Tangle in the Dark - Kassidor

“Alan is here,” she said calmly.“Alan was cloned from that helmet,” he said, staring herdown. “Your avatar copied his soul,” he was going to saymore but swallowed it. She stood there, knowing the wordshe swallowed, looking like the print of his hand was red uponher face. He hadn’t moved his personification, he slapped heronly with his words.“I still believe the civilization of that world is extinct. Itsdevices might live on in the ruins and that protocol the avatardecoded might even be real, but the inhabitants of those citieshave been gone at least a thousand years.”“Believe what you want about the study world, but thesesignals are here today,” he pointed to the screen he wasworking with. “I’m going to isolate this channel.” In theupper kilohertz band a pulse train appeared. It changed induty cycle, often drifting, sometimes shifting abruptly toalmost nothing, or very high. They had been silent while hedid this. Now he said, “Miss natural phenomenon?”“The differing nuclear potentials in so low temperature aregime cause discharges. This is like lightning bursts at thequantum level,” Ava said.“The pulse trains are too regular. They are more like thesignals in the axion of a nerve cell.”“The resemblance is coincidental I’m sure,” she said,“and the frequency is off by an order of magnitude.”“Why would any signal at all be coming from thesebodies?” he asked.138