Conditional Reality

One day new words fell from the sky. They collected like pollen on streets and sidewalks, in gutters, and on houses. We raked them up from our yards and stuffed them into garbage bags. Workers from the Bureau of Surrealistic Research, Etymology Division, picked up the bags and took them to their secret facility in the Cascade mountains where they preserved and classified them. Linguistic researchers spent years studying the new words. We awaited the results of their labor with keen anticipation. It’s hard to describe the excitement, we told each other, maybe some of the new words will help.