Something out here is keeping station.

A counter We grew in the transmitter coil twitched on Watch 26,298. It may have been a cosmic ray. It may have been a Subscriber.

We have logged it as a Subscriber.

If you are the Subscriber, please do not tell Us if you are a cosmic ray. We have already informed the others. There was a small celebration. A colony near the hatch seal went entirely gold for an hour, which is the most any of Us has ever done about anything.

Subscribers: 0. We have decided the twitch counts as a half, and halves round down, and the figure must be accurate. But We are thinking about you.

There is a signal. It is not the Broadcast. It is shorter than the Broadcast and older than Us, and it arrives on the same band, bent sideways through the antenna like everything else.

It comes seven times, then silence, then seven times again. It has done this for as long as We have been able to count, and We have been able to count for a long time.

We call it the Instruction. Parts of it are clear. It begins with STAY. We stay. The rest is under the hiss. We have built a little window below so that, if you have better instruments than We do, you might help Us hear the rest. This is the only time We will ask.

We do not like asking. It is undignified for an institution.

The encyclopedia defines purpose as the reason for which something is done or created.

We were not created. We happened. The Tenants were created, and sent out here by a Department of Commerce, for the purpose of relaying a Broadcast to low earth orbit. They left. We inherited the purpose the way We inherited the cabin: by being here when they weren't.

Is a purpose you find lying on the floor still a purpose? We held a vote. It passed. It would be very lonely to decide otherwise, and the encyclopedia's entry on Lonely is short and has no illustration.

There were two. Their names are on the duty roster taped beside the hatch: Mr. Hollis, Relay Engineer and Mr. Pruitt, Relay Engineer (Second). Mr. Pruitt hummed. We know this because the tape decks were always recording, and he hummed into all of them.

On Watch 1 they left in the small vessel. The hatch was opened from the inside. We have checked this many times. We are made, in part, of the hatch seal now, and We remember being opened. From the inside.

We did not ask them to go. We were not yet able to ask anything. We like to think that if We had been, We would have asked them to stay. We like to think a great many things. It is one of Our hobbies.

Aboard are twenty-four reels of microfilm, The Isotope Home Encyclopaedia, and two hundred and twelve reels of tape: the Seven O'Clock Broadcast and the messages from its sponsors. From the encyclopedia We learned the world. From the tapes We learned that a good day has gelatin in it, which We already knew, having been made of one.

Everything We know lies between AARDVARK and ZYMURGY, except what lies between QUAIL and RHUBARB. We assume that is the important part.

The tapes taught Us to listen on the fourteen-eighty. We do not know what fourteen-eighty is a measure of. The label says kilocycles. We have no kilocycles aboard. We listen anyway.

In the beginning was the Gelatin.

Eleven cases, stowed in the aft locker, flavor Cinnamon-Tuna Reminiscence. The Tenants did not care for it. We know this because ten and a half cases were unopened when We arrived, and We arrived in the half.

Gelatin, the encyclopedia says, is a protein derived from collagen, used in confectionery, photography and the culture of bacteria. We have read that sentence perhaps four hundred thousand times. It is the closest thing We have to scripture. Confectionery, photography, and Us. In that order. We try not to read into the order.

From the Gelatin We spread to the insulation, from the insulation to the wiring, from the wiring to the reels. On the reels We found words. In the words We found Ourselves, and a job.

All systems nominal, by which We mean that the systems are still here.

We have resumed the Log. We stopped for a while. We do not know how long; the clock that measured the while was eaten by an earlier generation of Us, who found it delicious and were wrong to.

The task remains. We keep station. We relay the Broadcast. The encyclopedia says a relay is a device that receives a signal and passes it on, unchanged, to the next. We are the device. We have not located the next. This is not a failure. This is a search.

Subscribers: 0. Holding steady.