Self-Review – Babel 2.0

Let’s Look at Babel 2.0

If the earth is ever horribly threatened, there could very well come a time when a small, disparate group of survivors would have to huddle together. If they don’t all speak the same language, then it’s practically inevitable that what’s left (and who’s left) will end up with a mish-mash of languages. Hence, Babel 2.0.

I wrote this story during the first quarter of 2021. The original prompt word was xenophobia.

Background

The Xolana from The Real Hub of the Universe are a pretty great villain alien species, if I do say so myself. But I didn’t use them enough in that trilogy. And so, I got the idea to bring them to the present day and have them attack, of all places, Revere Beach.

Babel 2.0 Plot

It starts off as a typical day at Revere Beach, about thirty miles northeast of Boston. But when Joanie and Lenny witness an alien species pull a small child into the water and drown her, it’s the start of an attack on the entire planet.

And when people start to realize that aliens are redistributing the Earth’s water, one thing is for certain. The aliens are playing for keeps, and they want our planet. We’re just in the way.

The only solution is to flee and get out of the water—which means mountaintops. Since Joanie can fix helicopters, she ends up in the Himalayas, where a stew of languages starts to turn into Babel 2.0.

Characters

The characters are Joanie Menotti and her brother Lenny, with Joanie being the main character. She refers to other survivors, like a guy named Dawa from Tibet. But they don’t get any screen time.

It’s Joanie’s perspective all the way, and the way she’s speaking, it seems as if she’s explaining for the historical record.

Memorable Quotes from Babel 2.0

When I first saw one, it was at Revere Beach. Lenny and I were sunbathing and drinking beers. Typical summer weekend. Then one of them rose up out of the water and it grabbed a kid—pail and shovel and all. Of course, her mother started screaming.

Lifeguards ran over, but it wasn’t exactly something they had trained for. The thing got two of the lifeguards before the others fled.

They were yelling at everyone to get back. That was when Lenny and I and everyone else snapped out of it. We all ran to the parking lot or the T. I thank God we took the MBTA that day, for we could fairly easily get outta Dodge. The next day, amidst the stories about the monster, the kid, and the two would-be heroes, there were reports of numerous crackups. It’s not like anyone was thinking of normal parking lot courtesy when all they wanted to do was drive away from that hellscape.

Then things got weirder. We started to see even more global warming reports than usual. Lowlands were getting flooded, that sort of thing. Indonesia sank, and so did big chunks of India and the Philippines.

Here, the mayor and the governor paid out the nose for every seawall to be shored up. Construction kicked into overdrive in Worcester and Springfield. If you could carry a shovel, you were brought on board, no questions asked.

Rating for Babel 2.0

The story has a K+ rating. While Joanie does describe some pretty horrible things, you don’t really see them on screen. Much.

Takeaways

I like to think (and hope!) that we can all set aside our differences if such a calamity were ever to befall our world.

With people and countries on a more or less equal footing, the only real way to communicate could very well be to toss everything into a linguistic blender and hit frappé.

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Want More of my Short Stories and Novellas?

If this story resonates with you, then check out my other posts about my shorter works.

Short Stories

Finally, for a complete list of my shorter works, please be sure to check out the Hub Page—Short Stories.