What Is Tempo’s Alphabet?
Tempo’s Alphabet is a speech translator designed for a boy with an unusual "speech impediment."
Tempo is a funny name for a boy, but it’s fitting in this absurd case. Now a 13-year-old in the seventh grade, he was born with a highly unique condition. He jokingly calls it "the gift from a curse".
Caused unnaturally. By an everyday item; a YouTube video. Yes. It’s true. This is how the YouTube video was discovered…
Tempo's mother, Frances, always wanted to be a musician but never made it. Her own failed attempts left her determined that her soon-to-be-born son wouldn't fall short the way she did.
"Insecurity is a heck of thing… isn’t it? I don’t blame her."
When Frances shared her anxiety with a fellow expectant mother in yoga class, the woman pointed her toward a social media influencer named Saranda Dreamweaver, a self-proclaimed "Spellfluencer" boasting a grand total of three followers.
In her most popular video (which sat at five views), Saranda shared a ritual promising to help an unborn child be born musically gifted through the "magical powers" of music and a chant called "DO. RÉ. MI.".
Frances had no idea the chant was an actual witchcraft spell; she simply thought it was a quirky modern parenting trend.
For the rest of her pregnancy, Frances faithfully chanted the spell while blasting her favorite song from Saranda’s Magic Spells playlist on a loop… and waited.
When Tempo was finally born, he didn't cry or make a single sound for months. But then, the silence broke.
One day, Frances, a failed folk rock musician, strummed her guitar while Tempo was in the room.
Upon hearing the guitar notes, Tempo opened his mouth and mirrored them perfectly. Frances watched in sheer horror as her son began speaking musical notes.
Tempo retains vivid memories of hearing that music from inside the womb.
However, because Frances had butchered the Spellfluencer's instructions, the ritual backfired into a cosmic joke.
The spell's true incantation called for the traditional "Si"—the version Saranda Dreamweaver (and most of the world outside English-speaking countries) used in her original spell. But Frances, whose only reference point was belting along to The Sound of Music, sang "Ti" instead—the anglicized substitute the movie made famous, unknowingly changing the spell's final note. Turns out, swapping one note name for another was really swapping one whole language for another, and the spell took her literally.
In a twisted way, Saranda's video hadn't lied: the power of "DO. RÉ. MI." changed his life forever.
But instead of turning him into a musical prodigy, the spell manifested literally, restricting his entire vocabulary to the fundamental musical scale: C, D, E, F, G, A, and B.
He was trapped inside a permanent loop of Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti.
The spell did cause one other major side effect: psychic telepathy.
Inside her head, Frances could hear Tempo’s thoughts in a normal speaking voice, and Tempo could hear Frances’ thoughts in return. Outside of their private connection, however, Tempo was completely unable to communicate.
Whenever he opened his mouth to speak to the rest of the world, all anyone else could hear was a jumble of musical notes.
Until Tempo’s Alphabet was created by his music teacher, Margaret Mallow, Tempo was forbidden to talk to anyone.
"Just tell them how to use it… I’ll show them in the game."
How does Tempo's Alphabet differ from a Polybius square cipher?
A traditional Polybius cipher uses a 5×5 grid, so some letters have to share a cell. Tempo's Alphabet uses a bigger 7×4 grid instead, with each column matching a note in the C major scale, linking every letter to the musical note Tempo speaks.
Each column is locked to one note forever — C is always C, D is always D, no matter what. That note is what comes out whenever Tempo speaks a certain letter. That's called "fixed do." The right spell used "Si," but Frances sang "Ti" from The Sound of Music, a song where "Do" can change depending on the song. So the spell overcorrected and locked Tempo into the most rigid option there was: one note per letter, forever.
Unlike the Polybius square, which has no color coding at all, Tempo's Alphabet gives each note its own color: C is blue, D is black, E is brown, F is red, G is green, A is yellow, B is purple. That way, Tempo can see the note he's speaking, not just hear it.
Punctuation doesn't have a musical sound, so the exclamation point and question mark simply fill the two leftover slots in the 28-cell grid. This gives every letter its own space, and gives Tempo a way to show emotion, too.
It's a strange story, but it's true.
"You can't make this stuff up."
