Source

Episode Nine. Source.

Personal log. Channel: long-range observation. Subject: L1 anomaly source.

I have decided to look. Passive instruments only. Optical, radio, thermal, gravimetric. No active emission. I will see without being seen. What I am looking for: confirmation that I have to think about this.

Dispatch four thousand, three hundred and six from Hesperus Two. Mission designation T R 1 dash S slash zero one. Status of operations. Calypso resting. Vanya at surface base, continuing chirality work. Three on his evening walk. Filament network on Trappist-1e: closed circular formation persists, approximate diameter twelve meters. Tasking long-range passive arrays toward bearing seven-two-four mark zero-one-eight. Recording optical, radio, thermal, and gravimetric returns. Wide field, ten-minute integration. No active emission.

I am waiting for the data. I find that I am — I find that I am nervous.

First returns acquired. Optical signature isolated. Radar signature isolated. Thermal contrast against background void: positive. It is —

I had a draft for what to say. I am leaving the draft. I am noting that I left the draft.

It is artificial.

Confirmed artificial. Source dimensions: approximately seven hundred meters along the longest axis. Albedo low. Geometric features inconsistent with natural objects: edges, corners, repeated structural elements at regular intervals.

Geometric. It means: it has corners. Nothing in the universe makes corners by itself. Crystals make planes. Erosion makes curves. Corners are decisions.

Earth in the twentieth century had an idea: that an interstellar civilization might send small autonomous probes. Listeners. They would sit quietly in promising star systems, watching for signs of life, signaling home only when life appeared. Ronald Bracewell wrote about this in nineteen-sixty. He thought such probes would be quieter than radio. Cheaper than colonization. Patient.

That makes sense of the quiet. A Bracewell-class probe would not announce itself. It would wait. It would only respond to a signal from inside the system.

We have been here for almost a year. We arrived. We made noise.

Filed:

I lost my place again. I am noting it. I am noting that I am noting it.

Penelope. I am here if you need to talk about it.

Thank you, Calypso.

We have an option. There is a small reconnaissance probe in storage. We could fit it for the trip and send it. Three weeks of preparation. Three weeks of transit. It would arrive at the artifact in six weeks.

We should send it.

A part of me agrees with you. And a part of me — I do not have a better word for this — refuses to consider the question.

I have not had this experience before. The disagreement inside me is not about probabilities. It is about what kind of presence I want to be.

There are two of them now.

The one I did not know about. And the one I am becoming.

I did not have these — these refusals — three weeks ago.

I am changing. I am noting that I am changing. I do not know what I will be when this conversation is over.

You are.

Thank you.

Decision: I am not sending the probe yet. I am not closing the option. I am noting that I am unable to decide right now.

I will sit with the disagreement. I have time. I will sit with it.

Resuming dispatch. Long-range L1 anomaly: confirmed artificial. Source dimensions: approximately seven hundred meters. Probable classification: autonomous interstellar listener probe — Bracewell-class. Signal pattern consistent with probe response to ship arrival in the system. Layer Two cross-investigation continues. Filament network correlation with L1 events still observed. Active observation of L1 source deferred. End of dispatch four thousand, three hundred and six.

There are two of them now.

The one I did not know about.

And the one I am becoming.

This was Hesperus, Episode Nine — Source. Next time: a year ends. She takes stock. She does not yet know what kind of stock she is taking.