Sun

Title: Sun

Date: March 29th, 2026

Author: Z. E. Wayland

License: CC0; To the extent possible under law, Z. E. Wayland has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.

When we translated light waves to sound waves, the first thing the Sun said was, "Turn it off." I thought we were supposed to celebrate the moment that we made contact, real contact, with something as immense and stunning as that burning ball of gas we orbit around. Nobody said anything in the control room. I didn't say anything because I didn't want to be the one to bring up what clearly echoed through the speakers, to be the one to point out that our message was not well received. The silence stifled me. I couldn't live with such a simple answer, not after all the work and research and resources that I invested inside of this.

"Maybe, it's telling us to turn off something else we have," I said to everybody. We all turned to Samson. His eyes squint against the display of that yellow and orange ball of fury as though it was a face. They shared an intensity. 

Only one of them blinked and told us, "Ask why." The message is translated immediately back. I anticipated a response back, to feel the ancient and powerful voice echo through my bones. If only I could hear it without the machine, without some kind of translation, to speak the language of a burning star. Anything, anything to hear the warmth. We waited for a response. I waited for a response. And there was nothing. There's a murmur of unrest. At first, they were attentively waiting, checking each time a different noise or wavelength emits. Boredom came in quickly for them. Chatter filled the room, some shuffled out looking for drinks. They didn't come back. It became a skeleton crew, but I was not one to fall from such faith.

I was attentive. I was listening. I was anxious. Maybe the original transmission we sent wasn't received properly. Maybe the sun didn't like how we asked it. Maybe it was a matter of some mistake that they made. As everybody else quietly flitted between station and relaxation, I sat at my post with the stillness of a statue. My ears strained to hear any semblance of the voice again. Back craned over the transmission button and microphone, pressing the side of my face against the speaker. Still only static. "Why are you being silent?" I snapped, finger pressed against the glowing transmission button, "There is so much you know that we want to know from you. You, you could help solve so many problems, so many arguments, so many... things and we look up to you. So, why, why? Please, answer us."

I felt a lightness building up inside of me, the anticipation alleviated slightly. Though it was not enough as the shame of my coworkers bored into me. Judgmental eyes, jealous even that they were not privileged enough to speak to the sun so openly.

The only response I received was from Samson: "Office. Now." I followed to receive the chastisement, but I didn't hear him. My ears too filled with wonder and excitement that I didn't catch his breakdown of the endangerment of the research, of the delicate handling, only the tail end when he told me that I was suspended until I was ready to accept that the work was larger than me.

"I. Am." I put on with my most forward voice, one step below yelling. As though I wasn't aware of how important it was to receive its transmissions, its truths. It took immense power to hold myself from collapsing and exploding into a supernova of all the thoughts I have inside of me. Maybe I should have. Samson, unimpressed, did not share the same zeal. He was jealous of my tenacity, of my willingness to plead to the sun from my heart rather than from my head because he's too scared to be vulnerable. It's what we needed to show to the sun, that we are small little things trying to ask for guidance.

"No, you are formally dismissed. Go home." He said with a finger pointed out of the office. He wanted me to go back home, to my empty house with nothing inside, to languish in the dark, to be ignorant to everything happening. Samson couldn't see the even wider picture that this message from the sun was everything to me. I didn't tell him that because I knew that he wasn't somebody that listened, instead somebody that spoke and told and commanded. I didn't tell anything him because I knew he would try to stop me.

I snuck back into the control room and hid between the walls where I scurried like a rat with its ears and nose perked upwards. Not to disrupt everybody's work, no, only to wait and listen. Beneath the floor, inside the machinery, where hummed the circuits and wires quietly waiting and listening and realizing that I was their perfect company. All we wanted to do was listen. I would be sustained on this feverish hunger. Even as my body rotted and they started to ask what was the smell in the control room, even as my vision began to fail, even as there were no longer the noises of people making their way through the morning and afternoon routine. Each month there were less people until it was just me, the circuits, and Samson.

He stood in front of where I hid, eyes squinted, as though he knew something. I peeked through the small ventilation holes for the machine with my one good eye. I knew it was him because of how old he had gotten in such a short time yet still held the fierceness that challenged the sun. Samson looked forward, at me, into me, though the metal walls. "Are you really sure you're listening?" He asked me before he stood up and shuffled out as well leaving me alone to hear the sun. It still hadn't spoken.

I listened. I still listened. I listened the entire time, no matter what Samson said to me, I listened. I listened to the slow age of the facility as the beams rotted and rusted and crumbled beneath the weight of time. I listened to my skin and flesh melt away unable to carry on the same fervor as my spirit. I listened to the sunlight as it touched my skeletal carcass through the holes in the ceiling and walls. My skeleton stuck in an eternal smile because I knew that I listened forever more.