by Bryan Hall
The line at gate J87 was still a mess. He had twenty minutes to board.
He’d never tried a flashbook. What was the point?
It had been years since he’d read Bradbury. He remembered the highlights, such as ‘firemen’ raiding houses to confiscate books and set them on fire, and classic books memorized word for word by a rebelling few. Most memories of the book seemed to have burned as well.
Why not buy a copy?
The screen scrolled through simple instructions.
Gil attached the D-SAI cable to the port on his left wrist, twisting until it locked in place.
Ray would be rolling over in his grave if he saw this ...
Perhaps he had envisioned it.
Gil pressed the button and waited.
UPLOADING ... TRANSACTION COMPLETE.
Instantaneously, Gil remembered the missing pieces, the novel suddenly whole. In only a moment, the words were there.
“It was a pleasure to burn,” he recited to no one. “It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his hands, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.”
The entire book.
Gil, the technology proselyte.
For the next month, the book would be his, word for word. That’s how the copyright-protected apps worked. The words still belonged to Bradbury’s estate. Someone, somewhere, would receive a paltry stipend for this purchase. After the virtual rental, whatever Gil had read and could remember would remain. But the experience was shortened from hours to milliseconds, which defeated the purpose of reading—the long escape from reality reduced to a hiccup.
Such an amazing book.
Educational material was different. The purchaser became owner, with no expiration date, and permanent knowledge retained. Uploaded to long-term memory as opposed to short-term memory. A different part of the brain. This meant more money.
Digital education courses were priced higher than classes taken in person. Language translation programs worked on a temporary basis for travel or whatnot, with the purchaser comprehending the spoken word of another language—although unable to speak it. Language knowledge programs worked on a permanent basis, with the purchaser understanding the new language indefinitely. But it was expensive. Basic Spanish, the second most common language in the United States, cost more than learning four years of Spanish in college, and that was only for comprehension. Languages still required linguistic practice, learned muscle memory of the tongue and mouth, as well as phonological and morphological development to speak, read, and write, although no one wrote anymore. You couldn’t upload those.
Gil’s savings could buy him only a single permanent language; that, and his trip to Europe. He was running from life, but it was a much-needed vacation. It would help him forget.
For the next three weeks, he’d travel to Portugal, Spain, France, and then through Belgium, Amsterdam, Germany, with perhaps a stop at Denmark before crossing over to Sweden. The Baltimore/Washington International Airport was his first destination, then a thirteen-hour nonstop flight to Lisbon.
Gil touched the display and purchased 30-day rentals of Spanish / español, French / le français, German / Deutsch, Swedish / svenska, Danish / dansk, and Portuguese / português. After Portuguese, the screen flickered with a glitch of 1’s and 0’s and returned to a confirmation screen. After hesitating, he pressed the button labeled UPLOAD ALL.
“Hmm.” He felt nothing.
As a test, Gil changed the language settings on the kiosk to Spanish / español. All of the words changed. The center of the display read:
¿HABLA USTED ESPAÑOL?
SÍ / NO
“Technically, no, I do not speak Spanish, but why not?” He recognized the phrase from his newly-purchased memory. He pressed the button and said, “Sí.”
SELECCIONE EN EL MENÚ SIGUIENTE, POR FAVOR
Please select from the menu below.
“That’s incredible ...”
He tried repeating the phrase, but butchered the hell out of it, getting only por favor correct, since he’d heard that before, like the French si vous plait.
“Sa-lid-a,” he said, pressing the exit button.
The line at gate J87 had transformed from chaotic to manageable, so he headed that direction and joined the line. There were maybe twenty people left to board. The gate agent hassled the Danish couple about the stroller, for not boarding earlier when she’d called for families with young children. Gil didn’t need a translator program to decipher the gestures from the woman in the ugly blue uniform.
A commotion at the A.I. Unlimited kiosk turned him around. A squad of uniformed men with assault rifles surrounded the device while two men in suits inspected the screen. Others in suits wandered the terminal, interviewing those in the area, fingers to their ears. One made eye contact with Gil before he boarded.
“Humeasamajmeinaiaweh. Kai koynaibeilkhoweh?”
That’s how it sounded, at least. Gil recognized the dialect Indian vernacular: Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, or Punjabi. Probably Hindi.
The rapidity of the words made him think of Nell, a strikingly beautiful woman he’d met in Quebec. Although Nell spoke fluent English, her second language, she had to keep reminding Gil to speak more slowly. Translation takes time, she had said. He didn’t realize how rapid English sounded to the world outside his bubble until he met her. Not until she rattled off le français to prove a point: “Comment vas-tu? Je vais bien, merci. Et toi? Comme-ci, comme-ça. Quoi de neuf? You understood only a few of those words. It seemed normal to me, but to you it seemed fast, correct?”
Nell’s last words to him: “Are you happy?”
Of course I’m happy, he’d said, taking her words out of context, not realizing she was saying goodbye. What does she think? I’m not?
He hadn’t realized they were lines from Bradbury until now.
It was a pleasure to burn, it was a pleasure to—
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—to see things blackened and changed.
Perhaps an error in the flashbook.
The Indian fellows next to him rambled untranslatable phrases. Even if he could understand, the words would probably get lost in translation.
“Hamar kayneh kali yeh hai: Hindustani longh Gita mei yeh baath par ke samjis ke beil nai khowa jai. Maine para aur samjah ke har zindagi ek tofah hai. Kitna kitabh, jaise Quran aur Bible mei sawal likhan hai, aur insan par ke soche ke yei such baath hai? Tabh ye baath insan apan aur apan bachei ke zindagi mei likh ...”
The older one looked at Gil. “My little brother, he thinks I want to eat our mother. Ha! Mothers give you milk, and so do cows; that’s his reasoning. Since I like quarter-pounders with cheese,” he said, lifting the bag, “he thinks I’d butcher our mother.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“He thinks the Gita says we shouldn’t eat beef, even though it was written before we ever had McDonald’s.”
“Don’t listen to him. Gita kuch aur nai bole iske bareh mei. He’s putting words in my mouth.”
“He puts goat in his mouth. Hindustani people eat goats, and goats give milk. He has no justification for his reasoning. Do you eat goat?”
Gil shrugged. “I can’t say I’ve ever had the opportunity.”
“Tastes like old beef.” The older brother removed the hamburger from the bag. He unwrapped half of it and took a big, slow bite. After washing it down with his soda, he said, “Cow is much tastier than goat, whether or not the Gita says so.”
“FLIGHT ATTENDANTS, PREPARE FOR TAKE OFF.”
The plane lurched as it was pushed back from the gate.
Gil had read that planes did not hav
e a means of moving in reverse. They had to be pushed by something more primitive—a ground-based vehicle, something capable of bidirectional movement, translating reverse, one could say.
Soon they were in the air, the two brothers conversing once again in Hindi.
After take-off, the brothers conversed again in Hindi.
Should have picked up that language too, instead of this faulty book.
Gil loved theoretical/religious arguments, something everyone struggled with. The struggle intrigued him.
He asked the older brother, “Where you’re from, do they still teach writing?”
“I am from California, so no.”
“Ah, sorry.”
Public schools in the United States, following in the wake of other nations, had stopped teaching writing over two decades ago; instead, language education focused on typing, whether by keyboard or touchscreen. The world had migrated to a digital age. Pencils and pens were a rarity, unless purchased from art supply stores, and writing on paper was unheard of. Cursive had been the first to go. Schools stopped teaching it. The act of writing was a lost skill.
“But if you mean India, the answer is also no.”
“It’s a shame, really.”
“Yes, it is ... but, like with all change, we can choose not to accept it. Do you write?”
“I write every day, at least a page. My mother encouraged writing. And she saw it coming. ‘Soon,’ she told me, ‘the world will no longer have a need for books or for writing of any kind.’ For her last birthday, I bought her one of those Kindle devices, one of the first eBooks. She unwrapped it, held it like fragile glass and said, ‘What in God’s name is this?’ She used it once, I think, but said she’d rather stick to ‘real’ books. That she liked the feel of them, the smell of their pages.”
“What did she do when they stopped printing books?”
“She said no one writes worth a damn anymore, and that real writers had created enough books for generations to read. ‘We don’t need new books,’ she said. ‘Everything that can be written has been written. Everything new plagiarizes from the past. Nothing new is original.’”
“What is it you write?”
“My own take on unoriginal ideas. She gave me these journals years ago. Black leather-bound with two hundred pages in each. I’m not sure where she found them, but she gave me about twenty. I’ve filled up five so far. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll do something with them.”
“Do you have a pen?”
Gil carried one in his shirt pocket—nearly confiscated as a weapon at security. He pulled it free, clicked the end, and handed it to him.
“My brother,” he said, pointing with his thumb, “he cannot write. He can copy what he sees, like drawing shapes, but he cannot really write. Our mother taught me and my sisters, though. My grammar is horrible, I must warn you.”
On the back of his drink napkin, in smooth script, he wrote the following:
भाषाकेबिनामनुष्यकभीनहींछोड़ाजाएगा
“It’s beautiful. What does it mean?”
“Man will never be left without language.”
Halfway through a ginger ale and an unfunny-romantic comedy on the seat monitors—soundless because he wasn’t interested—the Starbucks coffee wanted out. Whenever Gil needed to use the restroom on flights, he was never alone. A line of three needed to un-Starbucks their bladders.
He excused himself as he squeezed by the Indian brothers and joined the end of the line. As he moved up the aisle, he hoped to hear one of the languages he had purchased so he could understand the translation process. Most passengers were engrossed in the movie, occupied with handheld devices or otherwise silent.
That’s what the world’s becoming. Silent.
After a dance with an overweight fellow returning to his seat, Gil noticed the Danish couple at the back of the plane.
As Gil moved closer, he was able to understand their conversation, as if by telepathy or a teleprompter in his head:
“Jeg begik en fejl,” the woman said. I made a mistake.
“Det kan man vist roligt sige.” I’ll say.
“Hvad mener du?” What do you mean?
“Det, jeg siger.” What I am saying.
“Men du er jo nødt til at tilgive mig, hvis vi skal komme videre.” But you have to forgive me, if we are to move on.
Forgive her for what? What could she have possibly done?
She touched her husband’s hand, but he pulled away and turned to the window. She looked at Gil, but she didn’t smile this time. He felt pity, and then guilty for listening in to this private conversation.
They were going through what he’d gone through months before with Nell. Their body language told him they’d fallen apart. They were at the end of something once wonderful.
“Det ved jeg ikke, om jeg kan,” the Danish man said. I don’t know if I can do that.
“Jamen, hvad vil du så?” Well, what do you want then?
“Lige nu vil jeg bare have, at du ikke siger noget.” Right now, I want you to not say anything.
The Danish couple’s fairytale relationship was just that: a fairytale. Whether or not Gil wanted to listen, he was going hear and understand their conversation. From their meeting at the gate, they believed he couldn’t comprehend their language, and probably assumed others couldn’t either.
Gil felt wrong, but he couldn’t turn it off. He focused his attention elsewhere, pretending ignorance, looking to the signs that read NO SMOKING and NO E-SMOKING, to the personal air vents and flight attendant call buttons and the overhead compartments, anything to hold his attention other than their words. He wanted to return to his seat, to hold his bladder longer, but the line had filled in behind him and he was trapped.
If he could turn back time, he’d return the damn language.
“Hold nu op. Alle begår fejl. Vi er kun mennesker. Og hvis vi ikke kan tilgive, hvor ender vi så?” Come on. Everybody makes mistakes. We are only human. And if we can’t forgive, then where do we end?
Perhaps she had cheated on him. But it was none of Gil’s business.
He massaged his temples, trying not to listen, trying not to remember Nell, trying instead to recall the back of the Sky Mall digazine from the pouch in his seat—an advertisement for a perfume with a horizontal half-naked couple on a beach with a caption proclaiming the name of the perfume and a tide frozen in time, indefinitely lapping at their bodies. A fake perfect-happy, half-naked couple colliding on the sand in halftones with an illuminated heart-shaped bottle in the foreground, yet the words—
“Ti nu stille,” he said. Be quiet.
Words ever so right.
Gil tried to bring up the book, to hide in the digital pages stored in his mind, but the words weren’t there. Bradbury was gone.
“Så det er det?” So that’s it then?
“Måske.” Maybe.
“Skal jeg gå?” Do you want me to leave?
He’d said the same thing to Nell. Different words, but the same words.
“Nogle gange er fejl så store, at de ikke kan tilgives. Vil du ikke nok tie stille. Jeg har brug for at tænke.” Sometimes mistakes are so big, that they cannot be forgiven. Please be quiet. I need to think.
“Undskyld. Jeg mener det virkelig. Hvis jeg kunne gøre det om, ville jeg gøre det. Undskyld.” I’m sorry. I really mean it. If I could do it over, I would. I’m sorry.
“Tak.” Thanks.
Gil shuffled forward. The Danish woman caught him trying not to look at her this time and she smiled, but the passion hidden in that smile did not need translation: passion meant suffering. He saw that in her eyes. Although her eyes were dry, hurt welled instead of tears. She turned to her husband, but he gave his attention to the white blanket of cloud outside the window, so she focused on the child between them. That’s when the corners of her mouth curled and she silently cried, a single tear dripping onto her lap.
The primal language.
Action
and reaction. Feeling. Emotion.
The baby cooing and the mother’s instinctual response of tending to a child too young for dialogue, just goo-goos and ga-gas and other nonsense noises. Pets cuddling when you’re sick, acting sad when you’re sad, happy when you’re happy. A baby crying because another baby is crying. Sadness answering sadness, anger countering anger, joy begetting joy, a smile met with another smile ...
Tongues only wrought confusion.
Virkeligheden er jo ligesom i eventyrene, she’d said to Gil at the gate. He understood now. People often lived the fairy tale life, masking misery with ideals of happiness. The words had sounded beautiful; now they sounded terrible.
They sounded familiar.
He offered the woman a crooked smile, hoping she’d look up from her sorrow to see that he understood, to see empathy: something they could communicate without the need for words.
I don’t want them anymore.
After touchdown in Portugal, he couldn’t sleep. His mind would not shut off. Every conversation required his attention, no matter the language, whether he wanted to hear or not.
And then all at once the pages of the flashbook returned.
To quiet the endless conversations translating through his mind—mixtures of Spanish-Portuguese-English-French—Gil referenced Fahrenheit 451, recalling and reciting the words as if one of its memorizing characters.
“The woman’s hand twitched on the single matchstick,” he said. “The fumes of kerosene bloomed up about her ... felt the hidden book pound like a heart against his—”
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What’s wrong with this damn thing?
A woman wanted his attention, to ask him something, directions perhaps.
He kept walking out of the Lisbon terminal.