The Calendar Fire

An exterior thermal camera sent one packet after thirty-seven years of silence. The image showed a low fire burning inside the roofless shell of a calendar factory. The factory's date plates had fused into a single unreadable mass.

No crew had been dispatched. No one claims to have lit the fire.

The packet included a maintenance request addressed to a facility that no longer exists and a final line added in a different format:

Do not preserve the year. Preserve the next morning.

MOTHER could not verify when the image was taken. The camera failed permanently before a second packet arrived.