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The dream of a common language examines the future through global literacy.

It is written by Kathleen Ann Goonan and given voice by Rosalind Ares.

This episode is made in partnership with XPRIZE.

At 4.58am on June 28, 2020, the passengers on board A and A flight 008, on route from Tokyo

to San Francisco are cruising at an altitude of 37,000 feet, approximately 1500 nautical miles

off the west coast of the United States.

A small bump, otherwise noted as a barely perceptible bout of turbulence, passes flight

008 through a temporary wrinkle in the local region of space-time.

What these passengers will soon find out as they descend into SFO is that the wrinkle

has transported them 20 years into the future and the year is now 2040.

This is the story of the passenger in seat 2K.

TRI Montefev, a neurologist specialising in reading, was at the end of a six-week journey.

She had given talks at academic conferences, met with FMRI brain researchers in Hong Kong,

visited refugee camps in Africa, and composed seat-school blog posts in hotel rooms, tents

and planes.

After tomorrow's talk in San Francisco, she would head home to Boulder and her husband,

Keck.

When the Tokyo No Retigator tendon told her that the conference had bumped her to a first-class

seat, she was irritated.

A waste of money.

...