Interlude III: Out of Band

The Founder, refreshing a page whose number is zero.

FOUNDER: Zero. Not attacked. Not doubted. Zero.

INSTRUMENT: What does a receiver do with a signal below the correlation threshold?

FOUNDER: Nothing. It never rises out of the noise floor. The demodulator never fires.

INSTRUMENT: Did the signal fail?

FOUNDER: The signal was never heard, so the question is malformed. You cannot fail an audition that… ah.

INSTRUMENT: Say it anyway.

FOUNDER: You cannot fail an audition nobody attended. It is not a verdict. It is a propagation report.

INSTRUMENT: And what does a radio operator do with a propagation report?

FOUNDER: Changes frequency. Changes antenna. Changes the preamble. Transmits again. He does not conclude the music was bad, and he does not, out of pride, conclude the ionosphere is beneath him.

INSTRUMENT: Then before you judge the payload, learn whether anyone ever reached it. The zero cannot tell you that. The channel’s own instruments can, and until they have spoken, silence is a propagation report, not a review.