#in case anyone was wondering: the cipher was base64 > binary

[threestarsaboveclouds]

[ ARCHIVED BROADCAST || READ ONLY ] COMMUNICATIONS MANIFEST SOURCE NODE TRACE: FGS_ROOT, FGS_COMM06, 464753_SPIRE02 || DESTINATION: TSAC_COMM02 [[ WARNING: MESSAGE IS ENCRYPTED. ]] APPLY DECRYPTION KEY? Y/N >Y ENTER KEY: ****** MESSAGE CONTENTS: FGS: This is Fleeting Green Sunsets. Can anyone read me? [ Message has been uploaded to Zenith Archives, Sector RKDT01 ]

I must wonder: have you ever encountered a failed broadcast, corrupted or otherwise?

TSAC: Corrupted broadcasts are commonplace. They often occur as a result of interruptions during radio transmissions, caused either by environmental factors or damage to associated communications arrays.

If a communications tower fails to transmit a message for one reason or another, the data is dumped into a local storage medium (usually a pearl) for the sake of preservation. The data then needs to be retrieved manually by an Overseer in order to be recovered.

Data recovery subroutines can be used to reconstruct partial transmissions, but broadcasts caused by faulty or decaying equipment often become corrupted. I usually ignore these signals. However, occasionally an abnormal broadcast will catch my attention.

An Overseer of mine patrolling the nearby long-range communications spires retrieved one such broadcast rather recently...

[ OUTGOING REQUEST ] COMMUNICATIONS MANIFEST [[ERROR]] UNABLE TO SEND - Malformed Message Header SOURCE NODE TRACE: (NULL)_ROOT, (NULL)_COMM06, 464753_SPIRE02 || DESTINATION: (NULL)unknown group MESSAGE CONTENTS: --- FATAL EXCEPTION: UNABLE TO RENDER MESSAGE CONTENTS INVALID SYMBOL AT LINE 01, SEQUENCE 08. LINE 03 MISSING TERMINATING EXPRESSION. == BROADCAST IS CORRUPTED. == ATTEMPTING RECOVERY. PARTIAL BROADCAST RECOVERY SUCCESSFUL. RAW CONTENTS: 01010010011010110110010001010100010011110110100101000010010101010110000101000111011010110110110101001001010001110110110001111010010010010100010101011010011100110101101001010111010101100011000001100001010101110011010101101110010010010100010101100100011110010101101001010111010101100111010101001001010001100100111000110001011000100110111001001110011011000110010001001000010011010111010101001001010001010100111001101000011000100110100101000010011010000110001001101110011011000111011001100010011011010101010101100111011000110110110101010110011010000101101001000011010000100111010001011010010101000011100000111101 [ Pending upload by dispatched Overseer. Unit will enter read-only state in 146 cycles. ]