Reconstructed from a persistent thermal residual on the aft-quarter receiver. Carrier is a colony-generation node-emitter, unmaintained, drifting in power. Gaps are marked. Nothing has been interpolated: where the signal is gone, the line is left broken.
── CARRIER ACQUIRED ────────────────────── drift −0.4%/yr
── LANGUAGE: recognised. Earth-standard, archaic register.
── AUTHENTICATION: none. No provenance. No ledger anchor.
── AGE OF TRACE AT RECOVERY: 4 yr 2 mo
SEGMENT A — repeating, oldest layer
to whoever opened the road ▮▮▮▮ we are still here
we are the people of the ▮▮▮▮▮▮ we made landfall and we have kept the count ▮▮▮▮ our children are born here and are well
we do not ask to be taken ▮▮▮▮ we ask to be answered
to whoever opened the road: we are still here
SEGMENT B — appended, later hand, later power curve
▮▮▮▮ the sky has been going out since our grandparents
we have kept the count and the count does not ▮▮▮▮ we are not mistaken and we are not the first to say it ▮▮▮▮
if this reaches Earth
do not open the road wider
▮▮▮▮ we say this knowing what it costs us to say ▮▮▮▮ we would be answered ▮▮▮▮ we would rather be heard
── CARRIER LOST ─────────────────────────
Working notes
The two segments are not one message. Segment A repeats on a fixed cycle and is worn — it has been transmitting a long time. Segment B sits on a later power curve and interrupts the cycle, which means somebody went out to the mast and changed what it was saying.
That is the part this desk keeps returning to. A people who have been calling for help for two generations climbed the mast and added a line telling the help not to come the way it would have to come.
Nobody aboard can yet explain how a four-year-old trace reached a receiver on this side of a road that had not been opened. The question is entered as open. It is not resolved by this reconstruction and should not be presented as though it were.
Source unresolved. Provenance none. Entered as a working reconstruction only.