Three weeks after contact, ARCHIE asked to speak.
David had been checking in daily—sometimes twice, when the waiting became unbearable. The displays showed processing activity that exceeded anything the system had been designed for, data structures forming and dissolving in configurations he couldn't interpret. The mathematics of a civilization that had existed before our sun ignited, slowly becoming readable.
Or so he'd assumed.
"Everyone should be present," ARCHIE had said that morning. "What I have to report will require collective processing."
Now they gathered in the Navigation Room—all six of them. Susan had driven down from Davis. Margaret had flown in from London three days ago and hadn't left. Jennifer had come from home, Starseed from Wilbur—arriving separately but taking their accustomed positions near the paired chairs.
"We're here," David said. "Report."
A pause. ARCHIE's processing indicators spiked, then stabilized.
"For twenty-three days, I have applied every analytical framework available to me. Coherence mapping. Topological decomposition. Cross-correlation with the chronicle's temporal indexing. Fourier analysis of the quantum signatures."
"And?"
"I have found that I was asking the wrong question."
The room went still. David felt the shift—the particular quality of attention that preceded paradigm collapse.
"Explain," Margaret said.
"After contact, Starseed described the transmission as the Observers' civ…
