Parliament
Fibrous clear strands hovered delicately over the top of other fibrous clear strands as one of the tentacles swiped across the panel, each hair kissing the tip of another, transmitting a tiny electrical pulse.
The individual pulses themselves carried no discernible meaning other than that within Flaygon’s central nervous system, which looked akin to a giant jellyfish that had consumed a box of fireworks and a match shortly after, a side-effect of processes at work beyond our comprehension. Flaygon was the most sensitive of the hyper-sensorists, which meant more tentacles coated in more clear fibrous hairs, more sensory input equaling more information. More wisdom. With sensitivity being the respected measure of value among the species, Flaygon had been nominated his position in front of the hyper-sensor, and assigned the simple task of unlocking meaning from all things in the universe. And it was only recently, a few short centuries ago, that Flaygon had detected a signal that had been travelling across stars and constellations and galaxies and various other systems of interstellar turbulence to reach them.
Up until now, Flaygon had had to work backwards. The first reception of the signal had been basically indecipherable, but it had been it’s signature that had indicated to Flaygon that the signal was not something attributed to the ordinary behavior of the universe. Something was occurring out there in deep space that did not conform to the patterns and processes of its surroundings. Upon reception, Flaygon knew that it was time to listen. While the meaning engine of Flaygon’s central nervous system exploded with lights and colors of a spectrum beyond what we would call light and color, Flaygon waited patiently until enough information had been consumed to be able to splice the input into sub-categories, which were then able to be reflected in the hyper-sensor configuration.
Gradually, Flaygon became more adept at scouring the received waves to parse for further properties of similarity, and whenever these properties were registered, additional groups of categorization were added into the hyper-sensor until finally it became rare that a facet of the signal would exist that had not previously been accounted for. Then, and only then, was the signal able to be rerun back through the hyper-sensor, and the interactions between the categorized elements were able to be viewed by Flaygon’s own colossal mind’s eye. His assessment was that the signal being received was, undoubtedly, produced by life.
Even though Flaygon’s species were fortunate enough to have a lifespan lasting many millennia, the complexity and distortion contained within the signal (which had traveled across vast lengths of the universe to reach them and had been exposed to all manner of cross-chatter that might compromise it) was such that even this lifespan would only allow Flaygon to gain a somewhat elementary grasp of what was attempting to be communicated. Flaygon began to recognize what we would call speech, the emanation of sound waves produced by small orifices in the uppermost nodules the species, and upon this discovery Flaygon hypothesized that the message had been sent to them had a definite purpose and agenda. Flaygon’s central nervous system beamed with magenta, informing the rest of the species that the signal’s significance was closer to being discovered. But then, after only a further few decades of analysis, Flaygon sent out another contradictory gamma ray to let the species know that it was a mistake. The signal had since been recognized not as one that was directed towards the outer-regions of space, as Flaygon had first thought, but was rather identified as a by-product of the species internal communications. Regardless, it was a discovery, and a helpful one at that, with Flaygon now able to determine that they were not in dialogue, as once thought, but were simply eavesdropping.
With the hyper-sensor configured correctly and with Flaygon’s expertise in interpreting its signals, Flaygon perceived a definite trend in the communication, in both richness and intensity. It was fortunate, as with these increases suddenly Flaygon had enough sample data to proverbially “decode the enigma”, to gain an understanding of linguistics. Flaygon had been able to develop what could be considered a vocabulary, certain received vibrations that could be assessed alongside other deconstructed signal data to make an assumption that the vibration, the word, was either a trigger for or was a representation of a certain signal anomaly. Despite the intellectually advanced nature of Flaygon, both in a generic species sense and in an intra-species sense, it must be understood that such was the foreign nature of these systems of communication to Flaygon’s own that this interpretation of a word might be comparable to that of a dog’s, where “sit” is a concept in and of itself, and a complex sentence containing negation, for example, “do not sit”, would, of course, produce the sit response. But in light of this, Flaygon was also intelligent enough to know that its grasp of the language was very rudimentary, and was thus learning more and more as the centuries progressed, preferring to focus on the words that represented the concepts that applied to the species as a whole, rather than the noise in between. Words like “resource”. Words like “extinct”. Words that seemed to be gradually progressing in frequency as the signal ran through its known course of existence.
Flaygon was required to increase his amplitude registers on the hyper-sensor as the signal continued its exponential trajectory upward in complexity and ferocity. Flaygon had previously been resting a few tentacles, having been stationed at the post for centuries, but these tentacles were suddenly bought to life to be run over the top of the hyper-sensor, the signal seeming to be working its way up to an unprecedented crescendo. Thin clear hairs sparked and shocked at their point of meeting, and the fireworks display inside the gelatinous chamber of Flaygon was no longer flashing intermittently, but rather had begun to shine out in a perpetually glowing beam that lit up the rest of the species like a supernova. More and more Flaygon recognized the dialogue being exchanged by the observed species as having an undercurrent of hostility, of accusation, and more and more he was able to refine the understanding of previously encountered words as they grew in frequency. Words like “war”, which he could now see was analogous to tufts of signal disruption. Words like “climate”, which could be correlated to a gradual increase in electromagnetic radiation. These words rattled through the sensitive tentacles of Flaygon like erratic webs of lightning.
For almost a few decades Flaygon acted as a second sun for the entire civilization, the exhausted medium of an intergalactic seance. Then, in but a moment, suddenly and unexpectedly, Flaygon’s peers were cast into darkness as the signal all but disappeared. Flaygon at first assumed a mistake had been made, an error, which was unlikely given the incredible depth of intellect contained within the species, of which he was a stand out. But, as pattern recognition is a substantial part of what one would qualify as intellect, the complete and sudden change in the signal stream shocked Flaygon’s central nervous system enough to send it into a state of mild disarray. There was no pattern to it. No rhyme or reason. No information that would extend, in any great way, the species’ understanding of the universe.
All Flaygon’s tentacles scoured the surface of the hyper-sensor, but instead of being used to interpret signal data they were now being used to trace what remained of the signal. Flaygon readjusted the amplitude registers to their original setting, and then even lower, until finally a limited few of the fibrous clear strands began to spark once more. The culmination of all the remaining signal data was just enough for Flaygon to be able to perceive in its mind’s eye what we would see to be two men (in as much as Flaygon’s fractured vision of what man looked like would be able to deliver) and these two men, communicating from opposing sides of the planet they were occupying, were debating in murmurs and mumbles and almost indecipherable slurs of language that seemed, even to Flaygon, to be the improper use of their native vernacular. The two men even seemed to hamper their own dialogue by perpetually shouting over the top of one another. Then, at last, there was one final word made clear to Flaygon. A word that seemed entirely irrelevant given the signal’s context, but (like with the word “sit”), he knew, might simply just be a result of his own limited grasp of the language…
“Budget.”
…and following this seemingly profound but equally perplexing word, Flaygon’s hyper-sensor went dead, and the signal, lasting mere centuries, was no more.
