They did not know what to do.

The beings turned the disk over and poked, maybe even prodded at it, examining it with their inquisitive minds. They took a stick of an indescribable material and turned it over, showing the disk to be gold not only on one side, but both. They had never in their life seen an object with such a glossy, metallic finish on their planet.

The creatures that inhabited the planet did not have names, though many would have called them Algernons, if they would have been named. But no one had been around to name them. Their faces were indescribable, but yet if you were to describe them, it probably would be a mix between Liam Neeson and Hello Kitty, though probably more akin to the latter. This planet was a desolate place—if one were to believe it real. A bland and bare desert stretched on for miles and miles, like every boring depiction of Mars or the ever-romanticized Tatooine of every nerd’s favorite movie series. The peoples of this planet had never seen something so advanced before. The occasional rock or thing interested them, but nothing this shiny.

It was found beneath a red rock, one like all other rocks on this planet. Two of these creatures had been walking around aimlessly when they tripped, and from beneath the rock a gleam of golden light appeared. They first shielded their eyes, as the sun was much too bright and shot right into their corneas—or the alien equivalent—and straight through to attempt to burn their retinas. One of the beings ran towards the sight of the disk and picked it up. After staring at it for a second, they hurled it at the ground as hard they could.  

CLINK  

It hit the ground and bounced off—yes, you guessed it—another rock and skittered off across the brownish-reddish-yellowish dirt. Not so long after, the creatures of this planet gathered around in interest.

One of them picked it up. Looking quizzically upon its grooves, the being was trying to wrap its head around it. It is impossible to put into words what exactly it thought, so I won’t, but as simple as it is, I think the being knew not of its origin or what was said on its paper label. They had no clue it had the most beautiful symphony the world ever knew resting in its crests and valleys. Or perhaps a lost Beatles album rested in its grooves. Or maybe on this disk were sounds from a distant green and blue planet from another galaxy? Anyway, there’s no way of knowing, as there was no technology to transcribe its meaning nor play its contents, even if they were to play it. 

The communities of this world were odd. There were no towns. No hierarchies. No kings.  No queens. No form of government. No tribes. The beings just kind of existed. They had no wants or needs, no food or water to be consumed to satisfy any of their feelings. For all it’s worth, I don’t know if they have feelings at all—well, at least what the reader of this story may recall as feelings, or the human understanding of what emotions are. But they did move about on the planet and could look at and touch things, so I guess they must feel in some sort of way.

One of the beings is now chewing on the golden disk, or maybe sucking? The beings of this planet do have a mouthlike shape on their body, but there is no way of truly knowing the biological term for whatever it is. They seem to be enjoying the texture of it in  their … mouth … but are unsure if this is its proper function.

While this exciting scene is occurring, another being saw its chewing of the disk and got jealous. Or maybe it was not jealousy—after all, do they have feelings? Are they cognizant enough to recognize how to feel at all? Anyway, the being rushed over and yoinked it out of the other being’s face-hole and started chomping down on it as it had seen its fellow freak do just moments before. One would think that the original chomper of the disk would race to get its teething ring back, but it just sat there. Motionless. Not even acknowledging what happened. 

It is unclear what the fate of this foreign disc will be. Over the next few weeks, it may have every one of its functions tested. One of the beings may throw it and the other one may catch it, discovering the concept of a frisbee for the first time on this planet. In another moment, one might find that they can carry around a rock on the disc, like a 4-star Cracker Barrel waitress, and may learn to be this planet’s first full-service dining staff. Maybe one of them will claim ownership and viewing rights over the disc and become ruler of all the other things on this planet.

Or perhaps, society may develop over decades and centuries to the point where this disc ends up in government storage or in a history museum.  Maybe it collects dust in the archives of some place for many years, until funding is raised to study its significance or purpose. One being, their name again indescribable, may find that the disc has grooves, see the little variations existing in these grooves under what we may call a microscope, and dedicate their life’s work to devising the meaning or function of these variations. They’ll analyze it day in and day out. Pick every piece apart, finding more and more out about it each day. They’ll spend late nights in the lab, recording and transcribing the differences in the grooves, returning to their apartment late at night. They’ll open the white paneled door to an empty room, no one in the kitchen, no lights on at all. Maybe they’ll have a microwave or some other machine to cook instant-meals-for-1 at the late hours of their chilling night cycle. Though probably not, unless they somehow devolved into beings needing food after centuries of modernization. After, the thing will go to bed and maybe cry themselves to sleep wishing for something more. 

They’ll wake up the next day, ready to go back to the lab for another day of finding something out while feeling closer and closer to nothing. They’ll be sitting, transcribing a notable ninety-two micrometer distance in elevation from the next, and realize, right then and there, that they don’t want to be doing this anymore. They’ll get up from their chair in a small basement lab of the potential government archives and want to do something. They’ll get on the bright white elevator made of glass, gleaming too brightly for the eyes due to the fluorescence of the bulbs, and go to the top floor of the 1,590-floor building where they work. Who knows, maybe the materials of this world can sustain such a height? 

They’ll sit for a long time, though maybe not too long—alien elevator technology is probably better than ours—and watch as the floors pass by, with each indescribable being passing at such a speed that they’ll never be able to make out exactly who each one is or if they knew them. They’ll reflect on their life, how solitary it is. How little they really know their fellow race. How little love they have had in their life. The lack of meaning, trying to sink it all into one thing, one disk visually devoid of meaning that seemingly held the key to knowing. Knowledge was something worth following, they thought, but now it just felt wrong. It was just for the sake of killing time instead of idling. Life had something: a disk. But now, it was all too much or all too little to handle.   

The box chimed, and they entered out. They climbed a stairway to a door miraculously unlocked and opened it up to the bright light of the sun. The white top of the building was so bright, so fucking bright, but it did not matter to that studied Algernon. They walked out towards the edge of the building and looked over. It took no hesitation at all. They stuck out one foot …

Oh well, I’m getting ahead of myself. The rocks are still red. The planet is near empty. And somewhere, a creature is still chewing on the disk, not knowing if it was made of gold and not knowing about the information that may very well rest in its grooves.