After another long and arduous process, the ocean swimmer ventured again into other parts of the world. Slowly, the melody grew grander and more complicated, and interpretations diversified. Some people thought it was a river rushing downhill, others imagined the advance of a great army across a vast plain, others saw billowing nebulae in the darkness of space caught in the vortex of a black hole, but they all agreed that it was expressing some grand process, an evolutionary process. The movement was long, and an hour had passed before the theme at last began to change. The melody gradually split into two vying parts that smashed wildly into each other or tangled together….
“The classic style of Beethoven,” Clayderman declared, after a long stretch immersed in the grand music.
The secretary general said, “It’s like a fleet smacking across huge waves on the sea.”
“No,” said the US president, shaking his head. “Not that. You can tell that the two forces are not essentially different. I think it’s a battle that spans a world.”
“Wait a moment,” interrupted the Japanese prime minister, breaking a long silence. “Do you really imagine you can comprehend alien art? Your understanding of the music may be no better than a cow’s appreciation for a lyre.”
Clayderman said, “I think our understanding is basically correct. The common languages of the cosmos are mathematics and music.”
The secretary general said, “Proving it won’t be difficult. Can we predict the theme or style of the next movement?”
After a moment’s thought, the Chinese president said, “I’d say next will be an expression of worship, and the melody will possess a strict architectural beauty.”
“You mean like Bach?”
“Yes.”
And so it was. The listeners seemed to hear a great imposing church and the echoes of their footsteps inside that magnificent space, and they were overcome by fear and awe of an all-encompassing power.
Then the complicated melody turned simple again. The background music vanished, and a series of short, clear beats appeared in the infinite stillness: one, then two, then three, then four… and then one, four, nine, and sixteen… and then increasingly complex series.
Someone asked, “Is this describing the emergence of mathematics and abstract thinking?”
Then it turned even stranger. Isolated two- and three-note phrases from the violin, each of identically pitched notes held for different durations; then glissandos, rising, falling, and then rising again. They listened intently, and when the president of Greece said, “It’s… like a description of basic geometric shapes,” they immediately had the sense they were watching triangles and rectangles shoot by through empty space. The glides conjured up images of round objects, ovals and perfect circles…. The melody changed slowly as single-note lines turned into glides, but the previous impression of floating geometric shapes remained, only now they were floating on water and distorted….
“The discovery of the secrets of time,” someone said.
The next movement began with a constant rhythm that repeated along a period resembling a pulsar’s day-night beat. The music seemed to have stopped altogether but for the beat echoing in the silence, but it was soon joined by another constant rhythm, this one slightly faster. Then more rhythms at various frequencies were added, until finally a magnificent chorus emerged. But on the time axis the music was constant as a huge flat wall of sound.
Astonishingly, their interpretation of this movement was unanimous: “A giant machine at work.”
Then came a delicate new melody, a tinkle of crystal, volatile and dreamlike, that contrasted with the thick wall beneath it like a silver fairy flitting over the enormous machine. This tiny drop of a powerful catalyst touched off a wondrous reaction in the iron world: the constant rhythm began to waver, and the machine’s shafts and cogs turned soft and rubbery until the whole chorus turned as light and ethereal as the fairy melody.
They debated it: “The machine has intelligence!” “I think the machine is drawing closer to its creator.”
The sun music progressed into a new movement, the most structurally complicated yet, and the hardest to understand. First the piano voice played a lonely tune, which was then taken up and extended by an increasingly complex group that turned it grander and more magnificent with every repetition.
After it had repeated several times, the Chinese president said, “Here’s my interpretation: A thinker stands on an island in the sea contemplating the cosmos. As the camera pulls back, the thinker shrinks in the field of view, and when the frame encompasses the entire island, the thinker is no more visible than a grain of sand. The island shrinks as the camera pulls back beyond the atmosphere, and now the entire planet is in frame, with the island just a speck within it. As the camera pulls back into space, the entire planetary system is drawn into frame, but now only the star is visible, a lonely, shining billiard ball against the pitch-black sky, and the ocean planet has vanished like a speck….”
Listening intently, the US president picked up the thought: “… The camera pulls back at light speed, and we discover that what from our scale is a vast and boundless cosmos is but glittering star dust, and when the entire galaxy comes into frame, the star and its planetary system vanish like specks. As the camera continues to cross unimaginable distances, a galaxy cluster is pulled into frame. We still see glittering dust, but the dust is formed not of stars but of galaxies…”
The secretary general said, “… And our galaxy has vanished. But where does it end?”
The audience once again immersed themselves in the music as it approached a climax. The musician’s mind had propelled the cosmic camera outside the bounds of known space so its frame captured the entire universe, reducing the Milky Way’s galaxy cluster to a speck of dust. They waited intently for the finale, but the grand chorus suddenly dropped out, leaving behind only a lonely piano-like sound, distant and empty.
“A return to the thinker on the island?” someone asked.
Clayderman shook his head. “No, it’s a completely different melody.”
Then the cosmic chorus struck up again, but after a brief moment gave way to the piano solo. The two melodies alternated like this for a long while.
Clayderman listened intently, and suddenly realized something: “The piano is playing an inversion of the chorus!”
The US president nodded. “Or maybe it’s the mirror of the chorus. A cosmic mirror. That’s what it is.”
The music had clearly reached a denouement, and now the piano’s inverted melody proceeded alongside the chorus, riding conspicuously on its back but gloriously harmonious.
The Chinese president said, “It reminds me of the Silvers style of mid-twentieth-century architecture, in which, in order to avoid impact on the surrounding environment, buildings were clad entirely in mirrors. Reflections were a way of putting them in harmony with their surroundings as well as self-expression.”
“Yes,” the secretary general answered thoughtfully. “When civilization reaches a certain level, it can express itself through its reflection of the cosmos.”
The piano abruptly shifted to the uninverted theme, bringing it into unison with the chorus. The sun music had finished.
ODE TO JOY
“A perfect concert,” the mirror said. “Thank you to all who enjoyed it. And now I will be going.”
“Wait a moment!” shouted Clayderman. “We have one last request. Could you play a human song on the sun?”
“Yes. Which one?”
The heads of state glanced around at each other. “Beethoven’s Fate Symphony?”2 asked the German premier.
“No, not Fate,” said the US president. “It’s been proven that humanity is powerless to strangle fate. Our worth lies in that even knowing that fate can’t be resisted and death will have the final victory, we still devote our limited life span to creating beautiful lives.”