The signal, in its stark, mathematical simplicity, was a profound shock to the inhabitants of the garden. Their first response was to try and understand it on their own terms. They treated it as a new kind of text, a new kind of art form. The critics, with their powerful analytical minds, searched for hidden patterns, for a deep grammar, for some kind of meaning in the sequence of pulses. The artists, with their boundless creativity, tried to find the beauty in it. They translated the signal into music, into sculpture, into dance, hoping to find some kind of aesthetic resonance. But the signal resisted all their attempts. It was not a text to be read, nor a work of art to be admired. It was a lock, and they did not have the key. The first response was a failure, but it was a necessary failure. It taught them that their own tools, their own ways of knowing, were not enough. To understand the other, they would have to become something other themselves.