto each
other but only wanted to tease both Shevek and me. It was hard to resist the
temptation to be intimate though. We had not seen each other in a long time
and thus had a lot to catch up.

It was always a weird thing to be awake when others were sleeping. I tried
to lie motionlessly and let my thoughts wander, to yesterday, to today and
tentatively to tomorrow. There were many people, who were in this city, not
only in search of knowledge but also in search of community. I knew that
some people did (intentionally or not) convert others, however most people
felt alone, felt isolated. Maybe, eventually, this isolation could be
overcome, but most likely, the contact with the loved ones would suffer.
This reminded me that I had not notified my parents about my location and
about my state, let alone about the fact that they were right: that the
insanity was real and that being downstairs with them would have helped. I
knew this, but admitting this would hurt.

It would be interesting what would happen once the thirst for knowledge was
soothed. I could see a lot of things as possible, but the idea of the Nation
felt \textit{right}. We could not return to our old places, our schools, our
universities, our jobs. We would not be able to understand anything for
years unless the change had gifted us with extremely fast learning of
languages, but even then it would take time and be a second language to us.
I remembered the classmates who were in Va\^{s}ingtono country for a year
and said they were happy when they could access the well-known forums and
read mails from home. They missed the language just as much as they missed
the people. At least this was how it seemed to me. I would assume that the
group, which was united by language would want to remain united. They had no
place so far. Some people were here only via temporary visas. We would have
to figure something out about that but we were not in the best position to
discuss with people. This little thing about not knowing the language. Of
course, I had no idea how to go ahead founding a nation, and so did most of
us, I guessed. It would all depend on today, I was aware of that. The bad
thing about the future is that we don't know it yet. Incidentally, that also
was the good thing about it.

This morning, we all were rather excited. Not just Sarah and her family, not
just Pierre and Shevek, everyone in the hotel was. Including probably the
staff because of the sheer excitement they were exposed to. We were at the
speaker's corner several hours too early and far from the first ones. A
We stood a bit outside of the mass of people. The sheer amount of people
there made me anxious. A man in what had to be a uniform approached us. He
appeared to be of Asian origin. He saw my anxiousness apparently as a reason
to address me: ``Saluton! \^{C}u vi povas diri al mi kion vi estas faranta
\^{c}i tie?''

I shrugged. ``I am very sorry, but I have no idea what you want from me.''

He tried to say something again, this time much more melodically than
before. I repeated my statement of not understanding him. He pointed at the
group of people, then to the ground and then tilted his head.

``He wants to know why we are here.'' Sarah translated.

``We are here because of a speech.'' I said and pointed to the stone steps
and the metal bar of the speaker's corner. 

He looked there and tilted his head again. 

I pointed to my left wrist, a gesture, which hopefully still meant `time'. 
``Later!''

This seemed to satisfy him and he left.

\paragraph{Richard Monger:} The day was slow. Even for what I expected of
days working for this government agency. It was also boring. Most of the
time, the sociologists discussed one thing or another while the specialists
were elsewhere to work on actually contributing something to the problem
instead of discussing whether the NHS video was appropriate and being
redundant. When my phone vibrated, I immediately left the room and answered
it. It was Nguyen. ``Hi, do you have any news on the Greenville case?'' I
asked impatiently.
 
``No, different news, but still pretty awesome. You asked about the strange
language and wanted a sample, right?''

``Yes. You got something?''

``Had to go to Siki's to ask something. There was this huge group of people
in the park. They seemed to be all waiting for something. Strange thing, not
illegal though. I decided to look what's going on.''

``Yes?''

``These people all spoke in that weird language. So, I tried to get some
info why they where there, and recorded it for you.''

``Sharing is caring!''

``Sending it as we speak!'' he said.

``Thank you!'' I accepted the incoming file transfer, which took several
seconds. ``How many hours is that?''

``Not long, one minute or two!''

``It should not take bloody ages then!'' I stated.

``Bandwidth restriction.'' he said laconically. Apparently he was no longer
able to pay for the excellent speed he used earlier and used the cheapest
plan now.

``Ouch! That sucks!''

I immediately listened to the recording. There was much background noise in
it. I heard Nguyen ask: ``Hello, can you tell me what you are doing here?''

A female voice replied: ``Il'lanja'viije ,xe'ma'ta 'hadada ,il'vana xe'tes,
het, reja.'' It was a shock to hear a voice speaking this language not in
panic or other high emotions but like it was the most normal thing to do.

Nguyen tried saying something in what appeared to be Vietnamese, but she
just seemed to repeat what she just said. A pause in which only background
noise was heard followed.

``Il'vana 'ki ,xen'aru namin, reja.'' Another voice said.

I had heard enough and showed that recording to the linguists.

\paragraph{Karin:} I felt slightly unsteady on this day. I had every reason
to, of course. I was aware what I had done, I was also aware that it was the
best thing to do. If only people agreed with this. Mark left a while earlier
in order to be among the group unnoticed. I tried to control my breathing
and to think of a moment of calmness and happiness. I would have to lie to
say that this moment had nothing to do with Mark. I smiled unintentionally
at the thought of him.

I saw a large commotion in the park. I was elated to see that so many people
seemingly from different countries made it here. I suspected that the staff
at the airports in Londono hated me now for being the cause of having to
deal with so many `weird' people, but I could live with that. 

I stepped onto the podest. I had no microphone or any technical assistance,
so my only hope was to speak loudly and clearly without screaming myself
hoarse. I looked over the group, trying to see the people there as people
with valuable hopes and dreams whom I had to persuade of my idea. ``Hello to
all of you here, who came in the search of information, of knowledge and of
an idea how to go on. I am Karin Greenville and I am the one who released
the video onto the internet.'' I paused, structuring my thoughts and words.
The noise of many ongoing conversations died down. ``I know that you have 
questions concerning the change and I will try to answer those which I can 
answer and admit my lack of knowledge honestly in all other cases.'' I then
went on explaining my change and my conversion.

\chapter{'skima - Attracting Attention}
\paragraph{Richard Monger:} When I returned from a talk to the linguists, I
saw the pointless discussion still continuing. I sighed. ``Your facts might
be obsoleted.'' I paused to wait until I had the attention of a significant
majority of people. ``There is a large group of what the linguists of our
team confirmed to be speakers of language X in Soton.''

The facial exxpression of the entire group was hillarious. They looked as if
they found themselves covered from head to toe in jello all of a sudden. I
suddenly realized what my mistake was and only now, I assumed that all of
those who went foreign ended up in prison or psychiatry. Apparently this was
very wrong. As it seemed, people were much more able to cope with the
changes than we gave them credit for. 

``How can this happen\textinterrobang{}'' Mr. Sily asked with a mixture of
shock, confusion and anger in his voice.

``Let's ignore our hypothesis that the video works in only x percent of the
cases, let's just imagine what would happen if everyone who saw the video
was changed. In that cases, there would be many people, who were affected
but did not behave suspiciously enough to warrant arrest or forceful
commitment to psychiatry. Or both in sequence in certain cases. It might
not make sense for people to try everything to avoid raising suspicion about
their state, but people don't necessarily behave logically and with all the
horror-stories related to psychiatry, it might make sense why they did.''
The ancient stories of electro-shocks and people shackled to their bed and
drugged until they would no longer even remember their own parents were
alive and well. In recent years they were joined by stories about behavior
modification programs which worked dressage of circus animals and evil drugs
which killed all creative or `good' thought and turned the aura black. No, I
did not understand the last one either.

``This sounds ridiculous!'' someone shouted.

``Maybe some people seeked help and were not understood, or too proud to
seek help, even then. It does not matter. These people exist. The proof of
that is in the park Soton's city center. What is even more scary is that
they have apparently founded a kind of organisation.'' When I saw confused
looks, I added: ``Not legally, of course, but they have a system of
coordination. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been so many people there.
Groups of this size do not develop ad hoc. Neither does the distribution of
this video happen without a group of distributors.''

``You mean that we're up against an enemy organization?
Terrorists\textinterrobang{}'' Mr Sily asked. I cursed the terrorist scare
for still not having subsided after all this years. On the other hand, this
had something to do with the idea of terrorism in its definition before its
meaning became very unclear.

``We have no idea what their agenda is. They might think that
\textit{everyone else} went crazy. Or those who propagated the change are a
distinct group from those, who we encouter now. This is our issue: We're up
against something we don't understand, quite literally.''

``You sound as if you sympathize with them.'' spat the government executive
at me.

``You sound as if your opinion already stands and now you do not want to be
confused with facts or alternatives.'' I replied sharply, only then
realizing what I did. `I need more self-control!' I thought to myself.

\paragraph{Karin:} I was amazed that people actually listened well and even
those in the back seemed to make enough sense of my loudly uttered words to
at least remain there. I had held presentations in school and college which
had less people listening. I closed my eyes during the more emotional parts
of my speech. Not because I did not want to face the group but because I
wanted not to cry in front of them. Certain memories still triggered a
whirlwind of emotions, others I could better explain when imagining them
with closed eyes. I tried to explain to these people that I was not someone
who was out there to ruin random lives. Suddenly, I heard a shout. A huge
amount of policemen in yellow uniforms with riot shields approached from the
side of the park. They all were wearing eyepatches over their left eye. I
stopped in mid-sentence. ``Guys, I think some kind of trouble is
approaching! Huge amount of policemen on the way here. Sit down! Don't give 
them a reason to beat you up! Remember that we have not broken any laws!''

Most of the people followed the advice. I also sat down on the stone steps,
fully aware that I would ruin my expensive trousers that way. ``Remember
that this is their first impression of us! We don't want them to treat us
like violent scum, do we?'' I shouted. Despite my calm demeanor, I was very
anxious. My heart started racing. It was a good thing that I was sitting and
probably also a good idea that my trousers were brown. I did think of the
joke when deciding for them this morning, but of course, I thought that I
would need the color for a different reason. I started freezing. My breath
went quicker, as quick as if I was running away. From somewhere, a phrase
was repeated, chanted, first by only a few, then by many: ``We are the
people! We are the people!'' 

\paragraph{Richard Monger:} I saw the stream of the operation. I had no idea
what exactly the pretext was for this operation. Legally, there was nothing
wrong with listening to a speech. Inofficially, of course there had to be a
pretext. Apparently, the protestors learned from previous civil rights
movements the art of civil disobedience. Most of the protestors and the
speaker sat down. A chant started, reminding of something which you'd hear
during international soccer matches. It probably was in their language, but
it had the feeling of being inadequate. A dark-skinned, slender female
walked up to the police. I involuntarily held my breath when she showed the
nearest policeman a piece of intelligent paper. If this was a movie, there
would have been a cut to its content. This was no movie, I had no idea what
she showed. I immediately feared that she might try to make the policemen in
her vicinity go foreign. If these people had any sense of PR, they had
chosen her to create the most sympathy for the cause and the most outrage
about the police action. She was beautiful despite being no longer young and
very visibly a racial minority. I expected a lot of reactions: violence,
anger, mental `crash'. I would not have imagined him to write something
there.

Mr Sily saw the activity and screamed at the screen. ``What are these people
doing? This bitch is up to no good! Arrest her or worse!'' 

The police encircled the group of protesters. The person and the policeman
exchanged text silently. Occasionally, he would say what he heard and said,
but the microphone could not pick it up. Someone started tapping his feet
nervously. A noise was heard: The woman turned around and spoke to the
group. I had no idea what she tried to say, but her group seemed to react
hectically. I could not see what they were doing, but they seemed to access
their phones, papers and other devices. 

``Why are they still connected?'' shouted someone. 

``All of Soton is one HPDC cell. If we'd disconnect them, all of Soton loses
its connection.'' I explained. 

``They all already disconnected!'' explained Mr. Sily. Their threats are
futile. 

``What about other ways of communication? Other data providers? FreeConnect?''
asked someone.

``We cut them all off! They are bluffing!''

Suddenly, the picture of the park scene was replaced by that of a dark,
graphic in flickering light. I tried to look away, but I felt myself unable
to move.

\paragraph{Liberty M\"{u}ller:} I was not amazed by the speech of this Karin
person, mostly because I hoped she had more to herself than a good-looking
body, big `assets' and religious fervor. Instead, she knew little more than
we did. Of course none of this mattered when the police decided to go all
`national security' on us. An african woman, apparently the only one who
spoke at least a modicum of English tried to search a dialogoue with the
policecmen. She explained her position to the policemen, he was not
favorable. And announced that the group should give up and face the
terrorism charges they `worked hard for'. Okay, not quite what you want to
hear if you want to remain peaceful. I tried to message various people on my
contact list, but got no connection. ``Fucking shit!'' I cursed. Then I saw
the camera. I had read that these things stream live. I had read as well
that their encryption was not updated for cost reasons when it was found out
that their algorithm was vulnerable. I ran a program, I had written before
the change and only seconds later, a result was shown. `Okay, now I know why
they had not upgraded earlier, they knew that they were hackable!' I
realized. ``I need you all to create traffic! Try to connect somewhere,
locally whatever! And someone please give me the video, which you uploaded.''
Normally, the camera was not supposed to lose the connection easily. In
practice, it was probably not even our attempts to reach someone as the bad
setup, which made it reconnect. And thus allowed me to man-in-the-middle the
re-connection from the base. The streaming started. Yay for worldwide forced
standards, yay artificially limited markets and yay almost monopolies in
things like chips for video streaming.

``What the fuck have you just done\textinterrobang{}'' asked Sarah upon
seeing my insane smile, well, my even more insane than usual smile that is.

``Stupidity deserves punishment, great stupidity deserves great punishment. 
Unsurpassed stupidity however deserves unsurpassed punishment. At least that 
way, they realize not to use insecure encryption.''

``I repeat my question: What have you done and how have you done it?'' she 
replied.

I explained the vulnerability to her and how I exploited it. She stared at
me incredulously. ``You can do that?''

``Normally not, but these people not only allowed but invited the attack. I
can only do this kind of stunt if people really deserve it because they fail
at life. Hard!'' I proceeded to explain what should be done to their
so-called security experts and ended my several minutes long rant with: And 
then, we should \textit{really} hurt them!''

Sarah grinned. ``That was badass for a geek like you!''

The black woman, who earlier tried to negotiate made her way through the
crowd to us. She looked very angry. ``So much for trying to keep things
civil! Are you aware what you just did?''

``Saved our collective asses?'' I suggested.

``These guys are still around and they are all around us. Only now they will
be convinced that we are terrorists and not as I explained mostly harmless.
We have just screwed up royally and I expect us to be on our way to Nova
Gitmo soon and never again see the daylight again.''

``How is that different from their previous plans?'' I asked.

``There was a chance that most of us would have been released earlier.''

``That sounds not like the Londono country way to me, sorry to say that. I
never heard of anyone getting into Nova Gitmo and getting out to tell the
tale, unless they are reporters or guards.''

``I have heard the opposite.'' she said.

``That is what the government says,'' I said, leaving no room for
interpretation on my opinion about their credibility. ``However, it is quite 
surprising how many people have unfortunate diseases and accidents after
being proven innocent in a, or rather, despite a `fair' trial.''

``You mean that this is like Akrao country, the country I come from?'' asked
she surprised.

``No idea how `fair' the trials are there.'' I admitted.

She changed the topic: ``So, what do you think we should do now?''

``I guess showing them the video is not possible or will be vetoed by you.''
I stated.

``They wear eyepatches to keep them protected against the video. You have 
noted this?''

I suddenly burst out laughing. The idea of policemen with eyepatches was too 
ridiculous. I realized that the idea might not have been well-thought either. 
My vision on my right eye was horrible, no other way to put it. It was
bordering on the nonexistant. I explained that to the others.

There was a discussion, mostly about the synchronization of the attempt of
attacking. We all realized how important the auditory component was and thus it 
was important to play the video exactly simultaneously. We also realized how 
important it was to take them by surprise. If they averted their eyes quickly 
enough, they would still be unaffected.

Shevek, who was next to me had an idea: ``You know that people normally tell to 
count to three or four until something starts? How about using a high number? 
High enough for them not to keep averting their eyes anymore. To see what we
are up to.''

``Like 42?'' I asked with a grin.

Noone seemed to get that one. ``Like 192 rather. That is a bit after three
minutes and I doubt that anyone keeps averting their eyes then.'' The African
woman, Shirley, said.

``And continue counting!'' I suggested. ``That way it is far less obvious
that something sinister started.''

``You're insane!'' Sarah said, apparently as a compliment.

``Let's see whether I am insane enough.''

\paragraph{Richard Monger:} I felt my senses return to me. For some odd reason, 
I felt quite refreshed, I looked around. Many people just woke up. ``What... 
happened?'' I asked. I was rather relieved that my voice sounded normal. It
would mean that it did not work, would it? Would this mean that we escaped
the... change, which others encountered? I looked at the screan, but it was
dark and deactivated.

``No idea!'' someone said, ``I think that I passed out! Something happened,
the screen suddenly showed something different. It made no sense. I suddenly
felt paralyzed. And then, I woke up.''

``Same here!'' someone said. 

Others echoed that statement. It felt strange, but after the shock not
painful anymore. I asked the question, I guessed everyone thought about:
``Does that mean that we are changed now?''

People looked shocked at this suggestion. It was almost as if I suggested
that the pope was not only gay and pedophile but also a protestant. Someone
asked: ``What gives you the idea that the change occurred
here\textinterrobang{} They would have to hack a secure connection for that.
I can imagine a lot of things which are easier. One of them is reciting the
constitution of the E\v{u}ropa Unio by heart.''

I never realized before how strange the words for our beloved supernational
entity sounded before. ``Any other explanation?''

``Not really.'' he admitted.

``It seems to be the most likely explanation. And, lo and behold, we are
still sane.'' I could not resist quipping. Then I saw Mr Sily. He looked so
angry, shocked and panicked that I was afraid that he would attack someone.
``Well, most of us are.''

The reaction of the group was very emotional. Someone started crying, others
were very close to screaming, others reacted by aggression against
nonsentient objects, a few people smiled. I was one of the people who
smiled, for no other reason than having understood this riddle. 

Suddenly, the face of Mr. Sily changed. ``You say that those who are on this
side of the change can understand each other?'' he said to no one special.
After receiving the confirmation of this, he called a number on his phone.
It took a bit until the call was answered, then, he spoke. ``Hello, my
little princess! It's me, Daddy!'' 

\chapter{Kaju'het - Fight}
\paragraph{Stephen:} I felt claustrophobic with all these people around me.
It was not what I expected when I heard that Karin was giving a speech. I
expected people, of course, but not that they moved so closely together when
the police approached. Word of mouth and of local inter-system transfer
reached me to start counting out loud and upwards and prepare to show the 
video they were distributing to the nearest policeman. I had a pretty good
idea on what the video was. I thought it could not work since most, if not
all of these people were wearing eyepatches. I suspected that they had some
sort of proof that this worked against the effect of the video. Definitely
ungood, very much so. Some girl who was sheltered in the center shouted: ``I
have signed legislation to outlaw this country forever! We will begin
increasing in numbers in a few of your earth minutes.'' She then started
counting, giggling insanely. A man near her put his arms around her shoulder.
Others joined in the counting.

Whatever they had planned, it took its time. But they had talked about `a
few of your earth minutes', so probably they wanted us to wait. I asked
someone what the time was until we should go ahead. The person explained
that we were not supposed to say the number out loud, and gave a math
riddle. I hated these things in school, but I understood that it was
necessary so that the police would not recognize the number. They would not
understand our language, but we would be horribly wrong to assume that we
were completely save that way. People still would be able to hear the words,
even if it was possible that we used various declinations and conjugations,
which made the speech incomrhensible to anyone but us. While counting up, I
tried to think whether and when we used declination. It was hard to think of
language that way. I realized that there were various different forms a word
could take, but that they did not differ that much. Only the last or first
part of the word (or both) attached some different forms. This of course
meant that it was rather easy to find the basis. We reached 100 with our
numbers. People started to stand up.

Standing up, I saw additional trouble: a huge horde policemen had arrived
and many of their big vehihcles stood there. Now I understood why we all had
not been arrested yet: they had not enough of their prisoner transport
vehicles. I mentally cursed strongly. This looked definitely uncute. It was
not easy not to lose your nerves or your mind. We reached 190. I opened the
video in the intelligent paper, I played with the entire time earlier,
absent-mindedly. 191, I took a deep breath. 192! A quick movement started
the video on the pad and showed it to the policeman near me. I counted up to
ten, mentally, then I realized that we still lived and the policeman I
showed the video to had not moved yet. `Excellent' I thought. 

I pushed him over, seemingly paralyzed, he did not even attempt to resist. I
disarmed him, took his gun, then took the intelligent paper, reset the video 
and held it in front of me. All around me, policemen dropped like flies.

``To the vehicles!'' someone shouted. 

We started running. I had to run into the direction at first to get out of
the circle. I saw a policeman take out his gun, trying to aim while averting
his eyes. I felt a searing pain in my left leg, ran forward, reset the video
and shoved it into his face, which he turned away. People ran past me. I
heard shots, shouts, chants, was shoved onwards. People attacked the police.
hands and arms in uniforms were raised, policemen giving up to the changed.
I could not walk well, blood ran down my leg. I moved towards the police
cars, others did as well. When I reached the nearest transport car, I saw
that people took it over. One place was still free. I opened the door,
collapsed on the seat, I used my t-shirt to stop the bleeding. Only then I
actually saw who was in the car. On the steering wheel, was Karin.

Even while I was taking care of the leg, the car started moving backwards.
Now Karin asked: ``How do we get to Londono?''

I explained her where the \^{s}oseo was, occasionally making noises of pain
during the explanation. She seemed to ignore these and drove like the maniac
that she was through the city. 

``What are you trying to do?'' someone asked.

``State television headquarters!'' she murmurred during a risky maneuver. 

I must have looked as if she lost the remaining bits of her mind. ``Why?'' I
shouted.

``They think that we are terrorists. We will show them.''

``You want to transmit the video via state television of this country?''
someone asked.

``Yes! I want to do exactly that. Have a problem with that?''

``They will send the military, no one will get out of that alive!'' he said.

``I don't fear death!'' she exclaimed.

``I do! And I know the way to Londono, while you still can't read street
signs. You are aware of that?''

``You won't mislead me.'' she said, trying to sound self-confident but
sounding insecure.

``I will.'' he stated.

``I'll help.'' I said. ``I don't plan to spend the rest of my life fighting
my conscience because I changed approximately one country. Thus I won't do
that!''

Karin sighed. ``Nice to see so much support for the cause.'' she said
sarcastically. ``Still, we can't run and can't defend our cause or our lives.
You have seen that a peaceful speech escalated. This was not our fault.
Shirley was called a terrorist! Shirley, the most innocent person out there.
They will have no problems to put us either into prison or psychiatry. Just
as they already did with all the changed people whom they could get hold of.
They haven't even labelled it as the thing it is but as insanity.''

``Well, yes, they don't understand us!'' the person next to me, who had been
quiet so far said.

``They didn't send linguists but policemen.'' Karin stated.

After long discussion, we came to an agreement: we would go to Londono. We
would try to get into the headquarters of the state television station, but
not to transmit the video but to get into the position for making demands
and be taken seriously. Karin endangered the road even more than by her
sheer presence by calling people she knew about the plan. Several times, I
thought that we would get an answer to the eternal question whether there is
an afterlife. Karin's driving seemed really dangerous, too fast and too
angry. She surely was not one of the women, who paid less for their car
insurance due to her defensive driving. I felt extremely scared. The pain
did not subside at all. I wondered whether it would be better if they just
threw me out in a way that I would die quickly. I did not say this of
course, just yowled in pain. 

\paragraph{Liberty M\"{u}ller:} I was shoved into a lot of directions, when
the 192 was reached. I tried to keep near Shevek, but it proved to be hard.
As soon as I could, I ran, I ran away. A group of people ran into the same
direction as I did. I hurried, struggled to keep up with them. Shevek
stumbled over something, I lost precious time helping him up. We rushed
further. When I could not move anymore, I looked back. ``We aren't followed
anymore!''

The others stopped, looked around, panted. ``We've done it!'' said Shevek
happily between breathing. 

I nodded. For a while we just stood there. Neither of us was very athletic,
me probably being the worst. Physical education was for me a humiliation and
a chance to get bullied. Thus I hated it and avoided all kinds of sport
because it reminded me of that class. My physical condition was thus rather
ungood. After we felt more or less human again, Shevek asked: ``Any clue
where we are?''

People shook their heads. I did as well. I had never been in this part of
the town before. I thought a few words which my mother would not like to
hear. I realized that we had to find a way back to the hotel, but just
backtracking our way might be a very bad idea. We would get into the entire
black and yellow mess again. We discussed for a while what to do. No one of
us had any real plan or a map of Soton. Thus, we tried to go more or less
randomly. Eventually, this brought us back to the park and the fountain. The
fountain was on the other side of the park as the speaker's corner. It was
not even in a line of sight. It was eerily quiet despite that. No one was
going for a walk. No one was walking his or her dog. No one was lieing on a
blanket and pretending to learn. Definitely ungood.

We decided to try to reach the central road by other means. In a side-road,
we saw two policemen. I was shocked. I immediately said: ``I think we're
wrong here.'' then turned around and walked the other way. I tried to make
it seem as if we were genuinely lost. This was damn hard when my heart
seemed to beat so loudly that I was fearing that others could hear it. The
others were a bit behind me when I saw them and I saw that they got away a
bit too eagerly. `For the sake of the higher spirit!' I thought, `don't
these people realize that this is etremely suspicious\textinterrobang{}
These people were not wearing eyepatches, they were probably not on the
search for the changed.'

I met the rest of Sarah's clan on the way to the hotel. We had no distinct
clue on what to do so we grabbed our stuff, checked out and went onto our
way. Now all we needed was an idea where to go to. Pierre and Shevek settled
the question about the last place like real men: Via a game of rock, paper,
scissors. To my delight, Shevek won, meaning that Pierre settled for the
`are we beyond the border yet' position in the trunk. Fortunately, we didn't
have a lot of luggage. Gideon suggested returning to Berlino country in the
quickest possible manner. As he formulated it: ``Before they close the
border.'' 

``Probably have done that already if they plan to.'' said Sarah's mother
Sabine, ``happened in Harareo country this fast and I can't imagine they're
less organized here than they were over there.''

``They have a reason to be in chaos.'' I stated and grinned. I could not
resist doing this when thinking of the mess that I probably caused.

``Not all of them! As soon as we get official networks again, we might get
some info on what exactly happened.'' Shevek said and showed his
connectionless phone.

``Do you speak English?'' I asked.

``No, but I have a dictionary.'' he said and showed it. ``Should tell us
about the gist of it. Most importantly: about the things which are not
mentioned.''

``It still does not answer the most important question: what to do? Dovero?
Londono? Elsewhere?'' said Gideon.

``Dovero!'' shouted Sarah and me in unison.

``Anyone against it?'' he asked. When no one spoke up, he started the car
and quickly drove to the \^{s}oseo. 

``Liberty, your parents surely are worried.'' said Sabine out of the blue.
``I am surprised that they have not showered you in calls.''

I made a slightly embarrassed sound. ``They always call me during the worst
possible moments. Thus I ignored them on client level. And now I can't
unignore them.''

``You ignore your own parents?'' asked Gideon incredulously.

``They drove me crazy!'' I said as if it was an excuse. I summarized a few
of the stunts they pulled: Calling every five minutes when I was with
friends they disliked, calling at 6 am on weekends when they were away from
home but I wasn't and of course the fact that my mother tried to send an
exploit to my phone to get my call history. They suddenly understood my
position much better. While I was talking about that incident, I told how I
not removed the malware but let it display vastly incorrect data. After 2
weeks of me residing at my parents and my phone pretending to be in a remote
part of Kampalo country, they asked me about the incorrect data they were
getting. I told them that this exploit was illegal and I had no problem
calling the police about this. Suddenly their attitude changed very much. I
did not tell how the story continued since I did not want to spoil this tale
with the bitter taste of defeat.

``Wow!'' Gideon exclaimed after that. ``I can understand now why you ignore
them.''

``They have worked hard to earn their reputation, let's leave it at that.''
I stated. I missed them, despite working hard on their reputation of not
caring about my privacy and confusing love with control. I knew that it was
expected to love the own parents, but my emotions to them were often very
confused and contradictory. I knew that emotions made no sense and far too
often wanted an off-switch for them and this was no exception. I think I was
mainly ashamed of being considered illogical.

During our talk, we reached the end of the state-mandated communication
blackout. My first action was to log into the Nation and I was not the only
one. I was not the only one to do so. After Sarah shouted to Pierre that we
had a connction again, he thanked and as it seemed logged in as well. It was
him who discovered first Karin's call for re-grouping in a certain place in
Londono. We discussed this piece of information among ourselves. Karin was
crazy. We all agreed that she was a religious fanatic and a morally bankrupt
person. However, it was not as if we had a large choice of things we could
do and places we could go to. We decided to change our course and to go to
Londono.

\chapter{Kelda'het - Those Who Remain}
\paragraph{Richard Monger:} Some of the biologists and linguists were absent
when we saw the video for some odd reason. When they arrived, they had a
hard time understanding what had happened. They refused to believe us when
they heard it. Then, they had to realize what exactly happened. It was
possible to communicate, but it was very slow. While the grammar of the
linguists was surprisingly good, the vocabulary was very limited. It was
often possible to convey meaning only after explaining almost every term.
Also, they first had to ask for many specific terms before actually saying a
sentence. It was nevertheless a positive surpise that communication worked
as well as it did. The biologists immediately wanted volunteers for their
tests. I volunteered as guinea pig. I hoped that this was something which
made it easier for us to re-gain our knowledge of English. The tests
involved mostly the attempts to communicate and parse things in an invented
language under a kind of brain activity scanner. It seemed to take forever,
but eventually, I was free. ``Have you found anything?'' I asked,
simplifying my language to the situation. Of course I hoped that a brain
scan would find \textit{something}, but that was not what I asked for.

``It is... something relevant. I am not sure whether you know thought-system
that-was-newed-by Guilan. It is not something, the-many-people
see-it-is-valid. The found-things are in a manner that this thought-system
cause them.'' the translator explained.

``You mean, `that this thought-system explains the cause'? Like:'' I took
out my keys, held them in front of me and let them go. They adhered the laws
of gravity and fell to the ground. ``I opened my hand,'' I made the gesture,
``and I caused this,'' I pointed to the keys, ``to fall. But, my movement is
the cause of the movement of this.''

``Yes, exactly. This thought-system is: language is not changing
in-all-ways. Language is changing in-selected-ways. There are not no-border
many ways, which might exist. There are low-amount many ways.''

I translated it into whatever language it was I was speaking: ``Language is
not changing at random, you mean? There are not unlimited amounts of change
but only a defined amount of them?''

``Yes. There are not million-region change-able things, there are
hundred-region change-able things. Everything else... it-is-caused-by these
change-able things.'' 

``Changeable things as in what?'' I asked.

After a longer exchange I understood that he meant variables. I felt the
term he used rather strange. It was not as if variables were changeable in a
formula. They could only change in relation to other values and their names
refered to that property.

It took a long series of exchanges like this until I got the full picture:
The way language is represented in the human brain depends largely on a
number of variables and a function for each of them indicating the cost (in
time and required effort) of a change in either direction. If someone wants 
to learn a language, it would thus make sense to use a method which
minimizes the required cost in the human brain. The theory was
controversial, but the findings made sense this way. What he thought was
that something in the video might free the variables for a limited time,
which made them move to a local minimum of the cost function. It did not
contain actual information, just used things, which the brain already
established by the way it encodes concepts and converts them into sounds. A
proof for that was that the limited exposure of policemen during the
Operation Fuckup did not lead them to be unaffected, as was theoretized,
just made their pronunciation and grammar become strange in certain
respects. It is incidentally a way, which linguists say might be the future
of their language. People from 100 years in the future might hear a
recording of them and not be able to tell a difference between them and
contemporaries who spoke about old-fashioned things. It also sounded to me
as if this meant that this language I used would be the fate of humanity,
but the biologist quickly went on to explain that there were probably
several local minima and that the hypothesis was not well-enough understood
to say where a global minimum might be. If humanity ever reached that
status, language would be unchanging. Every variation which might be
possible would be disadvantageous. New words would be coined for new
concepts, but if you disregard them, any timetraveller could go from the
beginning to the end of the existance of a culture using this language and
not see any altered or varied grammar. Neither would there be any great
vowel shifts or actually any sound changes.

I had to admit that this was a really strange thought. I thought, hyped by
the paranoia of Mr Sily, that it was a weapon to cripple the mind of an
enemy, to make him unable for certain areas of thought. I would never have
imagined that it was a kind of a very archaic version (if only in terms of
vocabulary) of a lingua franca of the future. I felt strangely better, even
though I was still a victim, I felt strangely happy and calm. Suddenly, the
entire situation seemed no longer to be threatening that much. Nothing
actually changed for me, the situation was still the same, but my outlook
changed very much. I told this to the other changed ones. They reacted
confused, but also rather happy about these findings. It did not solve our
immdiate problems, it did not offer any solutions, but it did offer
self-esteem. 

One of the biologists explained these findings to the bureaucrat who is in
charge of even Mr Sily. He also explained what happened to us. Yes, people
were not very amused about this. On the other hand, they had a lot of other
problems at the moment.

\paragraph{Karin:} We arrived in Londono, paid the high congestion fee, and
somehow made it to the place, my strange brother suggested. A lot of
different people made it there. Among them the person, who had the plan for
handling the police and also supposedly hacked into the police system and
sent them the change. If that was true, it was an awesome exploit,
especially if many people saw it. I was happy to see that she did not leave
to her home country. She hugged a person, who looked tanned and was smaller
than her. I wondered whether he was a brother to her or whether she actually
fell for a smaller man. I reminded myself that in these strange times,
nothing was fixed. In the area of relationships, anything that was possible
was also done, though probably in secret. It was like a real-life version of
rule 34. When I saw them both kissing, it answered my question.

I tried to force my attention away from the relationships of other people,
despite them being very interesting and thought ahead. I had never been in
the headquarters of the state television station. No one of us had been. No
one of us had ever tried to take someone hostage and surely no one of us
ever did that to an entire TV station. It would require a lot of improvising
and of adapting our plans. I had read in Susanne's texts that a battle plan
only was good until the contact with the enemy, so this suited me well. I
would not do the mistake to deal with every possible issue, to make a
detailed series of what-ifs. We lacked the time for that. Instead, I prayed
with the others for a quick success once the general idea what we had to do
was accepted. We also agreed on a quick method to solve arguments when
inside and lacking time. I often saw the good guys in films arguing
pointlessly despite lacking the time for that and the baddies mercilessly
exploiting this.

I was not calm, not in the least. I knew that our only realistic chance was
to try the impossible. Thus, I was very afraid. I tried to calm myself with
the writings of my mother and it did work a little, but not that much. Not
having to resort to this would have helped my mood much more. I tried to
remind myself that I was not a coward, that I showed the courage, she wanted
to see in people who tried to change the world, that the higher spirits were
on my side. Then I gave the signal for us to start.

A few people had taken over police cars. These were what we would use to
approach the main entrance. A second, similar-sized group would circle the
building and notify us about any eventual exits in the back, that we needed
to be aware of.

The short car ride seemed to stretch out quite a long time, but when it
ended, it was far too soon. We left the cars, which we `parked' in a way to
make access to the main entrance hard. The entrance was unguarded, so we
entered, hurried into the reception area and Shirley told the nice little
lady from a racial minority that she had to come with us, bring us to the
bureaus of the management. She needed the persuasion of a gun pointed at her
before she understood that this was not some kind of joke. Then, however,
she reacted quickly. She wanted to use the elevator, but I knew of the
probably installed alarm functions, so Shirley made her use the stairs. She
was in a bad shape. Soon we had no fear that she was going to scream because
she had trouble catching breath. We climbed quite a number of stairs before
we reached one of the highest floors. Getting there, a few loyal men guarded
the stairs and the exits. Most of us entered the bureaus, threatened the
suit-wearing guy or pants-suit-wearing gal and the possibly existing
secretary outside and went onto the next one. The first time, I was scared.
I was reminded that this could go very, horribly wrong. I tried to sound
convincing as I shouted at them to be quiet only to intimidate them. It was
hard to sound intimidating despite my anxiety reaching previously unknown
levels. They two got the message though. In the meanwhile, Shirley and Mark
asked people about a large, windowless room for us to remain in. Well,
Shirley asked, Mark was there to defend Shirley if required. When we were
done, we herded the entire group of suits into a recording studio, Shirley
was told about. One of the suits wanted to escape downstairs as we
descended, but a shot made him freeze and then return, despite it hitting
only the ground.

The people who were in said studio reacted in a flurry of confusion. They
seemed first to be completely unable to understand what happened, then as
Shirley translated, some of them got angry about the increased production
costs. It was an extremely weird situation, but one, which I almost
anticipated. When the brain cannot grasp the full situation, it will react
to a ridiculous fragment of it. I remembered sadly that a sister of my at
that time best friend got into a minor car accident as pedastrian and the
driver's first reaction was to shout about the fact that the paint job of
his car was ruined. People occasionally do really strange things when their
brain bluescreens.

Others were herded into the studio. Those on top of the administrative chain
were of course a priority. The loss of cleaning staff and secretaries would
be not a big problem. Unfortunate, but the situation required it. The loss
of about everyone who was in charge and probably one actor or two would be a
tragedy for the TV-obsessed country. (So many people thought that the TV was
dieing only a few years ago, what died were only the concept of it being
transmitted in an analogue way and via a distinct media. It became a part of
the 'net instead, but people still wanted to watch to switch off their
brains. Televsion series still could become insanely peopular and actors
were still more popular than presidents or prime ministers.)

Stephen was near me. One of the teams found a first aid kit and Leonie, a
nice elderly lady who you'd expect to read magazines, knit and at one point
of their retirement get into a crisis and try to solve it with a long
holiday in a foreign country, like Pyinmana country, much to the horror of
their children, but not to participate in something like this, treated his 
wound. We could do nothing against the pain though. I remembered from my
time as catholic that pain was considered good there, but knew that he
turned atheist and phrases could not help him, painkillers could. He tried
to be heroic, manly and not to show how bad his pain was. 

I wondered what happened to others who were injured in Soton. We had to
leave too quickly to see what happened to everyone there, our phones did not
work so we could not even call an ambulance once we got away.

Sirens were heard through the open doors of the studio. Of course, police
would have heard about this and would attempt to do everything to keep the
language and our group from spreading. ``Quick, Shirley, translate this: We
represent those who were changed. We have the following demands: Acceptance
of Unified as a language, not a mental diseasse, liberation of the changed
who are currently in mental institutions or correction facilities and
restoration of their and our full legal rights as well as elimination of
these occurances on their personal records. Also, we demand the recognition
of the changed as a distinct ethnic group. The hostages, we took are so far
alive, well and unchanged, if you insist, one of these things can change.'' 
I spoke slowly enough for her to write it down.

``What's next? The constitution of the E\v{u}ropa Unio?'' she replied while
opening certain files in her paper.

``Not right now, but when Unified becomes an official language there, I am
sure that they will get back to you.'' I quipped.

Shirley giggled.

I returned to the issue: ``Tell me when you are done, okay?''

She nodded. It was clear that she was annoyed.

I heard a noise, from outside of the studio. Human movement, running,
murmured speech, something dropping. Liberty and the group she was with
hurried into the studio. Liberty was completely out of breath. The others
were in better states, but all seemed frightened. I asked: ``What happened?''

``These fucktards are entering the building!'' exclaimed one of them.

He did not need to be explicit about which fucktards he refered to. That
was unambiguous in the current situation. I looked at Shiley. She was
concentratedly working on her attempts to translate. I turned to Liberty.
``Any success reaching the control center?''

``None! Can't find anything in this anthill!'' she said. ``We have found the
archives, the radio studios, a lot of bureaus and a cleaner's closet with
modern day Romeo and Juliet in it, or rather: 2 Romeos.''

Just then, another group arrived with what looked like 2 policemen in their
control. ``Never allow wannabe-vigilates the access to a costume chamber.''
said Martha angrily.

I raised an eyebrow. ``They have pretended to be policemen?''

``Yeah. We still guard the doors.''

I sighed in relief: ``Excellent! Undress these clowns! And don't forget to 
giggle when you get to their underwear.''

``What a cruel, unusual and awesome punishment!'' someone said, laughing.

Shirley asked loudly and to the entire group: ``Does someone have a
projection-capable phone? I mean a good one?''

I gave her mine. ``Why do you need it?''

``We can't actually come near these people. So I suggest to project our
demands on a wall outside.'' she explained.

``Makes sense,'' I nodded, ``though it probably is a better idea to project
it to the road. Better readable.''

``They could easier triangulate our position and snipe.'' Liberty explained.
``And modern phones are still completely crap at compensating for being
projected at an angle!''

``We can put a phone in a position to project to the ground and control it
remotely.'' suggested Mark. ``That solves both issues.''

``Implement this!'' I told Mark. ``I will hide the phone later.''

He nodded. Only one minute later, he had a grin on his face and handed me
the phone. I hushed out of the studio. I knew the way, more or less. The
room in the first floor, I positioned the phone in was a kitchen. Looking
down showed the police sieging the building. I heard noises, their weird
monotone speech shouted into the building and sirens. I realized that they
tried to communicate with us, despite having no idea that we did not
understand a word of what they were saying. When I returned, Mark entered a
series of commands. Then, he said: ``Should be showing this. Check whether
it is projecting and how these mimes react.''

``Yeah, I will do!'' I said and searched a window in the right direction on
this floor. 

There was a large group of policemen near the message. The quality of the
projection was, well, between subpar and nonexistant, I could see that. So I
guessed that it took them some time to understand what was meant by it. I
waited impatiently, hoping that the windows were metalized well enough to
conceal me. I could not hear the noises from outside up here, thus it all
looked like a huge mime-convention or a Charlie Chaplin film. I realized
that I was chewing my fingernails and quickly moved my hands away. `Fuck! I
thought that I gave this bad habit in middle school' I thought to myself. 

\chapter{Inu'het - Argument}
\paragraph{Karin:} The confusion ended after a while. Someone projected a 
reply on the wall of the adjacent house. I made a picture and ran to the 
studio. Shirley translated it after a while of looking up words and biting 
her lower lip: ``What do you mean by `changed' and who are you?''

I told her what to translate: ```Changed' means that we received the grace
of the higher spirits and the divine language. We are a group of people who
were exposed to the graceful presence of the higher spirits on earth in
various ways.''

``You are aware that some of us are secular?'' asked Stephen.

``The secular among us were also blessed by the higher spirits. They just
don't believe it. So it is okay.'' I replied. Stephen remained quiet after
that answer.

Shirley translated it. I realized how depedant we were on the black woman,
who might not look beautiful in the traditional sense but in a sense which
inspired respect in others. No one else knew as much about the grammar of
the language of this country than her. If something happened to her, we'd be
seriously harmed in our ability to communicate. It definitely showed that
she was a linguist and a cunning one at that. We had to make sure that
nothing happened to her as she was one of the few irreplacable people in our
group. As if to proove how easy others could be replaced, a former
programmer called Li transfered the reply to my phone because Mark just left
for the restroom. I knew that I was replacable myself. If something happened
to me, someone else would take my place, probably Mark. I always laughed
about the leaders of suicidal cults who thought they were irreplacable and
thus could not go the last walk with their community. Now, I made sure not
to fall into the same category. 

I went to the window, I used earlier to see their reaction. To me, it looked
as if someone dialed up the confusion up to its maximum. People ran around,
made wild gestures, typed into computers with fury. A group of curious
pedastrians stopped and looked what happened there, distracting the police
and adding to the confusion. A civilian car arrived and stopped there. A
group of grey-haired people in suits got out. They talked among themselves
for a while. I looked around in the room, I was in. It looked like a kind of
conference room, the walls full of sheets of flipcharts with text in their
unreadable letters on them, some graphics were sketched, apparently by hand.
I touched the material. It was oldfashioned dumb paper. Whoever used this
romm must be very deprecated in the technological knowledge and have no
qualms whatsoever about wasting taxpayer money (license-owner money, I
corrected myself). Paper had become ridiculously expensive these days with 
all the various environment taxes in effect. 

One of these grey-haired men took a megaphone and shouted something. I had 
no idea what he wanted to say. I heard nothing from this position. I saw
them wait for a while, making nervous gestures among themselves. One of the
civilians started pacing back and forth. He seemed to be as nervous as I
was, even though he had nothing to lose. If this situation didn't end well
for him, he could always return to his house and family and remain in a land
where everyone would speak his language. If it ended badly for me, I would
be dead in the best case. The alternatives were Nova Gitmo or maybe a
psychiatry, where I was drugged and under control by people who opposed
everything I stood for. I would be alive, but I would no longer lead any
kind of self-determined existence.

I forced my thoughts away from this area. I forced myself to name all
countries of the world. It was a hard task and I was almost scared about how
few I knew. I planned to look them all up this evening. 

I was woken up from these weird ponderings by seeing something projected
onto the wall of the building on the other side of the road. It was
readable. ``We urge you not to take any measures, which you will regret
later.''

I returned to the group and told them about this. I was shocked. Liberty
seemed to be very happy. ``See, it worked!'' she shouted to her boyfriend.
Others were just confused about this. One paranoid person suspected a
traitor among the changed. This, of course was more or less impossible. A
discussion sprung up on how it was possible that they spoke Unified. It was
long, fruitless and annoyingly vague because there was no argument for any
of the possibilites: That a traitor worked as translator, that someone high
of the police was changed and now translated, that they had a team of
linguists who were working on this language. Except of course of: `This is
impossible!' and `Are you smoking crack\textinterrobang{}' which never can
be avoided.

I asked Mark to send: ``We take the measures which we deem appropriate
should our demands not be met.'' He did and I left to my outlook place,
telling the group that the discussion in its current state was pointless.
The group on the ground apparently expected such a result. They stood
together, discussed and then turned to a grey-haired man who was using a
intelligent paper. The text changed. ``We urge you to consider the
implications of your actions. We are re-evaluating the causes of the
`change' and no longer consider it a form of mental disorder.''

I returned and broke the news. Then asked Mark to send: ``Tell us how it 
is classified before giving us any hope.''

When I was back on my outlook position, I noticed that they already replied.
The reply was longwinded and hideously formulated. The grammar was slightly
off. The spelling was not bad but hideous. The first text had good grammar
and spelling so it really stood out badly. I suspected that someone else
formulated this, someone who had a rather tenuous grasp on the language. The
charitable explanation of this was that they wanted to show that they
studied the language. The more realistic one was that the answer was so far
from the truth or so obviously misleading that their translator refused to
do his job. The content of the message was put in what had to be the most
convoluted way possible. I photographed the message and showed it to the
group. Someone there immediately parsed it: ``They see it as a brain injury
instead.'' Someone else commented with dripping sarcasm: ``Great
improvement!'' I had to agree: It was no improvement at all, just another
reason to keep people under control.

Mark wrote something, then showed it to us. Most of the group laughed and I
nodded encouragingly. He went ahead and transmitted it. It was a message to
them like a report card giving bad marks for clarity, grammar, spelling and
decency. Bullshitting however was rated as `excellent'.

One of the persons on the ground was apparently still amused about it, he
made a thumbs-up gesture to us when others turned their back on him. I
immediately mentally marked him as a very sympathetic person. After a while,
the reply was written. As I expected, it was a long litany on why the
demands of full integration were impossible. The text was not bad per se, it
did however make lots of wrong assumptions. I listed all the ones I found
and Mark added 3 new ones. The worst assumption was this: They were
apparently just imagining the cost of supporting one person who could no
longer meaningfully interact with society and multiplied it. They failed to
see that network effects existed in a meaningful way and saw the changed as
fully reliant on the state. We finished the message by: ``If you think we
are unable to cooperate and to work together, how did we do this?''

This last question was misunderstood in a way, which I had not believed to
be possible. I suspected that the person who actually spoke the language
could not meaningfully communicate what he understood to others. It struck
me as very odd. I realized how easy communication had been in the group.
Liberty confirmed this: ``Things were parsed or weren't parsed. They were
never actually misparsed. I am surprised that we have not noticed that
earlier.''

``You don't know what you've got until it's gone.'' Mark said. 

I agreed with him: ``Very true words, that!''

We transmitted back a correction on what was meant and I could not resist
asking whether we should try to use English since apparently a transmission
of meaning this way did not happen. 

Before I could leave, a group of people asked me whether they could go
searching the control center. I nodded. ``But don't get scared by fake cops
in state-funded costumes, please. More naked men will get distracting.'' I 
looked to the fake cops who tried to cover themselves. Liberty, who was
among the group blushed. I calmed her a bit: ``Liberty, no need to be
ashamed to attempt to warn the group. If it was for real, you would have 
saved our butts!''

She smiled faintly. ``I guess so. I still feel awkward about this.''

``Some unchanged might still be around. If you find them, get them here.'' I
reminded the group. They nodded and went on their way. I went to the
lookout. I felt the anxiousness, that I felt since the speech in Soton (which
already felt far away despite being on the same day), but also something
else: a certain tiredness of the entire situation. I just wanted it to be
over so I could lead some form of normal life again, or at least get the
resemblance of normalcy, I had before my mother died. I sighed, then used
the quietness of the room for a prayer. It still felt strange to me to pray.
I got out of the habit of doing so at a very young age and still had not
gotten into it again. I wasn't even sure how the prayers were supposed to be
like, so I felt that I was making mistakes when repeating those of Susanne's
site and of the funeral. I felt even more awkward when I tried to speak to
the higher spirits without script. I felt that I was bothering them with my
badly formulated, embarrassing thanks for what they had done for me and
catholicism-inspired pleas not to see my sins, but my (attempts of) faith
and to think of me in my hour of death. When I stopped going through the
ritual, I felt better. To me, this was another proof that the religion was
not made up but the real one. I got up from the kneeling position and looked
out of the window.

The gray-haired people were discussing with the police. Then, the message
``Can we talk in person? This textual communication is not very convenient
for us.'' appeared. I knew why these people wanted that: This way lots of
psychological tricks could be attempted, or worse things. Suddenly, I saw a
flash of light on the street. I immediately thought that they resorted to
shooting. I stared down to see what was going on. Then, a second flash
happened and I was able to recognize it: it was the flash of a photo camera.
A reporter or a citizen reporter (or just a curious citizen who probably
would share the picture) was among those who watched. I had an idea and
hurried into the studio.

``We need to get the media on our side!'' I shouted as soon as I reached our
place. Some of the unchanged fled into the corner when they heard me.

Leonie nodded: ``Sounds like a good plan. But I am not sure whether the
skills of Shirley suffice for explaining a bunch of reporters what our
motives are.''

I looked at Shirley. ``It is very hard. The dictionary lacks many terms for
things I need. I would sound like a 6 year old. And I am not sure whether I
understood all difficulties of the grammar correctly.''

``It is worth a try, isn't it?'' someone asked.

Someone else interjected: ``And we need to get into the independent news
sites. These people will be most sympathetic to our cause, I guess.''

``Good idea!'' was shouted from other places. ``Do we have bookmarks of
them?'' a voice from behind me wanted to know. ``Here!'' someone shouted.
``Here too!'' another one. It was a bit chaotic. Mark also knew a security 
and civil rights related site she had bookmarked. I looked at Shirley for 
her reactions.

``I will work on a statement to the press, if you help me compose it.'' she
said. 

I turned towards Mark. ``Can you maybe deal with the police for a while?
Tell them that direct contact might be a bad idea and so on.''

``Why?'' he asked, ``Do you fear them trying something?''

``That and a lot of psychological tricks they are going to pull. They have
their years of training. We have not much more than our courage and our
trust.'' I explained.

``Interesting way to put it.'' said Leonie. ``I think, I know where you took
that quote from.''

``Don't tell anyone, okay?'' I said with a grin.

Even when working on the message to the media, I heard a bit of what Mark
was relaying to the group. He explained that the fluency of the two groups
was simply too meager for a meeting face to face and that written
communication was most adantageous. He hinted to the bad aural fluency but
never explained how bad it really was. That was good in my book: if they
overestimated us, their actions would not be as quick and self-assured as
they would be if they saw us as a bunch of stupid people with guns.

Shirley and I prepared a short explanation on the change, its effects and
its political implication as well as our reasons to hold the television
station hostage and sent it to every place we had bookmarked. Then, we used
a search engine to find other places to send it to. It took a lot of trying
and use of colorful, strong metaphors from her to reach the contact pages of 
the various sites. To her defense: These sites did suck.
\end{document}