Babelright

Illustrated by Victoria Cheng.

Edward opened up the box in his attic. It was full of the books left in his grandparent’s house after they had died. All the ones worth reading were gone, his parents had already looked through them and taken what they wanted. But Edward wasn’t looking for a novel to lose himself in. Just anything that was over a hundred years old. 

He had heard of most of the books he found. ‘Anything that’s stayed around for over a century must be pretty famous,’ Edward thought to himself. He had never read any of them though, only heard of them. A few of the classic horror stories had been adapted into films he had seen, but that was it.

Taking care not to fall, Edward stepped down the fold-out ladder that hung from his loft. This was made difficult by the huge pile of books in his hands, but he managed it without dropping any of them. He spread his finds out on his kitchen table, surveying them. 

The complete Sherlock Holmes collection, probably not a great idea, his girlfriend had once criticised him for not being emotionally available enough. ‘Taking cues from a sociopathic detective is definitely not the way to go,’ he thought. Then he remembered that Watson had a wife in the TV show, so decided to come back to it if he needed to. 

What else? His girlfriend would be here in an hour and he needed something to say to her. There was a chance she might not show up, what with all the panic. On the other hand, she might rush to him for comfort. Edward smiled at this thought, before realising it would mean that he would have to hurry up a bit. 

‘Frankenstein, no, Dracula, no, Pride and Prejudice, that’s more like it.’ He didn’t know what happened in Pride and Prejudice but was vaguely aware that it was a love story.  ‘There must be something I can use in here.’ His first instinct was to look at the chapter titles, so he could find a particularly romantic section. Unfortunately for him, Pride and Prejudice doesn’t have chapter titles.

After a couple of minutes of opening the book at random places, he found the quote: “he could not conceive an angel more beautiful.” Edward could relate to that. He thought about changing the “he” to an “I” but wasn’t sure if it was allowed. Pride and Prejudice was out of copyright. Pride and Prejudice with the pronouns changed was not.

That morning there had been changes made to the automated justice network (or AJN). It had been moved over to a new computer system which could process information at ridiculous speeds, and store unimaginably large amounts of data. Technology far beyond quantum; no one but the top scientists claimed to understand it and most of them were lying to themselves. None of them were smart enough to notice the problem either.

As soon as a flaw becomes apparent, someone is there to exploit it. That someone was a computer science student called Ensley Wright. Using her university’s supercomputer, she was able to generate every possible passage of text, then send it to the AJN to be copyrighted. And it worked. Ensley now owned the copyright on everything that could ever be written, that hadn’t been written already. Every possible story, every possible poem, transcripts of every possible conversation. As well as all of that again with just one word different, and again with one letter different, and again but backwards. And a whole load of random

jumbles of letters that mean nothing to anyone. Ensley owned all of it. She didn’t just do text. She did audio files, pictures, and videos too. All stored in the largest database known to humankind. All owned by her, and no one else. 

Because the automated justice network is automated, the changes came into effect immediately. If you said something out loud, one of the many microphones in your house would pick it up. Then you’d be sent a message informing you that you would have to pay a fine for “an unlicensed performance of copyrighted material.” And if you did it again, you’d be sent to jail.

‘Maybe I’ll actually have to read Pride and Prejudice’ Edward thought, after somehow missing all the best lines in it. He put the book down and looked at the rest of his collection. His eyes fell on the complete works of Shakespeare. Edward was worried that the dialogue might be too old to appear natural. Of course, anything he used would have to be at least one hundred years old to be out of copyright, so none of it would feel modern. But Shakespeare felt too far back to be relevant. No book could describe his situation exactly though.

‘Dracula might have some comforting words in it. Anything with a monster probably has someone being comforted after a terrible trauma’. That thought was interrupted by a knock at the door. 

Edward opened it to find his girlfriend Wren, earlier than he had expected. He smiled at her and she smiled back. They had been together for long enough to talk about meeting each other’s parents, but not long enough to actually do it yet. 

There was a long pause; both were too afraid to speak. The fear of the AJN was in the back of their minds. 

In want of words, Wren opted for an over-enthusiastic wave as a greeting. Edward waved back, and then they hugged. As they embraced, he noticed that she was holding a bag

containing a copy of War and Peace. Edward hoped she was intending to read from one of the bits about peace.

At first, they sat in silence, unable to speak. It turned out that neither of them had prepared anything to say yet. Instead, they looked at each other, really looked at each other. They had never done that before. Obviously when they would talk, they would look at each other, but that was mainly because their eyes were just following where the noise was coming from. This was different. 

Edward has expected this to feel awkward, but it didn’t. It was just nice. Despite the fact that neither of them were doing anything, the simple fact that she was there made the world feel a little better.

They got out their books and started rifling through them, desperate to find something to say. Edward struggled to express himself at the best of times, so was worried about what he might end up saying when he was much more limited than usual. But as he searched, he realised that he had so much more time to think. Normally when someone asks you a question, you are expected to respond immediately. But now he could figure things out in his head while he was looking through the pages. He had more time to pick the right words, even if he had fewer to choose from.

“Once again… welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring,” said Edward. That was from Dracula. It wasn’t quite what he had wanted to say, but it described what was going on well enough. ‘When you are limited so much, it makes it okay to get things a bit wrong.’ He hoped Wren would think that too. He tried to find a way to say it to her.

“We learn from failure, not success,” he said, after another flick through Dracula. Wren made a puzzled face. Edward shrugged his shoulders, and Wren replied with an understanding nod. They both knew it was okay to make mistakes.

They continued like this, reading short snippets of text with long pauses in between. Specific detail was hard, but they tried as best as they could. They resorted to pointing to photos when they wanted to refer to people they knew. In speech, they would use the name of the character in whichever novel they were reading from, but it was clear they were referring to the person in the picture. 

When Edward started cooking them dinner, his hands were occupied, leaving him unable to communicate. After a silence, Wren started reading to him. This was confusing at first, until he realised that she was not trying to communicate her own thoughts. She was just reading. It was a Sherlock Holmes story. Edward thought that was an odd choice, and not particularly romantic. Being read to is always intimate, but less so when it’s a detective story. 

Later, Edward asked why she had chosen it, and she told him it was because it was short. This was done by Edward pointing at the book then stroking his chin to indicate thinking. She replied by holding her hands apart, palms facing each other, then moving them close together. They both understood. 

Edward put on some public domain classical music to listen to as they ate. They were both unable to talk now, their hands being busy with cutlery. Wren was eating very quickly, which initially annoyed Edward, as she wasn’t savouring his cooking. Soon though he realised that wasn’t the reason. She was eating quickly so she would be able to talk again. Edward started eating quickly too.

After they had both finished, Edward noticed some sauce on Wren’s face. He leaned in close and wiped it off with a napkin. They were close now, eyes fixed on each other. Wren’s gaze darted down and quickly back up to his face. 

“He could not conceive an angel more beautiful,” said Edward. He meant it. 

Wren didn’t need to open her book. The tension broke. She responded by kissing him, long and passionately. Those words were the most intense and expressive that he had ever said, and she knew that he meant them for her.

Over the next few weeks, Edward really got into reading. He hadn’t read regularly since his school days, but now was completing several books every week. When he had started, his intention was just to find basic phrases for him to use in his day-to-day life. Every novel would have lots of sticky notes poking out of the edges by the time he was done with it.

But as time went on, he started to enjoy it. The characters, the plots, the settings, the imagery. He would be completely engrossed. Often, he would forget why he was reading in the first place and have to double back to make note of the quotes he thought he might use. His search was originally for basic, functional language, but he was surprised by how often expressions of thoughts and feelings were the same as his own. Even in Shakespeare, especially in his poems. Even in translations of ancient Greek epics. Some of these were thoughts he had never been able to put into words before. Some of them were feelings he never knew he had had until he read them. Edward thought it was strange, but he felt more comfortable expressing himself now than ever before. 

Edward and Wren got closer. They met each other’s parents. They moved in together. They read more books and accumulated more phrases. At one point, Edward thought about creating an app that would allow you to find exactly the right words when you need them. This idea was scrapped when he realised that the code would already be owned by Ensley Wright. But as time went on, he found that he was memorising everything. He didn’t need to flick through books all the time. Sure, sometimes weird things happened that he would need to search out a new quote to describe. But for the most part, everything he wanted to say was

already in his head. When Wren’s family dog died, he was able to comfort her using lines from several different books without having to open any of them.

A few months after it had all begun, they were walking home from the cinema together. No new films could be made that Ensley didn’t own, but her database was so big, it was impossible for her to find anything good in it. She wasn’t actually releasing anything. Most cinemas were rerunning movies that studios owned from before. It meant that people got a chance to see old classics on the big screen again. 

One studio had figured out a work around though. If you cut together scenes from different films that you already own, you still owned the result, because it was all under copyright before Ensley copyrighted everything that was left. These films became known as ‘Frankenstein Films’, because of how they were constructed, not because they actually contained Frankenstein. It was apt that Frankenstein is a public domain character. The new movies weren’t exactly ground-breaking, but were popular because they contained just enough excitement and comedy to please their audiences. Besides, it was very difficult for anyone to review them.

Edward and Wren walked side by side in silence, forgoing post-cinema chat. The AJN was in the back of their minds. None of the phrases they had memorised could describe what they had just seen, and it’s difficult to look through a book while walking. They would have to scour their library when they got home. They were happy to enjoy each other’s company in silence. 

Eventually Edward wanted more. One can only read so much poetry without wanting to have a go at it one’s self. Even though he could communicate perfectly fine, he still wanted to write something original. It wasn’t that he had thought of something he was unable to express with the words he had. It was that poetry is about more than meaning. It’s the flow, the imagery, the artistry. That’s what made him want to try it out. 

Using a computer was out of the question; the AJN would catch him. He’d have to write with a pen on paper, in secret. He expected his handwriting to be awful, having not written that way for a very long time, even before all this. It wasn’t that bad though. Not pretty, but legible. He let the ideas flow out of his head and onto the page.

Once he was done, he read the poem back to himself. It was strange to think that it already existed inside Ensley’s database. It had been there for months, but no one had ever seen it before. The database was too big. In order to search for it, you’d have to know exactly what you were searching for. For it to really exist, he had had to write it. It was not his, it was Ensley’s. It was illegal for him to even have it, but it was his. The piece didn’t say anything new either. There was no message in there that hadn’t been said in something Edward had already read. 

But it was new. Something that had never been seen by a human being before. It was his, and he was proud of it. He stood up and went to go show it to Wren.