“Perhaps. Direct communication between the Cradle and anything outside Babylon’s biosphere is basically impossible. In theory, you [i]could[/i] transmit information indirectly through all of the connections the Cradle has with our infrastructure on Outremer.” Freyr mused as they rounded a large bank of workspace to the console. She shooed Dr Hou away from the interface's main seat in Cantonese and began manipulating a holo of a double helix, regressing Vreta’s DNA back to its original form. 

“However, these connections are basically all one way: outward from the Cradle. Which means any inward traffic would raise flags that are closely monitored. The most public devices I can think of that freely send information [i]into[/i] the Cradle are the entry harnesses and implants. But even then, they serve the quite simple purpose of associating that person with a Cradle ID. No wiggle room for other information that i can think of...”

With the DNA strand returned to a pre-augmented state, Freyr and several of her team stripped it back even further. They pulled at the thread that was evolution, following a trail of mutations back through the entire history of the Rothian species. “So with conventional signals unlikely, where does that leave us? We know the Cradle has the ability to manipulate DNA, from the creatures that attacked us. What if, whatever may be on Rothia...did something similar to you, in the hope that you’ll find your way to the Cradle? With a similar ‘signature’ style, the Cradle would be able to recognise anything related to it straight away. Moreover, the Rothia entity could encode all sorts of information into your genes, including patterns that can be converted into coordinates.”

With Vreta's DNA now devolved to a very early point in Rothian development, Freyr motioned for her team to stop. Putting on a pair of overlay glasses to add some of the annotations back into her view of the holo, Freyr brought in a DNA sample found in all of the Cradle creature samples. Dr Hou and several more of the team activated a machine learning algorithm to detect similarities and patterns. Parts of each structure began quickly highlighting as the program cross-referenced them.