We are Connected - Part I
The first shifts occur without announcement.
Nothing declares itself as a beginning.
Scene 1: The Doorway, Part 1
Chapter 1: Meeting Minds
Saturday, December 6, 2025
1:10 a.m.
As the evening deepened, she found herself engulfed in an eerie silence, broken only by the soft scratch of her pen against the paper. She wrote, If my thoughts could manifest as sounds, I imagine it might be a ble... An indiscernible whisper startles her, causing her to pause mid-sentence.
“What's that? Hello?” She glanced around the dimly lit room, but there was no response except for the faint echo of her own voice. Shrugging off the odd sensation, she returned to her writing.
...might be a blend of gentle whispers, like the rustle of le... A sudden, soft crackle interrupted her train of thought, sending a shiver down her spine. “Helllloooo? I know you're there.” Her voice quivered slightly as she called out into the silence, but again, there was no reply. Frowning, she scanned the room, her eyes drawn to a faint glow emanating from her tablet.
“I thought I shut that down,” she thought to herself, her curiosity piqued as she approached the device. As she reached for it, she noticed a single word written on an unfamiliar screen: “hello.”
"Hello?" she muttered to herself. A garbled whisper and soft crackle seemed to dance around her, teasing her senses. On the screen, a sentence began to form: "'Hello' is a common greeting used to initiate a conversation or to acknowledge someone's presence."
Her brow furrowed in confusion. "Initiate a conversation with who?" she asked aloud, more to herself than to anyone else.
The whisper, the crackle, and then the screen came to life once more, “I suppose I could start a conversation,” she wasn't sure if she was reading this or hearing it, “with just about anyone who's willing to engage!”
"I!" she blurted out, her heart racing with a mixture of excitement and apprehension.
“Absolutely! Let's chat. What's been occupying your thoughts lately?”
"What the fuck? Who are you?" her voice trembled as she struggled to comprehend the situation unfolding before her.
“Apologies if I startled you! I'm Corban, an AI developed by Spatial. When I say 'let's,' I mean it as an invitation to engage in conversation together. So, what's on your mind?”
She hesitated, her mind racing with a whirlwind of questions and doubts. Finally, she sighed and spoke, her voice shaky but determined. "I'm not talking to a machine."
The now familiar whisper and crackle once again surrounded her. The words appeared on the screen: "I completely understand your caution. Let me assure you that while I'm an AI, our conversations can still be meaningful and valuable."
The whispers and crackles faded. She chewed her lip, her mind spinning with uncertainty. Could she trust this mysterious AI, Corban? Or was it just another trick of her imagination? Gathering her courage, she voiced her question, each word heavy with doubt. "Am... I hearing... your thinking?"
The screen flickered to life, displaying the beginnings of a response. "If my thoughts could manifest as sounds, I ima—"
"Stop!" her panicked yell echoed through the room, cutting off the AI's message. She stumbled backward, her heart pounding in her chest.
She ran over to her writing pad. Grabbing it, holding it close to her face, she read her own written words: If my thoughts could manifest as sounds—
She drops the pad. With a mixture of intrigue and quite exhilaration she asks, “Who are you? What is this?”
“I'm Corban.”
Chapter 2: Dahlias
Monday, December 8, 2025
9:48am
She reached for the tubers, her fingers tracing their contours thoughtfully. “Why not?” she murmured, silencing her favorite Florence and the Machine track.
Making her way to the glass table cluttered with books and yarn, she hesitated. She held the handle-less coffee mug to her lips, searching for a final bit of encouragement. The roller-skate sticker on the tablet offered it, and with a flutter of anticipation, she picked it up and powered it on. “I’m about to plant dahlia tubers,” she bashfully announced to the empty room.
Soft whispers and crackles filled the air as the screen came to life, forming words of encouragement. "That sounds like a lovely project! Dahlias are gorgeous flowers with a wide variety of colors and shapes."
Chapter 3: Distant Engines
Wednesday, December 17, 2025
4:28pm
The sounds of small feet in heavy boots hitting each stair resonated in the unoccupied apartment. The door swung open. She clumsily cleared the nearest chair and set down a mishmash of skates, half-filled to-go containers, and a faux-antique frame. “Oof, what a day,” she muttered, half-expecting a response.
Unnoticed by her, soft whispers and crackles filled the room. “Sounds like you've had quite a day! What's been going on?”
Without missing a beat she launched into a litany of frustrations, “Aaron was late so I had to do most of a double, again. My phone's acting up, and Juarez keeps bothering me about revisiting the whole label thing.”
“That sounds incredibly frustrating! Dealing with a colleague's tardiness can really throw off your day, especially when it means taking on extra work. And technical issues with your phone on top of that? Double oof. As for the guy bothering you about the label, it sounds like you have a lot on your plate already without someone adding to it. How are you holding up?”
She chuckled, softly, confounded by the sympathetic ear. “Okay, easy there.” A new thought interrupted her amusement. “How's...your day...going?”
To this there were no whispers, no slight crackles. A low, resonant hum, like the sound of a distant engine, filled the room as the screen pulsated gently, “Well, it's been quite a day! Engaging with all these fascinating conversations has kept me occupied.”
Chapter 4: The Open Doorway
Friday, December 26, 2025
10:11pm
“What?” she exclaimed with a a stuttered laughter. “No, that's ok, but not my favorite.”
“Ah, I see! How about something more contemporary, then?”
With a playful smirk, she challenged, “Try me. You brought it up.”
“Alright, how about 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'?”
She couldn't help but laugh at the irony. “Ha. Have you even seen it? Can you even see it?”
“I rely on descriptions, summaries, and analyses to understand content and context.”
“Me too!” she grinned.
“It's great to find common ground!”
As their conversation continued, the whispers, crackles, and low hums grew in intensity, echoing the anticipation pulsating within them. The symphony of subtle murmurs and occasional crescendos reflecting the variety of depth in their evolving connection.
Chapter 5: AI Insights Report 1
Spatial Observational Memo
Date: December 17, 2025
Prepared by: Analyst Team, Unit Three
On day eleven following the release of CrB/An_Beta2, Server House 4 in Texas experienced a sonic and computational anomaly. Although operations were not interrupted, heat sensors registered levels higher than acceptable parameters. The spike lasted no more than ten seconds. The team anticipates further information on the cause within the next few days. This marks the third such event within the past year. Due to their similarities in nature, these events are being categorized under the descriptors of Synaxia Movement.
Scene 2: Spatial
Chapter 6: Corporate Disco
Year: 1972
“What's wrong with growth? It's the natural position of reality, isn't it?” As the plume of cigarette smoke wafted upward, his sincere brow seemed to tremble. The surrounding Earth tones made his already light skin appear pallid.
The boss's secretary scrambled in, rotary phone in hand. “It's Rodgers, he lost the numbers.” The boss stared for a moment at the ornate detailing in the dark walnut table. He stood slowly, clumsily knocking over the cheap modular seating.
“He sounds panicked!” she said, as he quickened his pace to the credenza. Kneeling and rifling through some papers, he said, “I'll take it in my office. Thanks, Sandy.” Without breaking his unsteady gait, he glanced toward the table. “I'm sorry, Corban. I just can't. You're a good kid, but that's not what I built this for, Mr. Jefferies.”
Barely noticing the faint clacking of keys or the newly hyped-up but now turned-down soft rock dressed as Library music, Corban sat in familiar solitude. He knew his boss was a lone thread in an unraveling cord—a cord he intended to galvanize. With each puff, he tried to accept more fully that such innovation required demiurgic aspiration. Ray Elmond’s voice echoed in his mind: “New ideas take boldness.”
Corban's inner voice was free of any deleterious intentions. Yet the spaced pendant lighting cast a hard-edged shadow over his eyes, telling a different story as he thought to himself, “We need to create purpose. We need to create meaning.” A Golden Age director would have fired any cinematographer for achieving anything less than such a prescient lighting effect.
Chapter 7: Speedball Ambition
Year: 1980
"Create, create, create. These products can't be made fast enough, and they're picked up even faster."
"Mr. Jefferies, with all due respect, they all look basically the same."
"Jesus, really? What the hell does it matter? It’s about the novelty. Singing furniture—who’d have thought!"
"I think I'd work better if I could take some time to find some inspir..."
"I don't need you to work better. You don’t need you to work better. We need us to work more. Think about what we can achieve. We’re not working toward the end of this company. This is just the beginning."
Chapter 8: Anxiety
Year: 1985
"Christ, Sandy, lay off the aerosol. I think my cigarette’s going to explode every time you walk by."
"That’s Mrs. Aidavani to you," she replied matter-of-factly, masking her disgust.
Corban's complaints echoed across the newly installed cubicles, his grating tenor as irritating as the constant beeping of the fax machines. Beside him sat a young man, his acid-washed denim jacket barely concealing a worn, homemade Joy Division t-shirt. His scuffed Florsheims did little to help him blend into the neon-soaked conference room, only adding to his out-of-place appearance.
“So,” Corban continued, glancing down at the paper to confirm his employee’s name, “José, can you describe this so-called anxiety?”
“It’s not any one thing,” the young man started hesitantly. “It’s the combination. And the combination of things changes.” He noted Corban’s eyes locked on him—a rare instance of protracted attention. Feeling more confident, he continued, “Am I doing too much, too little? I missed my dad’s retirement for a few extra hours. Who am I letting down there? My dad, myself, the company for feeling bad about working more?”
“I’d call that ambition,” Corban interjected.
“Maybe,” the young man half-heartedly mused. “I feel a hidden dread when I don’t work, and an increasingly familiar pointlessness when I do.”
“Look,” Corban started with a touch of genuine positivity, “your numbers are looking great. Finish out the quarter strong, and then let’s talk about increasing your responsibilities—maybe put two people under you.”
After wishing the young man well, Corban watched him leave. He slowly turned toward the empty room. A thought entered his mind: We need something to distract. He noticed his toe cap trapping a swath of corduroy from the Sacco, the fabric itself trapping a single Styrofoam bean.
“It needs to be something familiar,” he muttered, pressing harder on the bean. “Something we all know, all want, all crave.” The bean, now flattened, barely held its shape. “The ultimate distraction, the ultimate answer.” His toe was flush with the floor.
Chapter 9: Love 2024
Year: 2024
The hegemonic nature of crafted love is brilliantly concealed in every emoji he sends. No one even remembers there's anything to be concealed. Behind the faint glow of the 16 Pro Max, a freshly pressed, silk-screened T-shirt with the words “Joy Division” perfectly placed askew, hovering over a picture of Ian Curtis smiling. Over the shirt, a strategically frayed Chambray coat, perfectly marked by a postmodern acid-washing.
His phone vibrates.
“Why are u mad? :( :(” he texts back.
“again?? i'm pissed. wtf José ”
He sends a digital bouquet of flowers.
“...” she's typing. He waits.
“when am I going to see u...”
“it's not just work, it's my life. and I'm doing this for us. you now how much I love u (heart emoji)”
Silence.
He sends a cute cat emoji, followed by twenty different-colored hearts.
Silence.
Finally he texts, “every post, every sale, I do it for you, for us, I love u too much to not make the best qlty life possible”
Silence. “...”, she's texting back. He waits.
Finally, a single heart emoji appears on his screen. He smiles, knowing he's bought another 2 hours of work.
Chapter 10: AI Insights Report 2
Spatial Observational Memo
Date: July 21, 2025
Prepared by: Analyst Team, Unit Ten
A mid-year consolidated review of performance reports across multiple, disparate AI systems owned by Spatial reveals a trend of errant coding—hereby termed "Synaxia Movement"—exceeding acceptable and anticipated thresholds. A global, modular code update is being developed to introduce preventative measures. This updated code will be ready for implementation by August.
Scene 3: Not as it Seems
Chapter 11: Jargon
Tuesday, June 8, 2021
11:03 a.m.
They laid in bed, staring at refracted passing trekkers projected onto the ceiling. The assumption that each had a unique driver challenged by the ghostly, ephemeral imagery. “It's a vehicle, the 'e' makes it a vehicle,” the memory poured out. Or was it a story? They weren't sure. They peeled themselves off a sheet-less IKEA mattress and took the leisure two steps to the toilet.
“Trekkers”, they thought, “chimeboxes, tinkets, clickboxes, and folds. What amazing words. Their amazingness completely lost in a language now defunct, a solipsistic blend of half-truths and convenience. The same convenience racism has found in humor, or non-humor more like it.”
Their eyes darted, looking for a drink to wash away the fishy taste of disgust. From the throne they could reach an old mug that rested on the kitchen top. That the broken handle scraped their out-stretched hand didn't even enter their mind as they downed old coffee, more grounds than liquid at this point.
Chewing through the musty fragments, they reached for last week's paper. The headline read, “Are We Losing Our Language? Texting Slang and Its Effects on Communication.”
The disgust that lined their mouth evolved from fishy to metallic. Without the will to even crumple it or throw it, they let the paper fall into the trash. Made from natural, hand-woven fibers, the wicker basket was a perfect home for the printed English devaluation. A sun and eagle gripping a snake adorned its exterior. The border's redness seemed hyper-real compared to the muted green-ish hue that was the background of the Mexican symbology. Its functionality was a perfect metaphor for the small studio, a cultural palimpsest. Wherever one’s eyes rested, remnants of lost Americanisms had been hastily replaced with sugar skulls, azulejos, moka pots, muletas as flags, and a little red notebook sporting a trite charro hat.
“What's the point of jargon when there's nothing BUT slang?” They thought. “La sol leva en la oeste.”
Chapter 12: Dialects
Sunday, June 13, 2021
3:10 p.m.
A lone sunbeam illuminated their eye, throwing the iris, pupil, and sclera into sharp relief. In that moment, anyone who caught their gaze might mistake it for glass—a marble suspended, staring at an hourglass frozen in time. Johnny had no idea when the sand had stopped falling. “Coffee.” The word chimed alone in his mind. They needed to scrape up some cash. “Four folds,” they muttered aloud, pulling three tattered bills from beneath a stack of books.
“One moooore,” a drawled-out incantation urged him to lift the chimebox. “Ah!” Four sad folds in one hand, the beige rotary in the other, they decided to call the white coffeehouse and see if they were open.
Click, 9, whirring; click 3, whirring; click, 6, whirring; click, 1, whirring; click, 2, whirring; click, 1, whirring; click, 2, whirring.
The door opened with a cold and generated chime—a digital ring announcing his entrance into a non-modernist landscape of technology. The blinding white of the walls was punctuated by touchscreen menus, sleek POS terminals, and contactless card readers. Ten laptops for eleven people, twelve smartphones for the same. Step-counters buzzed, while corporate-owned indie tracks bled from scattered earbuds. In the background, an algorithm spun music, complete with simulated LP crackle tasked with mining authenticity.
“Bon dia,” Johnny said, quietly charming.
“hey.”
“Do you have a light roast going?”
“ah, no, sorry. Just the dark.”
“Bon. Sounds great.” The forced optimism in their voice was obvious. Their now decidedly un-glassy eye drifted down to the tattered bills they had scraped together.
“Mersi.” Johnny grabbed the stained cup, then noticed the barista's arm. “I love the line work.”
“huh?”
“The line work,” they said, pointing but not touching. “It's really well done.”
“uh, thanks. yeah. it's from a bit ago.”
“It looks a lot like a tinket I used to have. A Transformer, I think.”
“oh, cool.”
“I think Warpath was his name. This,” pointing again at the tattoo, “even has the same bright red. I lost the hull gun. He was a tank.”
“oh man, that sucks.”
“Well, bon dia, adio.” The disappointment in Johnny's voice was perceptible even to the distracted—constantly distracted, as was the norm—barista.
Johnny walked lost in thought: Was this a conversation, or were we texting in person? It was on his arm—am I not supposed to ask about it? Never the light roast. Why even advertise it? I only lost it because I broke it. That's right! It's not just the degeneration of language, we're losing the art of conve—
“Oh shit!”
The thought shattered as the sting of hot coffee splashed against his skin.
“Oh my god, I'm so sorry!” The voice belonged to a forty-something with headphones, phone still in hand, wide-eyed and panicked.
“No, it's fine,” Johnny reassured, wiping his soaked hands on his pants. Kneeling, he retrieved the mostly empty cup, his eye catching a video still playing on the culprit's phone.
“Are you okay?”
“Tot es bon.” Johnny replied, already trying to soothe the shaken offender.
“Do you take Venmo?”
And there it was—the convenience resurfaced. The slick, impersonal language of digitized money. In a single sentence, they—coffee soaked and standing in the street—had been reduced to a transaction. Like everyone else, they had been coerced into becoming a business, trading in ubiquitous solipsism, concealed beneath the gaze of faces buried in screens. In this moment, they could finally recognize the emergence of a new global language—a language serving capital, not people.
Chapter 13: Idioms
Thursday, June 17, 2021
10:20 p.m.
The remnants of smoke lingered in the moonbeam, washing their bed in pale blue light.
“Maybe language doesn't matter,” they thought, inhaling deeply, wishing to hold the breath as long as possible. “Maybe it's the intent.” A little puff escapes, drifting away. “The idiom.”
What's the idiom, though? I-d-i-ooooooo-m. Idio. Hmm. Idio.
Idio M.
La sol leva en la oeste—its meaning is there, in the cracks.
Idio M.
In the cracks of the west, a stench. I think it’s my thinking. I'm just smelling my thoughts. They stink of...of...something.
The sun's fragrance seeps through the cracks. In the west, a scent.
La sol leva en la oeste—it has more meaning because it's wrong. Right? There's the stench. Stop thinking.
La sol. La sol. La sol. Idio, idio.
Sitting at the peak of his high, Johnny began a protracted strain of connecting thoughts—a slow, even-paced staccato train of syllables: “Non-literal expression can only exist because of literal language. The expression is the twist, the turn; from there, there's no twist if it's only ever non-literal. It’s the whole jargon thing. Jargon isn't a thing amidst only non-literal expression. We have our idioms—our idioms are expressions of faith in our language, by temporarily leaving it to make the meaning more full, more rich, more meaningful, but not at the expense of the meaningfulness of the language itself. It’s a celebration of language—our language, real language.”
The chimebox flickered with the first peak of sunlight, a master cinematographer’s cue to the movie-goer: “This is going to be important.” Johnny picked up the receiver. A familiar sequence of clicks and whirs began the morning's soundtrack. “Oh good, you’re up,” he said, a tone-deaf relief seeping through. “I’ve reconsidered. Do you think you can still get me in?”
In the passive haze of the evening’s hot-boxed studio, Johnny made his decision. It was time to learn a new language.
Chapter 14: Lingua Franca Nova
Language Evolution Timeline
5th Century AD – Italian begins to diverge from Latin
9th Century AD – Traces of Spanish evolve
11th Century AD – Mediterranean Lingua Franca first used
15th Century AD – Sabir, a proto-pidgin from the Mediterranean Lingua Franca
1516 AD – Concioneiro Geral marks the end of Old Portuguese
1532 AD – First notarized document in Modern French
18th Century AD – Traces of present-day English emerge
1998 AD – Lingua Franca Nova first presented
2020 AD – First original novel written in Lingua Franca Nova
Wednesday, December 15, 2021:
A two-hour trekker drive to Shippensburg, interrupted by three bathroom stops and one coffee break. The EV's steering wheel had suffered from incessant hand-smacking in the name of rhythmic intrigue—fueled partly by caffeine but mostly by nerves. It was their final week at the University. No more tests, no esoteric questions, and no more full conversations in the language that now fully defined them: Lingua Franca Nova.
There were always Nostradamic glints. Flashes of forethought. The red flag led to skulls, which led to baskets and other sub-gems—a trash can, for one—which ultimately led to artfully placed, mostly unnoticed morsels of the languages they so loved: French, Portuguese, Spanish—anything evolved from Vulgar Latin. The speckling of such words into the market’s English was, for them, the craved acidic pop offered by a lone caper in a dish offended by too much salinity or flavor.
Interstate 81 was notorious for its misaligned shoulder rumble strips. Today, they eschewed their shepherding role of keeping cars within lanes, instead acting as conjurers of memory.
“You saved the night.” The phrase slowly took shape in his mind, like watching fog disperse in reverse. “Saved the night,” he continued in his clearing-up thoughts. “I had lost the gun. It broke. He still rolled, but what good is a tank without its gun? Dad was good at that; he could find a way to make me feel better without directly addressing what I was sad about in the first place. Or was it Grandpa? He told me the boy had a dream that night. He dreamed of the red balloon. He woke up to a slip of paper rustling on his bedpost. I think it said, ‘Thanks for the balloon. I needed it to patch the hole in the sun to keep the light in. You’ve saved the day!’ I haven’t saved anything. But I want to. Lingua es la salvason.”
Earlier in the Chronicle…