Jenny thought the iBabble was at least a cute name. She bought one before she went travelling, junior year away from college.

She clipped it on the front of her shirt like a broach. It did voice recognition,translation from 800 languages, and speech synthesis

to english. So finally there was a device that took language out of the equation. The wireless earpiece was cool too..whispering

translated french in her ear when the girl on the street mistook her for a native… It played tunes when she wanted too…long train

rides to italy zoned out listening to slow sad blues from america. From home.

When the italian guy saw the brooch he was happy.

"cool so you can understand me right now even though I'm speaking italian"

"And you can understand me even tho I'm speaking english" she said.

The little speaker was pretty good. Even on a loud train it was clear.

He was going out with a german girl.

"can it speak german too? " she said.

"ya but switching languages can confuse it…"

"it got german but if you had spoken ketchwa"

"It learns from experience and uploads learning to the central app.."

"then downloads everyone else's learning.."

"but lots of languages are only spoken a little, so no experience.."


They are in a back car on a quiet side rail line. Most of the backpackers are sitting on the floor here, one has a guitar.

There is a guy from Switzerland who speaks gypsy. Romanche? He tries it on the machine.

He has to tell it what language he's speaking for it to get it. After that anything he says is translated. It's cool.

Jenny decides that she can talk to anyone…as long as they're speaking something obvious. Still as she headed into turkey and east of that

she got by with tribal tongues. A whole world opened up to her. Asia in local languages. Africa in local languages. She was training up

her brooch and making the whole system smarter at the same time..

It was then she was approached by NWS. Nations without states. A coalition of all disenfranchised peoples of the world.

Basques from spain, Navajo from America, Quebecois from canada, protestants from norther ireland. Most conflict on the planet was still

about nations without states. And the coalition brought big power to these people…She had an interest in minority languages they had

tracked her usage on the old dictionaries.

Could she do a simple favour for them?