Humming brought high to the air the hammer and then introduced its wooden, serrated end to the fruit. It oozed on contact, great plumpy purple waves of juice, thick as cornstarch soup. With a quick hand, he brushed the fibrous husk from the table where it fell upon the newly-formed mountain of other gusk husks. But the pile was high, and this time this husk continued down the pile, sourced momentum from its fortunate spherical geometry, and rolled along the width of the room, round and round, until it found its journey interrupted by a door with a crack and an eye peering through.

Goog observed Humming. Centuries of humidity had asked of the door he was behind to sag, stretch, seal at the seams, and it was finally showing its weakness. For these sorts of observances, Goog preferred the use of a single eye – he found that depth perception choked his thoughts with distracting redundancies. Depthless, he was capable of viewing the trees without care for where one bark ended, the other began, objects out his bedroom window were as good as sitting on his lap, and it was a rare sort of layered delight to engage in debates about the contents of stars while the one you debated was supplanted in a tiny way on ones hand. Goog, with a certain strength of meditation and a second strength of his eyelids, focused his pupil of his one eye so that its photonic absorption was optimal for Humming observance.

“What, my dear Humming, are you thrumming and hammering at today,” said Goog to himself. He did not – could not – say it out loud, so embedded in that door crack was his eye that his lips kissed splinters from one of the panels. The oak tasted just like the Esquine Emerald of Dooloo Mungo, which, for a turn, he fell deep into recalling that evening of dance with the Jemerald Queen and how impressively low she had bowed her serpentine appearance when he was presented the Emerald to digest. Goog almost spoke to himself there and then the words of gratitude he had then said to the Jemerald Queen, but he forgot he could not, for he was kissing splinters.

Such is the function of eyes that Humming was all within Goog’s mind, but Goog nowhere to be found inside Humming’s. The collective efforts of the guz juice had formed a purple ring on the oak table. Humming set another guz, raised his hammer high. Humming de-oozed and disposed of guz number ninety-one, then set the hammer down and turned to the bowl of guz seeds. He began to count them out loud, but used the ancient numerical system of Bling Four which used click sounds to enumerate a base-one number system. He picked up each seed as he did, moving it from the bowl to the table. Humming was at his twentieth click for the number twenty-four, when he did not see Goog walk up behind him.

Goog had spent two years on the Sun of Leeiv studying the Bling Four system with hot urgency, hence by the time he had approached Humming and said to him, “Short on guz’s my hopeful Humming?” he had clicked his way up to ninety, and twice over to double check his work.

Humming could not click and converse, so he chose to leave one be. Humming picked up guz husk number twenty-one with a quick succession of five clicks. Goog was not so rude as to interrupt, so instead waited for Humming to finish by looking at all the small trees and bushes that had shrunk and blended together through the window. This season they should have been positively pluming, plumbed up with sap and swelling their ends with a violet iridescence of that characteristic guz texture. But not only could Goog not discern tree from tree, but he could not see a one icon bulge of the sharp purple guz bud. It deeply concerned him, so much that he frowned in a way he had not in a long while: by arching the corners of his mouth down.

Humming reached for guz forty-four, but a hand arrived first and settled a top all the guz husk’s like a blanket. Then it ever so gently felt around the pile until a husk suited its constraints, and suspended with a forefinger and thumb, lifted it high to a mouth. A device with a-thousand tiny sensory embeddings emerged from the mouth and began a series of very calculated lapping licks across it, all the while providing the owner of the device the information through a gumwall of cortical structure. With the analysis complete, the device retracted, back to the bowl was the guz flesh returned. Goog now spoke:

“My dearest Humming, I anticipate a great disquiet burbling in that head sponge of yours we call a mind. This is certainly – and I do not use such words offhandedly without careful consideration for the transformative effect they have on my words – this is certainly a guz drought of a proportion not seen since our moon was a wee mon and no more.”

Goog made an arrangement of clicking sounds with his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and he looked off to the distance at nothing but the inside of the back of his head, for he was in deep thought.

“Humming. I see nothing but the inside of the back of my head right now, for I am head-under a deep sea of thought. And as I return my attention to our world, I am still employing the function of my one eye, tuned to the signals of certain photons such that to me, your entire head is about the size of a house. But in this state, it is important for me to remain, so that I can tell you a tale.”

Humming had not allowed this entire display from Goog to go unpunished, but he was very concerned about losing the count of the forty-fourth guz husk in his head, so instead of using words he had asked of his arms to represent his displeasure for him. They did it in gesticulations and punches, some of which perturbed the air around Goog and made sound. Goog acknowledge Humming’s displeasure, “I see you are busy so I will make it quick.”

Goog scooped up a handful of guz husks and with a flick splayed them all onto the table. The landed in the perfect triangle formation.

“The opulent planet of Ha had an orbital path exactly in the shape of a three-sided polygon. This, the cause of a trifecta of suns which it found itself, as is rare, orbiting it, rather than it serving in the orbit of them. These suns, which we shall call Hag, Hug, and Hog, but are in fact referred to in various star guides as Mypoztics Three Eyes of Dawn (using the colloquial A, B, C prefix for delineation), these three suns, they materialized and de-materialized in perfect synchronization such that – as I have said – the planet drew a triangle as it moved among them.”

Goog now took one finger and with a pirouette the guz skins now portrayed a new shape, one with twenty even sides and called a dodecagon. Humming’s air punches had become less frequent by now, more interested, more sceptical of Goog’s performance. He held in his head, still, clicks for his fourty-four count.

“As Ha evolved its first major civilization, there came with those civilians first, a realization, and second a Great Greed. As greed is the result of an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, we know this civilization was still young in its ways. This youth it utilized to an extent that it rallied the Ha-ians as one and said through the voice of their elected leader Kla-Ha,

‘Ja Ha Uha Tra-La-La Uha Oha,’ which is Ha-in dialect for: ‘More suns and make it quick!’

“No operation on Ha had been done with such haste, and soon to the sky were sent twenty fireworks, full of an exact ratio of different elements but almost ninety-percent hydrogen. Three of them fizzled out due to poor launch conditions, but seventeen of them reached as far as where Hag, Hug, and Hog spun, and exploded in beautiful varicoloured novas that stung the eyes only a little when observed, and, once cleared, had seeded fresh new blinking stars.

“When this operation was complete, Kla-Ha raised their hand to the sky with all the Ha-ians watching from below, and said (and here I am directly translating):

“‘Look above! Look above! What great deeds we have done, for we have dodegonized our orbit, that is, almost seven-folded the corners of which our very planet moves. Does this not make us, fellow Ha-ians, a civilization most powerful?’

“And the Ha-ians applaud empowering speeches in a very interesting way: by making entirely no sound whatsoever. Complete silence can be very loud indeed.

“Kla-Ha allowed the silence to die out, before closing their speech, which was already dragging on by Ha-ian standards:

“‘I close, now, with a prediction and a proposition. I predict the Ha-ians are not done, and we will succeed our dodecagonal existence, on to hiliagons and soon we will have to conceive of numbers greater than nine-thousand to account for our growth.’

“And another wave of shaking silence.

“‘And as for my proposition: it warms me to know that I will not live to see the greatest achievements of the Ha-ians, for that means our growth is unbounded. But, I still believe that my function, while still of the alive and fleshed existence, is to function as the chattering figurehead of our ship, adorning it with purpose. This position I use, then, to propose: every task you do in your day, whether that by milking the oov-voos, strolling through the park, or the droll of quick-weeding – whatever it may be – keep in your mind how this very task functions to our great goal as a collective of achieving a vari-sided polygonal orbit. For all work, no matter its motion, is crucial for our goal.’

“Such a silence had not been heard across the planet of the Ha since as long as any could remember. Even the chirping squonks of the irds in the bushes, some say, died out for a few moments.”

During Goog’s tale, Humming had found a new solution to his problem, which was how he could both count and listen at the same time. He resolved to click on every third word of Goog’s. He paused after a chain of fifty-two consecutive clicks:

“Goog! You are a monk full of tales and I wont deny it, but to walk in here and roll my guz husks around with very impressive motions of your hand – this displeases me much. You cast around my labour, my guz clunking, my de-oozing of the guzian flesh, my seed scouring, with an equanimity to challenge a porous and ugly rock. I will not listen to your tale no more and I will have back my guz fleshes, thank you.”

And because words are not functional without the eyes to deliver their undertone, Humming scowled his deeply, then brushed Goog’s guz dodecagon back into the bowl – not without getting his hands a bit sticky – and marched to the door in six loud stamps of his feet. Half of himself was through when he turned, and said,

“See you this evening, Goog,” and with a slam was off to his room where he instantly succumbed to a two-hour afternoon nap. Goog cast his eyes from the door and back to the table all oozed. There was a lone guz husk, left behind in Humming’s haste, and it came to Goog as rather minute, due to the way he was using only one eye to look at it. He picked it up, put it in the pocket of his robe, and walked out while making a diddy with his feet to the tune of The Twelve Singing Orifices of Maaba.

Humming awoke one part curious, two parts furious. Do correct these ratios he folded all his linens and robes, twice over, and when he was done he dusted the shelves and the sills of which he had two. Successfully entirely furious, Humming finished by cleaning his bedside table, but when he pulled open the little drawer something rolled and fell and hit the floor. Humming looked down to see a guz seed by his foot, and a curiosity returned as his mind went to Ha and Hugs, and – and what were the others called?

The evening suns had almost entirely set by the time Humming was putting on his thickest robe, having finished counting all the guz seeds, and headed for the garden. Some wind ushered Humming back, back with great sweeping swooshes, and Humming bent his head down as an arrow, creating a path through the torrent. He folded the sides of his robe tight around himself, crossed his arms, and winced.

“Not in this weather,” thought Humming to himself, but out loud too, just a little. “Not in this weather at all, will I be able to sow the land.”

But Humming kept a strong sail and made it to the edge of the garden where the soil swelled here with all sorts of rooty growths and gooty rowths, and it smelled like a nose massage on a Sunday Trivet Dockanolly Medicine Retreat. Of the tens of rows of plants, Humming counted his way up to the seventh row, which took him a considerable bit of time. He placed two brown pieces of cloth on the wet soil, kneeled onto them, and then fumbled into his robe pocket until he found a pouch that did not rattle when shook. Working the soil with his two hands, he performed a terraforming miracle and created a well, emptied the contents of the pouch into the small pit. Humming hummed some tune as he did this, but the wind was too loud for it to be heard by anyone, not even himself.

Then Humming scowled.

Before him, he saw a very familiar symbol, but he could not place yet, why it felt familiar to him. The well he had created was about twice the width of his hand and lifted at the edges like a crater for a meteor, were it the size of a pea. In the well, his ninety-one guz shells were there, but they formed a most interesting structure: entirely equidistant and symmetric no matter the degree of your head tilt. The word came not from Humming, but from a higher-plane, transmitted to him by great forces of the anterior and posterior dimensions. It’s syllables for far too much to count, let alone conceive, and it was sharp at the ends but soft at its start. The transmission was thus: enneacontakaihena.

And as quick as the eight-syllabic message had arrived, it was gone, and its accomplice was a great gust, which blew apart the guz husks into a formless mess. Humming was so struck with a realization that he left the guz husks unprotected there in the soil and ran back to the monastery in long strides, leaving behind his two knee pads.

Goog was on the table, his one meal for the day on his chair. The well-mannered monk had provided his table guest with the a fork, a knife, and draped them with a napkin to catch any spills. “Dine on me!” commanded Goog, just as Humming burst through the door. Goog did not hear a thing, because the doorway had three doors. Humming burst through the other two, and Goog heard him coming this time, but he did not drop his hands from the air, did not open his eyes.

“Humming, my guzzly compatriot, you possess a quality of character that is none too dissimilar from a Norgan Battering Ram. You know that?”

His mind aflame, Humming ran up to Goog and listed off a series of noises, and closed with a call to action and then this question: “Goog! Goog! You must tell me! The Ha-ians. What happened to them? Goog?”

Goog was not one to enjoy being interrupted from being a meal, but also was not one to get angry about being interrupted from being a meal. He sat up from the table, said a polite word of excuses to the food on his chair, and crossed his legs thrice and a fourth and met Humming with only one eye open.

“Humming, first I must tell you: from where I sit you are no larger than this candle on the table, for I am completely depth-devoid – but! Come closer, for this is not a kind way to discuss with you the matters of the Ha-ians.”

Humming stepped forward until he was at the edge of the table, his breathing heavy still from the running he did to get here.

“That is much better,” said Goog. He reached behind him and into a back pocket of his robe, and pulled out a pouch. He untied the its string, and inverted it in the air, dumping the contents to the floor. The contents unloaded like a waterfall unfrozen, but the load it released was far larger than what could have possibly been inside a pouch one-hundred times its size. And still the flow did not stop.

“Observe,” said Goog. And Humming observed, his face the depiction of planetary tectonics under great shock. For what came from that bag was not anything but tiny smalls spheres of burning light, each alight in slightly different hue of red or blue.

Humming babbled and then spoke: “Goog, are those suns?”

And they were suns, but ever so tiny.

“Some call these The Suns But Ever So Tiny. That is not their true name, but the name given to those who do not know their history.”

“And what is their history?” asked Humming, but already he knew the answer before he asked it.

“The Ha-ians,” said Goog, “were entirely greedy for reasons I have already explained. The greed, some might argue, was a successful evolutionary trait – or quality – for they achieved a task that none have ever achieved before – and likely none will ever achieve again.”

Humming was as quiet as a the petals of a pear tree flower in spring bloom. He only watched on as around their feet the floor filled with tons of suns, but ever so tiny.

“The task?” And Goog got up from the table now, carefully stepped around some suns, and walked a few paces away from the table. “All of them, every last sun, they created thousands upon thousands and soon they had an orbit that no arrangement of sounds could say, for it was such a large orbit that to say its name would take a lifetime. Rather, they had to invent an entirely new concept to deal with their orbital greatness.”

And at this, Goog lifted a finger to the air in front of him, pointed it directly at Humming, and drew a perfect circle into the air. Humming measured it with his eyes as it was drawn and, yes, it was a perfect circle. The pouch, which Goog had left on the table, continued to poor. Humming eyed it and Goog saw this concern.

“Humming, my dear companion of the universal folds, do you know why we have a guz sparsity? Do you know why – every season, we always have a guz sparsity?”

Humming did not answer this question but asked another: “What happened to the Ha-ians? What did you do?”

“I travelled, Humming, to meet Kla-Ha’s one-hundredth ancestor, who had overseen the Ha-ian’s Great Gathering of The Stars,” said Goog. “He was extremely pale and sickly when I arrived, but was in a spirit of great pride for the final star was being collected now and would be put in its place. When I arrived, I warned Hecto-Kla-Ha, but they would not listen to reason, for reasons I have already explained about cortical development of their species. A great shame.”

And it struck Humming that he knew it all now, he saw the picture in its full and now knew and understood. Goog now saw Humming too, tiny as ever in his vision, and knew that Humming knew. He concluded the speech anyway, not for Humming, but for any higher entities that might be listening: