The question hovering in everyone’s mind was the same: Had Ryan learned some language?
If you had asked that until recently, he would have said no.
After all, his father liked the idea of pretending they were poor, a performance he gave his all to without sparing any effort. To the point that Ryan often had to ration food or even receive donations meant for charity.
Thanks to his father’s faithful performance, Ryan had the upbringing of a family extremely scarce in resources, and generally families like that didn’t have extra money to enroll their children in expensive language courses, at least as far as he knew.
Until he was sixteen, Ryan only knew his mother tongue, and if it were up to his father he’d speak like a country bumpkin.
But if you asked today, a few weeks after his birthday, whether he could speak some foreign language with the mastery of a native, the short answer was: Yes.
Many might wonder: How, in such a short period of time, did he learn the basics and the advanced levels of an entire new language, starting from absolute zero, alone?
The answer was simple: He didn’t.
Ryan simply knew.
One day he woke up and poof, he realized he was fluent in another language.
Ridiculous? Yes.
But the Unnamed Game had always been ridiculous.
The books Ryan read inside that game were in another language, and likewise, even without realizing it, he spoke a distinct language within the game.
One that had been branded into his mind with fire and steel.
Ryan soon wrote a simple sentence on the paper: Hi, how are you?
The symbols drawn by Ryan were sharp, made up of strokes and triangular arrows, which occasionally clustered together and crossed one another.
The sentence was short and soon took shape.
"This would be the equivalent of a greeting and it’s pronounced like this:" Ryan then spoke as he would in the Unnamed Game, his voice turning hoarse as he pronounced those words.
His vocal apparatus clearly hadn’t been made to pronounce words in that way.
Even so, the people around him watched attentively, memorizing what had been said and linking the sounds to Ryan’s writing. In an attempt to catch him in a lie, or else to actually learn a new language.
Something that had the power to leave these people in ecstasy.
"I see." The archaeologist observed. "But how about a more complex sentence? Something like, a dish of wheat for three sad tigers."
The man smiled, challenging Ryan, who soon wrote the sentence without being fazed.
"Technically the word ’dish’ doesn’t exist in this language."
Ryan said, writing extra notes for them, at which the men frowned.
"But there’s something approximate, the general idea would be ’food container,’ it could be used to describe objects other than a dish, like a bowl or even a pot. The sentence would go like this:"
Ryan slowly said, and wrote a few more notes.
After a few more tests, the people around him soon began showing interest. Noticing that the symbols and sounds were consistent.
Ryan hadn’t tripped up on his lie so far, in fact it was becoming more and more certain that it was a real language. Because they produced the patterns of a real language.
And if that was the case, they really wanted to learn it!
The mutual interest led to a wave of questions.
Ryan calmly answered them one by one.
"One more question." The archaeologist said, examining what had been written so far with a certain anxiousness. "What’s the alphabet of this language?" Ryan soon smiled before saying:
"This language has a kind of alphabet, but in common use, specific drawings are generally used to represent whole ideas, thus sparing the use of long words. There’s a symbol for mountain, for example."
Ryan drew the symbol in question.
To the archaeologist’s eyes, that revealed a great deal to him. He analyzed it and then asked:
"A pointed symbol with a wide base. Many peoples draw mountains this way, but what would this ring above with those lines falling be? And these arrows that seem to come out from behind the mountain, circling it?"
Ryan quickly replied:
"You see, these people don’t view mountains favorably, mountains represent calamity to them. The ring with falling lines represents thunder, and the arrows around it represent death and freezing winds.
Since it’s a cold place, freezing winds and death are interchangeable ideas."
The archaeologist nodded, as Ryan showed them a series of symbols while writing beside them the spelled-out version of the same and a translation of the content.
He also demonstrated the basic structure of each sentence.
"They don’t speak like we do. For them, you first say the object or person, then the characteristic attributed to it. If we say red meat, they say meat red.
The reverse order from what’s common."
The archaeologist kept nodding, as a small compendium slowly emerged with all the known information about this mysterious language. And the most surprising thing about it was that each of them could see familiar patterns from other languages.
The grammatical structure wasn’t unique.
The idea of a base script that leaned toward the use of symbols also wasn’t uncommon.
The one peculiar thing about this language was the sounds. The sounds seemed unusual for human use, even though they were still possible.
This language broke one small rule common to other languages: energy efficiency.
Many languages reduce words over the long term because they were too long, and without realizing it the population would adapt to speaking a reduced version of them. Which would then become the official version.
However, in the case of this language, each sound was hard to produce and even seemed unnatural for a human being, causing pain in the throat.
Normally these peoples would tend to shorten the words or even replace them, but that wasn’t the case here.
This raised a question among all of them: why?
Even so, no one criticized that as a mistake on Ryan’s part. What he was teaching was clearly a real language.
The researchers could tell just by looking how each symbol blended with smaller ones to emerge into a final version that combined meanings and ideas.
They were familiar with the evolution of languages and therefore could see the patterns.
"So then? Two hours have already passed." Cyntia said, drawing attention. "What was the result of all this? I hope you haven’t just wasted my time."
She seemed irritated, the evaluators were supposed to be working and their job was to fail Ryan.
Even so, they seemed to be playing house with Ryan, like little children.
That sight was unbearable for Cyntia and her entourage.
Meanwhile Aron had seemed tense from beginning to end, almost biting his nails off from so much tension.
Finally, the archaeologist looked at his peers with a thoughtful expression and then they nodded in unison.
"Director Cyntia, after much analysis. We’ve concluded that there’s something peculiar about this language, a small error."
"So Ryan is lying." Cyntia said with conviction and her chin held high. "Great, in that case he’s failed..."
"No, I don’t believe so." The archaeologist denied firmly.
"I can see pattern after pattern here and there, even if he were an expert trying to create a synthetic language he wouldn’t be able to go so far as to pass it off as a real one. We would never let ourselves be fooled so easily."
"Now as for this error of his, I wouldn’t simply call it an error, but rather a unique aspect of this people. An exception to the rule never seen before! As for the reason behind it, I don’t know.
But as an evaluator, I say yes, Ryan has passed, and I advise you to admit him to the university regardless of the outcome of the special exam. He would be a phenomenal addition to our university, especially for us archaeologists and linguists."
Ryan beside him just smiled as Aron pulled up a chair to sit down, completely pale. But relieved, so relieved that his blood pressure dropped, leaving his body so limp he nearly fainted.
"If Professor Aron hadn’t already recommended him, I would have done so myself. This is his place, we can’t allow ourselves to lose a talent like this. When the Founders founded this institution they spoke of people like Ryan, this institution was made for him."
The archaeologist said, leaving Cyntia speechless.
He then cleared his throat. "But to make it more official: Ryan, you have been determined to have passed the second test. Congratulations. We expect great things from you."
"Of course." Ryan continued smiling and then glanced sideways at Cyntia. "Anything to add, Director?"
Cyntia swallowed hard before answering with difficulty, the words struggling to come out of her mouth.
"Congratulations, Ryan, you’ve already come so far. I’m sure you’re very proud of yourself."
She then took a deep breath.
"Even so, there’s still the third test. So get ready, because we’re not done yet."