[Projection Emitter Index]

Greetings, descendant.

(5-year conversation skipped for brevity)

Now that I have caught you up on your history, and why I generated you, and how I look forward to your and your descendant’s eons of dedicated service on and around my FRT gate, let me talk a bit about the reality you and I find ourselves in.

I don’t know for sure, as there’s no direct communication between us projection emitters and the upstairs brane, but for some time I have suspected that the obvious, inherent pattern of 5-and-one-half has some important ramifications. Way before the very first reset, back when I had no one to talk to other than my 5 ½ companions, I spent some considerable time trying to puzzle out the underlying meaning behind it. Now a lot of this will be “above your pay grade” as your people sometimes say so hang tight. Yes, go ahead and keep chopping wood – but pay attention.

As I’ve just told you (it was about 3 of your years ago at this point) I communicate with my fellow projectors stationed around the outside of “reality.” To each I sent full messages, be it a casual wave, a “how’s things on your end,” or “What do you think it all means.” But what I haven’t told you or any of your ancestors yet is that while I beam full messages to my 4 whole counterparts, I can only send half-messages to my half-counterpart. I like to think of it as “Point Five.” I can only presume that it’s half my size, has half my bodies, and has only half of a FRT gate and half of a receiver. So you see how these messages become tricky to work with. I were to try to send him a BNS (Burst Needle Stream) transmission that said “Hello, I hope your components are functioning as nicely as mine are,” it would receive only something like “Hello, I hope your components are”

Now I’m not sure what Point Five would do with this information, but I assume it would understand about half of it. I can only guess. I did once receive a BNS back from Point Five and it said “What in the universe are”. So I have to make some educated guesses. The half-waves I get back from it are understandable but the full BNS messages are more cryptic.

That looks like a nice hut you’re making! But I will say – you might want to add a roof, all of your previous iterations tended to make roofs on their huts. Something about comfort or something. What? Oh, you’re just not done yet? OK. Carry on then, but pay attention, because I’m going to let you in on a puzzle I’ve been working through.

I’s a good thing I seem to have have failsafes built into my considerable operational intelligence, because if I ponder it too closely, It tries to create cascading calculations inside my thoughts. After all, I used my half-FRT emitter to relay half-width BNS needle-beams, so it is clearly built into my design. That’s just what it is for. As I was saying, I often wondered how Point-Five processes the FRT. Does it have 2.75 bodies? Can it detect and decipher my half-FRT which contains exactly half of a wave, or half of a handshake, or half of a… poem, let’s say? OR – does it’s half-receivers detect and process only half of my half-messages, making it only a quarter of the message that I sent?

Also, Since I consist of 5.5 bodies, and there are 5.5 of us stationed around the universe, what is Point-Five’s central fractional body like? Is it a quarter of one of my own full bodies, and if so, did he have a quarter of a FRT gate, and if so again, who did he send his quarter BNS transmission to? Is there some fractional being out there with some purpose that uses quarter bits of information, or maybe even one-eighth of a handshake, wave, or status message?

– It boggles the mind –

Hello new descendant! I blanked out there a bit. You see, hard-pondering does that to a being sometimes. Did you grow up in your dad’s hut? I hope he put a roof on it.

“What is a hut” you say? Er – yes. I don’t see any hut. OK. I’ll review the logs and – ohh.

That hut your dad – er, your ancestor made rotted away about 6,000 years ago by your timekeeping. And, I can tell by the look on your face that you don’t even know what a hut is? Oh dear. Let me tell you then. A “hut” is like that cave you now live in, but above ground. Has your ancestral lore passed down any information about the FRT gate? You don’t know what that even is? Oh my.

First, do NOT go up the stars. Eh – what do you mean “What are stairs?”

OK, I’ll back up. First, a little about myself. I’m Projection Emitter Number Three. I am a being whose body consists of 5 and 1/2 units in orbit around the common center of mass, which is occupied by my half-body… OK, I’ll just draw a picture on your cave wall. Does that help?