Lie: Signal

Bits of speech sparkle
Public radio debris
“It’s okay if you’re still a bit hung up on that”
Swish-swish-snap
And a country song starts playing
Your hand keeps turning the little knob
Further and further, the white line speeds past DJs you might have met
Looking for the semisweet aftertaste of the song you heard last night, overplayed
In the crowds
At the party
Or the sickly smell
In the bathroom
Maybe on the Pavement
Blasting from a loudspeaker
Overheard, forgotten,
And slipping down the wet storm drain
“Where were you last night”
-break for an advertisement-
It’s all a mess anyway
Better leave it in the static
Swish-swish-click
Un-sort-it

Deception: "Babelfish Hypothetical"

It turns out that Douglas Adams wasn’t only one of the greatest humorists of the 20th century, but he was also a sort of sage. Bacteria has been synthesized that essentially acts as a ‘babelfish’, which, if you haven’t read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, allows you to understand every language as if you had spoken it since birth.

Does this increase or decrease your desire to travel? If it increases it, where would you go first?

Do you think this will help or hurt international diplomacy?

What effect will the discovery have on the world's various cultural identities?

Lie: Worn

            The Victrola’s wooden needle skittered along the worn grooves of an old 72-RPM record as the kid in the flannel shirt stood and listened; the wrinkled proprietor of the store stopped his work on the miniscule gears of a golden pocket-watch to hear the tune. Jazz exploded from the tinny speakers in the cabinet; little reminiscences of roaring parties and the warm taste of illicit drinks, of the streets downtown and the discarded relics of day-to-day life they contained, of the high hopes and low expectations of the man with the trumpet on the corner. It all coalesced into a few moments of purely human joy and dusty but brilliant white light. The machine gave this to the world freely, and then fell silent. Leaning down, the boy sorted through the books of old records until he recognized a name on one of the paper labels. He sat the thick vinyl on the table, turned the crank, and placed the needle onto the first groove. In the dim light of the sunset window, the boy saw the proprietor smile as the twelve-string guitar sounded in a haze of static and noise, becoming its own echo in the quickly changing chords and vocal melodies. Other peoples’ memories swept over their mind and calmed them, so that when the boy left the store and disappeared into the orange glow of rural night with nothing in his hands, neither he nor the owner was left wanting.