"Sir?" called a voice through the rolling Bavarian hills.
"What's that?" asked my companion, a beautiful young woman whose name I didn't catch. I think it was either Mandi or Maggie.
"Nothing," I whispered, pulling her close again. "Just the wind. Here, let me place a few more kisses upon your lips and you'll forget all about...."
"Sir? SIR? Can you hear me?"
She leaned up on one elbow. "I'm sure I hear someone calling you."
"Not a chance! This old train station has been abandoned for years. You know, you have the most appealing surface I have...."
"SIR!!"
Uh-oh. That voice. I knew that voice! It was thin but expressive and very, very distinct, with a cultured accent that could only come from years at a British boarding school. Where had I heard it before?
A rivulet of water splashed upon my face. (Who says that word is NUTBTGMR?) The whole room darkened and began to spin, and the beautiful girl in my arms dissolved into a puff of dust. Man, I hate when that happens.
For one brief moment, I found myself floating weightlessly towards a bright, pure white light. Sirens wailed in the distance, or were they the song of temptresses from ancient Greek lore? I passed through the shining portal and found myself lying in harmonious bliss, staring into the eyes of angels.
Actually, it was Slingsby and the rest of the tour group. I was on a bed somewhere, flat on my back, and they were standing over me with concerned looks on their faces.
"What happened?" I asked weakly, though I had a pretty good idea.
"I'm afraid the hard disk driver on your neurocomputer failed, sir," said Slingsby. "You've been out of commission for quite a while. One of the Stewartland field technicians beamed in and replaced an optocircuit, so you should be fine now."
Easy for him to say. His head wasn't pounding and throbbing like someone was playing a tuba and a tambourine inside his skull.
"Where am I now?"
"You're in the spare bedroom at Stewart Manor," said someone. "We were touring the second floor when you crashed."
Oh, yeah. Now I remembered. I was disappointed because I hadn't found any poll results in the kids' rooms. I guess even those drunken black shirts had enough sense not to go upstairs and awaken baby Violet.
I tried to shake the cobwebs from my head, with little success. "I think you'd better let me lie here a while," I mumbled. "I'm not ready to get up yet."
"No bother," said Slingsby. "We'll be back in a few minutes. Follow me everyone," he added as he led the rest of the group away. "Next stop is the hall bath, where Guy Stewart began research on his landmark Philosophy of Genetic Sibling Rivalry by attempting to flush Violet's Barbie dolls down the toilet, and...."
His voice faded into silence. I took a deep breath and looked around. The room was kind of dull really, as guest rooms usually are. Just a bed and a nightstand and a chest of drawers. By the door hung a picture of a teenage Violet Stewart at what looked to be a birthday party. The other three walls were all bare, save for tasteful flowered wallpaper.
Come to think of it, that was odd. The other bedrooms were all painted. I decided to scan the room quickly with my temporal sight restorer. The walls turned pitch black under the beam, indicating the wallpaper wasn't there the night the ASML'ers invaded the house. A couple of adjustments later, I learned it had been installed just two days afterwards. Could that be a coincidence?
Well, no harm checking to see what's underneath. I certainly wasn't going anywhere for a while. I attached an x-ray lens to the TSR and pointed it at one corner of the room. To my surprise, the following table immediately appeared:
1995 ASML BOAP: Best Song to Add an Additional Verse
# Song Album Votes ---------------------------------------------- 1 Post World War II Blues PPF 10.00 2t Love Chronicles LC 6.00 2t Nostradamus PPF 6.00 4t Merlin's Time 24C 5.00 4t Trains FLW 5.00 6t Last Days Of The Century LDOTC 4.00 6t Year Of The Cat YOTC 4.00 8 Modern Times MT 3.50 9t Hipposong FLW 3.00 9t Time Passages TP 3.00
So one of them had come upstairs after all! Whoever it was, he or she wasn't one for subtlety. The table was printed in huge block letters with what looked to be a felt-tipped pen. Even more strange was that it wasn't written in Old English, but rather in the long-dead language of Ancient Italian.
Perhaps there were more results under the wallpaper? I snapped a wide-angle lens onto the TSR and scanned the far wall to find....
"Holy cow!" I said softly. At least I meant to say it softly. Actually, I yelled it so loud the windows rattled.
"Is everything all right, sir?" called Slingsby from down the hall.
"Um, yeah, sure," I shouted, rubbing my eyes. "I think I'm just hallucinating again."
What I saw -- what I thought I saw, anyway -- were words! Words and text and phrases, poetry perhaps, printed on every square centimeter of three of the four walls in the bedroom. Starting at the top left corner of the leftmost wall, I read:
Europa vastata,
mihi in Versillae aula sedenti adest tabula Europae.
"I'm here sitting in the wreck of Europe...." I mumbled to myself. I turned my head to read the last words on the rightmost wall:
spectans e eius fenestra eam vir aetate
sua sed suis oculis qui aequillae sunt.
"...But his eyes are the eyes of an eagle." This was no hallucination -- it was the Great Master's lyrics! Someone had translated every last word of his oeuvre into Ancient Italian and inscribed them on the bedroom walls.
Well, not quite every word. I found one line written in Old English: "Peace be with you".
Seems that one of the black shirts snuck off from the rest of the horde and created his own miniature Sistine Chapel. Incredible! I'd wager that the Great Master was touched by the gesture. But then, I'd also wager Lady Kristine had a vastly different reaction, which would explain why the wallpaper went up two days later.
Personally, I found it to be inspiring. I reflected upon what would make someone undertake such a monumental task. Sincere admiration? Profound respect? Deep gratitude?
Then I noticed a short addendum just after the final lyric, something of an epilogue to the whole endeavor:
nonnihil omnibus est credendum;
nonnullas nunc mihi bibendas cerevicias credo. -- B.C.
"Everyone needs to believe in something. I believe I'll have another beer." Um, yeah, that would explain it too.
I took a closer look at the middle wall. Though it was covered in Ancient Italian, I did notice a couple of Arabic numbers just after the lyrics to 'Red Toupee'. Turns out it was another poll result:
1995 ASML BOAP: Best Song Lyrics
# Song Album Votes ----------------------------------------------- 1 Roads To Moscow PPF 22.50 2 Modern Times MT 6.00 3t (If It Doesn't...) Leave It YOTC 5.00 3t Post World War II Blues PPF 5.00 3t Trains FLW 5.00 3t Where Are They Now LDOTC 5.00 3t Year Of The Cat YOTC 5.00 8t Love Chronicles LC 4.00 8t Nostradamus PPF 4.00 10 Soho (Needless To Say) PPF 3.50
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed another set of numbers on the bottom of the left wall, below the lyrics to "I'm Falling." At that very instant, Slingsby walked back into the room.
"Feeling better, sir?" he asked politely.
"Almost," I said, quickly clicking off the TSR. "Just keep going -- don't let me hold you back."
"No need for that. This room is the next stop." The rest of the tourists filed in, one by one. "Although I must admit, there's not much to see in this little guest room. It was hardly ever used. The only curiosity is that, for reasons unknown, the Great Master and Lady Kristine referred to it as 'The Italian Bedroom'."
"What an odd name," said the elderly woman. "Did the furniture come from Italy?"
"No, Sears. Nothing in the room is of Italian origin, save for a small spot of tomato sauce on the ceiling fan. The children had a particularly violent food fight in 2009."
"Perhaps 'Italian Bedroom' was some sort of inside joke between them," speculated one man. "It's said that in heaven the lovers are all Italian, the cooks are French, the mechanics are German, the...."
"Actually, that's an urban legend," interrupted Slingsby. "Modern-day researchers, using avatars as agents, visited heaven and hell recently to determine the division of labor. They found that jobs are divided equally among nationalities, with the exception that in hell all of the police officers are from Los Angeles.
"The difference is one of organization. In heaven, workers telecommute, managers are flexible, government regulations are few, job security is guaranteed, and everyone has stock options. In hell, the workers are Civil Service, supervisors micromanage, upper managers have golden parachutes, downsizing is done for sport, and everything is owned by Microsoft. Plus, the only show on TV is 'Step By Step'."
"Um, Slingsby," I said, as innocently as I could. "Are you sure they called it the *Italian* Bedroom?"
"Yes, sir. That's the accepted translation from Old English. Why?"
"Well, our ancestors often had multiple words for similar concepts. What we know as 'Old Italian', they called simply 'Italian'. But for 'Ancient Italian', they had a special word: 'Latin'. So I'm wondering if the Great Master didn't refer to the room as the 'Latin Bedroom', and the phrase got corrupted when we moved to Modern English."
Slingsby rubbed his chin. "That's a possibility, I suppose, though it doesn't really shed any light on the mystery." He shot me a suspicious glance. "Unless you know something I don't."
"Oh, no. Heaven forfend."
"Could you guys run through that again a little slower?" interjected the young woman from Dallas. "I think I missed something."
"Allow me," said Slingsby. "As you know, English has undergone a number of dramatic changes over the centuries. Its roots are in the Germanic and Romance languages of the First Millennium, with significant contributions from the Celtics and the Sixers...er, Saxons, sorry.
"As the British Empire grew, English grew along with it. Colonists borrowed words and phrases from native tongues around the globe. Brilliant writers such as Shakespeare and Swift added to the lexicon, as did successive generations of wordsmiths like the Brownings and Emily Dickenson and Ernest Hemingway and Don King. Spelling began to standardize in the 18th century, usage in the 19th and 20th. By the year 2050, Old English was overwhelming accepted as the first or second language of choice worldwide.
"But there was a price to pay. Because the language had evolved in a piecemeal manner, it harbored thousands of inefficiencies, inconsistencies, and out-and-out absurdities. For example, the words cough, hiccough, through, rough, plough, and though all ended with the same four-letter combination, none of which matched the phonetic pronunciation! Old English was simultaneously the world's most essential language and one of its most difficult to learn.
"Fortunately, a number of long overdue developments took place towards the end of the 21st century. A consortium of multinational corporations, led by Hukd On Foniks Inc., succeeded in re-standardizing the language around phonetic spellings. Simultaneously, there were a spate of general pronunciation revisions. Chief among these the Great Vowel Shift, the Great Consonant Mutation, and the Great Diphthong Defenestration. The result was what we now know as Modern English."
At this point, Slingsby walked to the window and closed the mesh and lace curtains. "Sorry folks. It was getting so hot in here I thought I was going to melt."
"So where does Italian versus Latin come in?" someone asked.
"Well, the third noteworthy component of Modern English is that it is vastly smaller than its predecessor. Words that were found to be unnecessary, redundant, or imprecise were stricken from the lexicon. The overall trend was to simplify, simplify, simplify. I dare say it has been successful, although certain radical subfactions of linguists and authors have groused for years that the language has lost its richness and subtlety.
"In the case of 'Latin', is was felt that the phrase 'Ancient Italian' conveyed the same essential meaning. Ergo, the word was scrapped."
I nodded in assent. Slingsby's explanation was excellent for two reasons. One, it was accurate. Two, it was so long that it gave me time to slip off the bed and check out those results I'd noticed on the left wall:
1995 ASML BOAP: Favorite Line from an Al Song
# Song Album Votes
------------------------------------------------------------
1t (If It Doesn't Come Naturally) Leave It YOTC 4
"Nothing that's forced can ever be right /
If it doesn't come naturally, leave it!"
1t Accident on Third Street R&A 4
"He left me with a feeling that what he said was basically sound /
Like a black hole in space or philosophy: useless, but profound."
3t Year Of The Cat YOTC 3
"She comes out of the sun in a silk dress, running /
Like a watercolor in the rain."
3t What's Going On MT 3
"You walk like Greta Garbo, but you talk like Yogi Bear."
5 (If It Doesn't Come Naturally) Leave It YOTC 2.5
"I'm up to my neck in the crumbling wreckage /
Of all that I wanted from life."
"One unfortunate consequence is that Modern English and Old English bear almost no resemblance to one another," I added when I rejoined the group. "All of the great works of the past have been translated, of course, including the Great Master's. Still, nothing compares to reading and hearing them in the original tongue."
"Luddite," I heard someone mumble under his breath.
"Frankly, I find it incredible our ancestors allowed the language to get out of hand so absurdly," said the elderly woman.
"It may not have been entirely by chance," said Slingsby. "Scholars have evidence that the old system of spelling was perpetrated by one deranged individual in the mid-1700's. He believed that modern technology, in the form of printing presses, transcontinental ships, and the like, was having a devastating effect on the human spirit and society in general.
"His solution was to embark on a ruthless wave of institutional terrorism. Only by disrupting technology and impeding its growth, he believed, humanity could be saved. As letter bombs were not practical in those days, he took a different tack. He emigrated to America and took odd jobs as a designer, publisher, and engineer. There, he deliberately mis-designed key systems and components critical to the development of the New World. One of the scoundrel's first deeds was to publish a dictionary containing the horrific and illogical Old English spellings that, tragically, persisted for almost 400 years."
"Amazing! What other atrocities did he commit?" asked the middle-aged man.
"Oh, dozens. The typewriter keyboard. The English system of weights and measures. The original Simplified Income Tax Form. The contract bridge scoring tables. His most nefarious deed of all was laying out the city streets of Boston."
"Was he ever caught?" someone asked.
"Yes, but it wasn't until very much later. After the Revolution, he traveled to the nation's capital and attempted to sell the founding fathers on a scheme whereby one could cut taxes, raise defense spending, achieve constant above-inflation growth in entitlement spending, not cut any popular programs, and still have a balanced budget. He was summarily tried and hanged as a traitor, of course."
Geez. What a bonehead move. Who'd be stupid enough to fall for that malarkey?
"Well, folks, I think our friend from Philadelphia has recovered from his unfortunate illness," said Slingsby with a smile. "Shall we move on to the master bedroom?"
"Let's shall," said someone.
The group left the room orderly, Slingsby leading the way. I hung to the back because there was one last thing I wanted to check. Mr. B.C., whoever that was, left one of the four walls blank, and I had a pretty good idea why. A quick scan of the base molding confirmed my suspicions:
1995 ASML BOAP: Best Instrumental
# Song Album Score ---------------------------------------------------- 1 Denise At 16 BI 5.20 2 The Black Danube BTW 4.55 3 Once An Orange, Always An Orange O 4.51 4 Ghostly Horses Of The Plain LDOTC 4.37 5 Room Of Roots ZSF 4.03
Those ASML'ers were a bit eccentric, but at least they were predictable. On to the Great Master's Master Suite!