I Love Lucy, and Harmoniums

My little sister is one of the coolest humans on the face of the Earth. She knows something about everything. She offers up her random knowledge every once in a while. It might be about some weird breed of dog or some statistic about how many plastic water bottles are drifting in the Pacific ocean currents. She just remembers every bit of information that is remotely interesting to her.

Last night she was working on an art assignment and I was pretending to study for hydrology, but really I was babbling to her about how I can't wait for them to find fossils on Mars and how many questions about evolution and biology and the entire universe will be answered at that moment, etc. I didn't actually think she was listening. Then, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, she pulled a book out of nowhere (actually, it was on the table right in front of her). It was The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut. She flipped right to chapter 8 and read this to me:

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There are creatures in the deep caves of Mercury. The song their planet sings is important to them, for the creatures are nourished by vibrations. They feed on mechanical energy. The creatures cling to the singing walls of their caves.
...The creatures in the caves look very much like small and spineless kites. They are diamond-shaped, a foot high and eight inches wide when fully mature. They have no more thickness than the skin of a toy balloon.
Each creature has four feeble suction cups -- one at each of its corners. These cups enable it to creep, something like a measuring worm, and to cling, and to feel out the places where the song of Mercury is best. Having found a place that promises a good meal, the creatures lay themselves against the wall like wet wallpaper.
...There is no way in which one creature can harm another, and no motive for one's harming another. Hunger, envy, ambition, fear, indignation, religion, and sexual lust are irrelevant and unknown. The creatures have only one sense: touch.
They have weak powers of telepathy. The messages they are capable of transmitting and receiving are almost as monotonous as the song of Mercury. They have only two possible messages. The first is an automatic response to the second, and the second is an automatic response to the first.
The first is, "Here I am, here I am, here I am."
The second is, "So glad you are, so glad you are, so glad you are."

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That just brightened my entire day! I wish humans greeted each other that way. This book has jumped to the top of my reading list! I can't wait to start it!

And I have to say to Lucy, even though she doesn't read my blog, I am so glad you are, so glad you are, so glad you are my sister! Marie, I'm so glad you are my sister, too. And to prove it, I will put up a picture of all of us back when we were really cute, almost as cute as spineless Mercurial kites.