Being bereft of writing material is a maddening premise. I have all kinds of tales I want to tell, and no way to properly convey them. At times like these, I think back to a Foreign story I read ages ago that reflect my current condition. It falls far beyond the scope of my experience, but comes as a great solace to me. I’ve transcribed it here as best as I can recall.
(A word on the translation - the original title for this story was Forbidden Letters, but Forbidden Words sounded and fit better. If anyone can find it again, let me know.)
These days, trying to express our innermost thoughts has become more of a challenge. When we started out, we were free to share feelings without impunity, but then we started having to watch what we said to ensure that we didn’t say anything that could be considered problematic.
Every so often, we’ll get an audio announcement telling us which letters we aren’t supposed to use. Careful attention has to be paid when these reports are given. If they say all the letters in the alphabet, then we’re safe. If there’s a single vowel or consonant missing, we have to make sure we don’t accidentally say the offending letter. Anybody who mistakenly utters one of the forbidden letters will wind up being snatched away.
Seeing whatever it was that swooped these victims off was impossible to capture even with the fastest cameras. All that was visible was a blurry streak. Some tied themselves to heavy objects in the hopes that they wouldn’t be taken. No such luck. Even in those instances where access to tight areas made mobility impossible, only a faint image of sharp claws could be seen, leaving no hint of where they’d been carried off.
We called these sightless creatures SoundBiters.
For the most part, the forbidden sounds were letters we couldn’t pronounce anyways, so there wasn’t much fuss over the matter. It was a bit of a game, really. We would go through all kinds of innovative methods to work around the restrictions, finding new words that would fit the missing ones. The less word-savvy weren’t able to keep up, and were among the first to get snatched up in a hurry.
Then, one day, there were two missing letters. There was much consternation and grumbling, but we eventually learned to live with it. And we got our letters back a few days later. Besides, the other letter was one we didn’t use very often, so there wasn’t much loss there.
Then, with the next report, there were five letters missing. This set off a great panic, since this was far greater than any of us were willing to live with. The number of words we could reasonably say in polite company was becoming diminished, and any outrage that could be expressed was dampened by the number of words we could say. Now that we had no access to the same amount of letters as before, all we could see were words containing those very forbidden letters.
But after a few days, we all learned to live with the restrictions. It was annoying, but what could we really do? Any arguments made went unheard, and our vocabulary was limited to little more than grunts.
Then the list of forbidden words increased to seven. This was annoying, but we’d grown used to living on limited means, and our sense of outrage was no longer as heightened as it used to be. Besides, it was just another added challenge. We would use truncheoned sentences, tlkng vry mch lk ths. Wtht ny vwls, fgrng t wht nyn ws syng ws chllng. Bt w mngd.
And then, we were down to one letter.
Communication using just one letter was a tremendous task in and of itself. We had to use expressive gestures and intonation varied with length and pitch. It was surprising just how much could be conveyed with just one sound alone.
“Aa a aaa a aa aaaa aa a.”
“Aaa a a a aa, A a a a?”
“AA aa aa aa Aa.”
While convenient, exploring complicated issues was a practical impossibility. At a certain point, all philosophical arguments start to sound the same.
This would go on fine as long as we received breaking reports that continued with their limited sounds that gave word of what was still allowed.
Then came the day we had all been dreading all along.
The next report came... and all that came through was complete silence.
At least, it was silent on our end, but for anybody else with higher frequencies than us, they could communicate on other sound waves just fine.
The ONEs didn’t seem to notice or understand why we couldn’t talk as usual. “What’s the matter? Just use telekinetic or ultra waves. It’s not that difficult!” To them, there were the occasional Forbidden Letters they couldn’t utter as well, but their vocabulary and alternate options far outstripped our own. What was the big deal?
The big deal was that we had no access to the same senses they did. If we could, we wouldn’t be in this predicament in the first place! But our rudimentary explanation barely registered on their radars. The time to make vocal complaints was before our language became limited, not after. And with the lack of comparable languages, there was a lot of miscommunication involved.
We were simply unable to convey the pain of our current situation properly.
To compensate for this oversight, we began to rely on pictographs for communication instead.
But pictographs were normally supposed to be used at the end of a sentence for emphasis. Having a bunch of symbols was meaningless without knowing their meaning. It was next to impossible to understand anything unless you had any idea of what the subject was about. As a result, miscommunication was rampant as the majority of us struggled with this new form of communication.
There was also the dilemma of matching multiple images from an overwhelming dictionary of pictures. Frustration rose at being unable to find the exact image that would fit the exact circumstance. Missing an opportunity to jump in at an opportune point meant that moment was forever lost. To reduce confusion, we stopped using long elaborate images that flowed smoothly to using abbreviated pictures. Our selection of useful pictographs became shorter and primitive. We became overly reliant on using the same pictures to save time.
It was difficult enough to find a symbol that would capture the emotion of being both tired, disgusted and hungry with an air of detachment borne from another ineffective stressful day. I always shied away from using these pictographs, because if I couldn’t get my point across without relying on these, then I would’ve objectively failed as a writer.
What most bothered me wasn’t that the young were intuitively better than us at grasping the massive complexity of the pictographs, but how they mangled the pictures in their attempts to do so. All semblance of subtlety went out the window. They casually misused and combined the pictographs in ways that were never intended, making all kinds of dirty and silly jokes. I know that language is extremely malleable and suppose to evolve with changing times, but they could at least stand to enunciate properly.
90% of our communication was nonverbal anyways.
Without access to our speech, we had to make do with the ONEs language, which we barely had a rudimentary knowledge of. It took a painstakingly long time to even decipher the simplest sentence into something resembling our language. There was simply no comparison. Their smallest word was over 200 letters long. (With that many different letters, it was no wonder they were so blase about our dilemma - they could afford to lose a few.)
Those days of trying to figure out their language was made all the more difficult with the lack of our own. Trying to tell what someone was thinking was an impossible task and frustration ran high, being unable to coherently voice out our complaints properly and make our thoughts known. Especially since we couldn’t risk screaming out loud.
Coughs, burps, sneezes and farts were activities that were normally frowned on, but became more so for completely different reasons.
But we persevered, putting forth theories of their communication waves, using media substitutes to get the proper connotation. It wasn’t easy, especially since the occasional letter would get censored, changing the entire meaning. We had to proofread it multiple times to make sure it was accurate. When we finally got our message across, (no doubt full of grammar and spelling mistakes), their only reply was a terse, “All you have to do is listen harder!”
There are no words to describe our predicament. For five years, our life was a state of walking in an existence made of gestures. Care had to be made not to surprise anyone from behind, otherwise they might shout, and be swept away. There were brief snippets of sounds at odd intervals, but those were gone too quickly. And soon, there was little more than long intervals of silence.
Our only method of communication was via writing, and there was the general feeling that even that would be gradually taken away from us. Our minds were beginning to stagnate into mush from the lack of stimulus. We were more scared of what might happen if we spoke out, and our attempts at finding successful means of communication were very discouraging. It would only be a matter of time before this restriction would be aimed at our thoughts as well.
And then, from a speaker that we all assumed had been turned off long ago announced a report that three letters were now back in circulation. It was just a few incomplete words, but just the sensation of hearing sounds after suffering a plethora of silence was enough to bring the hardiest of us to tears.
Most of us remaining were wary. Was this a trap? Were they giving the faintest crumbs of hope to trick us into lowering our guard long enough to catch those who had somehow managed to escape whatever net they had cast earlier? If this was designed to flush us out, it was very effective.
Some of the new arrivals who’d come for some peace and quiet were the first to speak out. They hadn’t been present long enough at the start, so they were more daring than the rest of us. The more adventurous ones who were stupid enough to use more than the accepted letters were quickly snatched away, but those who stayed within the boundary were left alone.
Over the next few days, the public reports grew more clear and cohesive, revealing more letters that had once been long forbidden. If only those foolhardy daredevils had waited until then, they wouldn’t have lost their lives. Whatever cause that snatched up all those unfortunate victims was something that was never adequately explained. Those of us who tried to understand were left floundering for a reason.
But what did that matter? The worrying was over. We could engage in casual conversation over banal gossip and small talk. We could exercise our vocal chords once again after an eternity of letting them atrophy away. It is amazing what you miss when it no longer becomes available. Now, we listen intently for the daily reports, keeping a watchful ear for any potential missing letters. We wouldn’t want that to happen ever again.
Yet even now that I know that I have a surplus of letters to use, as well as silent letters from other languages, I still find it difficult to stretch my creative muscles without worrying that at any moment, the words I valiantly fought to keep for so long have been taken away from me. I couldn’t take that loss again.
I can’t rest easy, knowing that our words could be taken away from us at any mment.
A last word about the text. Readers may be curious as to what the content of the warning announcement every day was. In the original language, there were only eleven letters, which would make it easier to tell the difference by simply substituting a different truncated word that had a similar meaning. That simply wouldn’t work with our alphabet, so I left it intentionally vague.
Ironically enough, I’m wonderful at putting together words in a combination from multiple sources, making the final result sing. But I’m absolutely terrible at putting individual letters together. When I look at a collection of letters, I can barely manage to find more than three-letter words. Experts out there are welcome to rise up to the challenge and create a suitable warning of their own.
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