Bob's neighbours were perfectly charming people. They had a neat house and a two year old daughter. The girl loved playing with her teddy bear, her doll house and her smartphone. Actually, she seemed to prefer the smartphone, and she proudly showed Bob drawings she had made on it, which her parents had printed out for her and put on the wall. (By "wall" I mean the physical wall of her bedroom - not any particular section of some social media site.)
This made Bob uneasy, because he did not have any smartphone himself. The blank surface frightened him, and even though they were called smart phones he could not see any way to actually call anyone with it.
He had reluctantly bought a low end mobile phone a few years ago, when someone at a mall had convinced him that everyone was expected to have one. They also cancelled his fixed phone line, pointing out that he no longer needed it.
After some time, the last newsstand in his part of the town closed down, so he could no longer buy newspapers. He took up the habit of going to an Internet café a few times a week to read the latest news.
His television and his radio had stopped working a few years earlier in a transition from "analog" (working) to "digital" (incomprehensible) emissions.
He spent most of his free time at home reading the many great classic books he had inherited from his grandfather. Dickens, Balzac, Thomas Mann, Tolstoy and Homer were his favourites, but he also happily read Gogol, Zola, Jane Austen and many others.
When he read articles on the Internet, there were more and more things he did not understand. There were references to musicians he had never heard of, movies he was not interested in and technology he could not grasp.
About the time he retired came another big change in his life. At the Internet café they removed the old computer with a physical keyboard. The staff were very polite and excused themselves, but, they explained, they had kept it only for him. No one else had wanted to use it for years. It was now broken, and they could not find any parts to repair it.
They tried to explain to him how to use the new input device, but he did not understand half the words they used and none of the meaning. He tried. He touched it. He pressed it. He fiddled and diddled. He cried and he swore. And all he could discern in the stream of helpful advice from the staff was "it is really simple, you know".
In the end, he gave up, had a cup of coffee and left.
When he got home, he read Finnegan's Wake for a few hours. At least James Joyce understood him.
While Bob now had contact only with the great authors of yore, mankind was busy evolving. New words, new ideas and new concepts were added to all the languages of the world, which rapidly became more and more similar. The Japanese started putting the verb before the object in sentences. The Russians got rid of their genders and the English dropped the definite article. This development was very fast, as everyone was connected with everyone. Except Bob.
One sunny autumn day, Bob was walking in the park. He had bought something that vaguely resembled what once had been called "ice cream", and he enjoyed it on a bench under a tree that probably had some DNA in common with a willow.
A loud noise broke the peace. He beheld a flying saucer above. He had had no particular opinion if there was life on other planets, so he was not that surprised. However, looking around he realised from other people's screaming and running that the mainstream opinion was that this was bad news.
"Greetings earthlings!" said an alien who had been lowered to the ground from the main ship. Bob nodded approvingly. "We come in peace. Bring me to your leader."
"...to your leader", mouthed Bob at the same time.
"We have monitored your planet for a long time and learnt your languages from radio waves that have travelled for decades to our home planet."
Some kind of patrol of people who perhaps filled a similar function to the police force of the past approached along the lawn of some herbs that vaguely looked like grass.
One of them answered the alien. Bob did not understand more than one word: "what?" The aliens looked at the "policeman", and they were as confused as Bob.
"I beg your pardon", the alien said. "Does anyone speak English? Habla español? Est-ce qu'il y a quelqu'un ici qui parle français?"
The "police" looked at each other in bewilderment.
"I speak English", Bob said. "Twentieth century style. Don't worry about them. There is no one else left who speaks fluent twentieth century English. You could try the classics department at a university, but I'm not sure we have anything that resembles universities any more."
"What a dashed nuisance!" the alien said. "We prepared for decades for this contact. Now we have to learn yet another language."
"It is not worth it", Bob reassured them. "They use completely insane concepts. You may as well try to understand what a dolphin wants to say or grasp what opinions a lizard has of quantum physics. Don't waste more time here. Let's just leave."
The alien looked at the confused human "police" and agreed. Bob and the alien left in the flying saucer, and Bob lived happily for ever after.
Ok. That last bit was just a happy dream Bob had. But he never woke up from it, so that does not really matter.
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