00:00They arrived with promises of utopia. Their ships, like polished river stones, hung silent in our skies. They called themselves
00:08the benefactors, and they offered us everything, cures for all diseases, an end to poverty, and technology that bordered on
00:15magic. In return, they asked for only one thing, our art, all of it, every painting, every symphony, every poem,
00:23every film.
00:23They would preserve it, they said, in a grand cosmic library, safe for all eternity. It seemed like a small
00:29price to pay for paradise, so we gave it to them. We watched as our museums were emptied, our libraries
00:35stripped bare, our music silenced. But a few of us started to notice something strange. The benefactors never created anything
00:43themselves, they only consumed.
00:44And then we found the old records, the ones from a civilization that came before us, who also met the
00:50benefactors. They had a different name for them, the silence.
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