The group continued reading The Book of Wisdom together, spending their evenings after school at the cabin pouring over the strange maps and diagrams while Eliana read aloud to them from her new favorite spot on the bottom bunk. She'd brought a string of lights to hang from the now empty bars above her, and even her favorite blanket had started staying behind in the bunker more often than not.
Jax kept sneaking more and more tools and parts in from outside to try to get the radio working, Ewen used the maps to create a second version of his own, filling in the gaps of the areas we hadn't explored yet. They didn't trust it to be entirely accurate, but it seemed to follow major landmarks well enough, even if it was embellished with a "Planet Portal" here and there.
Xaiden worked on the book code, and though he'd made the connection between some of the numbers from the radio transcript and the library serial codes on the books from the desk upstairs, none of the typical book codes were making any sense. He eventually gave up and started reading the books he'd once considered quite boring, hoping to find a clue in the contents. And so, time passed like this until Flowering came along and school ended for the season.
It was a day in the early weeks of Flowering when Jax finally finished the last part of the radio repair following the detailed notes from the schematics left in the bunker. "Finally!" Jax exclaimed, satisfied. "I present to you, the famed 'Interplanetary Radio' you've all been hearing about, and the only working one of its kind (that we know of) on our favorite planet, Zenith!" He mimed fanfare and tapped his hands on his knees for a drum roll. "Ta-da"
"It somehow looks just like all the other radios you've tinkered with," Xaiden remarked disinterestedly. "Have you tested it yet?"
"I have! And you're gonna be shocked when you hear this," Jax paused for dramatic effect, "It doesn't work with our other radios! Like at all."
"Why do you sound happy about that?" Xaiden asked, returning his gaze to the book he was halfway through.
"Because," Jax said, tapping the top of the book to get Xaiden's attention, "it's set to an encryption level that none of our radios are capable of, one I didn't know was possible to achieve, there's certainly no records of it I could find, other than in this crazy man's notes!"
"What's the point of using something like that?" Xaiden asked, "No one's gonna be able to reply unless you make another one of those."
"Excellent observation, my liege," Jax joked on, "Unless, of course, our beloved myth about neighboring planets is somehow true!" He laughed heartily, though no one else joined in. He wiped a happy tear from his eye, and continued. "No, but seriously, there's gotta be at least one other one somewhere. Remember the transcript?"
"Oh yeah, it was 'Reader', right?" Xaiden answered, a bit more interested now. "Good point, should we try to find the other radio then? It probably will need fixing too, right?"
"Yeah, unfortunately, there's a total of 97 instances of 'Meridian Portals' on the maps he left behind, and we don't even know that has anything to do with our dear 'Reader'. Honestly it could be anywhere."