The Message

Seamus Finney was not, and never had been, a popular boy. He was precisely the type of boy that lends himself to bullying and shunning on the part of his peers, and for this reason had spent most of his formative years being bullied and shunned on the part of his peers.

Seamus's predilection toward social ostracization made his current situation, which for anyone else would have been quite an enjoyable one indeed, rather awkward and unsettlingly reminiscent of his first and last time on stage, in sixth grade, most closely in that he was pretty sure he needed to vomit.

For today, for the only time in his life thus far, Seamus was a celebrity. He had heroically manned the deep space detection arrays when the message had been received; valiantly thought to record said message, thinking that deep space messages were precisely the type of thing his manager may want to see; triumphantly brought said message to said manager with a flourish, who's gasp of astonishment was reacted to by the rest of the men in the room by rushing over and beginning to talk about what they saw, and how it made them feel, louder and louder until one couldn't possibly hear any other and all that could be picked out among the din was the odd "aliens" and few "Seamus"s.

The message was from aliens. The message was nonsense. The message was from Mars. The message was fake. The message real. The message was a song. The message was a question. The message was many things, depending on who you asked, but one thing that most everyone agreed on was this: the message was untranslatable.

Once this was decided, Seamus's celebrity took the inevitable route taken by most people's celebrity, namely fading into oblivion when one was no longer interesting. As interest in the message waned, so did interest in Seamus, much to his relief and comfort in his workplace.