Blank Square

Fragment 3 looks empty.

$ cat 3
$ wc -c 3
1129 3

Over a thousand bytes of nothing visible. The over-documenter's favourite trick: information stored in the one place people refuse to look, the whitespace itself.

$ cat -A 3
 ^I     ^I  ^I      ^I^I  ^I^I  ^I^I ^I^I   ^I^I ^I^I^I^I ^I^I^I ^I^I^I ^I^I  ^I ^I ^I^I^I  ...

Only spaces and tabs. That is a binary alphabet.

Decode it. What falls out is not a word but a riddle. Answer the riddle.

Submit the answer, lowercase.