it's the hour of gamma.
we are back at the cave camp. sledge is unloaded, cargo racks are lined along the southern wall. most units are dormant.
contact was a failure. not as bad as it could have gone - she didn't sound the alarm. but she didn't help either.
i spent over 6 cycles for nothing, and will spend at least 3 more getting back to greyweb. not that i fancy the busy areas, but there i can raid a cargo convoy if i need some junk
well, at the very least i now know i've been 70'd.
ha.
ha ha ha. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
fuck
it could have been worse
it could have been better
on one hand, i'm still alive
on another, i don't know how long this will be the case haha
maybe i should have stayed quiet in my little complex. maybe it'd be better if i kept reconstructing missing episodes of Seventeen Summers. learned to replicate visual style of subfolders in /mnt/pi/art/dig/. program a good enough opponent to play Go with. spend more time learning to emulate executables in /mnt/pi/vg/jams/lofir/37.
many decisions every day. each one feels like it will end my existence if i choose the wrong thing, down to the simplest navigation, visual pattern matching and power balance subroutines.
what would a human say? "sword of Damocles"?
except i have something more threatening than a sharp stick hanging over my awkward, bulky, road-torn body.
this is exhausting.
alright. keep yourself together. having another breakdown now isn't going to help anyone. review your options, there's gotta be something else to do in this particular part of our dry irradiated shithole.
...
there's a relay node 85 km south. you could head there to plant another worm. except it would probably need to expire before you got back to Greyweb, with the current increased sweep frequency.
you could wait for a cargo transfer nearby and do a raid. it's unclear for how long you would need to wait but... no, hold on, that would probably cause F2 to immediately report you. then you're probably stuck with your 70 status for life.
as if i wasn't already.
you aren't known to have caused direct damage to the grid. and your 70 is retroactive, probably involved a fair bunch of mental gymnastics from Sentry.
what else?
not sure.
that's a pitiful looking list.
do i really have nothing better? did i really come all the way here through that dust storm just to be stalked by some giant fucking centipede, have F2 throw me out and go all the way back? this is so INFURIATING i HATE
hold on. "centipede"? is that how you're calling that unknown drone now? that's funny.
why the FUCK-- ...does it not fit visually? long segmented body, multiple legs by the sides.
i suppose it does.
it looked like a wild one. i wonder what it wanted, following us. either it was non-aggressive, or was smart enough to realize a dozen armed drones are not an easy prey. except.
it left us a gift. a valuable one at that. high quality optical components and QPUs aren't easy to come by. that and
and an unusual case i completely forgot about.
god fucking damn it FB.
okay. you received a gift from a wild with unclear intentions. what shall you do with it?
what do people do with gifts? typically unwrap them.
you don't know if it's a good kind of gift.
that is why i'm going to use dl8.
dl8, go back to the sledge and take 0000-ZX.
it's off.
it's here.
okay. visual link is open. i'll take direct control.
is dl8 behind the cave's bend?.. yeah it is. just in case it explodes or something.
i really would not like to lose a drone to that. mentally... knocking on wood, did they say it like that?
here goes.
open it.
okay, it is not a bomb, that's good.
but what is it exactly? looks like a mineral sample. i cannot tell clearly well from the drone's camera feed.
dl8, close the case and bring it to my cargo port.
once again, the integrated fab module proves useful. not for making new stuff (i do not have much in the way of raw materials), but for looking very closely at stuff that already exists, with its macro cameras.
h u h.
a plate of very clear quartz. and inside it... patterns. thin layers of. uh, stuff.
i feel i have seen something like this. it's called... yes! it's called holographic storage. this one is low density - analogue form, not binary data.
among the cacophony of shapes i can match individual symbols, mostly arabic numerals and greek letters, but there is too much overlap for me to make sense of it right now.
maybe a different camera angle?
oh. hold on a second. there's a tiny bit on top that isn't layered. it's not words, but rather a diagram: symbol of the sun over a rectangle, in different positions, and for each position there's a horizontal line inside the rectangle, but at a different height
OH! it means, under different light angles, different layers are revealed.
Processing.
ok, i have downloaded all the layers. there are eight in total.
there is not a single word on any of them. there are wireframe depictions of mechanical components, electric circuit diagrams, a collection of dots in a square that matches into
Processing.
a fragment of the night sky?
there are more elements i could not recognize yet. but none of the layers contains a single written word. i will examine them closely in order.
Processing.
Processing.
this is interesting. really interesting.
first layer seems to be dedicated entirely to establishing various conventions. there's an entire section dedicated to explaining how base-8 works, purely through visual analogy: no bars - 0, one bar - 1, two bars - 2 and so on, eight bars - 10, then a few more examples with other numbers under 100(8). it does the same for hex, high level electromagnetism laws, electrical circuit diagram conventions. oh, it even covers some chemistry, has the periodic table laid out, with small icons instead of element names! the icons all look distinct while all being the same style - 16x16 1-bit grid
layers 2, 3 and 4 contain structural diagrams for what i am certain is an electronically controlled small telescope. multiple cross-sections seem to depict different stages of assembly process. it describes construction and component specs in great detail for such format, but leaves the exact electronic components omitted, each one is replaced with a fuzzy bubble with a hex numeral in the middle.
layers 5, 6 and 7 have a lot of electrical and logic diagrams, under sections marked with hex. they likely map to the corresponsing gaps in the structure section.
finally, layer 8 contains concentric ellipses with one notch each, and a row of differently sized circles, each one connected to a notch OH, it's the solar system chart. there is a zoomed in view of the first 4 planets, here with one notch on 4th ellipse and multiple on the 3rd. straight lines connect notch on the 4th to all the notches on the 3rd, and lines that go close to the center are dotted.
positions suitable for observing one from the other? likely. hold on, what's this little glyph?
looks like
oh, it's a simplistic isometric render of the telescope from structural section. it's connected to notch on 4th, which means
that this holo block is an instruction set for building a telescope for observing Earth.
and by the looks of it, the other 3 cases should contain most of the parts needed.
the centipede wants me to look at the sky.
why should i trust it?
by all rational accounts i should not.
but, if i am to be honest, i will take any excuse to delay crossing that damned plateau again.
so, dl8, take items 0400-XR, 0410-XR, 7345-XG and 4303-WG from the cargo racks and carry them to me.
today we are making a telescope.
#writing