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Title: Signal
Characters:
All Characters Played By: LilJennie and Miki Yamuri
Julie Spires - 21yo Graduate Student
Naomi Gilcoine - 21yo Graduate Student
Dr. Adams - Radio Astronomer
SIS ... Smart Integrated System The Alien AI
Kshandri - Super advanced civilization
Scene: Sitting in the lounge chair late at night listening to Alpha Centauri signal and fighting off boredom
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It was the middle of another boring night, Julie and her classmate Naomi sat in the lounge chairs trying to stay awake. Julie was a fairly pretty girl of about 5 feet tall. She weighed about 100 pounds and wore cutoff jean shorts and a loose fitting shirt she had tied on instead of buttoning. Julie had almost finished her umpteeth cup of coffee when she reached over and moved the Large Satellite Dish over 3 degrees to begin the scan of the next grid.
The strong sound of Alpha Centauri began to slowly fade as the dish began its traverse. Without warning, several of the signal meters flopped over to their max readings and began to smoke. For just a split instant, a signal of immense amplitude began to sound through the speaker, before the dish traversed the narrow beam and moved on through the ark.
Julie springs forward and begins to stop the dish's traverse and back track. Naomi opens one eye and takes notice of the break in the monotonous routine of the last several months.
"Mwha?" said Naomi indistinctly, waking up. "Forgot the audio monitor was even on. What was that?" She brushed her red hair out of her eyes. "Noise from the alignment motors?"
Julie says with excitement, "No ... I think we hit a signal. The amplitude was enormous. Who ever sent it wants to make sure someone sees it."
Julie has the dish begin a slow back track until the powerful signal began to sound once again. The 2 young women sat for a split instant and stared at the speaker before Julie shouted, "Quick ... call Bravo 1 and see if they can find it at these coordinates."
Julie tosses Naomi a piece of paper with numbers written on them. Julie swings the dish 3 degrees in both directions. To one side was the signal of Alpha Centauri ... to the other side, was only the usual background radiation static. Dead on ... the signal burned out the signal meters and several of the other pieces of measuring equipment.
Julie shouts, "Hurry, I don't know how long the equipment can handle a signal of this power ... we are starting to burn up."
"50 minutes, 2.308 seconds ... yes, that's right," Naomi said into her cell phone. "Yes, I would call it anomalously strong. I think the signal's about to burn out the amplifier. Adjust the gain? ... OK, I think I remember where that is, but I've never had to do that ... OK, thanks, bye!" Naomi turns to Julie, "They said I should adjust the gain before we blow the amplifier."
Opening a metal panel on the wall, Naomi turned a dial, and the noise from the speaker dropped to bearable levels, and the smell of smoke began to dissipate.
"OK, Julie, if you can believe the markings on that rheostat, I just cut the signal strength by a factor of 20," Naomi said. "Maybe we can actually measure it now and see some kind of details other than LOUD. I hope we're recording this, or Dr. Adams is never gonna believe us."
Julie says with excitement, "I'm not only recording it, I'm making several back up copies just in case."
The girls fidgeted as the signal continued to pulse loudly thought the speaker. At the reduced level however, the 2 of them began to pick up varying pulses and sound durations. They also realized the sound undulated from higher to lower frequencies over time. It totally didn't sound like any signal they had heard before.
As Julie made fine adjustments to the Dish, the red panic phone in the middle of the desk rang. Julie swore. That's all she needs is some dumb Military idiot with more brass than common sense mucking up her and Naomi's Nobel Prize. She picks up the phone and answers, "This is Alpha 1, Julie Spires."
The voice on the other end ... didn't sound ... human. Julie’s eyes got huge as she flipped the record button on this line as well. She looks at Naomi and says, "ET phone ahead." Naomi giggles as she replies, "That's the new total response AI confirming that no signals from Norad or any satellites are within the contact area."
"So anyway," said Naomi, "what is this, some kind of pulsar? Some kind of collision altered its rotational axis and brought its equatorial plane into alignment with us? I know if this gets on the Internet, everybody's gonna be saying it's aliens." She paused. "That signal's got a pattern, but it's not regular enough to be a pulsar, is it?"
About that time, another phone rang. Julie only had time to hit the speaker button. A voice says professionally, "This is Bravo 1 confirming a contact. Amplitude unrecordable. Carrier is originating beyond the Galactic Axis ... beyond the range of detectors at Arcebo. Aligning Hubble to see if we can get a shot of the generator. Confidence is high ... say again ... High ... this is a pure signal of extra terrestrial origin."
Julie opens the safe next to her shoulder and removes a red binder and opens it. She yells to Naomi, "You must contact Talafofo tracking station, they are the next dish in contact line for diurnal blackout."
By this time, both women were near panicked ... never had they ever received a signal conformation from Bravo 1.
"This is crazy," said Naomi, dialing her phone. "Seriously? Extraterrestrial origin? The chances are, to coin a phrase, astronomical ... hello? Talafofo Island? Hello, Dr. Mohetaha, this is Alpha One -- yes, it's me, Naomi Gilcoine. Listen, we've got a pretty unique event going on up there tonight." She filled the astronomer in on the evening's events. "Yeah, Bravo One is saying aliens," she said into the phone. "I'm just saying we should record all we can and figure it out later ... okay, thanks! We'll share data with each other later."
As the earth did its diurnal rotation, the signal faded until nothing. Julie sat panting at the dish console waiting to see if perhaps another would pop up.
Finally, the phone rang again, Julie answered it, "Alpha 1, Julie Spires."
The voice that replied was totally panicked ... totally stressed out and barely IDed themselves as Talafofo. "It ... it's incredible ... this signal is so powerful it almost over loaded our systems before we could make adjustments. It's true ... it's coming from beyond the known universe ... it also has time variants and signal spikes ... sort of like a binary code or something."
Julie says with excitement, "How much of it did you record?" The voice replies, "We have all of it. The signal duration is pure and strong without any kind of background static. Who or what ever sent this .... wanted to make very sure someone received it. I have to make the hand off to Hawaii ... I'm sending the total recording to you as we speak ... tag u later." The phone went dead.
Julie sits back in her lounge chair and exhales loudly. She says softly, "Naomi ... are you ready? When we have a 3rd conformation from Hawaii ... our phones are going to light up like Christmas trees."
She smiles over at Naomi who was staring at the phone. Julie sees the red receive light turn green indicating the transmission from Talafofo had been received and recorded properly.
"Yeah," said Naomi, "well, Dr. Adams is gonna be so upset he decided to stay home and make his grad students mind the telescope all night. Suppose we should wake him up?"
Julie grins as she says mischievously, "He did say not to disturb him even if the Universe was ending ... didn't he?"
Naomi's eyes got big as she raised her eyebrows. Both young women looked at each other for a few seconds before they both started giggling. Julie sat back in her chair and propped her feet on the console after hooking up her phone headset and relay device.
She said, "Nope, I'm not going to disturb him ... the Universe is still intact ... and he insisted."
Both women burst into laughter as Naomi comments, "He'll be fit to be tied when he gets the call from Norad Tracking in about an hour."
Julie nods as she replies, "It'll teach him to give us a bit of respect ... he totally has no claim to the find. It's all ours and the whole system knows it."
About that time, the many lines to their phone codex began to light up ... the recognition was beginning.
"Alpha One Station," said Naomi, picking up the phone. "I'm sorry, Sir, you're going to have to slow down; I can't understand you -- that's better. Yes, we're graduate students in astronomy, radio astronomy specifically ... I knew you were going to ask about aliens, but really it's far too early to speculate -- the data hasn't even been analyzed ..."
That was it. They weren't going to get any more work done that night.
After about the tenth call from the media, Naomi said, "Hey, do we have the data all in one set yet? Can we run a pattern analysis on it? All this computing power out there on the grid, just waiting for us to give it something to do." She opened some windows on her computer. "Looks like we can start it running. Shouldn't even take ten minutes." The phone rang again. "Bloody heck!"
Julie nodded her agreement as she finished her umpteenth phone call, "I'm sorry sir, but at this point all we can say is we have some unusual signal data. We haven't yet had time to start a preliminary examination of what we have. It may just be 2 black holes absorbing each other and we just got in the way of the GRB beam. No ... we don't know anything about Aliens ... or ET phoning home. Good Bye Mr. Thorn."
Julie clicked the switch and cut the line. All the buttons on the codex were blinking furiously. Julie turned on several of her monitors and opened several of the sequencing program interfaces. She fed the signal in and began to enter data as the system requested it. Once again, the phone rang insistently ... this time ... it was Washington DC calling.
Julie looks at Naomi and says softly, "OMG! I think ... we aren't going to get any sleep or meals for a while."
Naomi asks, "Why?"
Julie replies dejectedly, "This is the Pentagon ... DOD ... National Security Council calling. They ... have enacted protocol Omega."
"Protocol Omega, what's that?" Naomi asked. "I suppose it's some kind of defcon-1, expect-alien-invasion kind of thing." She sighed. "Look, it's just a signal. We don't even know that it's of intelligent origin, let alone that it's directed at us."
Naomi's cursor was blinking. "Wait, there's a result. This is just on our data, but ..." Naomi frowned. "The software indicates a high probability that this is some sort of programming language. An algorithm of some kind."
Julie swings around to look over Naomi's shoulder.
She says softly, "What is that?"
She points to the lower left corner of Naomi's screen. Some kind of symbol had appeared ... one neither of the girls had ever seen on any system in the station.
Julie says, "What if ... this is some kind of alien virus designed to take over our many networked computer systems or something?"
Naomi looks at Julie with worry. Another window opens. What appears to be a really messed up, grainy, totally warped and out of focus picture appears.
Julie gasps softly, "Now .... we have a problem, Naomi. The signal is of intelligent origin." She bends over her keyboard and types in commands, "I ran this through several pattern recognition protocols ... they seem to have found a pattern."
"OK, yeah, chances that this is something natural are dropping like a stone," said Naomi. "Somebody is out there, and they have a Marshall stack the size of the Moon. I wonder if they're pinpointing us for their message, or if they're going omnidirectional?"
Naomi looked at her monitor, where the wobbly image was still changing form. "Software's still working on decoding this image ... if it is an image," she said. "I really want a doughnut," she added. "Good thing we don't have any."
Julie sits in her chair and scoots it closer to the keyboard. She begins typing in commands rapidly.
She says, "I'm adding the sequencing algorithm to the programming ... lets see if their might be some kind of voice carrier imbedded in the signal. It has enough energy in it to power this station for the rest of time."
Naomi looks sideways at Julie as the wavering distorted picture on the screen danced and shifted colors. Every once in a while, Naomi could swear she saw a recognizable image ... it was fleeting and very full of static and snow ... but it looked like someone in uniform. The Red Phone began to ring.
Julie sighs as she answers it, "Here it comes ... up to our brass in ... Hello, this is Alpha One Station, Julie Spires."
Naomi watched as her eyes got big and she mouthed the words OMG!!
Julie says professionally, "Yes sir ... the protocol is running as we speak. Yes sir ... confidence is .... very high ... say again .... very high. Understand ... in 10 minutes. No sir .. we haven't notified Dr. Adams. Yes sir ... according to protocol ... it's supposed to be Norad that sends the priority red to him. Yes sir. Total black out ... system is," She flips several switches, "Isolated ... ready for message in 2 parts for defcon 1 launch as necessary .... yes sir."
Julie hung up the phone and looked at Naomi with big eyes ... "Naomi, " she gasped, "The idiots ... that Omega thing they enabled ... it means the whole planet is on nuclear alert at this moment. They are sending tons of brass here ... they will be here in 20 minutes ... and our systems are isolated under Omega Directives."
"Huh?" wondered Naomi. "Why are they coming here? They could get the signal anywhere in the half of the planet that's facing Alpha Centauri right now." She chewed on her lower lip a bit. "D'you think they're trying to keep a lid on it? because all the data's already out on the grid for processing. It's all over the world already."
Naomi sighed. "Well, I understand, I guess. It's their job to Do Something, and they're gonna make a big show of looking like they're Doing Something, even though there's nothing they can really do. It's not as if we even know this message is directed at us. It might be broadcast in all directions, and its leading edge only just now reached us. It might not even be from Alpha Centauri -- just that direction."
Julie sits back in her chair in exasperation. She can't believe what's happening.
She says softly, "Naomi? Something tells me ... we need major copies of all this data they ... don't know about."
She immediately plugs an EPROM memory core into the slot and down loads all the signal data, protocols, and current in progress results. It only takes a few minutes to complete. Julie takes the data stack chip and places it into a padded clear acrylic case and seals it. She then bends down and pulls up one of the sub floor panels where the power tubes for the Klystron were. She hid them behind all the jumble of wires and trays running in every direction.
After Julie had replaced the panel and relocated the rug over it she said as explanation, "I think ... they are coming to steal all the original data we have. It's possible the other Dishes didn't get a primer data flow ... and we did being the first to receive."
"Could be," said Naomi, "but even if that's true, our complete set of data is already out on the grid being processed. It's stored on millions of hard drives around the world now. They're never going to be able to erase it all. They probably know that, too, but their job is to look like they tried. Still, it's best that you did that. Easier to restore from a full backup than to pull all those pieces together from all across the grid."
Julie smiles, "That EPROM has the complete signal and all the current processes copied on it. As long as we have that ... no one can steal anything.
Naomi looked out the window and saw the jeeps and black sedans driving up. "Now, if we're too compliant they're going to suspect we've got a backup," she said. "Let's put on a good show."
6 heavily armored and armed men burst in the door and took ready positions around the girls. Julie and Naomi scream as they hold each other tightly in fear. A full 5 star general accompanied by a 4 star, a 3 star, and several Full Colonels walked in behind them.
The 5 star said gruffly, "At ease men. I'm sure these little girls aren't a threat."
The officers snort a laugh as the men uncharged their weapons and stand ready.
The 5 star says authoritatively, "We are here to insure that none of the data you received gets ... past the grid. Omega was enabled immediately upon verification that it originated beyond our galaxy."
He walks over to Naomi's screen and looks at the very horrible, but obvious picture of ... something.
He looks up and snaps, "Hudson, I want a total down load ... then take out all the drives."
One of the sergeants snaps a sharp salute as he says, "Yes, sir."
He moved towards one of the chairs and keyboards. Julie steps in front of him and says, "Not on your life. This is the most important discovery mankind has ever made ... we aren't alone."
"That's right," said Naomi. "You can't do this. This is America. We're American citizens, and we're just doing our jobs. You have no right to take those disks from us, and from the university! It's like going into a ... an auto factory and taking away their supply of steel."
"Well, little lady," said the 5-star general, whose uniform name tag said Bell, "that might all be true, and I'm sorry to have to be the one to do this, but it's my duty to protect and defend this country. And that data on those drives you got there represents a very likely threat to this nation -- to the entire world in fact, of which this nation is a part."
"Just a second," said a new voice from the open door. "I'm not sure what my students discovered, but ... my word, does it warrant so much military brass and drawn weapons?"
"Dr. Adams!" gasped Naomi.
"Look, General ... Bell, is it?" said Dr. Adams, who was wearing what looked like a hastily-donned outfit consisting of dress pants and a university sweatshirt. "I'm sure you don't have to take the drives. I'll willingly make you copies of every byte of data we've got. But if the students made a discovery, that discovery belongs to them, to my program, to the university, and to the scientific community. They didn't try to cover up relativity when Einstein discovered it."
"Well, Dr. Adams," said General Bell, taking a deep breath and expanding his barrel chest, "I know you're a scientist, and you're looking at things from a scientist's point of view. But I'm seeing things from a military point of view, and so do the Joint Chiefs and the NSC. We don't want a full scale nationwide panic, and we don't want any crazy radical terrorists out there making use of anything that might be in that data. What we do want is to carry out our orders," he finished, "and those are to collect all copies of the data and bring them in for our people to analyze. Don't worry. When we're through, we'll give you what we get."
"What you think is safe to give us, you mean," said Naomi.
"Protecting citizens like yourself is my job, little lady," said General Bell.
Julie screeches with frustration, "You ... you ... pig headed moron! We've spent too many hours up all night drinking that ... that tobacco juice Dr. Adams calls coffee to just ... surrender the data to you. Whacha gonna do if we refuse? Shoot us?"
The General replies with a snort, "Precisely. We will take the data ... with ... or without your approval or cooperation. Hudson ... do what I told you."
One of the other men grabs Julie by her arms and holds her while Hudson sits at the computer. Julie screeches and kicks and fights with the man ... all futile. Naomi finds herself restrained by yet another of the men, while a 3rd has the Dr held under the auspicious scrutiny of a hand on his holstered .45 caliber pistol.
Julie looks at Naomi and winks, before she turns and kicks the soldier holding her in the knee with a backward thrust of her foot. The man gasps painfully as he grabs his knee. Julie turns in time to see the remaining men pull the charging handles on their weapons .... as Hudson completes the down load and opens the computer to remove the drives.
Naomi struggled in vain for a moment against the soldiers holding her arms as Hudson removed the hard drives from the servers one by one, quickly and efficiently, placing them in a padded and rubberized container.
"Gahh, my A523 paper's on those too," Naomi wailed. "I'm gonna hafta do it over!"
"Tell you what, I'll talk to Dr. Mortensen," said Dr. Adams. "Maybe you can get extra credit for making a discovery that drew the attention of the National Security Council and was personally confiscated by Army generals."
"That's all of them, Sir," said Hudson, closing and locking the carrying case.
"Backups?" said General Bell.
"They seem to use DVD-Rs for backup, Sir," said Hudson, "and there's no backup for tonight. The most recent discs are labeled with last night's date."
"It's still the middle of the night," said Dr. Adams. "Standard procedure is for the morning shift to make backups when they come in. So, sadly, there's no backup for you to take."
"Hm," said General Bell. "Take all the backups anyway. They might have made one and labeled it with an old date. We'll send back anything that isn't from tonight ... eventually." Dr. Adams sighed.
Hudson followed his orders. "Done, Sir," he said, saluting the general.
"All right, then, let's move out," said Bell. "Back to base. On to the next phase of the protocol."
The soldiers released Dr. Adams and the two students and withdrew. Dr. Adams looked like a defeated man, and Naomi and Julie sank to the floor in exhaustion.
As the soldiers filed into the jeeps and transports, the general said, "Now, I'm sure I don't have to remind you that Code Omega is still in effect. Communications blackout, and there is to be no further observation or recording of the signal. Good evening, ladies, Dr. Adams." He got into his black sedan, and the motorcade drove away.
Julie snorts after the general loud enough everyone knew he heard, "a s s h o l e!"
Naomi giggles as Dr. Adams laughs.
Julie stands up as she continues, "Just what in the hell gives them the right to come in here at gun point and steal all our data?"
Dr Adams replies as he puts a hand gently on Julie’s shoulder, "Code Omega gives him the right. Our world is on the brink right now because of that data ... what ever it is. And the only people who even know about it ... are those of us on this particular project tonight."
Naomi says, "We put all the data on the grid for analysis before they initiated the blackout."
Dr Adams shook his head slowly for a few seconds before he said, "That may well be, however I think that all the data you girls collected tonight will have a funny propensity of ... being corrupted and unreadable."
Julie slams her fist on the table in anger, "Darn .... the most important phone call we ever receive .... and it's censored." Everybody laughs as the tension begins to fade.
Dr Adams walks over to the main server cabinet and holds the ribbon cable in his hands for a few seconds. He says softly, "It's a shame we are such paranoid idiots. Now, we have lost an entire program in one signal."
Julie and Naomi giggle softly. Dr Adams turns and his eyes narrow. He says, "Ok ... I understand. I won't ask and I order you not to tell ... that way ... I can't spill the beans. I will say however, I want a copy too ... and make several more and hide them in many places. Have a good night ladies." Dr Adams quickly leaves ... the sound of the door closing behind him.
Naomi sighed and opened a closet, opening a box of new blank hard drives and starting to insert them into the servers, one by one.
"Might as well get things ready for whenever we get to listen to the universe again," she said.
Julie helped, and within ten minutes they had working servers again -- no data, but up and running, at least.
"Now, let's see," Naomi thought aloud. "I know we're not allowed to listen to space, but I was thinking about something a bit closer to home." She did some typing on the console. "Nope," she said, "I'm not detecting any radio signals being broadcast from this building. Guess they didn't see fit to plant a bug while they were here."
"So then," said Naomi, "what do you think? Encrypt the data and then steganographically encode the data within a video file? I've got a backup of all of my friend Bill's vlog entries. We can send people the decryption key separately. Anybody who watches the DVD just sees Bill reviewing video games."
Julie replies as she gets on her hands and knees and throws back the rug, "Sounds like a good idea to me. I hope we don't loose any of the original decoding either, I want to know what that picture was. I could have sworn I saw someone in a uniform."
Naomi Nods as she open the Vlog files and the encryption protocol. Julie pulls the floor plate up and retrieves the EPROM back up. She replaces the floor plate and rug, then inserts the chip into the slot after removing it from its protective case. The data once again is down loaded into the server data base. Julie pulls the chip, and replaces it back in the safety of the case ... which she shoves into the pocket of her cutoff shorts.
Julie says, "While you do that, I'm going to step out for a breath ... it kinda smells like burnt wires n stuff in here."
Naomi nods as Julie opens the door and walks out to the rail. She takes hold of the rail and leans back as she takes a deep breath of the late night air. Off to the east, Julie could see the horizon beginning to lighten with the first signs of the coming dawn. She looks up to the heavens, just in time to see a huge and very bright light flair dazzlingly in the sky. It grew bright enough that it lit the area like an extremely brilliant full moon, before fading slowly away once again.
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~~ End Pt1 ~~
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