Lost in Translation (Short Story)

Lola was going crazy. Her mother, sons, and cat had often joked that she had been for a while, but now, Lola believed it. Quarantined indoors alone with no end in sight for the foreseeable future. How Lola had enjoyed it at first. Even when she had been younger, she was a comfortable recluse, losing herself in books, music, books, languages, some books, occasionally cooking, and then changing it up with some books she hadn’t picked up in a while.

Those hobbies now blossomed with all the free time she had. Lola literally had thousands of books carefully organized, both alphabetically and by topic, in shelves lining every wall of her apartment. But after the quarantine had been going on for a few weeks, she began to feel itchy. Her younger son, now out living on his own, turned her on to a program for learning new languages, featuring a weird, green ambiguous bird mascot. She had dived in greedily, easily scaling through the exercises and regimens given to her and surpassing all others on the leaderboards. Even other polyglots were impressed, congratulating her online on her progress. She would reply cheerfully and earnestly, happy to bond over the love of language, while at the same time adding languages she saw others doing, just to make sure that they hadn’t outbid her in the worship of words.

But that was no longer enough. Although she sat on her comfortable bed with pillows propped up at the perfect angle, she couldn’t get comfortable. The sun shone through the curtains of her bedroom window and warmed the cool spring morning to provide the perfect contrast of temperature, but she felt restless. Even with her corpulent cat, Godzilla (nicknamed ’Zilla), contentedly nestled on her lap, purring like a well-tuned v8 engine, Lola couldn’t sit still. She picked up her book, set it down, shifted around, apologized to the disgruntled meowing of ’Zilla, and accepted the spreading numbness of her legs going to sleep under the cat’s considerable heft.

Finally, Lola sighed, put her book down for the fourth time, stretched as best she could without upsetting his royal furry majesty, and just managed to snag the purple case of her tablet from across the double bed. Then, she hit the unlock button, adjusted her screen so the sunlight wouldn’t glare across it, and opened the language learning app.

Another few messages had come to her inbox of other high-achievers wanting to discuss languages, the nuances of certain phrases, translation, and the like. She smiled knowing both she and they veiled a deeply held competitive spirit beneath their amicable words and emojis. But she was starting to enjoy that. She had never been competitive about anything before, being a rather introverted book nerd her entire life, but she was starting to get a thrill out of comparing her progress to others. All in good fun, of course.

Hmmm, she thought to herself, scrolling through the languages she had been studying. French, Spanish, Latin, Swahili, Navajo, Portuguese… What do I feel like studying?

None of the options she had previously chosen tickled her fancy, so she opened up the general language databank and began scrolling through, a slough of language whizzing past her with their respective flags of origin.

Irish, Korean, Russian, oh Chris studied Russian in college. Maybe he would get a kick out of talking with his mother in-

Then, she saw a flag she didn’t recognize, which was odd, considering that her love of books and words was closely followed by her love of trivia, including geography. The flag looked like a dark-blue spoked wheel without the outer rim, the spokes tapering into the white background. She tried to read the name of the language, but there were too many diacritical marks and accents for her to pronounce it. When she tried again, the letters seemed to jump around and shift, slipping through her mental grasp like ink.

Oh well, she thought to herself, tapping on the flag happily, excited to find another branch of human language to explore. Maybe it’s some dialect of Finnish.

She settled in deeper on the bed to the magnified purring of ’Zilla, who stretched out briefly before curling in tighter in the crook of her knees.

The first lesson opened up, and Lola immediately felt drawn into the cadence and symphony of the words as the tablet sounded out the strange phrases. It all unfolded very naturally, and Lola quickly picked up the subtle shifts of accents and strange punctuation. Now that she finally understood what some of the words meant, it was all very straightforward, quite similar to-

She stopped and realized that unlike the lessons of every other language in the program, there wasn’t any translation to English, or any other language she knew for that matter. The letters simply swam on the screen in front of her, slowly becoming a decipherable slither of pixels that drew her focus deeper the longer she stared.

Startled, she shut off her tablet and set it aside. The room felt strange. Then, Lola realized it was nighttime. She looked at the clock on her wooden bedside table.

12:15 a.m. What had felt like mere minutes had been hours. She hadn’t even noticed ’Zilla had left, though he now returned licking his lips from a midnight snack.

Lola felt cold dread creep down her spine. She gripped her comforter tightly until the knitting began to snap. Then, she took a deep breath, got up to get some water and go to the bathroom, then returned and set herself down to sleep.

She couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned, twisting and knitting the blankets around her into a suffocating cocoon, which she quickly kicked off. ’Zilla grumbled something and curled up back in the crook of her legs, giving her a very annoyed look. Frustrated, she looked at the clock.

12:45.

Maybe some melatonin will work.

1:07.

Some more water will do the trick.

1:32.

Finally, Lola flicked on her bedside table and resigned herself to pick up her book, determined to read herself to sleep. She briefly glanced at the tablet still laying on the other side of the bed. She pulled her blanket up with a jerk, the billowing of which sent her tablet tumbling to the ground. It thudded against the carpeted floor, its case surely preventing any real damage.

Dumb machines, she thought to herself as she opened her book to continue where she had left off. The story of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s right-hand man. A man who had pulled himself up from being a blacksmith’s son and had gone on to help create the Church of England, among other events of such magnitude, most could only fantasize. As Lola poured over the pages, she could see Cromwell before her, a stern, careful, considerate man of such intellect and insight, few could compare.

The anxiety and fear that had been churning and knotting in Lola’s stomach soon ebbed away as read. She had always preferred books to machines anyways. The weight of something sturdy, the smell of the paper, the feel of real words on the page. She could always lose herself more easily in printed words on the page, the images coming to life before her. She didn’t have to squint against the backlight of a screen to see-

That the ink on her page was moving. Before her, her mind’s image of Thomas Cromwell floated before her, a stylized tempera painting slowly concretizing before her eyes. He sat at a park bench overlooking the River Thames. The sun shone on a vibrant lawn, and suddenly Lola could feel the warmth of the sun on her cheek, hear the murmuring of the water. Then, Thomas Cromwell turned his head sharply and looked at her.

Lola screamed and threw the book across the room. She cherished books, and would never have treated one with such disrespect before. But neither had any book or character therein had the audacity to conjure itself before her eyes.

“Hm,” a snarky voice complained. “Thought you would have enjoyed that, given how your nose is practically planted in those things.”

The voice had come from Lola’s lap. She looked down to find ’Zilla staring at her, his eyes half-closed and creased in his typical ‘annoyed face’ fashion.

’Zilla yawned and curled his back up, his body quivering briefly.

“D-... did… you j-just-”

“My food bowl is empty,” ’Zilla replied.

“...But…. but-”

“I know, you only fill it up twice a day, but look at me! I run on diesel, woman.”

“... How… do you… know what diesel… is? Wait, how are you talking?!”

“I’m communicating to you through your imagination. I say what I generally mean, and your brain, via the language you learned, is translating. Food, please.”

“That… app? Makes you talk?”

“More like lets you understand,” ’Zilla sighed, settling back onto the bed.

Lola unconsciously pulled her leg back.

“I’m not that hungry,” ’Zilla assured her.

“That’s not… what…”

“Remember the book? How it came to life before you?”

“... Yeah?”

“There is a whole bunch of meaning in each of those things, a whole bunch of communication that happens between us every day, just usually without words. Now, you can tap into that.”

“How…? Why?”

“I imagine you will have to explore to find out. You have access to worlds at your fingertips,” ’Zilla added, looking around at the expanse of bookshelves in Lola’s bedroom, dark shadows against the pale drywall. “I’m sure you can find something here.”

Lola looked around, her mind suddenly boggling at the sheer possibilities in front of her. She could interact with… no… meet the greatest minds of all time, just by picking up one of her books. Socrates, Confucius, Da Vinci, Averroes, Spinoza, Proust!

Well, maybe not Proust, if he is as loquacious as his writing is dense.

“So?” ’Zilla asked. “Whatcha think?”

“... Is it… real?”

“One way to find out. I plan on discovering that by eating whatever food we come across along the way.”

“You’re coming with me?”

“Yup. We cats have always been renowned as sages and guides. Do you think I would be an exception to the rule?”

“N-no, of course not… I just…”

“It’s a lot to take in… but let us get a move on, or go fill my bowl. I’m starting to get the grumblies in my tum-tum.”

Lola snickered. With a deep breath, she rose hesitantly to walk around the room and began scanning the vast array of books before her, raising her hand to run her fingers along the multitude of spines. Leatherbound, plastic covering, worn cardboard. Books had always been a refuge for her.

“Now, they’re an adventure,” she whispered to herself. Then, she remembered the book she had tossed across the room and retrieved it. Fortunately, only a few pages had been creased. She considered opening it up again, but Cromwell’s eyes had been so intense, so discerning...

Another time, Lola thought to herself. She set the book down on a shelf, closed her eyes and pulled another book at random.

‘Paradise Lost’, by John Milton.

Maybe I’ll build up to that one, Lola thought as she quickly put the book back and picked another.

‘The Overstory’, by Richard Powers. One of her favorites.

“Will modern stories work too?” Lola asked ’Zilla, practically spinning back around.

“Yessss,” ’Zilla groaned, looking up in exasperation. “Now let’s go! Stop by a scene with food in it first.”

“Alright,” Lola gasped, as she sat back down on the bed, crossing her legs and setting the book in front of her. She quickly scanned for a scene in which the characters were eating. Once she found the page, she set her hands across the paper reverently, feeling the slight rise of dried ink on paper.

As before, the letters began to shift before her as she read, and soon the scene of a scrawny, brown-haired man named Douglas, cooking eggs and bacon over a wood-burning stove in a cabin.

“He better give me some of that bacon,” ’Zilla muttered as he positioned himself on Lola’s lap.

“I’m sure we can convince him to give you some,” Lola said, smiling as she hugged ’Zilla tightly while the interior of the cabin and the smell of rich wood and a hearty breakfast unfolded around them. “It’s hard to refuse a talking cat.”