The Language of the Unown

Claire and her team spent two weeks searching the ruins, collecting and analyzing all the samples they could to learn more about the ancient civilization that built the temple beneath a mountain. Shockingly, the foundation of the temple was deep underground and still very well preserved. Four stories below the mountain surface were filled with empty rooms marked by little except writing on the walls.

Having sketched the entire floor plan of the ruins, Claire counted eleven dead end rooms, ones with small pieces of debris and rubble that might lend the only clues to the temple's purpose. On this drizzly morning, she entered a twelfth dead end, and the only room thus far undocumented.

While she and Chan circled the largest room taking pictures, she noticed more writing on the wall. Odd that words were only written in the first room and in the last room, but what really fascinated her was the language in this message.

Claire recognized the script on the walls as unown, the least understood of all pokémon species. Unown can be found in a variety of body shapes—twenty-eight to be specific; every once in a while, an extreme mutation is reported. On average, they can be a foot and a half high and weigh eleven pounds; their skin is flat and black, and the single eye is the only organ they have in common with other pokémon. Although they are psychic-type pokémon, they do not speak to people except through written words.

The appendages of unown make their bodies resemble letters of the alphabet. As mysterious and somewhat mischievous beings, they moved through the air and arranged themselves in a way to speak with those who visited. Claire knew the importance of taking a picture each time she entered in case the unown awoke and changed the message conveyed. The message in the first room never changed; in fact, the message listed directions through the temple to this very spot.

But for some reason, the message in this room was illegible. Despite her familiarity with unown and her studies in linguistics, Claire was unable to interpret the message.

"What are you trying to tell me?" she asked as she gently traced her fingers across the wall.

"It says, 'Friendship.'"

Claire reacted with a start and nervously jumped away from the man who walked up behind her. He was a head taller than she was and he wore a vest with an ascot. Chan recognized her fear and intercepted the man with his tail and cheeks sparking in case he needed to defend his trainer.

"You!" Claire finally recognized. "You were that weird reporter."

"That's right," he said without regard for the pokémon poised for battle. "I'm just here to see how it goes as you finish the excavation of the ruins."

"How did you know we were almost done? You haven't been around here for two weeks."

His face scrunched like a raisin. "Two weeks?" Very quickly, his expression changed to one of surprise. "Right! Two weeks exactly, is how long it's been since we met each other." Muttering more to himself but still audibly, he added, "Fourteen days? I must have pressed a wrong button."

Now Claire looked confused. "You don't even know what day it is, do you?"

"Tuesday?" he suggested. It was a Friday.

"Who are you?"

"I'm the Professor."

"That's it?"

"What's it?"

"The Professor?"

"Isn't it enough?"

"Professor who?"

"Exactly."

Claire scoffed, starting to feel sorry for the guy. "What are you a professor of? You don't much look like a pokémon professor."

"What's wrong with the way I look?"

Making a face, she said, "Well, for one, who wears an ascot anymore?"

The Professor patted his neckband and straightened it. "Ascots are cool. And stylish. And I'm pretty much a professor of everything. Language is my strong suit." He pointed to the wall with the unown spelling out gibberish. "They're saying, 'All lives touch other lives to create something anew and alive.'" When he read the words, the eyes of each and every unown opened and began to watch the two visitors intently, curious what meaning they would take from the message.

"Wait," Claire interrupted. "You said 'friendship' a moment ago."

"That's what it says. The other part is the definition of friendship."

No matter how much she stared, Claire couldn't make sense of the arrangement of unown the way the Professor could. It still spelled out gibberish to her, and she was having difficulty concentrating on it now with the unown eyes all focusing on her.

"They're speaking to you, aren't they? In some foreign language you know that I don't."

"They probably recognize me after all this time," the Professor spoke. He glanced at Claire with a look of astonishment. "That's pretty brilliant of you to figure that out."

She looked confused by something he had said when they met—that he "always wanted to see the unveiling of the Solaceon Ruins"—but she responded to his most recent comment first, as if she needed to get it out of the way while she figured out what she wanted to ask.

"Unown are psychic. They know how to make a message people can read." She took a breath and asked, "What did you mean 'they recognize you'? How long have you been here? Have you been sneaking in at night?"

"No, maybe ten minutes, and I was here to see the temple built." He made a face. "I guess I answered those questions in the wrong order. I meant to say I was here when the temple was built, I've only been here ten minutes, and no, I haven't been sneaking in at night—not with that graveler guard at the front."

"I got it the first time," she assured him. Narrowing her eyes at him with suspicion, she asked, "You say you were here when the temple was built?"

"That's right."

"Two thousand years ago?"

"That's right." Suddenly his smile faded as the Professor realized, "Oh, that's a red flag for you, isn't it?"

"Itty bitty one," she admitted, using her fingers as an indicator. "Alright, Professor. I'd love for you to tell your story to a friend of mine at the hospital, specifically in the psych ward."

"I'd rather tell you," he said, giving her a look that didn't speak to romantic intentions, but rather to intellectual equality. "You know a lot about the unown, don't you?"

"I do."

"But you don't know why they chose this temple, do you?"

Already brushing him into the corner of her mind where she filed away crazy people she planned to forget about, her competitive side kicked in and decided to humor him with logic. "How do you know it was a temple before time ruined it?"

He shrugged and looked around the room. "Just take a look. What other kind of building would have all these rooms with space to study and worship and not hold even one rest room?"

She hummed in amusement. "Okay. So what do you think the temple was used for?"

"That's easy," he scoffed. "It was built as a place of worship for Emperor Alph."

"Emperor Alph?"

"Yeah. You know him?"

"I know of him," she clarified.

Of course Claire knew about him. Archaeologists discovered just a few years earlier that Alph III was the second emperor of the Ancient Kingdom before it dissolved and each of the countries regions became largely independent. The Ruins of Alph, located outside Violet City in the Johto region, carried the only written proof of Alph's reign, and current knowledge of history marked that location as the origin of written language.

"I met him," the Professor claimed. "Nice guy. Had to deal with a lot of invasions. His army was the first to start importing pokémon for war. Brilliant tactician. Terrible poker player, though. He actually tried to bluff up a pair of threes, but his tell was just too obvious to miss; his samurai would prepare to retaliate against anyone with a better hand." With a more sullen look, he added, "The man hated to lose."

"You're insane," Claire interrupted him.

"That's rude. I hear it a lot, though, so who am I kidding?" He gave her that big, toothy smile from the other day. "So what do you think? Want to go with me and see where it all began?"

Claire was chuckling now; the man was obviously a nutter with a history fetish, but he talked so fast it just amused her. "What? Go back in time to when this temple was built?"

"No, forget the temple," the Professor insisted. "It's just a worship site that a bunch of unown decided to inhabit. I mean go all the way back to witness the building of the very first Temple of Alph." He looked very serious for a psych patient missing from his bed. "You'd get to meet Emperor Alph… See the Ruins of Alph before they were ruins… Maybe find out where the unown came from…"

It all sounded too perfect. Time travel? A ridiculous premise used by science fiction writers and celebi conspiracy theorists. No sane person believed in time travel. This man was well informed, but clearly a head case who spent too much time reading archaeology articles and dreaming of ancient lives. Claire wouldn't deny she'd had the same dreams before, but time travel was only possible figuratively—by excavating ancient ruins and uncovering hidden secrets of the past.

"I don't think so, Professor," she told him. She turned to lead him out of the ruins so she could continue her work. "Now, if you'll please leave me be, I have work to finish up."

Six steps from the exit to the room, she bumped into something she couldn't see.

The Professor winced into a pained facial expression. "Sorry. I probably shouldn't have parked it right in front of the door, should I?" Knocking himself in the head with his palm, he muttered, "I'm really off today. Must have been that poached psyduck."