Chapter 2. We've Been Trying to Reach You
We’ve Been Trying to Reach You
“Let us hold fast to mystery and persist in something exceptional, however inexplicable it might be to our peers and superiors.”
“Do you know who said that?” Joanni asked.
“You?”
“Very funny.” Joanni turned away from her screen pad to look at Jack. “Flannery O’Connor. Flannery O’Connor said that. Some hundred and fifty years ago.”
Jack had already lost interest, “Never heard of him.”
“Her.”
“Fine,” he shrugged, as though this was simply a matter of opinion to which he was conceding. “Where do you dig up these people?”
Joanni did not escalate the discussion. She knew Jack was irritated with her, and she had no wish to make him more so. She could understand how it annoyed him that her song had become the band’s biggest hit (‘for now,’ she imagined him saying); how he saw it as not just stealing the limelight, which could be dismissed as just an ego thing, but as depriving him of the very oxygen of fame he lived on; he had nothing else to sustain him as they toured together throughout the galaxy.
She would be distressed, maybe even heartbroken over this rift had she loved him, but she didn’t love him, she had only tried very hard to love him. Jack Sanour on paper was an ideal beau, just her type. Joanni alone called him ‘Jackie’, and the way she said it got him going. She liked that. She was not only attracted to his musicianship, but to his onstage physical presence. Offstage he wasn’t that alluring, just insecure and remote. He only came alive when on stage, and floundered when off it. Most likely, if ever Jack thought of the two of them as a thing, he thought of them as a framed photo couple, their acknowledged togetherness displayed on a desk or dresser, best viewed with a side glance now and then, not as two breathless lovers entwined in the closeness of one another’s gaze. Joanni was foolish enough at times to hope one day he would open up to her, but generally wise enough to understand that would never happen.
So, when the call came from ISEA Command requesting an ‘informal consultation’, she did not hesitate and agreed to fly out to meet with them. In the conference room of the Department of Exploratory Diplomacy, four high-level officials, holding both military rank and academic credentials, filled her in on the unclassified, yet still fantastic, part of the Oreana backstory. Distrustful as she was of the agency, she could only take the briefing at face value. The Oreanians had “heard” her song, and rather than being offended, were curious about sentient beings somewhere out in space interested in their world. It was a miracle they could identify anything from Joanni’s babbling, but evidently, the musical notes provided more clues than Ms. Neiswender’s singing. How did ISEA know this? The Oreanians had sent a response broadcast out into the void, replacing Joanni’s gibberish with what was assumed to be the correct vocalization of the centuries-old Oreanian tune, as well as an indecipherable message appended at the end. In a similar manner, when the ISEA radio telescopes picked up this rebound transmission, as it was termed, out of the myriad of other transmissions and noise, they were able to recognize that this was an Oreanian response by matching the melody and instrumentation. Over time, and through several connected computer programs running back and forth, ISEA finally produced a rudimentary translation of the song, unfortunately at the level of twentieth century translation programs. Joanni probably was not singing about a ring of fish around the sun and how all women were air and not rocks, but whatever its accuracy, it was the galaxy’s initial communication with a long mythologized, but never authenticated civilization.
Also, during the past few years following this initial contact, a means of rough communication had been secretly worked out between ISEA and the inhabitants of Oreana. A nanopixel image of Joanni Neiswender holding her clesig was transmitted, and it was verified in turn that, yes, this was the artifact that had been stolen centuries ago, one of the eight original cultural treasures (“Eight of the Origins”) of Oreana. This representation of Joanni with the instrument was circulated and spread throughout the Oreanian population. It became a measure of one’s sophistication and status to possess imagery of this strange celestial singer holding their hallowed harp. At the point ISEA summoned Joanni, two things had been solidly determined: first, the Oreanians wanted their “clesig” back; and second, they wanted Joanni to be the one to bring it back. These two discoveries led to the present result—that, a little less than a dozen years after she first picked up the strange instrument that spoke so mysteriously to her, Joanni was destined to return it to its origins.
Image: Octave and 5th interval B♭. Source: “Three Pitches in an Impression Figure” by Margaret Watts Hughes, pigment on glass, date unknown. Cyfarthfa Castle Museum and Art Gallery. Public domain. Edited by J. Weigley