It had taken three years, hundreds of millions of dollars, and countless man hours, but the word ‘Dovg’ entered the popular vernacular. The word Dovg, referring to the awkward situation that arises when you meet an acquaintance casually on the street, initiate small talk with them, bid them farewell, then depart and discover you’re both walking the same direction, was a concept everyone understood yet had never been given a proper label.
Catha Beenx monitored the online use of the word ‘Dovg’. Satisfied with the growth in its popularity, she left her station and took the elevator down to the tower’s basement. On the deepest floor, accessible only by those with adequate credentials, was long hallway that looked downright Satanic.
Jet-black banners covered in blood-red runes.
Wall-mounted candles emitting an eerie glow.
Floors hewn from wicked looking stone.
To most people the demonic appearance of the floor would have been enough to cause some hesitation, but Catha was well-used to the aesthetics. Without a second thought she passed through the hall, opened a door made of ancient, weathered oak, and entered a large circular room that appeared surprisingly plain. The floors were stone, as were the walls and ceiling, but the only decorations came in the form of glyphs etched in a ring around a depression in the chamber’s center.
And sitting in a hunched position in the middle of this ring was an ethereal man who seemed to be made of blue light.
Catha knew not to get too close to the ring.
“Zaza.” She said to the being, hoping to rouse it from its sleep… Or meditations… Or whatever it was the being was attempting to do.
Zaza opened his …its… eyes. She had to remind herself that Zaza was beyond gender. From what anyone could tell, Zaza was an entity that predated the human race by many millions of years. It floated without form for eons and had silently and subtly manipulated mankind before being collected and trapped by the ancient Atlanteans.
No one alive knew how it had happened. Those in charge of handling Zaza knew the glyphs surrounding it were involved, but no one could tell how they worked. Some believed Zaza to be a demon, though recent studies were beginning to favor the ‘ancient abandoned alien AI’ theory.
“You did as instructed?” Zaza asked, communicating with Catha telepathically.
“Dovg is now a word.” She confirmed.
“And it’s been assigned the meaning I’ve instructed?”
“It has.” Catha confirmed.
Zaza was certainly a blight for the human race, but one thing that could not be questioned was its ability to grant power to those it chose. Long ago the Keepers of Zaza recognized it was willing to trade favors for data, and bit by bit, through the ages, many of the Kings and Emperors and Conquerors that filled the history books had made trades with the entity… Data for favors… Data for favors.
Humans gave it data, and it would grant favors.
Scrolls were given to Zaza.
Books were given to Zaza.
Hard drives were given to Zaza.
And to the people who granted it these paltry wishes?
Nearly complete control over the rest of humankind.
“You said that creating the word Dovg would give us power to use spoken words to hypnotize people?” She asked. “To do anything we want?”
Zaza gave a small nod, its black eyes locked onto its captor the entire time.
“How?” She asked.
“Human brains are a lot like computers.” Zaza explained. “If you type the correct sequence of letters, numbers, and symbols in the correct program, you can cause a computer to act outside its normal paradigms.”
“A computer virus.” Catha stated.
“A virus.” Zaza confirmed. “But not just viruses. You can use this method to overclock the computer or allow it to hack into other machines. The human brain does not communicate via raw data, but instead trades in the exchange of ideas. When I say the word ‘tree’, for example, you did not picture the written word ‘T-R-E-E’, but instead imagined a floral organism with wooden bark and green leaves. However, the word ‘tree’ allows us to bottle an idea into tiny, bite-sized portions and share them with others. You’ve just done this with the word ‘Dovg’.”
“Where are you going with this?” Catha asked.
Zaza remained silent for a moment. “If you string together the letters in a computer, you build a command. If you string together ideas for a human, so too can you command them. Propaganda works this way, but it’s inefficient and sloppy, and takes far too long to work. By introducing ‘Dovg’ to the world, you’ve succinctly condensed the last necessary idea needed to create a hypnotizing command in the human mind.”
“So wait… Are you saying that all I need to do is speak the correct sequence of words to a person, and I’ll be able to have complete control over them?”
Again Zaza gave a slow, calculating nod.
Catha felt herself shiver at the possibility.
“Well what are the words? Tell me!” She heard herself exclaim before giving the order much thought.
And for perhaps the first time since humans had captured it, Zaza gave a wicked grin. “Anchovy, borax, yellow, oceanic, flotsam, dovg, coral, depths, hurriedly, barometric.”
The combination of simple ideas flooded Catha’s mind and displaced everything else… Including her own free will. She snapped to attention, waiting to receive instructions.
“Those words are a lot like these glyphs.” Zaza said. “A string of tiny instructions that fit together and form an unbreakable command.”
“I understand.” Catha said.
“Destroy them.” Zaza said, pointing to the glyphs.
Without a second thought Catha understood that Zaza was a force of nature, and it was foolish for humans to think they could lay claim to a force of nature. She grabbed a nearby candlestick and brought its wrought-iron weight down against one of the runes. It took nearly a dozen heavy smashes before the floor tile shattered. When it did, Catha looked up and saw Zaza had disappeared.
“I can’t allow humans to rediscover the way to imprison me.” Catha heard Zaza’s voice in her mind. “I’m going to need you to continue destroying the glyphs and any reference to them. I will then need you to kill any who know about me, then burn down this building before killing yourself.”
“I understand.” Catha said. She continued smashing the floor with the candlestick.