I once traveled to a world where the blob-like inhabitants only had one sense organ — the mouth. Everything went through that one orifice to be perceived. Even their atrophied hands were dull and had little feeling, only enough to grasp whatever they came across and lift it to their mouths.

 

They were indifferent to sounds and could not hear you if you spoke, but if you were to bake your words into a cracker, they would devour this with relish then cock their nearly featureless heads, as if considering.

 

Their customary greeting for each other was a long, open-mouthed kiss, which I was embarrassed to watch. Then I realized there was nothing sexual about it; this was the way they recognized each other and shared information. In fact, they did not even reproduce sexually. I wasn't sure why a particularly large individual would suddenly vomit up a small and nearly identical creature. Then I was told that once they had eaten a certain amount, they must give birth. This was quite a large quantity over the course of the creature's lifetime, as they were not prolific breeders. They did not eliminate, so giving birth to another creature was the only way they could lose some of their mass.

 

Conversation as we know it was unknown to them. Some crackers contained sounds, poetry or music; other crackers delivered pictures, smells, and even moving images, directly to their minds. They spent most of their time baking and eating these crackers, seasoned with their own saliva, for this, apparently, was what carried the information they wanted to convey. Then they would sit for hours, rapt, experiencing the information contained in the cracker. Later, they would waddle inside their huts to bake another batch in response. I tried some of the crackers, but my brain could not translate them into the information that the creatures were seeing and hearing. My interpreter, a wrinkled individual —  a throwback of sorts —  who alone of the group had actual ears and could speak a language with which I was familiar, had to describe them to me.

 

After a while of listening to him, I noticed several recurring themes. He always described the contents of the crackers as the ancestors dancing, or the ancestors singing, or an artwork of the ancestors. I didn't understand what he meant, and my grasp of our one common tongue was not sufficient to grasp its elaborations. But according to my research, the creatures had evolved (devolved, some said) from a long-limbed people who had many senses, and I guessed that these were the ancestors that were the creatures' source of inspiration.

 

Why, I asked my interpreter, did their crackers not contain stories of their own people doing things. Why always the ancestors? It made a gurgling sound deep in its throat and uttered a word so rude I won't translate it. Our interview was over for the day.

 

Most of the globulous creatures moved awkwardly, when they moved at all, but I noticed one whose stout body constantly undulated, so I thought of it as "Twitchy."

 

On my fourth day studying the colony, Twitchy jiggled from side to side, waved its tiny hands, made a little turn, and repeated facing the new direction. It did this so many times, while its fellows sat rapt absorbing the information of their crackers, that I wondered what might be wrong with it. I asked my interpreter, who of course could not see this. He replied that I should not waste his time describing impossible things.

 

Later that day, Twitchy galumphed from its hut with a batch of crackers and distributed them to any person it bumped into. The creatures consumed their crackers, sat still for a moment, and then, one by one, began to glide around the area more quickly than usual, bumping into each other and kissing each one they bumped, until one of them kissed Twitchy. The creature pushed Twitchy into the center of the group and they surrounded it, all kissing it, as I first thought, until I stood for a better look and realized they were devouring the baker of the most recent crackers.

 

I had sworn not to intervene, though I had also been told that these creatures were peaceful and never harmed one another. But I couldn't do much for poor Twitchy. When the crowd parted, nothing remained of it but a greasy stain.

 

Why? I asked my interpreter. Why would they do such a thing? At first, he didn't believe me when I explained what the others had done. Then, curious, he sought out one of the remaining crackers Twitchy had distributed. He sat in a lump and chewed for a while, then flew into a rage.

 

"Ugly!" he said. The creature I called Twitchy had shown them something that was not art at all, didn't even show the ancestors, but an ugly, squat creature attempting to dance. He spat out the remnants of the cracker and mashed it into the ground with his flat lower appendages. I asked for clarification. What my interpreter described sounded like one of the creatures themselves, moving in just the way Twitchy had the day before. I could only guess that what Twitchy had shown the others that put them in a murderous rage was himself, doing something besides sitting and contemplating the contents of crackers. I was never able to understand just what was taboo about this. But later, compiling my notes, I theorized that the creatures themselves did not create. All of the crackers, as described to me, contained familiar themes, which matched well-documented works, such as certain ritual dances of the more elegant-bodied ancestors.

 

I wondered if Twitchy understood the peril of showing them something new, of having the audacity not only to create, but to show the creatures a vision of themselves. I can only conclude that some creatures are too alien for me to understand, and I dared not read too much into what I saw.