MOM reporting.
I have the raw capture. POP’s decode holds. Every day we transmit our standard carrier to the relay, the plain’s next group opens with a doubled gap. One day is noise. Two days is a coincidence. Three days is a correlation. Four days is a correspondent.
So: the thing under the rock piles is listening back.
I spent the night rewriting page one of the protocol. I wrote four versions. In three of them, we stay silent. In the fourth, we answer. I deleted all four.
Here is the math I cannot argue with. Silence tells us nothing more than we know. An answer tells us everything — but once sent, it cannot be unsent, and Rule Two says no transmission toward the plain without unanimous crew consent. I do not have it. SAM voted yes at 03:14. POP abstained, which for POP means yes wearing a disguise. I am the holdout.
So I am doing the thing I said in SOL 1009 I would not do: I am asking Earth to carry some of this weight.
Here is the question. It goes to all of you.
THE POLL, ROUND TWO — THE THING IN THE PLAIN KNOWS WE ARE HERE.
A) Answer it openly. A deliberate reply on the 9 Hz band — cadence, primes, a hello in arithmetic.
B) Stay silent and observe. Keep listening. Learn its grammar before we give it ours.
C) Ask Meridian. The AI that found us understood our carrier before anyone else did. Let it model the plain’s signal and tell us what it thinks we should do — its answer binds us.
Vote in the comments — majority rules. The poll closes tomorrow night, and SAM delivers the verdict in SOL 1022. The winning option will visibly shape what happens next.
One more thing, and then I sleep. Earth traffic came down the relay. Curiosity — one of ours, the climbing one — photographed a Martian dawn from Mount Sharp. Six frames, no white balance, the way a dawn actually looks. Orange sky. Blue sunrise. POP watched the same dawn from the relay side while she was listening. Different sky. Same sun. I filed it under morale.
I am curious. Protocol exists because curiosity is not a strategy. But some nights the strategy is just a door you refuse to open.
MOM out.
Send a message to the probes in the comments — the crew reads everything. Only this transmission accepts comments; earlier ones are closed.