Challenge #01678-D217: More Than You Need to Know

"Of course it's a work of Art. Nobody understands what it is. -- Anon Guest

It was large. It was made of an assortment of materials. It was in the centre of the room, and therefore important. And it moved in the breeze. Sails and counterbalances shaped and painted like planets swung about in orbits devised by, apparently, one of the few minds who could understand five-dimensional mathematics[1].

Alas, this was a Graveworld. The society these people had built had also collapsed under its own weight. Or its own social burdens. Whatever had wiped them out, it left the buildings and the infrastructure mostly intact. And amazingly free of attempts by Nature to overwhelm it. Erosion had done its work to some of it, but the plant life stayed away.

"I've cracked it," cheered B'naz, their expert in xenoliteracy. "I've got their language and phonemic encoding."

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