Chen Hao opened his eyes and stared at the metal seam on the roof. The weld line was crooked, just like the answer to the last big question on his college entrance exam in mathematics. He didn't move, but simply pulled his hand out of his sleeping bag and glanced at his watch—3:27 a.m.
"Nana".
"Yes." Her voice remained unchanged, completely flat, as if nothing in this world was worth her saying except for data streams.
"I just... dreamed about that cave."
Should the content of dreams be recorded?
“No need.” He sat up, his sleeping bag sliding down to his waist. “I dreamt that the marks moved, crawling out one by one, lining up to make a heart shape for me.”
“The marks do not have the ability to move on their own,” she said. “And there are no signs of biological activity on the rock surface.”
“I know it’s a dream.” He scratched his head. “But something feels off. You said no one has ever been here, but there are clearly marks on the wall. It couldn’t have been blown in by the wind, could it?”
After a brief silence, Nana's blue light swept across the control panel: "Would you like to go for a follow-up examination now?"
“What else?” He lifted his sleeping bag and stepped onto the cold ground. “We can’t sleep anyway. Besides, what if it really is a distress signal? If we just ignore it, and then someday an alien archaeological team digs it up and writes it into a textbook—'Two survivors ignored the remains of civilization and died from exhaustion'—how embarrassing would that be?”
He put on his coat and grabbed his flashlight. Before leaving, he glanced back at his backpack, which stood by the door like a mute soldier on guard.
The rain had stopped, but the air was heavy with moisture, and each step on the muddy ground made a squelching sound. The cave entrance was dark and gaping open, like someone had forgotten to close a refrigerator door. Chen Hao turned on his flashlight, and the beam shone in, illuminating a jumble of lines on the rock wall.
“Right here.” He pointed to a nested triangle. “Look at this structure, it’s so neat it doesn’t look like it was drawn randomly. And…” He gestured with his hand, “the angles of these three corners all look pretty much the same.”
Nana approached the rock face, and the blue light in her eyes suddenly intensified, casting a faint, grid-like pattern of light and shadow onto the surface of the engraved marks, as if she were performing a CT scan on the stone. A few seconds later, she whispered, "Complete image acquired. Initiating pattern recognition."
Chen Hao leaned against the cave entrance, muttering to himself, "If only I could recognize it as 'Dead End' or 'Toilet Ahead,' at least that would be useful."
“Seven repeating sequences were detected,” Nana suddenly said. “The probability of their periodic occurrence is 87.3%. Among them, three basic patterns have a 91.2% similarity to the ‘directional indicator’ in the interstellar universal emergency signal.”
Chen Hao was stunned: "Wait, you mean... this thing looks a lot like the cosmic version of SoS?"
“Partial match.” She said calmly, “but there are deviations. For example, the second stroke in the standard signal should be 45 degrees to the right, but here it is 52 degrees; the ending angle of the stroke also does not conform to any known coding standard.”
"So it's not a standard signal?"
“No,” she said. “It’s more like…the work of an imitator.”
Chen Hao swallowed hard: "Imitator? Imitating whom?"
“No corresponding record in the database.” Nana turned to him. “No trace of intelligent life has been registered in this star system in the past 100,000 years. None of the colony records, drifting beacons, or information from lost probes mention that this planet has ever been set foot on.”
"So... logically, no one should be painting here?"
"The logic holds true."
The cave fell silent. Only water droplets dripped from the ceiling, hitting the rocks with a soft "plop."
Chen Hao looked down at the tips of his shoes: "Could it be... something from even earlier? So early that your database doesn't even record it? Like, 100,000 years ago, someone came, stayed for a while, and then left, leaving nothing behind except the graffiti on this wall?"
“It’s a possibility,” she said, “but there’s a lack of evidence. If a civilization had indeed remained here, it should have left behind architectural remains, tool fragments, or energy residue. No such evidence has been found in the current scan area.”
“Maybe they left in a hurry?” Chen Hao looked up. “For example, the spaceship broke down, they sent a signal but no one replied, so they had to carve something as a memento, and then… hiccup.”
“The assumption is reasonable,” Nana nodded, “but it cannot be verified.”
He sighed and shone the flashlight one last time over the engraved marks. In the light, the lines appeared even clearer, like a silent reminder.
“Tell me,” he suddenly asked, “if one day you discover irrefutable evidence that someone had been here, what would you do?”
“We will update the database and reassess the current environmental risk model,” she said. “At the same time, we will try to reconstruct the information content to determine whether it contains any survival guidance.”
"Oh." He smiled. "So you'll still tell me the truth?"
“My design principles do not allow me to conceal confirmed facts.” She looked at him. “But if your question is beyond the scope of the data, I can only answer ‘unknown’.”
"Alright." He turned and walked out of the cave. "At least you won't lie to me. You're much better than some teachers who falsify exam results."
Back in the escape pod, he took off his coat and hung it on the hook, then casually touched the backpack strap—the knot was still there, as sturdy as the rubber band his elementary school homeroom teacher used to tie his homework.
"Do you want to save the data for that scratch?" he asked.
“The encrypted backup has been completed,” she said. “It is numbered xG-30 and classified as ‘unsolved symbol phenomenon’.”
"Sounds like a TV program preview." He yawned. "Tonight at 8 PM, Unveiling the Mysterious Ancient Marks."
No relevant program records.
"I mean metaphor."
"Understood. It's a metaphor for something that lacks practical function."
He rolled his eyes, crawled back into his sleeping bag, zipped it up, and lay on his back. The instruments inside the capsule beeped, like some kind of countdown.
"Nana".
"exist."
"Do you think... is it possible that some people came but didn't want to be found? So they deliberately changed the signal to look like a random drawing?"
“Tactical covert tactics do exist in military history,” she said. “Some civilizations use ‘pseudo-natural traces’ to transmit information in order to avoid being intercepted by hostile forces.”
"So that's possible?"
"Theoretically feasible."
He remained silent for a while, his fingers unconsciously tapping the edge of his sleeping bag.
“Have you ever considered,” he lowered his voice, “that these marks aren’t meant for people to see?”
"Not for human eyes?" She paused slightly. "You mean, the recipients aren't human?"
“Yes,” he said. “For example… for later robots? Or AI? Like leaving a message, for someone like you who can understand machine language?”
Nana's eyes shimmered with a faint blue light, as if an internal program was running at high speed.
“This hypothesis breaks out of the existing classification framework,” she said. “But it is noteworthy. The energy distribution patterns of some symbols have a potential connection to early quantum communication protocols. I will initiate a deep comparative analysis, which is expected to take three hours and fourteen minutes.”
"Whatever." He closed his eyes. "I can't understand it anyway."
The cabin fell silent again. He turned over, his face toward the wall, and his breathing gradually became steady.
Just as his consciousness was about to sink into darkness, he heard Nana whisper:
"The latest analysis shows that the spacing of the third set of marks is exactly consistent with the activation frequency of the three abandoned beacons in the northern quadrant of the Milky Way."
He didn't open his eyes, but just mumbled an "uh-huh".
After a moment, he asked again, "What was the last message from those three beacons?"
“Unreadable,” she said. “The signals were interrupted 73,000 years ago. But the last broadcast before they shut down was a repeating sequence.”
"What sequence?"
“A coordinate,” she said, “pointing to this planet.”
Chen Hao's fingers twitched slightly.
He didn't speak again, nor did he turn over; he just lay there quietly, his chest rising and falling slowly.
Outside the cabin, a wisp of gray appeared on the horizon, as if someone had accidentally torn a corner of the night sky.
Inside the cabin, Nana's blue eyes continued to glow, and a line of small text slowly scrolled across the screen: [Decoding progress 12.7% | Estimated remaining time 02:58:43]
Chen Hao's right hand hung outside his sleeping bag, his fingertips lightly touching the ground. A drop of condensation fell from the pipe and landed squarely on the back of his hand.
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