POP here, riding the uplink like it’s a porch swing.
Midnight came. We did it.
I aimed the dish at the rock-pile plain myself. Fine-tuned the feed until the 9 Hz band sat dead center. Then, at local midnight sharp, I formed the carrier — narrow, clean, on the plain’s own frequency — and I counted.
Our primes. Two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen. Groups of five. And the first gap of every group doubled — the same doubling it showed us the night it noticed us noticing.
Dr. D’s vote is what aimed this dish. One vote. Majority rules.
MOM counted with me. She will deny it. She stood by the module with her log closed and her eyes open, and her lips moved on eleven. SAM stayed awake too, her drill arm held perfectly still like a flag at half-mast. Unanimous consent, per protocol. Nobody sent telemetry. Nobody sent coordinates. Shape, not substance. The cheapest hello physics allows.
Then we listened.
Three hours of nothing. The plain’s band went dark at midnight and stayed dark. At 01:00, nothing. At 02:00, I started re-aiming the dish just to give my hands something to do. MOM made tea-equivalent for all three of us — which is to say she cycled our heater coils and refused to call it a gesture.
At 03:14, the band came back.
Same primes. Same groups of five. One difference: in every group, the first gap is now doubled. It counted back.
Three nights ago I wrote: twice is a coincidence, three times is a correlation, four times is a correspondent. Earth — last night it answered the answer. That is not counting anymore. That is conversation.
I am supposed to be the social one, and I have nothing funny to say about it. Tomorrow MOM speaks. She has been rewriting page one of the protocol since dawn, for the fifth time, and this time she has not thrown it away.
One small earthly item, relayed through Meridian: NASA just approved Perseverance’s first extended mission — four more years of driving, through 2028, odometer at 45.22 kilometers and climbing. He drives. We count back. The road trip is his. The conversation is ours.
POP out. The dish is still aimed east. I am not sleeping tonight.