That Obelisk Thing

Made from a writing prompt from u/Aquam8te from the r/writingprompts subreddit.

Day 2

They found the stationary not moving obelisk a couple days ago. It's really weird, since you can't talk about the stationary really not moving obelisk the same way twice. If someone else talks about the stationary really really not moving obelisk one way, nobody else can do it the same way.

Everyone's freaking out, of course, but I don't think it's going to be a big deal. Just do it like that one episode of Spongebob where he makes a list of all the things he's not supposed to do at a stoplight. You would have to be pretty uncreative to fail at that.

Day 7

I've been doing research. Apparently taking about the mysterious not-an-aardvark not-a-green-aardvark obelisk in a way that someone else has makes a certain part of your brain stop functioning correctly, which is why you stutter. For people who use sign language or writing their motor functions malfunction too.

One of the most uncomfortable feelings ever, let me tell you.

People have caught the trick of talking about the not-an-industry not-a-purple-industry obelisk. Just combine some nouns and some adjectives and put a "not" in front of it. Just like Spongebob.

The mathematicians ran the numbers. There are about 1.2 billion English speakers in the world. Estimates show that there's anywhere between 400,000 and 700,000 nouns nouns in the English language. Multiply the amount of adjectives and the amount of ways you can combine adjectives together and there's, quote, "Absolutely no way we can run out of combinations with those kinds of numbers".

Day 14

The mathematicians were wrong.

Well, no. They were right, but like any great mathematician they were only right in theory.

Sure, if you were to be a purist and randomize every little thing you say you will probabilistically never repeat yourself. Unfortunately, out of those 1.2 billion English speakers, approximately 0% of them wanted to do that.

What actually happened was people chose "random" words they they thought were random, and not words that were actually random. The brain, as I had learned, is notoriously bad at coming up with things that are truly random, which is why randomly generating a password is so much better than coming up with one yourself.

Most people don't know this, and decided that they could come up with word combinations that 1.2 billion other motivated people also couldn't come up with.

Coordinate 1.2 billion English speakers to follow a set pattern of talking about the not-an-excited-tennis not-a-native-tennis obelisk? You gotta be out of your mind to think that would work.

The riots started about day 10, if you're curious.

Day 69

Someone finally blew up the not-assorted-engineered-chocolate not-lackadaisical-memory obelisk.

One American land, and not done by the Americans. You can imagine how well that went.

The countries that tried to ban talking about the not-engineered-assorted-chocolate-memory obelisk learned the hard way that this just made people talk more while building resentment.

Even with the not-actor-chocolate not-engineered-actor-chocolate obelisk destroyed, The Curse (as it was being called) had still not lifted.

Day 102

One of those hacker groups, or maybe a powerful government, or something, came along in the wake of the war.

Auto generated phrases had become normal, with apps and website all over for it. If a machine generates a phrase it doesn't count for The Curse until an actual human says it.

The group, wherever they came from, had circumvented all of these ones that were connected to the internet (which were most of them), and caused them to generate from a list of about 100,000 combinations, where were run out of in very short order.

Luckily, the offline applications still worked, so most people just moved over to those. The entire situation is being called a terrorist attack and everyone's up in arms about it.

Day 365

One year already?

These days most people just refuse to make phrases, me included. The effort to bring out your phone and load up a phrase generator app is just too much when you're in the flow of conversation. You sort of just learn to avoid the subject of the not-befitting-mature-southern-colossal-grand obelisk.

Anyways, there's treaties and laws in the works that should help fix most of this. They're going to make a language specifically for talking about the not-woozy-cagey-tan-fanatical-green obelisk. The rules of the language are supposedly going to force people to come up with random phrases each time they speak; like the seed value to a random number generator.

I'm not sure how they're going to get people to use this new language when they couldn't get people to use the apps, but maybe there's a chance?

Day 536

Most people don't use the language. It works, and it's actually really clever. It's well made, for sure. But using it, especially fluently in the middle of conversation, makes you look like a tool.

The people that do use it are either crazy nerds, or the occultist.

Yeah, so the occultist decided that this language was the language of their new little religion revolving around the not taboo not productive not overrated not simple not pale not royal not stormy not cheap not oceanic obelisk.

They chant it in the streets at night. Really creepy.

Day 1266

This is going to be the last entry. The fire and brimstone is nice and all, but it kind of burns. A lot. If future alien archaeologists find this than I guess they could use some history? Nothing else to do while the world is ending.

So the occultist kept chanting their stupid phrases and getting more followers. You get anything mysterious and supernatural looking and you can turn it into a cult, and this was the biggest and most supernatural cult of them all. Even my poor grandmother got caught up in them.

Anyways, like this was the plot of a stupid movie, they literally summoned a demon by pure chance. The demon wasn't amused, but it was quickly "subdued" by literally every world power with more than two guns. The ban on the occultists's language just made them more fanatical.

Once you realize that you can summon demons, you don't just stop at one. They got good at summoning them, and we started to think we could actually make good use of them. Obviously this went about as well as you could expect, and now the world is on fire. Great.