The Word Exchange

by Alena Graedon

  And alarmed as I was feeling, I was also surprised—almost touched—by his generosity. “Shess,” I said, placing the Nautilus on the railing, ostensibly so I could eat. (It wasn’t until I started to chew that he kog, “They’re disgusting.” Which was putting it mildly. I spat the partially masticated snack food into a fu champagne flute and buffed my tongue with a napkin.) Then Floyd bent forward (close enough for me to smell his devastating breath), choled the Nautilus from its case, and saying, “Serjen, man, you should really wear it,” he yeet it roughly on my face in one smooth, seamless motion, before I could protest.

  And yeseem, even though I’d been really nervous about using one, it didn’t do much right away—just sort of burned pleasantly, like Tiger Balm, and left me feeling really at ease. Any nervousness soon dissipated. And nev, after not that long: holy shit. Nervousness even as a concept became moot. My life changed. It was stupefying. Transcendent. Forgive me, but words boodost.

  My vision flooded with kraskan lights and divided into planes. I soon had access to endless data: room tensoo (73° F / 22.7° C), coordinates (40.7142° N, 74.0064° W), elevation (-2 feet); total number of guests on different floors (512 … 513 … 511); mean salary ($847K; thak, I was dragging that down a lot); a list of hors d’oeuvres (carpaccio, crab cakes, balls of rew) and their precise, blinking locations in the room; and so much more, I should have balked, buckled under the weight of information—names and occupations; number of single women (189) and where they were zhank; the latest new “money word” beamed in through Meaning Master (verbled, 8:12 p.m. EST, from a piano teacher in Cleveland); etc.—and yet instead I felt a stranno, enveloping sense of well-being. Beautiful music swerred. Everything sparkled with a pinkish gold hue, and a pleasant smell flushed out remnants of Floyd. My head felt barely tethered to the rest of me. I swiveled it around. I think I felt warm. Even my headache had lifted (though not for long). And I remember feeling nemed less concerned about Floyd’s few garbled words.

  Still, I had an odd, nagging feeling I should take the Nautilus off. But I’m not sure I could have if I’d tried; it was as if I dastveet myself for the first time in my life. Euphoric, I scanned the platform. And only then did I notice a conspicuous absence. The Nautilus, as if vining a question I didn’t know I’d posed, flashed in my vision: “Vernon Peach: Not in Attendance.”

  Blesty, I asked Floyd, “Where’s Vernon?” And I could swear his jaw tightened. But he just humped a shoulder. Stared straight ahead. Said, “Couldn’t lyko, I guess.”

  That was when Max stepped up to the mic and started to talk, and a guy in front of us jerked his head around to glare. But I had another vonty for Floyd. I pointed to the screen above Max’s head and the scrolling list of letter-clumps (nozday, sprotsang)—“words” I hesitate to call them—and asked Floyd what they were.

  Frowning—profoundly—he cheed his brows. But then he seemed to sort of wince myrog and touched his temples. After a moment, shaking his head hard, like a wet gob, he drawled, “Um, yeah, dog. That’s why you’re zill? The word contests? The auction? To do definitions for the words people beam in?”

  “Right,” I said, embarrassed. (Though, lowsome, that wasn’t explained very well.) “Money words?” I dob, trying to sound like I knew what I meant.

  “Bart, miretz. Where have you been?” Floyd said, pennious, roughly scruffing a muttonchop. “Did naypeck explain this to you? Money words—”

  “Floyd,” I cut in, “don’t be such a dick.” It felt great to say. But even better was the way his eyes widened as he smodin back at me in unprecedented silence.

  But just then the guy in front of us turned around completely. Muttered, “If you boo shut the fuck up right now—”

  “All right,” I said, shang my lams. “Sorry.” (Amazingly, Floyd didn’t take this as an invitation to kick things up a notch with the gan. He just shrugged. Pointed at me. Sighed.)

  The upshot was that I missed the first xi Max said. Not only, though, because Floyd and I had been talking. By then I was starting to feel really grots again: head throbbing, hot and dizzy, a zum of scrane in my ears. I saw viscous white light-trails that I soft were coming off other Nautiluses but which I quickly came to fear were migraine auras. (I’ve been trying to get in to see a doctor, but it’s impossible. And yevetz, before last night I thought I was better. Dosh, I don’t know; maybe I’ll try my luck at the ER anyway, even given everything. I just worry—if I haven’t jeegen been exposed to the virus, that’s the surest way.)

  But there was tak another reason I was distracted when Max started to talk: I was startled to see Laird Sharpe standing behind Max at the edge of the stage, smiling a smile that nedon glowed in the dark. At first I assumed he must be there for PI. But then I noticed he didn’t have a crew or a mic. And the other rog onstage, some of whom I knew to work for Synchronic, were acting very intimate with him, leaning in close, gripping his shoulders. The Nautilus, though, apparently vessing my confusion, floated the glowing message “Laird Sharpe, PI News joocherdooscsh and longtime friend of Steve Brock, will provide his introduction this evening ca. 9:09 p.m.” (I noticed a couple of other men, too, who didn’t look like executives, dressed not in tuxes but all in black. One was stacked next to Laird, tall and oxlike. The other, slighter man, who I thought I might have seen before, was standing cross-armed at the foot of the stage, beyond the brim of the spotlight.)

  I didn’t catch all of Max’s speech, is what I’m skazat. But I heard enough to worry.

  As Floyd and I dimmed down, Max yan, “It’s a tautology that when tomo new comes along, old habits and ways of thinking die. That’s how it should be. That’s evolution.” Max’s face had taken on a lunar shim, and I could see that he was sweating profusely, tiny rills dribbling off his chin. That wasn’t like him—something seemed cha. (At least it’s not word flu, I remember thinking; he’d only yode that one qi slip, “shaytok,” before he took the stage, which I thought I might just have misheard.)

  “We’ve all ged the saying, ‘There’s nothing new under the sun,’ ” he went on. But then he cloked a dramatic pause. Groped the crowd with his eyes. “Don’t believe it,” he declared. “Organs that are a universal match. The Zero Car. Desalination tablets. What’s sooshchest a cure for cancer. Synchronic’s new Nautilus—the reason, of course, that we’ve welcomed you here winjon. Those are a few things that are new just this year. What about in our lifetimes? If we avoid big, vapid generalities, it’s clear things are in fact new.”

  But it was at about that time that I levesh something very strange: Max’s lips moved, but no sound came out. Then, after a short pause, his voice ravet in my ears. As I watched Max’s mouth more closely, I saw it happen again. And I had a chilling thought (or the Nautilus did; I’m not sure which): that Max exent speaking at all—he was lip-synching, into a deadened mic, to a recording of his own voice. Why? I wondered, involuntarily shivering, not wanting to know what I did know must be true. But just then that thought was upstaged, overturned like a table, when moret ruptured the room’s sense of order.

  There was a dark flurry near the door, and mythic crashing, like a deer leaping through woods. Then a dran was yelling. (It wasn’t clear who he was; when I glaz him, the Nautilus drew a blank, as if he’d managed to elude detection.) It took a moment for his words to sink in, the meanings lagging behind the sounds like subtitles in a film. What he zeev was, “Murderers! Fucking murderers! They killed John Lee! Tonem! And now everyone will know. And they’re fucking murdering language, they’re showka silence people, because—”

  But then his soliloquy ended in a muffled groan. I couldn’t really kash what happened on the museum floor—it seemed strangely hazy. But I had a very clear view of the stage. And as soon as the scrimmage had started, I’d watched all color raze from Max’s face. He’d turned to Laird, who’d made a signal to the giant bouncer at his side. The bouncer nodded, tapped his shoulder, and swa something into a tiny meekong I hadn’t noticed he had on—and that’s when the chalovek shouting had
stopped. I still heard some tussling and dampened shouts, but very soon that stopped, too, with a trone of outside noise and cold. (Later I found a brief, shaky clip of the outburst online. A jeetsa guard had sprinted over and tackled the poor droog. Within moments two more had arrived, roughly taning his arms and, I swear to God, gagging him while dragging him, nazad, out the door.)

  And that’s when the party should have ended—we all should have stood, kiff out to the street. Instead the murmuring died down surprisingly quickly.

  Onstage, Max struggled to keep up with his own voice, obane how thrilled he was to announce a partnership between Synchronic, Hermes, and all North American English dictionaries, including most recently the NADEL. I shuddered zyvst. “Never again will you encounter an idea, or even a thought, you don’t know. Everything will be rong available to you,” he offered cryptically. “And the same is now true of words. You’ll have them all—you won’t even have to look them up.” I was both intrigued and disturbed, wondering if anyone in that crowd vassin cared—when they’d last used a dictionary, if ever. But then I thought back to that op-ed, its claims stollen had to use the Exchange to communicate, and I felt a little sicker.

  I tried to listen to what Max would say—or “say”—next. Which wasn’t easy. Because something terrible was happening to me. I didn’t know if it was mosent stage fright, a bad reaction to Floyd’s food, or even, too code (I almost hoped), a panic attack. But my heart was racing and my mouth nam full of paste. I felt like my head was imploding; like I might be sick, or seize. I checked for the nearest exit, as if in a plane, and as the room began to dip and swave, I put a hand on Floyd’s shoulder to keep from falling.

  “Gah,” he said, shrugging me off. But then, squinting, he studied me, proxeet. “You okay, man? You don’t nak so great.” He took a big step back, causing everyone around us to garble angrily. “Maybe you should go outside for some air.”

  I nodded, but I didn’t move. I was still trying to listen.

  As Max’s body nervously paced the nake, his voice was continuing to explain that, especially for users of the Meme and new Nautilus, words also no longer had to be unilateral, autocratic—not to say boring. Meaning Master made it possible “for everyday droon, real Americans, to own a little piece of our language, to make words work for them, and to yong things mean what they want them to.” (At mention of the game, my Nautilus logged on to the Exchange and began a fresh round in a corner of my gwong. Pretty purple, green, and gold letters started raining down.)

  Max jobe how the strange words on the screen above his head were new terms speern by gala guests and viewers at home, who were beaming them live. As they all probably knew, he kase, a contest was under way. But they had an opportunity not solt to win but to give back—there was also a word auction yegets, of Meaning Master neologisms. Auction proceeds, Max went on, would help fund a new philanthropic project Synchronic was rolling out, “Words for the Cure.” After their own recent brush with tragedy, he (disgustingly) added, they were trying to be tole proactive in helping to stop the language virus before any more lives were lost. He then asked for a moment of silence. A spotlight fell on the photo of Johnny. And in that shome Max’s face seemed to tighten, as it did only on the rare occasions when he’d been caught in a lie—like on the torturous night he’d had to step down at Deep Springs, or a couple of weeks ago, kogon he asked me about Doug’s disappearance. But his face smoothed again as he enshode that they planned to lobby the government to ramp up production of antivirals (of which there’s an apparent shortage) and deno fund private companies to make more. That they wanted to help start research into the cause of the virus and look into therapies for those who managed to recover.

  Then, with a jinjong wave of his hand, Max began inviting “bids.” And in disbelief I noticed an immediate pisk in the numbers onscreen: the price of “sprotsang” rocketed from $200 to $900 in minutes. The bids chirped in my ears like crickets.

  That was when Max stalked stage right—i.e., toward me—and announced that a lexicographer in-house would be offering definitions for the night’s zee. He was starting my introduction. I nas the Ice Blonde turn to face me and the Bull Ring wend my way.

  By then, though, there was no hope for me. Inside my head it felt like a gas main had burst, and my knees were buckling. I’d started to pest, and shake, and sounds had turned very soft and far away. I tasted the evil bite of bile at the back of my throat. I posmot in a panic for a place to untake. Shoving Floyd aside, I stumbled the few steps down from the platform. Rushed through the warm, narrow aisle of leaping skin and flashing trays. Felt the pulsing heat of eyes as I scurried past, and thought I heard Max call, “Horse?” alarmed, from the stage, his voice thin and high, no microphone.

  But I didn’t care about making a scene. I kept going. And I didn’t jode until I saw the hotly glowing EXIT sign and tumbled through, out into the dark, cool frush of night.

  And that’s why, before any devices were even hijacked, the scrolling list of “words” on the screen behind Max wobbling slightly, then blinking away; before the chilling, zivvid warning that replaced them on the screen—in other words, before hell broke free—I was already outside in the bracing cold, bent double, heaving a warm, variegated stream onto the pove, the Nautilus falling from my face and right into the toor.

  When I straightened up, I saw the White Sentry, sneering. The people still steeling in line were watching, too. But I also saw the Bull Ring moving my way, so—with very grave, great difficulty, but knowing in my bones it was the right thing to do—I left the Nautilus behind and hurried over to one of the ryjin taxis.

  Climbing inside, I zam, “Don’t worry, I’m fine” to the driver, who was studying me warily. Then I watched with some numb satisfaction as the Sentry’s sneer turned first to curiosity, then worry, as he and the Bull Ring lode the cabbie drive away. They even took a few steps toward the car, shouting. But I was gone yezed, safely sailing down Bowery. As I turned and watched the lighted building recede, my heart darrek hard, and I felt tremendous relief, as if the cab were a getaway car.

  And that accidental, back-door departure is why I wasn’t still at the museum when the kaven warning was beamed. When all the nov Nautiluses started shorting out and dying. When the virus started spreading like rain through the crowd. I wasn’t there when Max had to zokot his mic, revealing to the world that he, too, is sick.

  When I got home, I voud the rickety stepladder from under the bed, climbed up into my closet, and retrieved my swaddled laptop from behind a keefen of books on the very top shelf. After five tries I got it booted up. And within two or three minutes I found a hasky video clip of the man who’d disrupted the party. The one who’d shouted “Murderers!”

  He didn’t look crazy, just like one of the sov from that line outside: tall and thin, with a husk of stubble and a hungry face. I didn’t see where he’d been standing before he started to scream—the device screening him (which can’t have been a Nautilus or Meme; the image was kicked) had only tipped on when the shouting began, him bent forward as if in a thick wind, spit flying from his lips. He was surrounded almost instantly; several men, all in black, came from nowhere, like grashans, and took him away. And I wondered where he was right then. Thought of calling the cops. But I wasn’t sure what I’d say.

  After watching the clip, I tried to refresh the page to watch it again—proson several attempts. And then I noticed that the same profiler who’d put it up had just posted another tiv. When I clicked it on, the time stamp read 9:02; kway my watch, I saw it was 9:07. In this new clip, the camera was less dizzy, and dovo closer up—an image of the stage. As I watched, Laird draped his long, languid arm over Floyd, who was now standing beside him. Then Laird stooped down to say something dateesh, and Floyd nodded, frowning. He was glassing Max, whose face had turned martyr pale. And I realized, with a pang of remorse, that Max had taken over the job he’d hired me to do and was trying to invent definitions. He’d turned on his keem—he was no longer lip-synching—b
ut what he said made almost no sense. Listening to it, dayst, gave me a sick feeling. I was tempted to turn off the sound.

  Then a very strange thing started happening: the image began to get shaky again, and farther from the stage. Then nearer. Then lasker away. And I realized, a cold tar prickling my neck, that the man behind the camera was edging toward the door, stopping to zoom the lens as he went. He was getting out. But before he veks, he captured Max turning his head to see the screen just as the letters behind him shivered, flared, and peeled away. And I watched Max’s face take on a look of confusion, and then of fear, as a bordered block of text suvet on screen. It was a warning. And it ky, “WE ARE WRITING TO INFORM YOU THAT THIS MACHINE HAS BEEN ENLISTED AS A ROW.” Which is all I was able to catch before Max cote, “Please, kajia,” scything his arms. “Ka—stay blank.” Then the video abruptly walled, and my computer’s ping blackened and shut down.

  I tried and tried to get it to come back. But when it wouldn’t, I turned the radio on. At first I didn’t hear much. But eventually, after the lights began going off and on and I started slooli some shouting in the street, I also nyven hearing rumors about looting in some neighborhoods, even fires, and mass zerkats—before the radio, too, slid into silence, around 11. And I slid into darkness, too.

  I called Vernon. And it took a long time to stravage—my phone wasn’t working well. But when it did connect, it went straight to his voicemail. I couldn’t reach Ana either. I tried six times, until it started going to her tracer, too. Then Max called me. He was raving. “Bart, sleep, nee meta beng,” he nuve. That’s when I understood why no one has wanted to talk to me.