Only Stars Understand, the Scientist
On a different planet, beneath a clear sky filled with foreign stars and a Moon, the New Moon, a city and a man thrive, moving stably and with conviction towards their ends. It is an immaculately organized city, and the man is an academic, curious and brilliant, with an affinity for the secrets of history. The man alone in the city is reading about the old books, considered remnants of a forgotten culture, translated but only partially understood.
The book that caught his attention is considered a compilation of parables written in a tangle of symbolism. “Silence, Solace, and Stasis,” it is named, and for him, only him, only now, the meaning of the title is a declaration of the legacy the culture left. He starts to believe the culture was so advanced and different that he couldn't believe they existed on the same planet as him.
He gazes upon the symmetrical construction of the building in front of his windows, a house of law, and notices the reflections of the moonlight on the pillars breaking the symmetry. He is about to start the journey of his life, but only the curiosity of the shining marble pillars is there to confirm the magnitude of his new idea.
In the morning, after a conflict between sleep and ideation, a belief materializes. Another book, a children's book with a constellation on the cover, a mysterious story about a quiet man, is connected to the word 'silence' in the title and beginning passage of the book he studied last night. The thought appears bizarre, but he decides to test the idea. He starts to think the quiet man might be the leader of the culture, who decided to leave the books as a message.
He opens the children's book and reads it, finding the new interpretation slightly baffling and probably incorrect. The book tells of the journey of the quiet man across the lands and the heavens. But, he thinks of the other word, 'solace,' and about the man carrying the legacy and mystery that his people received, and the meaning starts to click.
He classifies the first book as a kind of dictionary, a set of explanations for the symbols occurring in the other books. His journey continues from this point, and he memorizes the book as a key to interpreting the other texts. The publication of the first meaningful interpretation of the children's book says the man had traveled to another continent with the books, and the culture is waiting for the people to discover them. A later interpretation claims a crew had traveled across space, and the constellation on the cover is the origin point of the foreigners, and it is more accurate.
Our academic accepts the new interpretation, but he can't stop talking about the other meanings of the stories. They are not simple documents, but more like prisms through which information reveals itself, he says. After generating countless interpretations, he also creates a response to the culture in their own style. It was sent to, and received by, the foreign messengers long after his death.