The Signals That Arrived Separately

A signal arrived.

The observer recorded it.

It was faint. It was incomplete. There was no reason to think it was important.

Some time later, another signal arrived.

It came from somewhere else. It looked different.

The observer recorded that one too.

A third arrived much later. It did not resemble either of the others.

For a while, the observer treated them as separate events.

That seemed reasonable.

Then someone asked:

What if they are not separate?

The observer looked again.

The signals had arrived at different times.

They had been measured by different instruments.

They had different shapes.

None of that had changed.

What changed was the question being asked of them.

The observer placed the records beside one another.

There was no immediate answer.

There was something else.

A relationship.

It was not contained entirely in the first signal.

It was not contained entirely in the second.

It had appeared between them.

The observer wondered how many things in the world might remain invisible simply because their evidence had arrived separately.

Then they began looking for another signal.