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Rydra Wong encounters Obsidian, who, because he cannot speak, tells Rydra about the pandemic that ravages earth through writing.

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Rydra Wong encounters Obsidian, who, because he cannot speak, tells Rydra about the pandemic that ravages earth through writing.

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(In this scenario, Obsidian has not yet died.)

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Rydra muses on the similarities between Babel-17 and the pandemic.

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Rydra realizes the similarities between the pandemic's effects and the tale of the Tower of Babel. As the disease sweeps through earth, people's ability to communicate with each other vanishes. The lack of communication prevents people from constructing and maintaining a fully functioning society, so services that were once well-established like public transport are now defunct.

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As Rydra tries to make her way through the California streets, she realizes the signs are no longer making sense.

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Valerie Rye meets Dr. Markus T’Mwarba (Mocky)

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Valerie Rye meets Dr. Markus T’Mwarba (Mocky)

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Mocky (left) tells Rye of the galactic linguistic warfare between the Alliance and the Invaders. She has a tough time grasping that a language can change someone's behavior without their knowledge, and even explains to Mocky that on Earth, alterations of communicative ability are viewed as the result of a biological disease rather than a change of perception unknowingly learned by those who are exposed to a new language.

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Rye wonders whether the solutions implemented to combat the effects of Babel-17 could be used to cure the pandemic back at home. Could they invent a sort of counter-pandemic that overrides the current one?

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If the pandemic she has been affected by is similar to Babel-17—not merely biological but also reality-altering—then Rye wonders if Mocky's renowned work as a psychologist can help her regain her lost reading and writing skills.