by Chun Lee
It’s not like I knew this was going to happen. I can’t answer very many of your questions.
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No, you won’t be able to talk to my mom. She’s trying to find an answer to this mess.
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I can’t tell you why it’s not happening to me. Well, I can tell you why. I just can’t tell you how. My mom didn’t want to read me. It’s a remarkable amount of forethought on her part. She normally has an idea and runs with it. Either that, or the fact that I’ve been a guinea pig for her for so long somehow vaccinated me.
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A needle. I get poked and prodded a lot. It’s just what happens when you grow up with my mom.
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I can’t tell you why she thought it was a bright idea. She never said and we know we can’t talk with her right now. I think it has to do with a break up. She was dating John, who I think was a pretty nice guy. She was complaining about how men can never say what they really mean. And then I told her it wasn’t just men. I was reading a comic book at the time and she noticed something about it that really interested her. She asked to borrow my comic book and then went into her lab, which takes up half the house by the way.
This isn’t completely out of the norm for her. She often has these brilliant yet absurdly impractical ideas. She doesn’t like spicy foods so she invented a pair of glasses to see just how spicy something is.
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Three weeks. She would come out to shower and eat. But yeah, that’s about all she did for those three weeks. I suppose I should’ve tried to get her to make up with John and this whole thing wouldn’t be happening and the world wouldn’t be about to explode.
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I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. Stop freaking out. I don’t know if the world is going to explode, but I don’t know what’s going to happen either and it’s a bit scary.
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Maybe she’s working on a way to change it. I honestly don’t know if it will work or not.
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I think the worst thing about it is how quiet everything is. I’m the only one making a sound. Even the animals are doing it. Hell even my answering machine is doing it.
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What’s he saying?
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I don’t understand what he’s saying. It’s just a bunch of random words.
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Japanese? What does that have to do with it? I don’t care which country he’s from.
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Right to left? Ohhh. Well that makes more sense. But you see how much of a pain in the ass this is turning into?
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Stop yelling. I’m answering you the best I can.
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Stop Yelling!
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Because your font is huge right now! That’s how I know.
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You’re yelling too!
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All of you stop yelling, I can’t see anything anymore!
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Great. Great. Are you happy? All I see is “rabble rabble rabble” over your heads. Do you know how silly you guys look? Just chill out. Please?
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Okay, good. Now let me try to explain. I think she was really happy with what she did at first. Some good things did come out of it. The deaf suddenly have no disability, though the blind are suddenly in a world of silence. Everything everyone said to each other is very clear. No one can screw up an order and let’s face it; this is one way to make sure we have a 100% literacy rate. The weirdest thing? You want to know how to spell something? Just say it out loud. The bubbles know how to spell better than you.
My mother really thought she let people communicate more clearly with one another, but I think she first regretted what she did when she tried to play some music. A bunch of floating notes and lyrics just don’t do the job and she really loves listening to Jethro Tull. My mom used to play the flute when she was young, you know. I’m not saying that’s what made her decision to do something about it, but I think it helped. She probably also didn’t like the sound effects. Those things can be downright dangerous at times. When I drive a car and just see a big “SCREECH” coming at me I can’t see the car in front of me. That’s not safe at all, is it?
My mother isn’t one to feel guilty over her experiments. She just doesn’t have the time for it. She sees a problem and then decides it needs to be fixed. Remember John? Well she made up with him. Not because everyone was speaking in speech bubbles all of a sudden, but because John’s just a nice guy and way more patient with my mom than I am.
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Oh yeah, sorry. I guess I got off my point. It’s just nice to see her happy again. Okay so she realizes she needs to fix things and she goes into her lab with a box of Red Bull, she drinks the stuff endlessly, left over Easter chocolate from two years ago, and I don’t see her for weeks. When she comes out she tells me to stay away from the house for at least two weeks. She’s going to try something and it’s going to be dangerous.
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Have you ever tried to figure out what these bubbles are made of? Have you ever grabbed one and tried to pop one? They disappear as soon as they come, but if you ever managed to grab one you will find that they very much exist in the physical world. They feel like rubber, but I find it’s far stronger than any rubber I know of. You can stretch them out to who knows where.
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It’s important because that’s how my mom plans to stop all this. I can’t explain the science to you. I mean hell she invented a new science to make this happen, but she thinks if we can pop one of those bubbles then the entire system will break down. We’ll go back to normal if one bubble pops. But like I said the bubbles don’t last long and they seem to be made of a very stretchable and resilient material.
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A bubble normally only holds a sentence or maybe two. We don’t normally think in more than one or two sentences; our mind can’t hold it all, but my mom found a weakness.
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Think about it.
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She wants to stretch one out. Stretch it beyond its limits.
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Yup, she’s going to say a sentence so long it’ll pop the balloon. Or maybe end the Earth. That’s what she was doing all those weeks in her lab, constructing a sentence so long it will take her weeks to say it all. I can’t imagine how big her balloon must be.
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From space, huh? That’s impressive.
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I don’t know.
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I honestly don’t know.
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Either she’s right and we go back to how it was before the bubbles.
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Or the last thing we all hear is a big, big boom.
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You don’t have to say that to me.
CHUN LEE is dodging gators and enjoying amazing Cajun cuisine in Lafayette, Louisiana. His work has appeared in The Late Late Show, Dissections, Sails and Sorcery, and the upcoming anthology Paper Blossoms, Shattered Steel. He is a graduate of the WPF program at Seton Hill University and is currently earning a Ph.D. in English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
