While collecting data from headlines of English papers for my MA dissertation, I came across a curious article about a rather strange language fact.
The following short story is based on such strange fact.
It felt like I've been waken from a deep slumber. After a little struggle, forcing my eyelids to open, I distinguished an obfuscating white light glowing above me. All I could hear was this continuous dull humming noise that sounded as if coming from inside my own head. My limbs were numb. As I gained consciousness, I realized that I was lying on my back on a hard raised surface. I lifted the upper part of my body and remained sat, trying to understand what place was that. The bright light glowing above me dispersed itself and merged with everything else that was just all-white. I saw no hallway out. I turned my head slightly as I noticed some kind of spectrum resting on the periphery of my vision. When I stared straight at this spectrum it just remained there shapeless, extremely out of focus. Then I realized that my pupils should be dilated.
“Do not worry. I am the messenger. I am here to help.” This shapeless thing addressed me in a deep voice! It was a man.
I had full consciousness of the eeriness of that situation and had many questions rumbling around my mind. Yet, I should be under some sort of emotional hallucination that made me feel somnolent and impelled to pay attention - as if I was attending a regular morning lecture at the Roger Stevens Building. Gradually, the hard surface where I lay minutes before morphed into a smooth seat where I then reclined comfortably. Behind the messenger, a screen projected itself, showing patterns of constellations, whilst the he assumed a lecturer’s posture.
“I belong to an assemblage of messengers who, like me, are presently engaged in particular missions throughout different locations on the earth. We act under the command of a higher authority, our main function being to inspire individual humans and entrust these individuals to multiply our inspiration amongst others.” Along with the messenger’s words, the screen showed a succession of iconic images which I recognized from the GCSE History books.
“Messengers and humans alike are creations from a unique source of power. The main difference between messengers and humans resides in the function attributed by the source of power… Humans” he proceeded, “were created with the function to preserve and enhance energy that comes from the source of power. The energy, then, flow back to the source, continuously improved.” The messenger’s mouth appeared to move out of synch with his voice. Somehow, he was streaming those concepts straight into my thoughts, without actually speaking.
Behind him, the screen showed pictorial illustrations which looked suspiciously like the ones from the Holy Scripture that my mother kept open on the table at home. Following the illustrations on the screen I gained awareness that the earthly realm had been created amorphous with the purpose to be under the constant control of the source of power. By exerting control upon the forms of the earthly realm the source of power preserved and enhanced itself. The source of power then created organisms, namely humans, capable of performing such control upon the earthly realm. Thus, every time that a human organism exerted such control, this organism processed the maintenance and enhancement of a fraction of the energy from the source of power. However, humans would not exercise control upon the earthly realm without a stimulus. This was where the function of the messengers became essentially connected with the function of the humans. Messengers provide afflatus.
In the Paleolithic, messengers inspired the Neanderthals to knap the forms of solid matter, like stones and bones, and later to control heat and create fire. Having control over fire enabled the early humans to be further inspired to control their environment, subdue wild beasts at distance, and heat clay to craft pottery and construct stronger dwellings. Equally, humans were inspired to control the appearance and taste of their victuals by cooking and seasoning. In the dawn of civilization the messengers multiplied the effect of their stimulus by inspiring intellectually advanced humans to exert control over masses of humans. In this way, hordes of humans were stimulated to exert control over large blocks of solid matter and construct massive monuments. Messengers worked closely along humans in the heyday of stonemasonry. They were indirectly the architects of the Pyramids in Egypt, the Citadel of Athens in Greece, Persepolis in Iran, and other sites that, like R’lyeh, today lie at the depths of the ocean. When the messengers inspired great leaders, such as the king Alexander of Macedon, to expand their empires they were actually expanding the reach of their inspirational stimulus. Throughout history, humans were inspired to exert their controlling abilities upon everything in the earthly realm. Works of art are the best evidence of the messengers’ inspiration that compelled humans to control the forms of hard materials, coloured substances, and the elements of sound, to generate sculptures, paintings, and music. Still, one of the messengers’ most marvellous endeavours was to inspire humans to exert control over their guttural sounds. This is when humanity was endowed with their primordial tongue: the Indo-European-Semitic language.
Before the Indo-European-Semitic all humans communicated
through a system of elementary sounds, much like most animal subspecies
do. Then, humans began controlling the resonation of sounds from their
vocal cords, and using their tongues and lips in multiple combinations to further modify the sounds. This allowed
humans to make more defined associations between sounds with things, situations,
and thoughts. Then, through the control of rhythm and intonation, the system of
sounds gained more complexity, and the humans were allowed to establish
further associations of meaning. The complexity of associations generated inevitable
inconsistencies across different subgroups of individuals. Before long, the sounds
of the primordial tongue were associated in such an inconsistent manner
that individuals couldn't understand each other anymore. The humans were
further inspired to exert control over the inconsistencies of the Indo-European-Semitic,
what caused the emergency of a number of more consistent sublanguages. And that
was exactly the messengers’ purpose. Despite enabling better communication, the Indo-European-Semitic also allowed the messengers to establish a control to human understanding of each
other. Through that route, the messengers actually established a linguistic network
system through which they could regulate the reach of their inspirational
stimulus.
Messengers needed such regulator system because
human subgroups began to evolve at different rates. Whenever a human subgroup
evolved, their potential to exert control upon the forms of the earthly realm also evolved. In order
to trigger these subgroups’ potentials the messengers had
to provide them with more advanced forms of inspirational stimulus. So, the messengers used a
specific sublanguage, intelligible only to those who were evolved, to
conveniently restrict the reach of a new inspirational stimulus. This
linguistic network system, for example, allowed the
messengers to inspire exclusively the Israelite slaves when these had evolved
enough to exert their controlling
abilities independent of the command of the Pharaoh of Egypt. Whilst communicating
with the Israelites, messengers kept the Egyptians from understanding that
inspiration. The linguistic network
system became so intricate that the messengers were capable of regulating the
reach of their inspirations at the individual level. This is how the messengers
fine-tuned their inspirational stimulus and restricted their intelligibility only
to those who were appropriately evolved. The linguistic network system is still
essential to the messengers’ endeavours nowadays. Yet, just as they inspired a
subdivided linguistic system to limit the reach of their inspirations, they
also had to inspire a unifying linguistic system to transmit the inspirations
that a larger number of humans were already prepared to receive.
One of the messengers’ former mission was to inspire the dwellers of the Ancient Rome with the forms of Latin. The forms that structured Latin proved themselves to be resilient across the many human subgroups that ended up acquiring modified forms of this language. During a long period, Latin became the linguistic system through which the messengers conveyed their inspirations to saints, martyrs, explorers, scientists, and philosophers. Images of Augustin of Hippo, Martin Luther, Christopher Columbus, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, and René Descartes appeared on the screen. But Latin was only the onset. In their mission to inspire a unified linguistic system, the messengers also inspired the forms of Germanic. The forms that structured Germanic were not as resilient as the forms that structured Latin, but the messengers needed them to create a base for their greater project, an ultimate system that would accumulate resilient forms of both Germanic and Latin. This is how they inspired the forms of English, which is still being perfected today.
I noticed that every time that I shifted my attention off the messenger, his facial features shifted in minimal details, producing alterations that couldn't be perceived immediately but that after a continuous sequence of subtle changes made me feel like I was staring at a different face. Suddenly, the messenger’s mouth began to move in synch with his voice again. "...And that's what brings us to this moment."
"You find yourself now inside a chamber with physical properties that maximises your ability to exert control upon forms. During our meeting you have exerted control upon all the forms within this physical space. My physical appearance and movements are just some of the things that you have controlled. All that I am doing is providing you with the appropriate stimulus and you complete the scenario by exerting your natural controlling abilities on the amorphous forms within this physical space... The earthly realm have pretty much the same physical properties found within this chamber. But human individuals need to evolve to a certain level to understand the messengers’ inspirational stimulus. That triggers their potential controlling abilities. This is why the linguistic forms of English have been inspired on humans, so that us messengers can communicate our ultimate inspirational stimulus to the individuals that will be prepared by the turn of the third millennium. To accomplish our mission, around the beginning of the twentieth century, us messengers have inspired sufficiently evolved individuals whose first language is English. These individuals were entrepreneurs, authors, and leaders, like Andrew Carnegie, Wallace Wattles, and Martin Luther King, who were suitably selected to multiply the messengers’ inspiration using their English through writings and speeches. Naturally there will be still a good time until the forms that structure English reach a state that will define an ultimate unifying language system and carry our inspirations to all humans. Until there, since English have inherited essential characteristics of the primordial linguistic system, namely the Indo-European-Semitic, it can still be fine-tuned with the purpose to either broaden or narrow the reach of some inspirational stimulus transmitted through English..."
The messenger started moving in my direction, looking deeply into my eyes. He, then, raised the tone of his voice. "...You have been brought to my presence with the purpose of having your English fine-tuned so as to adjust the reach of my inspirational stimulus."
Having said that, the messenger approached me and produced a mask which was placed over my face and mouth just before I blacked out.
...a word that blends sounds and combines the meaning of two others (Concise Oxford English Dictionary).
.jpg)
