Kairi did not recognize the symbols on the side of the fleeter. They were bizarre glyphs, always contorting at obtuse angles, meandering across the scow’s hull and wrapping back around on themselves. If they were words, Kairi could not guess what they might mean. They must be art.
She had docked at the only bay she could find, at the stern. It would be a long way until she found what she was looking for. The fleeter had been running in low-power mode. From time to time the engines would pulse, just enough to keep it from drifting further into space. When she first picked up the signals, she thought there might have been someone piloting it. But she received no replies when she tried talking back. It was rare to encounter this sort of idling technology—no one expects to abandon a ship and return to it, so why bother coding that possibility? Kairi fidgeted with her holster. She had left her skiff in standby mode, in case she needed a quick exit.
She didn’t like to contract with Amalgam, but they had promised her the inverter modules she needed. And since she worked alone she wouldn’t have to split the upfront cash payment with anyone else. Hawkers will never survive if they work together, she thought to herself. She couldn’t say why this was the case, but no one ever asked.
The other reason why she took this job was the signals. She had started to pick up interference across multiple channels. They could have been coincidental, but they were never random, always in steady, rhythmic bursts. When she listened to all of them simultaneously they came together into polyphony, harmonizing with each other. She could see patterns. She just didn’t know what they meant.
Kairi liked to work in silence. The few times she worked with a crew she couldn’t handle the constant noise over the comms. It distracted her. She liked to listen to her work, and she liked to listen to the scows she worked on. They all sounded different. The engines all breathed differently. Kairi preferred microgravity, because she didn’t like to listen to the sounds of her footsteps. She quietly floated through the hallways. Her body buzzed with the resonance of the fleeter. It felt soothing.
She wouldn't get to listen to the ship for very long. Amalgam wanted whatever engine parts she could salvage: servos, distributors, throttles, sensors, thrusters. If a ship is on the edge of a system, that means it could travel further. So its parts were more valuable. Kairi always hoped she’d one day find an off-system craft. She wouldn’t have to contract Amalgam, she’d just steal it and leave. Everything can be fixed, she believed. Eventually one of these scows will be the thing that can take me out of this system, fix me.
The server room blinked blue and red. None of the consoles were receiving enough power to turn on, and Kairi had neglected to bring a portable generator. But she still could run the datacores into her suit’s processing unit. She checked her scanner. The signals had never been stronger. What was this ship trying to say? She plugged into the drives. When she tried to skim the data, she found that she couldn’t even begin to understand it. It was all noise. But it had the same precision as the signals. It couldn’t have been an attempt to erase the logs—no one would go through the trouble of scrambling the data when they could delete it all together. Even her processor couldn’t read the data, because there was simply nothing to read. It was like art. How could you read a painting?
She remembered the signals. She had tried every code and algorithm she knew of. She could intuitively perceive structure within the aleatoricism. She knew there was a message. It occurred to her now that she had only ever tried to read the data. She expected language. But language is not the only phenomenon of structure. There was no need to decipher the message, because the code was the message. It was not to be read. It had to be seen and heard.
She asked her processor to assign each datum to a point on a graph. She translated the code into physical space. And she saw it there. The ripples of the harmonic series grew into tsunamis, their spectral peaks washing over cities of murmurs. She looked at the music and saw that it was a painting.
Kairi listened.
… solar date year three hundred fourteen a.e. moon cycle five day two we have left our system and we will not turn back now…
A way out.
