By Carol van Strum and Jordan Merrell
They used to call us “autistic,” and before that they had other, even cruder names. They used to call this place Minnesota, and it was famous for snow. I have never seen snow, but I know this from old books. Now mahogany trees grow here, and vanilla orchids. And parrots.
That’s what I’m trying to tell about, the parrots. But first who are we. We are five that were six before, until Blue went to sleep and didn’t wake. It’s called death. I know this from old books. Blue was one of those who heard colors. We still sing sadness for her and now I write this because she started it. Blue said we were left here when civilization disappeared. Civilization was very noisy and we don’t know what happened to it. We were left because civilization did not understand us, Blue said.
Here is what the civil ones did not believe or understand. Which is that some of us uncivil ones, the ones they called autistic, could hear colors and see melodies and tune in to rhythms and harmonics the civil ones couldn’t see or hear or understand. But the birds could. We didn’t know this until the civil ones left us here. Blue said the civil ones probably forgot all about us in their rush to go somewhere else. And after all their machineries were gone or stopped, we could hear what the birds were saying and it was what we had heard awake and asleep. Blue said we should tell the song in writing like the old books. It is very hard to do this but Blue said it must be done.
The old books tell how the civil ones took many years and built many machineries to listen to hydrogen frequences for signals from civilizations in other galaxies many light years away. I like light years, the light sings on tracks of time. But with all their machineries the civil ones never heard or saw any signal from other worlds. That made them feel sad and lonely. The old books say that. I am sorry to know this, because if the civil ones had asked us we could have told them. But they said we were autistic and put us in Buildings and never asked us anything.