Sunday 5 February 2017

29.09.2649 - Guided by a Star


Distance: 12.03 light years from Earth | Content Flag: Public

Great news – the Visitors have finally responded!

As we approached Epsilon Indi, we detected a direct transmission. They know where we are and that we are trying to catch up with them. The signal has a different structure to the one that they sent to the Cetians. It is much shorter and contains a lot of repetition, most probably for redundancy. It does include some of the significant keys that I used in our message to them, which leads me to believe that they have at least partially translated what we sent them.

They have confirmed their destination as Beta Hydri and that their presence there is in response to a Sun Dragon. This indicates once again that they have some way of tracking and predicting the creatures’ movements across the gulf of space. How they are able to do so would be very useful knowledge, although how I would bring that information home is still unknown.

With my reduced abilities I haven’t fully translated their message yet, and I’ve found no explanation as to why they took so long to respond. Their message appears to be a similar invitation to the one they made to the Cetians, to join them in their hunt. In my message I made them aware that we knew of the Sun Dragons, had encountered them and survived. I’m sure they would find our data interesting, but should I be so certain? After all, they have clearly been persecuting the creatures for some time and have weapons capable of defeating them.

From what I’ve ascertained so far, the bulk of the message is a series of puzzles. It seems that as I solve them, I gain a little more understanding of their language. When I send the responses, they advance the same understanding of ours. We planned for this during the mission preparation before we left Earth, but due to the damage I’ve suffered, I’ve changed the plan. Rather than try to correspond in English, I will communicate in my natural abstraction code. It saves me a layer of translation and mission control will still be able to gain meaning from the communications. This is when I need my full capability the most, but I can only work with what I have.

If the Visitors maintain their current vector, then the course correction as we pass by the central star is the last we’ll need to make.

2 comments: