The Hat

From what they could deduce, he awoke one morning to discover everyone around him was speaking in a language he couldn't understand. Of course it destroyed his career. Words became at first unbearable to him, then fearful. He turned to reading in panic, scanning his eyes along the stems of words studying the physical construction of symbols, their maze like passageways of edges and curves. He fixed his mind with force as if willing the blank pieces of an inverted jigsaw to overturn to reveal colour, shape, form no matter how pretty, banal or deep the significance.
Simple conversations began to fill him with dread. He could barely maintain composure, retreating
into solitude. But even his thoughts were becoming elusive like tiny fish slipping through his fingers. At first he was convinced this disturbance in his life would pass. It was crushing to his career. He could no longer engage in simple conversation or read a newspaper let alone fathom the subtle microsignals of those who inhabited his world with an intention to deceive.

What little we know of him at this stage of his life, indeed, any other for that matter, is limited. All that exists today is his hat which remains neatly placed in the centre of his desk. The drawers of which are completely empty, of anything which might shed more light on this mystery. Did he attempt to immerse himself in research to find a solution to his disturbance? There are rumours of him holding his hands up to his ears in the faces of colleagues and howling like an animal.