I stood up from my chair, spilling my chi tea, and made my way through the room that, by now, after weeks on the planet, was so strewn with my belongings that it looked like a scatter diagram where nothing had any correlation.
I opened the door to find a representative of the Enasni Intergalactic Telegraph Office (ITO). Enasni law prohibits direct communication between planets; consequently, the ITO does a thriving business.
I must say, however, that these telegraph communications are not without their challenges. First, Enasni law requires that the sender (in my case folks back on Earth) must translate the message into Enasni before transmitting. This poses a challenge because the Enasni language is difficult and because only 7 people on Earth speak it.
Once received on Enasni, the telegram is sent to the Enasni government sensors that look for and remove any words or phases considered offensive. Examples of offending text include, but are not limited to:
Corn (cob, not cream style)
Terrarium
Flute
Bette Midler
Any words containing more than four letters.
Once potentially offending words are removed the telegraph must be re-translated back into English by a designated representative of the ITO. On Enasni there are 4 English speakers, who, as best I can tell, spend most of their days fishing. I have attempted to determine if there is a correlation between the hours they spend fishing, the number of days they work, and the volume of telegraphs I receive. They are a very independent group, their productivity seems variable, and I, after all, am dependent upon them.
But I digress…
With the telegraph in my hand, I read:
URGE STOP MUST COME HOME BABY STOP WIFE STOP EAT NEED STOP MILK STOP
I ponder the meaning of this for a moment. Does it mean:
Urgent, my wife has had a baby, but the baby has stopped eating?
Or, does it mean my wife is eating babies and won’t stop.
Or, perhaps it means, “come home baby, I want to go out to dinner, and remember to stop and pick up some milk on the way?”
Whatever the meaning, it appears I need to prepare to leave Enasni.
I opened the door to find a representative of the Enasni Intergalactic Telegraph Office (ITO). Enasni law prohibits direct communication between planets; consequently, the ITO does a thriving business.
I must say, however, that these telegraph communications are not without their challenges. First, Enasni law requires that the sender (in my case folks back on Earth) must translate the message into Enasni before transmitting. This poses a challenge because the Enasni language is difficult and because only 7 people on Earth speak it.
Once received on Enasni, the telegram is sent to the Enasni government sensors that look for and remove any words or phases considered offensive. Examples of offending text include, but are not limited to:
Corn (cob, not cream style)
Terrarium
Flute
Bette Midler
Any words containing more than four letters.
Once potentially offending words are removed the telegraph must be re-translated back into English by a designated representative of the ITO. On Enasni there are 4 English speakers, who, as best I can tell, spend most of their days fishing. I have attempted to determine if there is a correlation between the hours they spend fishing, the number of days they work, and the volume of telegraphs I receive. They are a very independent group, their productivity seems variable, and I, after all, am dependent upon them.
But I digress…
With the telegraph in my hand, I read:
URGE STOP MUST COME HOME BABY STOP WIFE STOP EAT NEED STOP MILK STOP
I ponder the meaning of this for a moment. Does it mean:
Urgent, my wife has had a baby, but the baby has stopped eating?
Or, does it mean my wife is eating babies and won’t stop.
Or, perhaps it means, “come home baby, I want to go out to dinner, and remember to stop and pick up some milk on the way?”
Whatever the meaning, it appears I need to prepare to leave Enasni.
posted by Tom Roberts at 10:01 PM
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