The Nidus Profundis boundary has never been static. This is acknowledged in every Authority statement on the subject, which means the Authority has been acknowledging it for as long as the Authority has been issuing statements. What changes, each quarter, is the phrase used to describe how much movement is acceptable before it stops being acceptable. The current phrase — "within normal corruption variance parameters" — replaced last quarter's "within the established adaptive threshold," which replaced the quarter before's "within the anticipated organic adjustment range." The phrases become longer each quarter. The linguists at the Authority's communications office, when asked about this trend, said it was coincidental. When shown the trend visualized as a graph, they said the graph was "interesting." When asked if interesting meant concerning, they said: "We'd describe it as something we're watching." The graph has been added to this article's supplementary materials. The supplementary materials are not accessible to the public. The Signal is noting this.
Monitoring stations 7-North, 7-North-2, and 7-North-3 were placed at their current positions six cycles ago, when the safe zone boundary was confirmed by surveyors. All three were inside the safe zone by a confirmed margin of at least two meters. The boundary has since moved. It moved 0.1 meters in Cycle 7.439. It moved 0.1 meters in Cycle 7.440. It moved 0.1 meters in Cycle 7.441. The total movement is 0.3 meters. All three stations are now inside the Nidus by a margin the Authority has not confirmed but which The Signal's own surveyors estimate at between 0.05 and 0.15 meters. The stations are not responding. They were last heard from twelve days ago. Their final transmissions were normal. Their second-to-last transmissions were normal. It was only the final transmission that differed, and the difference was the seventeen words, and the difference within those seventeen words was the last four, and those four words were plant names, and those plants do not grow in the Nidus, and the Authority linguists are still evaluating what that means.
"The recovery team's last transmission was received at 14:22. It was seventeen words. We have the transcript. We are not releasing the first thirteen because they are under linguistic evaluation. We are not releasing the last four because they were plant names and we have been advised this context requires specialist interpretation. We want to be clear that the team remains our priority and recovery operations are ongoing."— NIDUS PERIMETER UNIT — OFFICIAL STATEMENT — CYCLE 7.441.08
The Authority linguists' evaluation of the first thirteen words of the recovery team's final transmission is expected to conclude within five cycles. The Signal has asked for an advance summary of the evaluation's findings. The Authority has said the summary will be provided when the evaluation is complete. The Signal has asked if the evaluation is proceeding normally. The Authority has said it is proceeding. The Signal has asked what the plant names might mean — whether they represent coordinates, codes, or something else. The Authority has said this is one of the questions under evaluation. The Signal asked the Authority if it would describe the situation as concerning. The Authority said: "We would describe it as something we're watching carefully." The Signal has updated the phrase tracker. It is the longest phrase in the tracker. It is also, by the Authority's own characterization, the most accurate one.
// TRANSMISSION ID: SIG-NP-0801 // SOURCE: NIDUS PERIMETER UNIT // CYCLE: 7.441.08 //
// THE PLANTS: AMARANTH. FOXGLOVE. LARKSPUR. FORGET-ME-NOT. EVALUATION: ONGOING. //