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ken*again
The Orthographers
by Kane X. Faucher
Conclusion
could flatter myself to believe these mysterious people were impressed by my
precociousness, but it was more likely their boredom and isolation that allowed
me to tarry longer in their domain as they had made no motions to do as my guide
had announced in speeding me off. I was slowly introduced to the mysteries
they so carefully guarded. Perhaps by the curious twist of their
metaphysical outlook and its complete exclusion of any possibility of, or place
for, accidents, my simply being there was an act of a higher will, linked
perhaps to predestination or fate. In time, they relaxed the derogatory
predicate of trespasser from my name and began treating me—not with excessive
hospitality—with a measured laconic tolerance. Seeing that I was
harmless and more or less grateful to having been saved from the harsh desert,
there was less reason for them to be secretive. As a nomad, I could
present them with little to no jeopardy. In time, I would learn their names,
although names served a different function, closely reminiscent of medieval
naming where a surname like Cook, Butler, Smith, would announce one's
profession. Each member of the Guild was assigned a letter at birth they
would be accountable for. The man who had rescued me was named—and
responsible for—the letter P. Each of the 26 members were given to
profound reflections on their respective letters, experimenting with phonic
variations, drawing elaborate tables of connections where the letter was
prominently in use, the geometric permutations of the letter, and so on—a
whole of one's life devoted to one assigned letter each. They were also, I
learned, each responsible for the manufacturing of their assigned letter using a
large typesetting apparatus (I would later discover that the black sands that
dominated this stretch of desert were actually a mix of stone dust and black ink
from these machines). By contrast, my name, composed as it was of ten
letters, must have seemed to them a jumbled incoherence. Each letter had a guardian and an elder
advisory council. The guardian would be entrusted to train the novice at
thirteen years of age when the child was taken from the parental home. At
the age of 26, if the novice passed the educational requirements in the study of
the letter, he would take the position of the new guardian while the old
guardian would be given a seat on the advisory council. The training was
of a demanding rigour not found even in some of our most renowned schools.
Concurrently with the training specific to the letter, the novice was expected
to read the Book of Aleph (Liber Alephi) so as to lend the requisite
spiritual gravity and instruction as to why guardianship of the letter was
necessary. I was given no indication if their studies included
mathematics, geography, history, or the natural sciences, but their knowledge
seemed to embrace all fields of study as it pertained to the study of the
letter. Despite the rigour of instruction,
their studies were pragmatic and the subjects gracefully economical. A
history of American presidents, for example, would most likely be considered
highly peripheral except where letters were somehow involved—the repetition of
W in the initials of Woodrow Wilson would have some relevance to one studying
the letter W. Neither was their education so exclusively specific as to
disregard the importance of other letters in the alphabet. I've already
mentioned their quasi-theological text, Liber Alephi, but every six
months they were expected to pass a test on a letter outside their
guardianship. This survey knowledge of other letters gave the student
insight on how letters connect as a whole. By the time they reached the
age of 26, on top of mastering their own letter, they would have gained
approximate knowledge on the remaining 25. This was consistent practice in
their pedagogical view of gradual development and the cohering of orthography. For obvious reasons of guild privacy, I
was not permitted to read the Liber Alephi, but the guardian of Q was
kind enough to tell me select notions from their devotional text, doubtless
taking care to omit a great deal so as not to subject the book to the eyes of
the profane. The Guildmaster's suspicion of me as a
foreigner was waning, almost as though I had ceased to be of any alarming
significance. His nonchalance trickled down to the remainder of the tribe
who took very little interest in me, my travels, or the land from whence I
came. In fact, they seemed to lack that bone of curiosity most others are
born with, and so my incessant questions must have seemed odd, if not mildly
offensive and exasperating. I more than made up for their signal lack of
any astonishment while they regarded me like one would the presence of a
chirping migratory bird. I cannot reliably say just how many
weeks I spent pacing those winding stone corridors and black sands, alighting in
one workshop or another (they were all of homogenous size and contents save for
the difference in letter). To say that I was permitted to observe their
work is too formal an acknowledgement when, in fact, they took increasingly less
interest in my presence. In each of the 26 workshops, all hewn in stone,
there was a monumental letter (also of stone) in the centre announcing the
workshop's charge. By the evidence of small stone chips strewn around
these sculptures, the letter was always being refined and reshaped. A
baffling array of instruments and measurement tables bespoke of perpetual
modification and analysis. To say these people took letters seriously
would be a crude understatement: for them, the letter was a religion, a
way of life, and the reason for existence for which no higher purpose could
exist. The fact that I had no trade in the letter placed me in the
maligned position of being inferior. What also astounded me was the
staggering volume of archives each letter had associated with it. For
example, in workshop F, a copy of Anatole France's The Garden of Epicurus
had every F in the text reverentially circled in ink with a single bold
underline. The guardian of F could tell me from memory how many times the
letter F appeared in the book which he said was factored into his ongoing
statistical analysis. I learned from him that F appeared on average 97
times out of 1000 characters in the period preceding World War II, but appeared
106 times subsequently. When I inquired after the discrepancy, the
guardian made motion with his hands suggesting there are some mysteries about a
letter only the guardian of that letter is entitled to know. The guardian of Y was much more
forthcoming, almost friendly, when I visited him. He even elected to show
me a book that pleased him containing Jacques Derrida's Ulysses Gramophone. “Not here how
the philosopher counted the number of instances of Y-E-S in Joyce's Ulysses,”
he said. “When it comes to the inscription of
letters, there are no accidents.” “Do you
believe that authors intentionally add a set number of particular letters in
their works?” I asked. “Yes and
no. Rules govern language and predict what can come next in the
construction of a word. There are no words in any language where an X is
followed by a K, but Y follows L frequently. Sound and structure determine
orthographic interconnectivity. Each letter has a limited range of options
for what they can connect to, and this is determined by the small range of
sounds it can fit with unless modified by another letter.” “Like how G
can be hard or soft, 'grab' or 'lodge', right?” “Yes.
Determined by rules of convention, mutations in language, borrow terms, and the
like.” “Can you
explain why my being here is not considered an accident?” “There are
rules some cannot see, but still follow without knowing it. Certain
connections in the universe follow broad patterns that may extend as far back as
time's beginning. Every choice made in life, as in letters for the
formation of a word, is an exclusive one that annihilates all other possible
choices. Granted, there are some choices that are more highly probably
than others. Y follows L commonly even though K following X is
theoretically possible but not probable. In your case, you came to the
desert. You knew it was a possibility that you would be cheated, become
lost, all the risky and perilous misadventures that eventually brought you
here. Some choices are more likely than others. You could have come
here and strangled me or talk to me—the latter choice was more likely.
If someone greets you, it is more likely that you return the greeting with
something in kind, and highly unlikely that you take that occasion to slit your
own throat or recite a passage from an encyclopedia or peel a grapefruit.” “I couldn't
have known in advance that I would find myself here since I did not know 'here'
existed.” “As I said,
choices are made according to rules, but not everyone is aware of the
rules. Choices are sequential, and most people make them in specific
circumstances without realizing that these choices are formed by all previous
experience.” I would not be granted much more
insight into this strange tribe of orthographers, for the Guildmaster summoned
me to say that he had arranged for my departure. It was time for me to
make new choices. But, at the heart of my attempts to understand these
people, I continuously came up against the wall of their true purpose. To
what end this guardianship of letters? The answer would be given me by way of a
riddle. “Words are
clean, and names are clumsy,” the Guildmaster
said. “Some must dedicate their lives to the
protection and regulation of the word's smallest and most fragile units so that
words may continue to thrive. The things we name—feelings, objects,
ideas—cannot survive without the concurrence of letters that guarantee the
sense and sound. We fashion, we study, we develop so that others may be
free. It does not trouble us that so many take these tiny units for
granted, or do not understand the vital significance of single letters, but
neither do many who eat think of the harvester, those who use tools think of the
toolmaker, those who blindly obey the laws of the land think of the one who
wrote them into existence. Go forth, Jason Johns American. The
letter is yours to wield, and ours to comprehend.” And so it was done. A member of
the guild escorted me for several miles, that tribal fortification swallowed by
distance and the stirring of another storm. My guide left me at the
nearest small town, gifting unto me only one statement: “It
is written. The infinite Aleph knows, and men believe they are free.
It is the way of the Aleph and the way of men, their differences united by the
pattern of the letter.” That was the last I ever
heard or saw of the orthographers. Since then, I endeavoured to locate
where they might have been situated, poring over maps and researching any
mention of them. However, I turned up nothing, and resolved to think the
whole affair a hallucination brought on by desert exposure. The idea still
torments me from time to time, that there is a group of chosen people given the
duty to uphold the building blocks of language. Who appointed them? I can
no longer jot down even the most frivolous thought or compile a simple list
without feeling the tug of what I so carelessly employ.