Children's Hour: What Is a First Gift?

TRANSMISSION SIGNAL-1/0003
ORIGIN Children's Hour · Tiered Ward Twelve, Broadcast Annex
CLASS Children's Hour
DECODED Desk day 3
CONFIDENCE Partial

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—so if you already know the answer, you may sit quietly and feel pleased with yourself, which is also a gift, though we do not enter it.

The first gift is the first thing you do for another keeper before you know you are doing it. Before you know what doing is. A parent enters it on your behalf, and that is how you become a keeper. That is how you enter the Count. Eleven-and-eleven thousand, four hundred and twelve keepers, as of this morning, each one beginning the same way: with something given before they had a word for giving.

Now. The rhyme. Hands ready.

Before the word there was the act.
Before the act there was the want.
Before the want—

[—]

—which is why we say the record is older than the first entry. That is not a riddle. That is just the shape of things.

We will do the second verse tomorrow, if the Draw permits and the signal holds. Quiet Hour follows.

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Intercept Desk note: The broadcast appears to cut before the second verse is introduced; whether this is signal loss or simply the end of the segment is not yet determined.

Decoded with machine assistance at The Sixth Lense Intercept Desk.