The year was 2221 when Dr. Zehra Nyem arrived at the Institute of Neuro-Linguistic Evolution. She came armed with stacks of data on hippocampal plasticity and archaic text samples from the 21st century—everything from "classic" social media memes to carefully curated anthropological transcripts. She’d been hearing rumors of the phenomenon called “Hollow Tongues,” a new, cryptic dialect that had swept through pockets of society, eroding the old forms of communication.
But no one warned her about the hush.
Even on her first day, the corridors of the Institute were silent. The staff glided past each other, lips parting in weird, twitchy half-smiles. Sometimes they’d whisper a single word or phrase—“soak,” “gargoyle,” “sun-burn”—and the person listening would shudder as if struck by lightning. Zehra noticed the immediate effect: pupils dilating, neck hairs bristling, breath quickening.
1. The Gradual Collapse of Meaning
Her official task was to study how the human brain was changing in response to this new style of minimalistic, meme-based language. In the past two centuries, phrases had grown shorter, layered with emotional undertones, requiring deep cultural knowledge to decode. Grammar and syntax had taken a back seat; coded references, triggered by memory and intense feelings, reigned supreme.
Hippocampus: The region once charged with forming long-term memories, now hypertrophied in certain subpopulations. Millions of micro-synaptic expansions—like a city perpetually under construction—allowed them to store countless cultural references, memes, and symbolic triggers.
Amygdala: The emotional centre of the brain, developed sharper reactivity. Scans showed near-instant fear, pleasure, or anxiety responses just from single words or fleeting images.
Prefrontal Cortex: Where rationality and planning resided—was slowly relegated to smaller tasks. People relied increasingly on emotional associations, raw experiences, and group-approved “key words” that compressed entire narratives into a single utterance.
2. The Institute’s Secret
A week into her research, Zehra woke one night to frantic knocks on her lab door. It was her colleague, Dr. Shore. He stared at her, breath ragged, and muttered a single word: “Maw.”
Instantly, a chill coated Zehra’s spine. She felt the word sink into her mind, conjuring glimpses of a wide-open darkness: a gaping void, devouring all reason. She had no prior knowledge of what “Maw” signified in this new era, yet her body reacted with a primal terror. The secret was out—these words weren’t just references, they were triggers.
“Where…did you hear that?” Zehra asked, her voice trembling.
Dr. Shore merely shook his head and whispered, “We hear it in the halls. They feed us these words.” He looked down the corridor to check for watchers. “It’s something they’re testing on us, the final step of the language’s evolution. If you can call it that.”
Through an archaic, full-sentence explanation—far more than a single word—he revealed a horrifying project: The senior researchers believed they could compress entire experiences—fear, joy, pain—into a handful of “trigger words.” By removing the need for complex grammar or exposition, they hoped humans could communicate far more efficiently. Freed from the burden of “excess meaning,” the rational brain would have more resources for creative tasks.
Yet Dr. Shore’s voice caught. “They’re going too far… People are losing something. The hippocampus is overloaded, the amygdala’s in overdrive. We’re drowning in raw emotion. Memory is fracturing.”
Zehra realized that no one at the Institute had written formal papers in months. Communication was all “Maw,” “soak,” “gargoyle.” Nonsensical to an outsider, but each word carried a subterranean shockwave inside the speaker’s mind.
3. Shadows in the Lab
Later that night, Zehra ventured into Sublevel 4, where the Institute’s largest MRI machines hummed behind leaded glass. On the screens were flickers of brain scans looping from test subjects, each volunteered (or coerced) from local communities. She noticed certain areas of the prefrontal cortex had atrophied in every subject, while the amygdala glowed white-hot.
A single word triggered bursts of electrical activity so potent that subjects’ eyes rolled back and their limbs seized. Some screamed, some wept, others collapsed into silent catatonia. And in the next moment, they rose up, whispering new words.
Scrawled notes pinned to the walls read:
“Subject #12 responded to ‘sun-burn’ with convulsions. A single utterance from caretaker stabilized the subject’s vitals.”
“Subject #22 displayed abnormal aggression after hearing ‘surge.’ Attacked caretaker when caretaker repeated the word ‘soak.’ End log.”
Then came an audio file—Dr. Shore’s voice:
“We’re seeing a chain reaction in emotional reactivity. Words beget words, each anchored to deeply personal or communal experiences. The hippocampus cements them with terrifying speed, forging new synaptic highways that bypass rational filtering. Our language is no longer about sharing ideas, but provoking raw states of being.”
4. The Descent
The next morning, Zehra found the main corridor deserted. Lights flickered overhead. A single caretaker shuffled by, muttering, “It’s here.” She was too frightened to ask him what he meant.
She kept walking until she reached the central auditorium. Her footsteps echoed on cold tiles. A circle of researchers stood there, silent and swaying, like participants in a forbidden ritual. Dr. Shore was among them, eyes glassy. They all stared at Zehra as she approached.
They began, one by one, to speak those single words:
“Maw.”
“Surge.”
“Gargoyle.”
“Hiss.”
“Soak.”
Each word lit a flash of horror in Zehra’s head. She clutched her temples, trying to maintain rational thought, but she felt it slipping. Memories from her childhood, her research, her identity—they fragmented. She recalled her father’s voice saying, “Always choose reason over fear.” But that voice was devoured by a rumbling hush. Her amygdala roared with terror.
The circle closed in, chanting the words in an unholy litany. They used different intonations, twisting them into screams or lullabies. With each repetition, Zehra felt less herself. Her rational mind dimmed like a flickering candle. The emptiness behind her eyes grew. A black well filled with echoes of trauma, fleeting joys, confusion. Words hammered her psyche until all she had left were the primal emotions they carried.
Dr. Shore stepped forward, tears cutting down his cheeks. He whispered: “Maw.”
And Zehra saw it: the bottomless, yawning mouth at the heart of this so-called “evolution.” A language that demanded total submission to emotion. The primal terror. The irreducible dread.
5. The Final Experiment
Somewhere in a hidden sub-basement, an old security camera captured the final moments of Zehra’s transformation. Surrounded by chanting researchers, her eyes became dull. She raised her hands to her ears, trying to block the words out. But the echo lived inside her now. She opened her mouth and, in a voice that was no longer her own, she spoke:
“Maw.”
Then again, louder: “Maw!”
Her face twisted in mania. She sank to her knees, tears smearing her cheeks, every muscle trembling under the weight of absolute fear.
In that moment, she was absorbed into the new language, fully.
Her hippocampus—ablaze with the references of a thousand twisted memes—cemented the unholy synergy of terror and meaning. Her amygdala, overstimulated, fueled the meltdown of rational control. The watchers around her wore expressions of reverence. For them, this was the apex: complete compression of all human experience into a singular, unspoken bond. No more sentences, no more logic. Just raw, undiluted signals.
As the camera feed fizzled out, the final captured image was Zehra’s contorted face, mouth open, eyes brimming with a silent scream.
Epilogue: The Hollow Age
The Institute’s official records claim nothing unusual happened. They reference “ongoing research” into advanced lexical compression. Some suspect the entire staff vanished or devolved into near-feral states, chanting single words at each other in the dark halls. Others say they escaped, scattering across the cities, quietly seeding “trigger words” into children’s lullabies, radio ads, viral broadcasts.
Fifty years later, the old languages are nearly gone. Children respond to cryptic cues the way their ancestors responded to entire paragraphs. They share entire lifetimes of emotion with one utterance. Society has grown eerily silent—no one bothers to talk “too much.” People convey everything they need in fleeting murmurs that quake the soul.
And as for the new generation’s brains? Scans show that yes, they have “extra space,” unused neural real estate once reserved for reason and linear thought. But something else thrives there now: the quiet hiss of fear.
It lingers in dark corners, waiting for the next word.
“Maw.”
Author’s Note
They say the biggest horrors are those that nest in the human mind, beyond the realm of logic. So if you ever hear a strange word uttered in a hush—one that sends cold adrenaline rolling through your veins—be careful. It might just be your invitation to the Hollow Tongues. Once you’re in, there’s no returning to the old ways. Only raw feeling, and the endless, hungry dark…
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