June 5, 2009
#593: Voynich Manuscript
[[Weird root vegetables surround a strange script.]]
[[Woman holding up book.]]
Woman: This is the Voynich manuscript – a book, allegedly 500 years old, written in an unrecognized script. It’s some kind of visual encyclopedia of imaginary plants and undeciphered “recipes”.
[[The man opens the book.]]
Woman: It could be a hoax, a lost language, a cipher, an alien text, glossolatia – no one knows.
Man: No one? But it’s obvious.
Woman: … Obvious? Linguists and cryptographers have been stumped for decades.
Man: They forget. Human nature doesn’t change.
Man: Just imagine someone found a book from our time, full of lists, illustrations, tables, and long, dry descriptions of nonexistent worlds written in an invented language. What have they found?
Woman: … Dear Lord. It
is
obvious.
500 Years Earlier:
[[Three people are standing around pawns and a die. One is holding a sheet of paper, another is holding a book, the third is holding a scythe.]]
Person #1: Forsooth! I concoct an elixir of courage.
Person #2: Nae! The source booke sayeth that requires some wolfsbane!
Person #3: Your druid doth lose two points.