Deinterlace

Drifter has a log of reports, a list that grows year after year. He doesn't bother encrypting it. Not like anyone else could get anything useful from it, anyway.

It's about the Haul, see. The tests he's run on it, when he's of a mood to be a curious man. He checks how heavy it is, gliding along behind his ship like there's nothing at all to it. What it off-gasses. (Nothing. But also, dust. Sometimes the dust is radioactive particles. Sometimes it's confetti.)

No two tests come back the same. It's a hobby: wake up in the morning, feel a specific sort of gnawing in the part of him that passes for Human, find out what the Haul feels like weighing today.

Once, out of a kind of morbid curiosity, he went looking for patterns in the data. A secret message sent in space divided by time. Cryptographics.

Nothing. Not even a joke at his expense. Just nonsense. Static played out on the radio, all that noise still equaling zero.

Drifter's almost insulted. But sure, whatever, no one asked him to understand the thing. Just carry it and play the game. Sometimes the game covers his incidentals. Sometimes it's a weight around his neck.

Either way, he's getting tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop.