A living human “giant” survives captivity for generations in a spider-built pen. Observed and selectively fed, the captive’s sounds are dismissed because spiders perceive vibration through touch, not air. As the giant speaks less, scholars infer complacency. Dissections of earlier dead giants reveal mouse-like anatomy, supporting views of a simple endoskeletal beast.

Much later, attendants notice the captive imitating palp-signaling to request food and water. Despite limited symbol use, the spiders judge the giant incapable of complex thought and conclude it was designed for labor. The captive eventually dies and is dissected, reinforcing their mistaken hypothesis.

With the ant war long ended and the central colony now a cooperative neighbor, spider scholarship flourishes. Mastering glass and optics, astronomers extend sight to the very large and small, mapping their world, moon, sun, and a distant planet with its own orbiting body.

A new signal is detected, not from the familiar Messenger but from that outer planet’s moon. Unlike the Messenger’s elegant numerical sequences, this broadcast is chaotic and unreadable, prompting theories of a disorderly or malign source. After years, the chaos collapses into a single, endlessly repeated transmission, which some interpret as a plea for help.

Without warning, the second message ceases. Priestesses and scientists are left with meticulous records but no meaning, and a theology shaken by a voice that called from the wilderness and then went silent.