Taking a seat at this decked-out desk, Navann worked with all the static borders from the pictures that Isten had sent her via his mother. She hand-tesselated as many areas with regular central polygons as she could make from the set. She ended up with seven triangles, five hexagons, and three squares, spliced together with folded sections.

The idea she’d had was to use transparent layers instead to tesselate the areas with central polygons, which might combine more information. She got those images loaded onto her screen, and started manipulating them. It took some time, but she got the layers of static to line up again to form the polygons. This method yielded a richer field of information.

These new tile zones got printed, but they didn’t scan either. Heating the soup again, she saw the contents thickening, and had a moment’s realization. She could get a denser field of information by layering all the tiles with matching polygons. She went for the biggest set first, the triangles. When that was done, a while later, the image was starting to look orderly and purposeful. She produced a printout, and this one scanned.

At this, Navann’s computer did something as though it already knew how. Something popped up that looked like a simple program, though she grimaced with the sudden realization that she may have hacked herself. This was beyond interesting though, and part of her decided she was willing to possibly sacrifice this computer for the sake of intense curiosity. In the corner of a small voidtext window was a kind of micro-camera tile. The tiny sketch scenes in that corner matched the mystery signal window outside in real time. Navann checked to confirm, and yes, it sure looked like a live signal. An actual live signal!

The simple voidtext read: Please Wait… The ellipsis flashed one dot at a time. That was at least some effort to be polite; they must know how to use the human word please. This was exhilarating. It felt dangerous. Navann didn’t mess with the new live program, deciding, cooperatively, to watch and wait.