The audience once again immersed themselves in the music as it approached a climax. The musician’s mind had propelled the cosmic camera outside the bounds of known space so its frame captured the entire universe, reducing the Milky Way’s galaxy cluster to a speck of dust. They waited intently for the finale, but the grand chorus suddenly dropped out, leaving behind only a lonely piano-like sound, distant and empty.

“A return to the thinker on the island?” someone asked.

Clayderman shook his head. “No, it’s a completely different melody.”

Then the cosmic chorus struck up again, but after a brief moment gave way to the piano solo. The two melodies alternated like this for a long while.

Clayderman listened intently, and suddenly realized something: “The piano is playing an inversion of the chorus!”

The US president nodded. “Or maybe it’s the mirror of the chorus. A cosmic mirror. That’s what it is.”

The music had clearly reached a denouement, and now the piano’s inverted melody proceeded alongside the chorus, riding conspicuously on its back but gloriously harmonious.

The Chinese president said, “It reminds me of the Silvers style of mid-twentieth-century architecture, in which, in order to avoid impact on the surrounding environment, buildings were clad entirely in mirrors. Reflections were a way of putting them in harmony with their surroundings as well as self-expression.”

“Yes,” the secretary general answered thoughtfully. “When civilization reaches a certain level, it can express itself through its reflection of the cosmos.”

The piano abruptly shifted to the uninverted theme, bringing it into unison with the chorus. The sun music had finished.

ODE TO JOY

“A perfect concert,” the mirror said. “Thank you to all who enjoyed it. And now I will be going.”

“Wait a moment!” shouted Clayderman. “We have one last request. Could you play a human song on the sun?”

“Yes. Which one?”

The heads of state glanced around at each other. “Beethoven’s Fate Symphony?”2 asked the German premier.

“No, not Fate,” said the US president. “It’s been proven that humanity is powerless to strangle fate. Our worth lies in that even knowing that fate can’t be resisted and death will have the final victory, we still devote our limited life span to creating beautiful lives.”

“Then ‘Ode to Joy,’” said the Chinese president.

The mirror said, “You all sing. I’ll use the sun to transmit the song out into the universe. It will be beautiful, I assure you.”

More than two hundred voices joined in “Ode to Joy,” their song passed by the mirror to the sun, which again began vibrating to send powerful EM waves into all reaches of space.

“Joy, thou beauteous godly lightning,

Daughter of Elysium,

Fire drunken we are ent’ring

Heavenly, thy holy home!

Thy enchantments bind together,

What did custom stern divide,

Every man becomes a brother,

Where thy gentle wings abide.”3