A friend and I are on a parallel Earth. Identical biology, similar history, but details differ. China's spoken language is recognizable, but not the writing system--alphabetic or syllabic. Even the ancient Mayans, Aztecs and Mesopotamians developed systems based on sound, not ideograms. That concept is unknown, even among experts.

An archeologist is trying to decipher an unfamiliar ancient script. To me it looks a lot like Terran Chinese, though not squared off; as rounded as Mayan. Glyphs puffy as muffins. Lots of symmetry. These people liked shapes for their own sake.

Some glyphs have two components. I assume many combine two common idea symbols to logically imply a word/concept, while others likely have one sign meaning "sounds like..." and the other meaning "and the general topic is..."--a common mnemonic trick, in our world's ideographic languages.

One common element is identical to Chinese "white" and actually seems to mean light. Of course pictograms will be similar... I quickly start figuring out other elements; won't take long.

But the archeologist dismisses all such readings as amateur nonsense. Who'd create a crazy writing system with idea-symbols, or a mishmash of ideas and sounds? Unheard-of in his world--and anything new is just crank thinking.

Our expert keeps looking for purely phonetic readings, variations on the alphabets and syllabaries he knows.

So he can't read it. For he will not.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

The glyphs in my sketch aren't too accurate; there were more of the compound ones I describe in the text. I just found those harder to draw.

I know what this dream means. For four years, my friend Bob's doctors dismissed a horrible-looking scalp rash as mere psoriasis and just gave him shampoo. It was a rare but distinctive skin cancer. Now it's advanced; their misdiagnosis may have killed him.

I've had not one but several rare or unusual illnesses. Despite classic symptoms, I was consistently misdiagnosed, just like Bob. Med schools teach Bayesian statistics--"When you hear hoofbeats, think horse, not zebra". Doctors learn to look only for what's likely, not what the symptoms suggest. It's cost-efficient, but if you have something rare--if you are a zebra--well, God help you, for your doctor won't. They follow protocols--and protocols sacrifice outliers. For the greater good.

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