Here, and When

Beside one human mind and ninety minutes of music, the Voyager record carries something stranger: instructions. Etched on its cover, for a machine that has never been built, in the only language we could assume a stranger shares — physics.

A 60–90 second passage you steer yourself. Nothing plays. Nothing is downloaded. Nothing you write is ever sent anywhere.

Works with a keyboard, a screen reader, and reduced-motion turned on. No sound. No canvas required.

Not the record — its cover. Aluminium, etched, with a spot of uranium plated on. It rides on the outside of the spacecraft. Every mark on it is an instruction for a machine no one has built.

Nothing on Voyager can play the record. No needle is ever lowered; no groove is ever read. The spacecraft is a carrier. The reader — the machine the cover describes — exists only as a drawing, waiting for a finder with hands, eyes, and hydrogen.

So the cover had to say everything a stranger would need. How to play it. How to see it. Where it came from. When. And it had to say all of that without one word of any language.

Mind. Music. Machine.

You have now heard all three. The record is complete. The reader is not.

If you had one gold plate, what would you etch?

Every mark below is really on the Voyager record or its cover. A stranger with no language in common has to find you, date you, and build your player from it. You have room for up to four marks. You may add one line to each — what you would want them to understand. Writing is optional.

0 of 4 chosen

Bright marks are yours. The faint ones are what the real cover carries that you left off.