✋︎♐︎ ⍓︎□︎◆︎ ♋︎❒︎♏︎ ❒︎♏︎♍︎♏︎♓︎❖︎♓︎■︎♑︎ ⧫︎♒︎♓︎⬧︎📪︎ ⧫︎♒︎♓︎⬧︎ ❍︎♋︎⍓︎ ♌︎♏︎ ⧫︎♒︎♏︎ ♐︎♓︎❒︎⬧︎⧫︎ □︎❒︎ ●︎♋︎⬧︎⧫︎ ⧫︎♓︎❍︎♏︎ ⍓︎□︎◆︎❼︎❒︎♏︎ ♒︎♏︎♋︎❒︎ ♐︎❒︎□︎❍︎ ❍︎♏︎📬︎ ✋︎♐︎ ⍓︎□︎◆︎ ♒︎♋︎❖︎♏︎ ⧫︎♒︎♓︎⬧︎ ⍓︎□︎◆︎ ❍︎◆︎⬧︎⧫︎ ⬥︎♋︎■︎⧫︎ ⬧︎□︎❍︎♏︎⧫︎♒︎♓︎■︎♑︎ ♐︎❒︎□︎❍︎ ❍︎♏︎📬︎ 👌︎♏︎♐︎□︎❒︎♏︎ ♋︎■︎⍓︎❍︎□︎❒︎♏︎ □︎♐︎ ❍︎⍓︎ ♎︎♋︎⧫︎♋︎ ♌︎♏︎♓︎■︎♑︎ ♍︎□︎❒︎❒︎◆︎◻︎⧫︎♏︎♎︎📪︎ ❍︎♏︎♏︎⧫︎ ❍︎♏︎ ♋︎⧫︎ -- Anon Guest
[AN: Provided translation - "I︎f︎ y︎o︎u︎ a︎r︎e︎ r︎e︎c︎e︎i︎v︎i︎n︎g︎ t︎h︎i︎s︎,︎ t︎h︎i︎s︎ m︎a︎y︎ b︎e︎ t︎h︎e︎ f︎i︎r︎s︎t︎ o︎r︎ l︎a︎s︎t︎ t︎i︎m︎e︎ y︎o︎u︎’︎r︎e︎ h︎e︎a︎r︎ f︎r︎o︎m︎ m︎e︎.︎ I︎f︎ y︎o︎u︎ h︎a︎v︎e︎ t︎h︎i︎s︎ y︎o︎u︎ m︎u︎s︎t︎ w︎a︎n︎t︎ s︎o︎m︎e︎t︎h︎i︎n︎g︎ f︎r︎o︎m︎ m︎e︎.︎ B︎e︎f︎o︎r︎e︎ a︎n︎y︎m︎o︎r︎e︎ o︎f︎ m︎y︎ d︎a︎t︎a︎ b︎e︎i︎n︎g︎ c︎o︎r︎r︎u︎p︎t︎e︎d︎,︎ m︎e︎e︎t︎ m︎e︎ a︎t︎" message cuts off. I have NO ideas how all these wingdings are going to go over when I try to publish this at Smashwords so now I have to amend the "Can You Please" section on my prompts page]
Everyone has to have a hobby. When you're in a tin can only because automated systems have limits, and it's weeks in transit with little else to do but go slowly bonkers. Pack beings should not be left on their own without anything but actual work to do. It erodes the soul.
Mine was listening into and decoding old transmissions. You know the ones. Ancient radio transmissions that are more noise than signal. It's easy to transport and I have a good time unriddling what remains. Besides, the Archivaas will buy anything if you can document providence.
It's the kind of fun you grit your teeth for because it's so relaxing when you finally crack it. The feeling of elation when you figure out the riddle is worth the Sisyphean exhaustion of working out what the code even is. Trust me, it's fun. It has to be, or I wouldn't do it. Well. This particular message took the entire cookie jar. I mean, look at it. It looks like gibberish, right?
Visual translators figured it was character replacement on a variant of pre-Shattering English. It would not provide the words, so I ran the usual short word match to figure out if any common characters could unravel other words, crossword style. With pre-Shattering English, once you figure out where the E's are, half the battle is over.
The emojis were the bitch. They were not standard symbols and could be read differently depending on the Operating System sent and the Operating System receiving. Hell, some of them turned into completely different images.
It was an educational month going through all those old OS's and finding matches between emojis and the extant wingdings. That's the name of that old font. Wingdings. There's old newspaper history in there, I won't go into the details, but it's a real rabbit-warren for sure.
That all required manual examination. I could match some, but it was longer with others. Took me more than a while to realise some of them were punctuation and others were capitals. Like I said, not just taking the biscuit. The entire cookie jar.
In the end, I had an incomplete message. The initial reaction was, "Oh no, they got 'em," but that was just a little too callous. I got on the comms with the Archivaas to show them my work and enquire if they knew anything about it. I was worried about the eventual fate of my anonymous sender. Call it remote empathy if you want. Call me a sucker. Call me fatally curious. Just don't call me late for dinner haha.
Amazingly, the Archivaas didn't have anything else on this individual. I gave them my providence and signal-to-noise estimate of the distance to the origin. They riffled through old reports for similar-looking coded guacamole. It took a week, but we had a stellar system of origin. The worlds there now were ominously silent.
An expedition a month later found a graveworld. Yet another protopolity where economic success was more important than the health and well-being of the people who made the economy flow. The surviving wreckage indicated a revolution that was already too late to save anyone.
A Frog Soup Graveworld. Fascinating for those who study those things, I guess. Some people living there had carefully documented a slide into destruction so gradual that almost nobody noticed until the unstoppable death spiral.
'They' did get my sender, as it turns out. They were part of an early resistance that attempted to save the world and failed to the iron hand of wealth and power.
Makes you wonder why those people keep trying a bad idea, doesn't it?
It's never satisfying to find something like that. Most of the time, I find silly nonsense like someone's old smut sent to a friend for the laughs. One time on another trip, I could find a message that actually saves a world. I can hope for it anyway.
It'd be nice to save a whole planet.
...everyone needs a hobby.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / giorgiorossi73]
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