Boris was moving. He'd pilfered the contract and was heading down Crown street. Donning my sunglasses and straightening my tie, I jumped from my car and the chase was on. "Kk!-&}zzPt!," said Boris. Right in front of me a car door swung wide open, catching me full-on. I tumbled over it and Boris escaped clean.
"What the !@#$," I exclaimed. I was bruised and scratched. The car was empty. "K-kabuzpit?"
Gloria, walking to catch up, laughed. Long straight hair, knit cap, tight tailored jacket, she looked like a supermodel. "You are an American!" she chided in her English accent. "Haven't you learnt Audio Java?"
"Audio What?"
"Audio Java. All your modern gadgets, your car, your toaster, your telly ... they all have an Audio Java interface. They add a little microphone, done! But normal speech is hard for machines, so Audio Java uses whistles and clicks that they can recognize. If you learn Audio Java, and have precise pronunciation, you can control anything."
I sat in my flat at night, staring at my toaster. I read the Audio Java manual, then stared at it again. "Ffff-tPit," I said. All the fuses in the building blew with a pop, leaving me in the dark. The Italian next door started swearing again.
"I've been working on it," I told Gloria. We were in a parking garage, standing next to my Porsche. "I can tell it to open the doors now."
Gloria smiled, encouraging, her hands clasped in front of her.
"%fb-kWheeet," I said.
The headlights came on.
"%fpb-kWheeet," I tried again. The emergencies started flashing and the horn blared repeatedly.
"kWheuuut!" I correct myself.
All the cars on the floor started flashing their lights and honking.
"%fp-dk|Wyiii%T," commanded Gloria, and all returned to normal. "You are improving, you really are," she said, patting my shoulder brightly. "It should be %fp-, then k|, followed by WyiT for a single car. Not kWheeet." The headlights of my Porsche turned on again. "%fp-k|WyiT," she told it. The headlights turned off and the doors opened.
"Fff^,tP1%," I told my toaster. The toast popped.
I had studied, I had practiced, and I had mastered Audio Java. Boris had left the embassy, holding another hot document. I stood. He saw me. The chase was on.
"Kk!-&}zzPt!," said Boris, and a car door opened.
But I recognized the command myself and dodged. "$$tzz-wh)))--><," I said, and lampposts bent to block his path. "$rt-^@#(--,.#," countered Boris, causing a delivery truck to lurch into motion towards me. He ran and I pursued, and the urban landscape bent to our commands.
This was in response to a prompt on reddit.com r/WritingPrompts, "You've managed to get a hold of a universal language, capable of directly affecting and even overwriting reality! Unfortunately, you're a bad programmer and the language itself is very code-like."