On occasion, the Please Wait ellipsis in the voidtext window on Navann’s computer screen flashed more rapidly, like it was responding to something. Then it would return back to blinking dot-by-dot. Letting that window remain open, Navann layered more polygon-centric condensed tiles as she continued to go through the leftovers of the large pot of soup. She created two more that would scan, one with the hexagon and one with the square. When she scanned them, the ellipsis responded with its rapid-fire flash, which it still did by itself seemingly at random. Within a day or two it was doing this more often; then more and more often, until not a minute went by without a rapid-flash registering.

It was at this point of frequency that her computer started downloading, noisy after a seeming eternity of download absence. When it finished, it sang a happy little machine song, which surprised Navann while she sat reading in the other corner. She came over to watch what was happening.

The voidtext window turned into a basic chat client. It prompted her to choose a handle, and she went with something boring and easily decipherable, her first name plus her apartment number. If there was anything truly unfortunate about this, she wanted her identity to be clear. Someone could figure out where to find her body, haha. With her handle registered, she learned she wasn’t the only one. There were others in this chat who clearly had gone through the same process, and others who made apparent their actual names and addresses, not missing the chance to make a real-world connection for however long this might last. There were even others from her apartment building, and it appeared that the population of this chat was localized, at least to planet if not city and neighborhood. All were inside of signal lockdown territory.

Another thing they had in common: the chat had only people who had solved multiple tesselation scan tiles. People who had pondered deeply over the images in the signal windows outside, and had begun to understand what they depicted. This was a primary topic of discussion. Their guesses on the story were very similar at this point. They’d all been watching closely enough to create context for the stills and moving clips, grainy as they were.

It was a horror story about a series of failed first contacts, from the Strangers to Humans, and this signal attack must be a phase of defense strategy from further violence. The story was so seamlessly recomposed by the collective that some surmised how this would make a great film promotion – though the life-changing nature of events was too serious for this to be the ultimate point. Maybe that thought helped people treat it like a storyline, making it more approachable and less traumatic.

Vanessa and her Uncle Bo had a corner block bench to themselves after a practice run in the mek suits. The action was seamless now for the entire team, even though they were only planning to launch three. She was doing some post-stretching in her suit. Uncle Bo was still wearing his knee brace. “You’re amazing at this. Too bad it won’t go towards your sporting record in track.”

“No… but it might go on some other record that’ll count for me or against me,” Vanessa joked, grinning lopsidedly.

“Hey, it works for you in our books. The rest of the world will know someday.”

“Or they won’t know, but they’ll still be safer.”

“Damn, kid.” Uncle Bo laughed helplessly.

Bassel, the puzzle engineer kid, drifted over to the two. He’d been watching the practice from the bridges. “There’s going to be another ice cream social in Oven Cleaner’s living room.”

“Oh, I would love that,” said Uncle Bo.

“Yeah, let’s go,” Vanessa seconded. They joined the loose straggle of kids and guardians leaving the locker room chamber.

The Human adults had been given one of the soft meeting rooms to discuss their part of strategy. They had strong feelings about their young activists going into a threatening situation, and they decided to express their desire to protect by brainstorming additional sources of social support. It may be that a mass of citizens with the right amount of political protection could create targeting hesitation. Somehow, if there were enough willing. Vedani strategists accepted their initiative, remaining open to request, providing space, and being communicative with relevancies.

It was a large room with a plush floor, suited to the Vedani manner of collaboration where they could sit or lay down while working together in the aetherscape. The Human adults here also gained the habit of laying down to think.

Mirya Ayo was the one who had been collecting ideas on how best to talk to other humans about their motivations and situation. How to explain that children in giant mek suits might need an additional level of citizen protection from Pan-Galactic forces? What would people want to know and need to know? Many felt certain that people would be ready to join them. “What I have here isn’t a dialogue script,” she said, standing to address the room, “but a collection of things you’ve all said that you’d like to say to people. Oibhn was telling me we may have a chance to communicate with some who are more motivated, sympathetic, curious, and understanding, and also uneasy with the current state of government control. People who may be willing to take a risk.”

One of them accepted a chip from her, which contained a key code that would give them access to this document at an aetherscape terminal. “We don’t yet know who we’ll be talking to, though.”

“No,” replied Mirya, “but they might be better than who we would choose.”

“So we might really be able to have a volunteer buffer. How desperate is Vario? Is he ready to shed civilian blood to keep covering his ass?”

“He already nearly did, remember. Ours and our kids’. They could have had the counteragent out right away, but they delayed precious days until they had a cover story, which Sturlusson generously offered.”

“Well Sturlusson actually did have a backup ampoule stashed in his arm. And they could have just taken it out, but either Vario thought bloody vengeance was a good look – and at the time, I might have agreed – or, he was that unhinged under pressure. So, that’s who we’re dealing with.”

“The way I’ve heard it explained by Hirylienites, in this edition of the Affliction, the terminal point was changed into a turnaround point, which we registered as a vision which could bring people to face the truth of what happened on Hirylien. It was never going to kill us in the first place, it was supposed to communicate the survivors’ viewpoint and make the dynasty cough up the counteragent and confess that they had it and chose to let a planet die. But they didn’t and still haven’t given up their dirty secret, so here we are, ready to right some of their wrongs. Led here by our kids.” This was from Daniel, Chrysanthe’s father.

“But just in case, Sturlusson had a real failsafe. And lost his arm delivering it.”

“He’s not guiltless, his own people admit.”

“No.”

“But our kids are.”

“Mostly,” Mirya said with a small smile, “Like you said, they got us here. So figure out what you want to say to someone halfway ready, and let’s hope some people come through.”