Or do words have any volume....

This question looks so simple, but it happens quite often that things and matters which seem very simple can embarrass us or even stupefy. Those who are embarrassed will remain silent and in silence will consider whether there is any sense to answer this question and how to avoid a nonsense answer. Those who are stupefied, when they will get back the ability to speak and hear, will erupt, quite surprisingly, in a question: Has it any sense to ask such questions?

They are right. Now, right now, this question is nonsense, but in some time it will not be nonsense. The word SOME is the most proper one, since it is really impossible to indicate, even approximately, the amount of time needed to achieve the state when words fill up the universe entirely, and there are nothing but words, only words, nothing else, because there are no room, no space, for anything else. Will words unite in one unimaginably huge word, and this word will collapse being not able to hold, to carry, its own mass, will disintegrate into unimaginable (or imaginable) number of smaller, new and unknown, words? or will implode and disappear? – nobody and nothing knows it. We can not reject another scenario: words squeezed with their own weight will transform into a black hole and will begin to devour other, new-coming words, then words will be able to appear endlessly and without restraint, for there will always be a space for them....

This is something like a fantasy. A mad vision. A shocking illusion. A screenplay for a film more than a catastrophic one: words are filling up the world – just a few more and the world will be fully packed with words – only one, the very last which will take the last piece of free space (the number of words was increasing faster than the volume of expanding space – words caught the space up, and now they will overtake it) – who or what will utter or write them? - will there be silence after? - no! the hubbub will reach the peak and it will last – till the moment space will again overtake words and then they will be able to appear again, although it still won't be known who or what will say or write them – who could do that if words fill up the space entirely and there would be no room for any being or device that could utter or write new words, because words can't reproduce themselves, neither sexually nor asexually nor in any other way - - - - - oh, I feel like I lost track of this story.... fortunately this film is going to be a catastrophic fantasy, which doesn't need logic, it needs dramatic action.

So, it means words do occupy space. The written-printed ones with no doubt. It's enough to look at any book. To held it in one's hand. To open it..... No doubt. Even such a small words like no, even printed with the smallest and tiniest typeface, would cover a very very small area of paper. Of a page. Of space. As usually in the beginning it looked like it was a very tiny scrap of space, even in the case of a giant word (due to the number of letters, not to their size), so tiny it was, not worth bothering, because the number of these scraps was unimaginable. Infinite. All words together and the expanding space would be in the same proportion as one word to all words together....

In the beginning – but not later....

All words – how many words does it mean?

Yes, this might look like a crucial problem. However it is not. If words occupy no space, then their number is of no importance at all. If we find that only a part of words has any volume, while the other part has no volume, then only the number of those ones occupying the space will be important, while counting the other ones will be waste of time and energy.... A waste? Really? Well, probably nobody would need this information, but there are so many things in the world which are (or at least seem) needed by nobody, are the effect of sheer waste of time and energy, and they seem (or really are) indispensable for the existence of the world.

OK. So, we will count words. How? Let's construct a machine that will do it instead of us. A MACHINE FOR COUNTING WORDS – this is the best solution. The machine will never get tired, neither it will count the same word twice or thrice, nor omit any word, which is what we would do with no doubt. We do hope such a machine will be made soon, and it will be made here, at the Extreme University. It would belong to the category of extreme machines, while the Faculty of Extreme Machines focuses on all aspects of designing, building and functioning of these devices. Who is really interested in such machines should go there.

At first we must group words as follows:
visible,
audible,
semi-visible,
semi-audible,
invisible,
inaudible.

Of course, everybody will maintain, that counting visible words, printed and written, is the easiest, though it would be much better to use a bit complex phrase: “the least difficult”. While the least difficult is to count semi-visible words, the ones that appear on the screen of a computer of some other electronic devices. They are semi-visible, because now they are visible, they exist physically, but in the next moment they will disappear and their physical existence will seem very doubtful, though they must have a kind of dormant form, if they can re-appear on the screen when the computer is on again and this document has been opened. So they are already counted, hence it's enough to add the sums saved in the computers' memories. That's it: it's enough. Oh, it seems so easy.... However it doesn't seem so easy in the case of words recorded on other media than computer memories. I mean semi-audible words, those ones existing on tapes and various discs – semi-audible because first one can hear them, then can not.

In the case of audible words, but not recorded, the situation is almost dramatic, though there are still some chances – nevertheless completing this task is almost unimaginable. (Just try to imagine counting all words uttered by all people during the time I'm reading this sentence.)

Invisible and inaudible words, those ones which never leave our heads – this is the real tragedy. The only and little hope is that they vanish together with us, unless we assume they are somehow recorded in the structure of our skulls' bones. If a thought is a kind of wave, then as a wave it must have an impact on the structure of tissues where it is generated, which it penetrates and which absorb it.... Like we suspect stones, rocks, bricks and plasters – maybe in their structures, maybe on the atomic level, the vibrations caused by the acoustic waves of our voices have been recorded.

Let's give up counting. Let's come back to the main topic.

Visible words occupy place. Yes. No doubt. They take space. You can see it. A pile of words can crush and suffocate us. Like a landslide.

Audible words take space. Mmmmmm. No doubt I hesitate. When they are heard – yes. Although it would be rather impossible to measure either the surface or the volume of a heard word, or so difficult that almost impossible. So, one day it will be possible..... And a word that is no longer heard, that has turned into silence? If it has not been recorded on any media, consciously or unconsciously, manually or automatically? If it has given back the space, it took for a moment? No, rather not.... For sure it has been left in someone's head. It is not possible that a word once spoken was heard by absolutely nobody. At least by the one who uttered it. Even if he or she was deaf like a log. Or like a stone. He or she heard it with the internal ear. Then this word stayed in him or in her.

It's amazing how many words can be stored in our heads. Does it mean invisible words have no volume? Or their volume is unimaginably small? So far nothing has been heard about a head exploding due to excess of words. Sometimes a head seems to crack because of one word, or a few words composed in a phrase-hammer or a sentence-drill, however everything ends up as expectations, metaphors and illusions..... And if they don't take physical space, then they take mental, intellectual space. Is it possible to have in the head nothing but words? no pictures, no images, no sounds, no no-words, because there is no room for them?

Words are extremely interesting entities.
They are, they exist, but it looks as if they were not, as if they didn't.
They do exist and they don't exist. They are and they are not.
They don't exist, but it looks as if they existed.

It is also extremely interesting that a closed, limited skull contains an open, unlimited brain. The strictly defined exterior, clear and sharp, contains absolutely undefined, misty-muddy-smudgy, interior.... But isn't the infinity and openness of our brain but a never fulfilled wish?

Well, it's quite fascinating vision: a brain using only words.

Let's try to imagine something like that: we don't know images, we don't know sounds, we know only words. Our brain is producing and storing only words.

Words which are neither sounds nor images.
What words would they be like?
What would they be?
Smells? Odours?
No, no. Not smells.
Words which are neither images, nor sounds, nor smells. Nor tactile sensations. Nor fluctuation of temperature and pressure....
What would they be like? Would they also be as if they were not? Would they be and not be?


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