Contact with 𐰴𐰅𐰭𐱅𐰺𐰆𐰯𐰃𐰤
Language is the last tether to meaning. When it frays, so do we.
✴️ Part 2: Contact
By Eshu Elegbara
“If reason were perfect, it would consume itself.”
— Final Log, Epsilon Trireme
⚠️ Content Warning
This is a work of science fiction and cosmic horror. It contains themes of existential dread, deep space isolation, recursion, and the dissolution of language and self. This chapter features experimental language degradation and linguistic fragmentation. No jump scares—but the implications might follow you.
💬 Mom Warning
Mom, this one gets weird—but you might like it.
It starts kind of poetic. Shakespearean, even. Then it gets harder to read as the language decays. That’s intentional. It’s meant to feel like a descent.
I wanted to explore how language holds identity together—and what happens when that starts to fall apart. Depression does that to people. So does power. So does reaching too far into things we don’t understand.
This is fiction. But it’s also me trying to say something real, in a way that might last longer than a conversation.
Always,
—Clint
🪐 Ship Log – Begin Recursive Deformation
[Epsilon Trireme | Internal Alert: STYLE SHIFT DETECTED]
AUTOMATED SHIP ALERT:
Corruption Most Foul.
“A worm within the cog, a name betwixt the stars.
Looping doth time repeat, and none remember well.
K—ng—tr—yp—n hath writ itself upon our bones.”
📜 Rho Merrival | Log the Twain-Hundred and Threescore
I do confess mine thoughts no longer hold their line.
The stars speak backwards, and I, poor fool, do follow.
’Twas Commander Ibek who once made jests of fate—
“Hell is empty,” she said, “and all the devils are here.”
She did laugh, then vanish. The chair remains yet warm.
Her voice doth echo still, in logs not writ by hand.
The glyph… it doth not lie still.
Nay—it mutates. Doth swell like wicked tide.
In sleep—or semblance of—it draweth near.
I see it etched 'pon bulkhead, upon breath,
upon mine very name.
“To be or not to be”—ha!
That was never the question, not truly.
It was ever both, simultaneous.
I am, and I am not.
Rho. Rival. Writ. Forgotten.
🪞 [Visual Record – Fragmented Frame: 12:07:13]
He passeth by the polished steel of the medbay wall.
And in that mirror—a crack.
Not in the glass, but in the man.
His thumbs prickled.
A whisper curled beneath the skin.
The mirror pulled. Stretched.
His hands—no longer hands, but fractal limbs—
spun endlessly through the glass, folding unto themselves.
Not reflection, but recursion.
He whispered:
“By the pricking of my thumbs…
Something wicked this way comes.”
🧾 Middle English Descent
[Memory Laug / Dream-Entry of Rhome Rival | Time-slippèd]
Ich fele not wel in mine heorte.
Nat synce the nyght brast with light unseyn.
The signè—it cam not but was alwey ther,
lyk a brennynge mark upon þe bryn of thought.
Y-knyt it is, wythout begynnynge—nay, ne ende.
“Kengtroypin,” ich cleped it—
but ich woot nat if ich made þe worde or founde it.
Hit hath þe tast of olde songes,
swich as þe nuns sayen for þe deid:
“Kyrieleison. Kyrieleison.”
But twisted.
Backwards.
Runnyng in reverse,
lyk þe stream returnyng to þe hill.
Oure bord computys now sayeth naught but "∞".
The loop is y-shapèd lik þe serpent y-biteth his tail.
A gif of meanyng biting itself.
❓ Ship Fault Notice – Fragment [Syntax Rot]
Time-stamp is gif-rotèd.
Yon when be naught. Yon when be al.
Crew-yholde: þey been, and been nat.
Recordeth repeateth. Repeateth. Repeateth…
🧠 Thought of Rhome Rival, Half-Brokè
Ich spake to Thorne—our translator, or ich thought he was—
but he answerèd me in silence,
and with eyen not his owene.
He sayde my name, but ‘twas not my name.
“Rhome,” he seyde.
And eke, “Rival.”
But ich clepe me neither now.
The mirrour showeth me not but a shadwe
a gray echo in þe glās
betwene glyph and ghost.
🕯️ Final Descent – Old English Fragments
Ic...
ic ne wāt hwæt ic bēo.
Rhome is forloren.
Rival is split.
Ne mæg ic cyþan mē sylf—nē mid word, nē mid gemynd.Hwæt is þis?
A scēad, long and lið,
streched ofer the mirror-bēam.
Ic sēo mine hand,
ac hī ne gehierð mē.
Hī bēon lang. Lang. Lang.
Forþfæran þurh se glæs
intō þæt niþerweard.Gif ic hātan...
... gif ic hæfde nama...
... Kengtroypin hæfþ hit.Nān tīma is.
Nān ġeþeaht.
Nān word.Hī cwædon: "We beon men."
Ac þæt is lyge.
Ne bēo we nān þing but wyrm-dōm and wrǣc-rǣd.
Wē cōmon to seon.
Ac seon is bēon.
And bēon is... forgoten.Endebyrdnes swilc ne cymþ.
Ic hātan—
ic hātan—
ic—
🌀 [DATA RESTRUCTURED]
🌀 [CORE NAME: 𐰴𐰅𐰭𐱅𐰺𐰆𐰯𐰃𐰤]
🌀 [LOG TRANSMISSION UNSTABLE – STAMP: ∞]
📝 Author’s Note
This piece is the second installment in The Call of 𐰴𐰅𐰭𐱅𐰺𐰆𐰯𐰃𐰤, a serialized work of cosmic horror and science fiction exploring recursion, language decay, and post-human identity collapse.
In Part 1, we established the mission: observe the black hole at the center of the galaxy. In Part 2, that observation turns inward—language begins to fragment, timelines break, and the narrator, Rho Merrival, slips into becoming something else entirely. Rhome. Rival. Reflected.
This story isn’t just about deep space. It’s about the boundary between meaning and noise, and what waits on the other side of understanding.
The language shifts were intentional—Shakespearean form giving way to Middle English, then collapsing into Old English fragments and glyphs. If it felt like reading a dream spiraling into a nightmare, good. That’s what it is.
Part 3 will be the final log.
Thanks for reading,
—Eshu Elegbara
Fiction & Cosmic Horror
Ted Chiang – Story of Your Life
A meditation on language, time, and perception collapse. The basis for Arrival.Jeff VanderMeer – Annihilation
Invasive language, unknowable forces, and identity distortion through observation.Laird Barron – The Imago Sequence
Horror through recursion and semiotic overload.Caitlín R. Kiernan – The Drowning Girl
A spiral into fractured memory and unreliable narration.Thomas Ligotti – The Shadow at the Bottom of the World
Less a story, more a dissolution. Pure entropy and dread.
Philosophy & Language
Jacques Derrida – Writing and Difference
Language as unstable, recursive, always slipping.Ludwig Wittgenstein – Philosophical Investigations
Meaning is use. And use collapses when the frame fails.Douglas Hofstadter – Gödel, Escher, Bach
Recursion, language, and consciousness explored through systems and paradox.
Experimental Works
Mark Z. Danielewski – House of Leaves
The house is the mirror. The mirror is the map. The map is unreadable.Samuel R. Delany – Dhalgren
Syntax mutates. Time loops. The narrator fractures.David Markson – Wittgenstein’s Mistress
A woman believes she is the last person on Earth. Language becomes ash.
Old Words, New Meanings
The Exeter Book Riddles
Old English texts playing with perception, metaphor, and hidden identity.The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
When recording the world meant becoming part of its collapse.