The Spectre of St James
Post-prandial cheese push: a fabulous farrago fronted furiously by a creamy, malty slab of ewe's milk. A splash of red. Perhaps another. Quince. Retire. Drop out of existence for a few hours until recalled sharply by the sighting of a gargantuan drum-like structure above the atmosphere, an escapee from a '50s future feature, bristling with dishes, antennæ, a giant metallic cake with an interstellar vibe, a pastiche of an earthly space-laser with a space-faring brief, humming and buzzing with activity, travelling at tremendous speed, lowering itself to a giant crater in the desert, nestling briefly in a spectacular self-sunk screw-hole, veiled by geography but osmotically announcing itself to life across the sphere, trailing a series of transmissions seemingly representing a set of documents in some otherworldly Sanskrit form, its characters combining ancient Abyssinian and Armenian glyphs with another format that no-one consciously understands, yet which select people across the globe somehow absorb into their unspeaking under-minds and recognise as speaking to them of and across distance and time unknown, imparting strange stories of journeys from places we've never seen and travelling distances we'll never comprehend, borne by a carrier crashing through the atmosphere and somehow transfusing dense forestry with dry, dusty dunes, sand whistling through warm winds carrying context and sending sentiment from one point in this colossal continuum to all others it can access using its unique collation of technology and tenacity, a conveyed message of calm, determined yet derived from desperation. We transcribe what we can, painting pages with symbols we have no idea how we even half-understand, according interpretations aligned with our experience, an economist attaching analysis, a master of no trade jacking in a generalised grasp, each reaching for consensus and seeking somehow similar souls to flesh out puzzling passages, looking for linguists, attempting to alert companion custodians of fractionally perceived passages to the existence of their collaborators, attempting to pull together a complete copy of the complex codex, so that we can collectively understand the overall meaning and render meaningful the bafflingly huge journey undertaken by these alien ambassadors and ensure their message is heard and acted upon. We print out thick, full copies of what we have, pushing ourselves to pull together a canonical version, packaging parts into parcels to post to authorities on what we perceive to be the areas alluded to by as-yet unapprehended sections, still far from clear on what we've got or how we got it or why we need to do what we're doing, yet crystal clear that it's important, an urgent exercise to be executed immediately, converting our so-far small band of conspirators into the last hope of undermining the assiduous advance of an otherwise all-enveloping earthly empire, unsolicited yet critical external assistance aiding and abetting our efforts to establish a coalition of those willing to give a shit about the survival of the species against its own worst instincts and excesses. We complete the consignment and commit it to be carried to its other intended interpreters; an epistle of intention edging out through the ether, at the same moment and with the same action as the transmission of the tangible portion through the post, our envoys in the imagined and enacted worlds carrying our hopes and dreams ahead of us into the endless desolate dark desert of future times. Goddammit, I just dreamed the plot to Arrival. Kinda.
