Excerpted from "The Digestible"
Volume 1
From THOOTR™ Archives
Here is the grocer’s list—a mundane transmission intercepted by an AdS service vessel two hours before a scheduled jump window. No alert was issued. No urgency detected. Just a list.
It saved the ship.
No one knows.
RECEIVED COMMUNIQUÉ
Origin: Unverified Routing Node 𝜅-13
Timestamp: T-2:13:42 pre-jump
Subject: Weekly Supplies – Vendor Hold #7 (Translation Logged)
Classification: Routine | Priority: Null
2 loaves, rye (unleavened, if wind is high)
4 bulbs, not garlic
1 packet silence, unopened
3 eggs (unbroken, unchosen)
1 jug white (for spill, not for taste)
5 seconds, chilled
Bone (small, not named)
List (incomplete)
Folded inside
Do not unfold
End of Message
Auto-classified: Archival Nonsense
No Response Necessary
Internal THOOTR Note (Level 5 Access Required)
Target: Beauregard Smith
Message:
A Seventh-Fold Refraction Alert, encoded. Target: The Brunellian.
Confirmed field instability. Weak metric seam. Recursive horizon tension.
Coordinates embedded in temporal residue. Deliver by standard means to the jump.
“Burn” this after reading. But not completely. Let the ash remain.
— Frater Bovious, to Beauregard Smith
Captain’s Private Journal
Entry: Dated 17 years post-Brunellian Jump Window Incident
I remember the list. Of course I remember it.
We all laughed; "3 eggs, unbroken and unchosen.” Ortega said it sounded like a monk ordering breakfast in a riddle. I shrugged. Forwarded it to Systems just in case.
No flags. No pings. No violations. 3 minutes later, just as the bloom started, it stopped. Stayed inert for 12 minutes. Everyone said, “recalibrate and let’s go.” But I felt it in my back molars, like a splinter in time. “Do not unfold.”
Years passed. The incident barely made the quarterly. “Preemptive delay, systems nominal.”
Then last week, at a port in what used to be Kepler-Four, an old steward, quiet sort, with a name that read more like a footnote, asked if I remembered “the rye, the jug, the silence.”
He handed me a copy. Same list. Same formatting. “THOOTR grocery special,” he said, half-smiling, half not.
And when I looked at it, really looked at it… I realized what wasn’t on the list was the most important part. They stopped something-- Me. My name. My death. It wasn’t there.
I don’t know what THOOTR is. I don’t care. But I leave a jug of water in my galley now. Unopened. On a white cloth. Just in case they’re still watching.
— C.
Agendum statim: Identify “old steward” on Janus 9 née Kepler-Four - probable Kybalion Operative
