“What do you need?”

“Mmmmmmmmm! Mmmmmmmmmmmm!”

Bitch Teen thinks it’s hungry.

“Mmmm mmmmmmm.”

She tries offering it popcorn. I tell her mummies don’t eat. And not to spill any on the floor because the museum doesn’t allow food or drink in the exhibits.

“Some gang we are,” says @Nevada Turquoise.

Everybody thinks being in a gang is about being hardcore. Which is the most immature way of looking at a gang. A gang is about friends having your back. And taking you in.

“Do you want to get out of here? Come back and crash at our place?”

“Mmmmm Mmmmm!”

And that’s how we made friends with a mummy. █ a⃠d⃠a⃠d⃠

I will admit that telepathy is part of the skill set of a psychic lockpicker. Ok not exactly “telepathy,” but language and communication are just locks to pick like any other, once you know some basic techniques.

(I prefer creating a secret code ahead of time, where the subject can telegraph the message to me through undetectable methods, like tapping their finger or chattering their teeth, but I can work without that if I need to.)

Plus, people don’t like having their minds read, so it’s not a skill I advertise.

In this case, I was able to delve into the mind of the mummy. I discovered that they are suffering from some kind of break with reality, and insist they are not actually a mummy! Poor thing. Obviously experiencing some kind of deep reality denial. They also call themselves @Cleo Spencer, which is also a delusion as it is clearly not ancient Egyptian.

I am assuming this is some kind of amnesia that will pass. In the meantime, @Nevada Turquoise continues to slip pieces of popcorn through their bandages where the mouth would be. I keep telling her that mummies don’t eat and it’s just going to rot in there but the mummy seems to enjoy it. █ a⃠d⃠a⃠d⃠

The mummy is getting a bit ripe. Is that supposed to happen? I figured they'd be so desiccated after being sealed up for thousands of years that they wouldn't smell rotten at all. I figured they'd be, I don't know, kind of clean smelling? Like a nice musk? Or dry and dusty like an old wasp nest. Isn't that kinda the point of mummification?

But the mummy (or @Cleo Spencer as they continued to claim to be called) smells like they need a bath. For reasons I cannot fathom, they have been making trips to the bathroom now and then, but if they took a full-on shower I'd be afraid they'd fall apart.

Anyway, the timing couldn't have been better because we need a fourth. @Nevada Turquoise, Bitch Teen, and I won't be able to pull off our next caper without them. And the mummy might be ideally suited to help us.

We're going to jack the company of Nidivarui. We're taking down the commodification of language. █ a⃠d⃠a⃠d⃠

So what’s the prize when you take down the commodification of language?

The company of Nidivarui has the language teaching business locked up. You’ll see their name on all the textbooks in Psyhigh’s language labs. Urudu, Enochian, Galaxperanto... and a highly effective method, which is why they own the whole sector.

They’ve got other classes too, but you have to pass through their byzantine pyramid scheme to get the invites.

You know how powerful people speak. It’s a gradient. Yuppies have a certain tone—a college-level clarity of language command. If you’ve lived your life on the streets you have a different dialect. As do doctors, lawyers, C-level executives, fast food workers, cops. The codes and pattens get more hushed and obsequious as you get deeper into the halls of power. A whispered “yes” or “no” in the board room has impact on billions, their language focused and aligned with the life and death force of capital.

We are their words.

For a price, the company of Nidivarui will teach you that language, and they’ve made themselves the only source for the highest levels. Because they invented it. Or inherited it. Or stole it. Nobody remembers. Nobody knows. Not really.

So the first step is to leave the hive, leave the slave farm. We need to circumvent the language of the oppressors. Decouple its connection to capital.

We’re going to flood the market. Create our own sticky language for capital to accrete to. It’s only counterfeit if you’ve got nothing to back it up.

I’m so glad we’ve got a mummy. █ a⃠d⃠a⃠d⃠