Connection Established



Ben watched as his simple apartment vanished in a silver glint, replaced with a lavish and warm room. Crackling fireplace, heavy tapestries on the wall, hulking furniture, and a twelve foot ceiling.

Porting into Pan's home was an instant pleasure of comfort, earthy smells and low lighting. Drake stepped in from the galley, and embraced him, holding Ben out at arms length.

"I'm so glad you could make it," said Pan. "I've been bursting to share this with someone who will appreciate it."

Ben gave the dragon-wolf hybrid a firm handshake. "Well out with it then, mate, what's so important?"

"I have come to understand something." Pan slid into an enormous chair, fat with soft stuffing, and waved a great talon-paw to the center of the room, filling it with images of Terra. Blue skies, busy cities, droves of human beings.

"I have found a link between our solfolk," said Pan, voice rapid with excitement. "One beyond the marooning of Cindre and his team so long ago."

Ben lifted an eyebrow, thumbing at the imagery. "Is that a live feed or something?"

"Yes, a culmination of public holo," said Pan, "I had been using it to better understand the Terrans. The longer I looked, the longer I recognised something: solfolk. The Symbian races."

Ben kicked off his sneakers and flopped on a long couch. "Alrighty, you got me. What are you on about?"

Pan mulled over the crowd of people in front of drake, selecting his words. "Language. That is what struck me."

"You lot speak English, right," said Ben.

"No, no, it's not that simple," whispered Pan. "It has been thought that it was a mirroring at play. Our worlds, the same yet different. Both have the same atmosphere, one moon each, the same orbit, the same flora and fauna, geography, chemistry, physics. It all lines up. Similar worlds, similar people, mirroring language."

"Yep," said Ben. "That's the idea. Why? Is that wrong somehow?"

Pan scoffed. "Certainly! Your world is overflowing with languages. Differing cultures, creeds, laws. The sape-spec of your planet spread, and became pocketed, and became different."

"And?" prodded Ben.

"And, why are we not different?" inquired Pan. "Again, two solfolk, separated. Wildly separated, in fact. Yet we mirror one of your societies. China has their language, Spain has another, America has one, yet we Symbians do not?"

Ben grinned. "You sound human, mate. Putting it that way, I get it."

Pan leaned forward, tail swaying in the air. "Something has influenced between both Terran and Symbia, both societies. Recently. I have discovered what it is. Technology."

Ben stared, acetic gears set off in his head. "The particle-accelerator."

"Yes!" exclaimed Pan, "that indeed, and so much more."

Holding up his hands in protest, Ben spoke rapidly. "Okay hold it all, mate, hold it. Everyone knows that the Large Hadron borked up some littered entomnis on Earth. That made the entomnis here pick up on them, and bam, connection. It ain't a mystery."

Pan laid back, deep into the sofa, smiling. "Yes, yes it is."

"Alright. How?" asked Ben.

"How long has the English language, your version of Central-Tongue, been as it is today?" asked the drake.

"Uh." Ben mentally referenced a linguists text. "A few hundred years. And the roots are much older."

"In comparison, how long has Central been the mother-tongue of solfolk?"

Ben thought about it, and pulled up a holo from the Ayars, quickly realising an answer. "Fuck, a few thousand years. And it hasn't changed for.. Jesus.."

"The youngest non-Central text on record is three and a half thousand years old," said Pan. "We have been a mono-tongued world for a very long time."

"So what's your point," asked Ben, waving at his holos and drakes illusions. "Where does it meet in the middle?"

"My hypothesis is as follows: the sape-masses learned Central, over the course of a few thousand years, via delicate influence of the entomnis, and then via stronger influences of sape technology."

Ben made a face. "What influences?"

Drake waved slowly at his imagery, filling it with towers, computers, tvs. "Your comms."

Ben felt another acetic pull to his mind. "Woah."

"Every time a sape wrote anything," Pan continued, "In history, the entomnis were there, gently guiding the chisel, the quill, the pen. Language and writing is technology, and the entomnis are obsessed with all tech. Everywhere in Symbian history, where inventions blossom, so do the entomnis. The very same can be said for Terra."

Ben held up his hands. "Woah woah, wait. You're saying the entomnis gave us the ace of writing?"

"Yes!" cried Pan in triumph. "Only more. Much more."

Ben could only stare. "What more is there?"

"Speech," whispered Pan, voice trembling with excitement. "The entomnis taught you to talk."

Ben felt the last acetic thud in his thoughts, as he imagined the ancient Symbians talking and writing and studying science, math, all the while the primitive humans slowly, gradually learning to communicate, entomnis weakly pushing and encouraging, as ape-men grunted and gestured, and finally, one day, spoke the first words.

The room was silent as Ben stared at human history with his thoughts, watching his people learn Central over time, refining it, always closer, until radio crystallised it.

Hollywood. Computer programs. Space travel. Internet. The Hadron Collider. Everywhere technology went, English followed.

Pan laughed deeply, "Say something! Cosmos has bent and curved to allow you to talk, young sape, so talk!"

Ben blinked slowly, staring at drake.

"Holy fuck."