Excavation Status Report
Site: Earth
GTL 76834|467
CLASSIFIED
To Arkon Tervish III
As you know, we've been on this planet for much too long- since GTL 76833|452. Our mission was to find out as much about our ancestors as possible. Ever since it was discovered that our race originated from this tiny planet, The Populace has been curious about its origins. I'm proud to report that we won't have to wonder much longer.
The discovery took place several nights ago in a cave near our home base. Up until this point we'd had minimal success- all of the documents that Earth had were stored, according to what we now know, on a medium that degrades with time. As you can imagine, this made it hard to find out anything.
Until we stumbled into a cave and found a round metal box about 6 inches high and 6 inches in diameter. Upon opening it, we discovered a large number of flat disks made from a polymer derived from decayed organic matter. Upon closer inspection we found one side had been encoded with binary data.
The technical specifications are attached, I'll spare you from reading them twice. (They're really very boring) Basically, the first disk told us, in very plain terms, that the rest of the disks contained everything. It went on to explain how to decode everything and how to use it.
Needless to say, we set to work.
After a bit of work, we turned it on and found that the description was correct, in more ways than one. Amongst the disks, we found descriptions of everything. The technology of the era, the news, politics, culture, subculture, science, literature, people, places, things, and ideas. In depth descriptions of daily life and the way things were, in plain terms from plain people. Everything2, and the people who made it, and added to it; will live forever.
Hey, it could happen.