T LX DZCCJ

November 2023

This story was inspired by my recent trip to Japan. We took a cruise for part of the journey, which included a day in South Korea. After studying Japanese a few minutes daily for several years, I’d got used to many of the symbols and phrases. When we reached Korea, though, it was back to square one. It was a sobering reminder of the power and importance of language, and it led to this weird tale.

‘I’m sorry, Dr Heritage, I just don’t get it. I don’t understand what it is you’re asking me.’

‘Don’t understand or can’t be bothered to understand, Valerie?’

‘Honestly, I’ve tried and tried… it’s just—’

‘Just what? Just that you had something more interesting to do last night? Just that you had too many social media posts to look at and like or whatever it is you do these days? Just that you had too many important matters to discuss with your friends that kept you from your studies?’

‘No, I—’

‘Or was it just that you couldn’t be bothered?’

Valerie hates Dr Heritage’s Friday morning calculus class. They seem to get worse every week, and this has been the worst one by far. She shouldn’t take it personally – he’s not singling her out, he’s vile to everyone like this – but she does. She’s a sensitive soul, he’s not. Does he have any appreciation of how he’s making her feel?

‘Come on, Valerie,’ he says, standing directly in her eyeline. ‘We’re waiting. You’re stopping the whole study group from moving forward.’

She can feel herself sinking, the pressure increasing. But if she couldn’t work out the answer to the homework question on her own at home last night when it was quiet and she was relaxed and she had Google on-hand, then she doesn’t stand a chance now. The twenty-three other students are all staring at her. The reality is there are probably others who are similarly struggling, but right now it feels like she’s the only one who’s stuck. She can feel their eyes boring into her, and that’s making her feel worse and worse, further away from finding the answer than ever. She thinks they must all think she’s stupid, but she’s not. She excels in most classes, but maths is her Achilles heel. It’s like a foreign language to her (but one that’s indecipherable, because she can speak Spanish and French with ease). The harder she stares at the problem on the screen, the less sense it makes. The numbers, letters, and symbols swirl…

‘Well?’ Heritage asks. ‘Come on, girl. This is basic algebra, for crying out loud. This is a week one problem.’

Valerie desperately tries to clear her head and focus, but it won’t make any difference. The harder she tries, the worse it gets. Now she’s thinking about how she can’t solve the problem instead of thinking about the problem itself. Time slows to a crawl, almost to a stop. The pressure is increasing, the silence in the rest of the room growing ever louder.

‘If you can’t answer this, Valerie, then God knows how you think you’re going to get on with the rest of the course. You’re supposed to be graduating next semester, but if you can’t get past this level of problem, I suggest you go away and do some serious thinking about your future. You’ll probably be better off quitting now and saving you, me, and your fellow students a lot of wasted time and effort. Honestly, we went through a dozen examples like this in Wednesday’s session and—’

‘The answer is 3y to the power of x.’

Heritage looks behind him, annoyed. ‘I wasn’t asking you, Shay Taylor, I was asking Valerie.’

‘Yeah, well Val don’t know the answer. She already told you.’

‘And how is you shouting out the solution going to help, exactly?’

‘Better than you just picking on her until she breaks, I guess.’

‘Miss Taylor, I suggest that—’

‘Just leave Val alone. She don’t know what she don’t know.’

‘She don’t know what she don’t know,’ he repeats, in a mocking, patronising tone. ‘Fortunately, your understanding of mathematics is somewhat better than your grasp of the English language. Honestly, between you and Valerie combined, we’ve almost got a complete student on our hands.’

He shakes his head in despair and returns his attention to Valerie. Trouble is, gobby Shay still has more to say. She can’t help herself. ‘Can you play the violin?’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ he asks, confused.

‘Val can,’ Shay tells him. ‘She’s ace. And she can sing.’

‘That’s of no interest to me. I’m here to teach maths.’

‘We can’t all be good at everything.’

‘How dare you…’ Heritage says, red-faced and steaming, the anger welling up inside him like a pressure cooker. ‘In my many years at this college I have rarely come across a more average teaching group with more miserable prospects than this one. There are one or two of you who might possibly make the grade, but the rest of you are a lost cause. If you put as much effort into your studies as you do avoiding your work and answering back, you might have half a chance. You truly are unremarkable specimens of a type of—’

He’s silenced by the klaxon which cuts him off mid-rant. End of session. It’s probably for the best. He’d likely end up saying something he’d regret. Again. And end up having to explain himself to the principle. Again.

It’s not so much that standards have fallen since his day, more that they’ve plummeted off the side of a cliff.

‘Submit your assignments online before the end of the weekend,’ Heritage shouts, struggling to make himself heard over the clattering noise and relieved chatter of the herd of students stampeding out of his lecture room at speed.

---

Staff drinks at the Havana Lounge, a leaving do for one of the department heads. It’s absolutely the last place on the planet he wanted to be right now. I mean, what kind of a name is that for a bar? Tacky. Pretentious. Not his kind of place at all. He doesn’t think he’ll have a leaving do when he retires next year. He’ll just clear out his desk and leave quietly. He’ll slip away when no one’s looking and he’ll probably never give the college or anyone in it a second’s thought.

Heritage hates social gatherings like this, but attendance is expected, particularly when it’s for one of the more senior members of staff. It’s not compulsory, but it’s noted if you don’t at least show your face. Most times he does what he has to do then makes a quick exit when no one else is looking. Usually, no one’s bothered when he leaves early. In fact, he thinks they’re probably relieved. They’re usually about as keen to spend time with him as he is with them. Honestly, when he looks around at the rest of the staff, it’s no wonder the current cohort of students are such useless slackers. Most of his colleagues (and he uses that term very loosely) are half his age and have a fraction of his experience. There’s no depth to any of them, no substance. He finds them tiresome. He’s increasingly out on a limb, fewer and fewer like-minded people left to talk to.

Sometimes, though, and it’s only very rarely, events take a turn.

This, to his great surprise, is turning out to be one of those occasions.

Tonight, quite unexpectedly, Heritage has found himself chatting to Miss Moore. She teaches Chemistry, and although she’s at least ten years younger than he is, she’s still closer to his age than the average of the rest of the staff. The two of them have been talking about inconsequential nonsense for an hour or more, sharing their frustrations and hankering back for times past. To begin with, he thought she was just being polite, but she’s laughing at all of his (awful) jokes and listening with real interest to the things he says. They’ve a number of shared interests, it seems.

Dr Heritage thinks that if things had been different and they’d both been younger, he’d have asked her to go out with him. Just drinks and something to eat to start with, of course, no presumption of anything more than that. It would have been nice. He promised to share details of a documentary series he recently enjoyed watching, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember the name of it. She wrote her email address down for him on a Havana Lounge-branded napkin which he folded neatly and put in his jacket pocket. He thinks maybe he’ll contact her over the weekend. He thinks he might even try and get hold of a copy of the documentary on disc and arrange to give it to her.

Her phone pings unexpectedly. ‘I’m going to have to get going now, I’m afraid,’ she says, and he feels his heart sink. It’s the first time he’s felt his heart do anything in an age.

‘Really? That’s a shame.’

‘I need to pick my daughter up. I didn’t think I’d be out this late. You know what it’s like, though, providing the parental taxi service. You’re always on call.’

Actually, he doesn’t know. He could never know, but he gets the gist, and he smiles at her just the same.

‘Thank you for a lovely evening.’

‘It’s been great, hasn’t it? I’ve really enjoyed talking to you, Ian,’ she tells him, and though he’s never been the best at reading people, he can’t help but think she’s telling the truth. She hesitates, seeming to be about to say something else, then changing her mind at the last second, not sure if she should. For a fraction of a second, he wonders if she’s going to ask him out for that drink that he’s too afraid to suggest. ‘I’ve seen a whole other side of you this evening,’ she says. ‘I wish you could be more like this at work.’

He feels himself stiffen slightly, anticipating criticism. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to respond or whether he should say anything at all. He’s always been keen not to give too much of himself away at work. A degree of formality and distance at college is important. The student-teacher divide has to be maintained, and that extends to teacher-teacher relationships too. If he was overfamiliar in the classroom, he’d lose the respect of the kids, and that respect is key to keeping them focused and learning.

But she is right.

Her phone pings again. ‘That’s my cue.’

‘I should probably be going too,’ he says, not wanting to let her go just yet. ‘I’ll walk you to your car, if that’s okay?’

‘That would be lovely.’

It’s never as straightforward as just getting up and walking out when you’re at these kind of events. It takes the two of them almost ten minutes to get their coats on then make it through the crowds inside the Havana Lounge. To be fair, it’s mostly people wanting to say goodbye to Miss Moore, and most of them simply acknowledge Heritage with a cursory nod or a brief flash of a polite smile. He thinks they’re probably assuming it’s coincidental that they’re both leaving at the same time. Miss Moore is lovely and well-liked, Dr Heritage isn’t. He overhears Jordan Shelton (that new and horrifically loud and over-confident drama teacher) make some cheap and crass comment at his expense. Normally he’d react, but tonight he lets it go.

There’s another delay as Miss Moore stops to say goodbye to another friend. Heritage hovers awkwardly, thinking maybe he should just leave and wait for her outside. But he promised he’d walk her out, so that’s what he’s going to do.

When she’s finally ready, he turns around and walks straight into Joshua Shelton who’s coming the other way. Shelton accidently spills almost an entire glass of red wine over him.

‘Oh, fuck,’ Shelton says. ‘I’m really sorry. Genuine accident. I was just—’

Heritage is having none of it. ‘You absolute bloody moron,’ he yells at the top of his voice, loud enough to cut through all the music and chatter, silencing everything else.

‘Sorry. Like I said, mate, it was a genuine accident.’

‘An accident that would never have happened if you hadn’t been jumping around like a bloody idiot all evening. I’ve seen you – I’ve heard you – you bloody show off. And let me make this completely clear, I am definitely not your mate.’

‘Ain’t that the truth.’

Shelton is ushered away by a couple of friends before things get nasty, leaving Heritage standing alone by the door. He remembers himself and looks around for Miss Moore, but she’s already gone.

Outside, he sees her walking toward her car.

He quickly crossed the road to catch up with her and say goodbye. Her demeanour has completely changed. ‘Goodnight,’ she says. Her voice is curt, almost abrasive.

‘Miss Moore, I just wanted to—’ he starts to say, but she cuts across him.

‘Perhaps I got it wrong. The side of you I saw earlier this evening, maybe that was the act.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The way you were with Jordan just now… the aggression, the arrogance… that’s the real Ian Heritage, isn’t it? I was starting to think I’d got you all wrong, that I’d misrepresented you previously. Just for a little while I was beginning to believe we’d all got you wrong, that there was someone warm and sincere behind the angry, argumentative, irritable façade we all have to put up with at college, but no. I know Jordan can be irritating at times, but it was a genuine accident, and your reaction was completely disproportionate.’

‘But I—’

‘I really don’t need that kind of negative energy in my life. Good night, Dr Heritage.’

And with that, she’s gone.

He stands in the middle of the road and watches until her taillights have disappeared. The rest of the world is dark and feels darker still.

Heritage is so wrapped up in his thoughts that he doesn’t hear the other car come skidding around the corner. The driver of that car is off his face on drugs. He clips Heritage’s hip and sends him flying into the gutter, then he panics and drives even faster to get away.

---

He doesn’t know how long he’s been lying here.

He’s soaked through with rain and though he’s motionless, face down on the ground, he feels like he’s standing on the deck of a ship in a storm, rocking up and down and from side to side with the swells and troughs of a violent ocean. He carefully picks himself up and checks himself over. Other than a blinding headache and a dreadfully sore hip, he appears otherwise undamaged. The pain when he remembers how his evening with Miss Moore ended feels far worse than any physical discomfort. That bloody idiot Joshua Shelton . . . why did he have to ruin everything?

Heritage doesn’t know where he is.

He has a feeling the train station is about half a mile north, closer to the centre of town, but he’s not completely sure. He’s disorientated. He came here with a crowd but is leaving solo.

The street ahead looks (vaguely) familiar, he thinks, and he follows the road until he reaches a T-junction. He turns left and walks straight into someone coming the other way. It’s a gang of four, dressed in black, faces hidden. ‘Hsle esp qfnv jzf oztyr, Rclyoolo?’ the leader of the pack says to him.

‘I’m sorry, what?’

‘Dszfwo jzf mp zfe zy jzfc zhy estd wlep?’ another one of them says.

‘I don’t understand…’

He can’t make sense of any of what they’re saying. Are they Polish, or is this some other language altogether? To him, their words sound like strings of noises – unpronounceable whirrs and clicks that don’t make sense, random letters that have no place sitting alongside each other in words. It makes him feel far angrier than it perhaps should. If they’re going to come to this country and start causing trouble for people who’ve always lived here like him, he thinks the least they could do is learn to speak the language.

‘Idiots,’ he says, and he tries to push past them but there’s no way through. One of them grabs the shoulder of his jacket and pulls him back.

‘Hsle’d esp cfds, zwo xly?’

‘Get off me…’ He tries to shrug them off, but he knows he’s up against it. They’re all far bigger than he is, younger too, and there are four of them, just one of him. ‘I’ll call the police,’ he warns, but they just point and laugh at him.

‘Ozy’e qtrse, alw… hp’cp ufde slgtyr l mte zq qfy htes jzf.’

‘I can’t understand you. Talk English, for goodness’s sake.’

‘Hsle lcp jzf dljtyr, jzf defato zwo qlce? Lcp jzf nclkj, zc ufde l mte dtxawp?’

‘What?’

The kid who just spoke grabs Dr Heritage’s collar and pulls him closer until their faces are just millimetres apart, then he repeats his words. He speaks slower this time, enunciating carefully, talking to him like he’s a child. ‘T dlto, lcp jzf nclkj, zc ufde l mte dtxawp?’

Either the novelty of the altercation is wearing off, or they’re running out of patience. The one that’s got hold of Heritage pushes him up against a wall. Two more grab an arm each while the final one checks his pockets, looking for anything worth taking. They get his wallet, but dump it because he’s not carrying any cash, only cards. ‘I’ll call the police,’ he warns again, but that’s not going to happen now they’ve taken his phone. ‘You bloody uneducated animals!’ he yells, and whether they understand what he’s saying or not, the tone and volume of his voice leave little doubt as to his intent.

A punch comes from out of nowhere. He’s hit hard in the stomach and, for the second time in no time at all, he’s flat out in the gutter again.

He lies still until he’s sure they’ve gone, then slowly picks himself up and looks for his possessions. They’ve taken his phone, but he recovers his rain-soaked wallet just before it’s washed down a drain. He checks everything’s where it should be… his bank cards and his ID.

There’s a card missing. His main debit card. He spots it lying in the road a little way ahead and he picks it up and wipes it clean.

Wait. That’s not right.

He opened his first account with Henchard Bank when he left home and went to university, and he’s stayed with them for more than forty years since. That’s why he’s so confused when he sees the words ‘Spynslco Mlyv’ printed on the front of the card. He looks around, hoping for either help or inspiration, but finding neither. If anything, when he looks around he starts to feel even more confusion, bordering on panic. The name of the road he’s on is, apparently, Ylgtrletzy Decppe. The billboard on the corner opposite is advertising summer holidays, but he can’t make sense of the strapline that reads: Dpe dltw qzc Efcvpj estd dfxxpc htes Eszxldzy Ncftdpd. His legs feel weak and he leans against a wheelie bin, the first in a row of four, but quickly pushes away from it again. It’s green in colour, and the label on the side reads ‘xtipo cpnjnwlmwpd’. The next bin along is marked ‘rpypclw hldep’.

His borderline panic is now close to full-on terror. He runs back in the direction from which he just came, but changes direction again and again whenever he comes up against a road sign or an advertising hoarding or anything, because he can’t understand a damn word he’s seeing or hearing.

Nothing makes any sense.

Completely disorientated now, he rounds another corner and finds himself in the centre of a busy square filled with bars, clubs, restaurants, and drinkers. The world is suddenly full of words, and he can’t make sense of any of them.

‘Wpe’d ecj ty spcp.’

‘Ufde zyp xzcp octyv lyo T’x ozyp.’

‘Esp qcplv zy esp ozzc hzfwoy’e wpe xp ty.’

‘Nzxtyr mlnv ez xtyp?’

Punch-drunk, he staggers aimlessly into the middle of it all. Beaten, bedraggled, and broken, he drops to his knees and covers his ears and screws up his eyes, overwhelmed by the overload of unintelligible sights and sounds. He curls up into a ball, wishing he could disappear until all of this stops and the world starts making senses again.

But it doesn’t.

The madness goes on and on and on lyo zy lyo zy…

Then, a gentle hand reaches down and touches his shoulder and shakes it. Rather than look up, he instead tries to make himself even smaller, hoping that whoever it is will get the message and leave him alone.

A girl kneels down beside him.

‘Oc Spctelrp? Oc Spctelrp, td esle jzf? Hsle’d hczyr?’

Her voice has a different tone to everything else he can hear. Her words are still impossible to understand – unfathomable and unpronounceable – but her pitch and intonation are enough for him to think she’s not a threat, that she might actually want to help.

Slowly, and with much trepidation, he sits up and looks at her. He thinks he recognises her face, but he’s not entirely sure. She’s wearing a lot more makeup than usual, and she’s dressed for a night out in the kind of places he’d never dare go. She looks completely different to the girl he berated in his maths class this morning.

‘Valerie? Is that you?’

‘Hsle’d esp xleepc, Oc Spctelrp? Lcp jzf fyhpww? Nly T spwa ty lyj hlj?’

Her friends are urging her to leave this tragic, gibberish-spouting wreck of a man and carry on with their night out, but she’s refusing.

‘Nzxp zy, Glw,’ another girl says, trying to pull her away. She refuses to leave.

‘T nly’e wplgp stx wtvp estd.’

‘Lqepc hsle sp oto ez jzf estd xzcytyr? Qfnv stx. Defato zwo mldelco.’

‘T nly’e,’ she says again, and this time her friends give up and leave her to it.

She helps Dr Heritage to his feet and guides him over to a bench. She sits him down and holds him while he sobs. Shock, fear, confusion, pain, heartbreak… it’s all too much.

‘What’s wrong with me?’ he asks her.

‘T ozy’e fyopcdelyo jzf. Ozy’e hzccj, Oc Spctelrp, T’x rztyr ez rpe dzxpzyp ez spwa jzf. T hzy’e wplgp jzf zy jzfc zhy.’

He doesn’t know what she just said, but he thinks he knows what she means. She’s going to look after him. Heritage doesn’t understand what’s happened or how he’s become so bizarrely disconnected and out of step from everything else. Right now, all he can focus on is the fact that Valerie is showing him more care and consideration than he did her the last time they met. He knows he doesn’t deserve it, but he’s ever so grateful. He’d tell her as much, but he can no longer speak the language.

---

A few weeks have passed, and Dr Heritage is beginning to feel much better. They’ve been very kind to him here at the hospital – no, sorry, at the szdatelw – very patient. He’s no closer to understanding how and why things have changed, but he’s come to the conclusion it doesn’t matter. No one else is affected. For everyone else, the world is as it always was.

On the basis that he’s the only one who’s out of sync, he’s accepted that it’s down to him to change.

Once he’d been admitted here and the initial panic had subsided, he worked it out. He found the paper napkin in his pocket – the one Miss Moore had written on and given him that night at the Havana Lounge – and that gave him the cipher. The name printed on it was ‘Slglyl Wzfyrp’, and by cross-referencing the position of the letters, most notably where the a’s should have been, he deduced that the world had shifted eleven characters to the right. No, that wasn’t it. It was him who’d moved. He’d slipped eleven characters to the left. He knew that it didn’t matter really, it was all dpxlyetnd. But what did matter from hereon in was his approach. He was going to have to be the one who changed. He’d need to adapt. Give ground.

Eventually, once they allowed him access to a computer, he sat down and started to write.

Oplc Xtdd Xzzcp,

T cplwwj pyuzjpo zfc nzygpcdletzy esp zespc pgpytyr. T ozy’e vyzh tq jzf’gp splco, mfe T’x yze hpww le esp xzxpye. T lx ty szdatelw, lyo T slgp slo awpyej zq etxp ez estyv.

T lx dzccj. T’gp mppy l gpcj otqqtnfwe apcdzy. T’o wtvp ez nslyrp, lyo T szap hp nly delj ty ezfns…

---

For an easy way to translate the dialogue in this story, visit this link and set the shift to 11.

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