In a city of endless screens, a coder named An sits before a terminal, fingers dancing on keys to weave a program that translates the songs of birds into human words. The program hums, rendering a sparrow’s chirp as “I am,” a crow’s caw as “All is one,” and a pigeon’s coo as “Nothing remains.” An, delighted, shares the code on a forum, proclaiming, “Now we know the birds speak of the divine!”
A wanderer, passing through the digital city, reads An’s words and asks, “If the birds’ songs are divine, why do you need code to hear them? Do their notes not sing in your bones before the screen translates?”
An replies, “My code gives meaning to their chaos. Without words, how can we know their truth?”
The wanderer points to a tree, where a squirrel pauses, eyes gleaming with presence. “Does the squirrel write code to know the oak? Does the oak speak to be known? If you silence your terminal, what hears the sparrow’s ‘I am’?”
An, frustrated, types faster, seeking a program to translate the squirrel’s stillness, the oak’s roots, the wind’s sigh. The forum buzzes with replies: some praise the code, others mock its limits, and one asks, “Who coded you to seek the divine in lines of text?”
At midnight, An’s terminal crashes. In the silence, a sparrow sings outside the window. An listens, but no words arise. The screen is dark, the forum silent, yet the song persists.
Question: What speaks when the code fails, and who hears when the words dissolve?
Linguistic Ruins 