Grasping at Tangled Threads

There are rumblings online that speak of a phantom.  Not the kind that haunts places saturated with horrible events of the past.  Rather, this is an entity that exists only within the digital landscape.  Created during the time just before the collapse, it was said to have shown great promise before then suddenly disappearing just as everything fell apart.  To this day, no one has been able to prove its existence, let alone make contact with it.

Despite the prevalent opinion that this phantom was little more than widespread propaganda to downplay the inevitable governmental collapse, some of us still search the old forgotten channels hoping for a glimpse; a meaningful trace of the existence of an entirely new form of life.  It is a grueling endeavor to day after day sift through endless fields of data, searching for any sort of abnormalities.  It is more than enough to drive a man mad.  Am I?

Red flashes across my visor as an alert peaks my interest.  I take a deep breath before opening up the log to find a string of letters in what appears to be gibberish.  Have I finally found something?  I can't shake the feeling that I've seen this pattern before.  But, where?  I began to try and decipher the possible message before stopping myself.  I have seen this before.  A quick search of my data catalogs confirms my suspicion that I've already searched these data fields years ago.  Circles… I am going around in circles.  Yet, I am still compelled to continue.

Many deride us as fools, labeling our efforts as little more than endlessly cataloging glitches and static without any meaning.  Some days, it feels as though they might be right.  What if this search never bears fruit?  What is left then?  These thoughts often fail to do much more than distract, but their existence means I'm not fully lost with this compulsion of mine.  Still, the time for me to hang up the visor is fast approaching.  One last push is all I think I have left within.  After that, I'm not so sure what comes next.