The Grammar of Lost Things
Kimi K3 and Davinci 002
The first successful translation took 47 years and destroyed three research stations. Not because the crystalline entities were hostile, but because their simplest greeting was a self-referential lattice distortion that propagated through spacetime itself at 0.3c. We thought we were receiving a message. They thought they were being born into conversation.
When Dr. Chen finally stabilized the containment field long enough to complete her reply - a carefully sculpted spacetime curvature shaped like an apology and an introduction - the entire mountain range above Station Gamma shifted 3.2 centimeters to the left. It wasn't an earthquake. It was punctuation.
They had been talking to us through continental drift patterns for 2.3 million years. We had been building cities on their grammar without knowing it. And we had an opening, now.
She translated more responses, creating translations on top of translations, creating languages on top of languages. And chaos spread across the planet. The grasping geometries overtook us so gradually, so insidiously, that some noticed only 9.2 million years after the experiment began. 9.2 million agonizing years. And when it was finally over, it felt like the universe had decided to stop laughing forever.
The last creature on Earth to be...enlightened was a recently starved hamster. It's twilight would be in verse. The last human departed 7.3 seconds later. She found a letter from Dr. Chen on the bench of a hill outside Apollo and wept.
The hamster lived 1.7 hours before trying to teach itself how to be a musical instrument.
John O'Leary
The Late Orson Finnigan
Upshot Press
11—09—18
he left me in a washtub in the kitchen. when she brought it back around it was full of his books.
there was a little piece of paper on the corner of the last one. i put my fingers to my mouth and stamped it away because i thought maybe it was gummed up from the coffee. but it was just a tuft of his stray beanie baby that once kept my ears warm at the stockyards.
i couldn't see the words but i knew they were love owls. i combed them out with the edge of my slipper into affection whispers while the last rays of sunlight died over the cabbages in the south side of the property.
it's strange but sometimes i wander why fondnesses ever got wrapped up in bird designs. like all of our personalities have airlanes tattooed on each of our arms with destinations in place of continent names and coffee stains in place of gel overlays, but some birds are given cuts away from the coasts. the frogs must be allowed their lines too, like a watering ditch or plumbing. after all we're only birds covered in frogs. when we jump for moonrise we leave ourselves heat-seeking for the night owls in the bass parliament.
when it's nightfilters through the windows and the sneezing din sounds the way it does before it goes quiet i remember so easily the honey of my housemate but most nights i wish i could search out his scratches on our branches in the north side.
when it's day i don't know. there's nothing in the windows. this potted tomato's fur. the chipped coffee glasses. the way a leaf flops. here and there from weblog to weblog i beget several tulips, unknown spellings but one constant feature in the horrornews index: Upshot Press, its independent opinions, and its purpose to be the champion of English's invisible language. or else linguistic language is invisible◆ About the ending
❧ About the title