Spheria (27 page)

Chuck: So 1973, the Big Ear starts scanning, listening for stuff out in outer space.
 

Josh: Hence the name.

Chuck: Hence the name. And what would happen is, because it was 1973, it would print stuff out on a dot matrix printer, and a student assistant would take that printout of what it was listening to and take it to another volunteer — teachers, professors — and they would just basically look at all these numbers page by page by page.

Josh: Yeah, if you’ve ever seen the Wow! signal it’s just numbers, 1’s, 2’s, maybe a 3 here or there.
 

Chuck: Yeah, it’s the level of background noise in space.

Josh: Exactly. So a 1 is a blip, a radio transmission, that was one times the intensity of the normal background noise in space on a particular frequency, right?

Chuck: Yeah.

Josh: A 1 is nothing, like there’s 1’s all over the place all the time.

Chuck: 1’s, 2’s and 3’s.

Josh: All very common stuff. So these, these poor astronomers who are donating their time to the Big Ear telescope were basically analyzing this stuff with their eyes.

Chuck: Yeah. There wasn’t like a computer program to spit it into.

Josh: …they would look at a whole night’s scan of deep space from a radio telescope, again, with their eyes, going over the sheets and sheets of computer paper, dot matrix printer paper. And that’s what this guy named Jerry Ayman, who is an astronomer at Ohio State, was doing on August 18, 1977. He was looking over some stuff from three days before.
 

Chuck: Yeah. And so he’s scanning all the stuff and there’s 1’s, 2’s, and 3’s and he’s, you know, he’s watching Love American Style on TV and eating his TV dinner and he’s bored out of his mind.
 

Josh: I used to love that show.
 

Chuck. Ha ha. Love American Style?
 

Josh: Mm hm.
 

Chuck: And he’s bored out of his skull and then, um, well here’s another important thing to point out because it was also 1977 at this point. They didn’t have double-digit printouts, it just went 1 through 9 and then started with the letters A, B, C, as 10, 11, 12, and so on.

Josh: Right, exactly.

Chuck: So he’s reading this stuff and he sees 6-E-Q-U-J-5 which means the transmission at its peak of U peaked at thirty times louder than anything they’ve ever seen before…
 

Josh: Than the normal background noise.

Chuck: And he circled it, and put ‘wow exclamation point’ on the paper, and that’s why it’s the Wow! signal.
 

Josh: Exactly. And this is a big deal. I mean, like in this huge ream of dot matrix paper filled with 1’s and 2’s and maybe a 3 here or there, there’s a U standing in the middle of this string, this transmission…
 

Chuck: It started at 6, which was high.
 

Josh: Yeah. I mean 6 alone would be like this is kind of significant. This thing went up to U! And, uh, like you said, he circled it and wrote ‘wow’ next it and it became the Wow! signal and, almost immediately, they started investigating this thing.
 

Chuck: Sure.
 

Josh: And there are a lot of details to the Wow! signal that, uh, make it even more impressive than just the fact that it peaked at U. It started at 6 and ended at 5 and peaked at U. There’s a lot of different aspects to the Wow! signal that make people say, “what in the name of God is this?”

#

Min reached over and pressed stop on Ashley’s phone. “I see what you mean. The password must be 6EQUJ5.”

“Is that long enough?” asked Ashley.

 
“Six characters should be, for a minimum length.”

“Okay, so now what?”

“So now,” replied Min, “I play detective, find the hidden system, and break into it. Give me some time. I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“Okay, please let me know what you find out.”

“I will. Thank you for your time and the water.”

“No problem. Speaking of time…”

“Yes?”

“Would you like to hang out and watch a movie?”

Now?
Min thought. Then she looked at Ashley, who seemed shaken. It was obvious that she could use a friend right now, and Min wasn’t going to work on the problem until tomorrow anyway. “Yes, that’d be great,” she said.
 

“Cool!” Ashley gave Min a wide grin. “I’ll make some popcorn.”

Chapter 32 - Confinement

"You can chain me, you can torture me, you can
 
even destroy this body, but you will never
 
imprison my mind." - Mahatma Gandhi

Sa∙ma stirred in the darkness and changed positions. The barren floor beneath him was less than ideal for sleeping. A slight vibration through the ground indicated the approach of a visitor. Light flooded the room as a large door was pried open from the outside.

The cell was triangular at the base and tapered to a point. It was the hollow interior of the Council building. The room had no windows and only a single large door which now stood open. Long ago, this room had been a shelter against attacking Zalisk, at a time when the Colony was much smaller than today. In Sa∙ma’s lifetime, it had only been used for storage and had all but been forgotten. Until now. It had been repurposed as the Polyan’s first prison.

The room was completely empty, save for a shallow hexagonal pit in the center.
 
The light faded as the door was closed, replaced by the dim glow of a small yellow shard. Ga∙zo walked over to the pit, tossed it in, and sat. Sa∙ma crawled over to the edge of the pit, across from Ga∙zo.

“I was sent to confirm you're still alive,” said Ga∙zo. “I could care less really. If it weren’t for Fa∙ro’s wishes, I would end you right here and now.”

“Ugh,” grunted Sa∙ma.

“That all you've got to say?”

“I have a lot to say,” hissed Sa∙ma, “you just don’t want to hear it.”

“I must remain here a little while. If you talk, I've got no choice.”

“It doesn’t matter. You have a closed mind, and those like you are the reason our Colony will perish.”

“Ha! The Colony is stronger than ever. The Leaders are the problem. They are weak, and only now, with Fa∙ro engaged, are decisions being made. We used to flounder, paralyzed by indecision. Now the Council defers to him to end the gridlock. He is a god among us. We’ve entered a new era, and the Colony is unstoppable.”

“Nothing is unstoppable. Even the largest Troaten will grow too large to sustain its own girth; it’ll shrivel and die.” Sa∙ma regretted not being able to refer to the story of the Rift. “That belief is delusional.”

Ga∙zo poked at the shard with one of his legs, flipping it over.

“You're wrong,” he said. “Your caste can’t understand. All you understand is how to build. You don’t understand strength, don’t understand power, don’t understand how to kill. We Soldiers live and feel death, and it sustains the Colony. We’re more organized now and can hunt better than ever. The Leaders are useless. Fa∙ro tells us when to go out, and the Council just bends to his will. And soon there will be two of them, and the Leaders will be that much more unnecessary.”

“What do you mean ‘two of them’?”’

Ga∙zo beamed. “There is a violet bubble rising toward the Source. Soon we’ll enter a breeding season. Fa∙ro has demanded that the Council make another seven-legged Polyan, another god. With two, the irrelevance of the Council is assured, and the Leaders don’t even realize it.”

Sa∙ma pondered this. Ga∙zo seemed to enjoy having made him uncomfortable. The two opponents sat in silence, mesmerized by the glittering yellow shard.

“You need to stop this,” Sa∙ma finally said.

“Stop this!” scoffed Ga∙zo, leaning back on three of his five legs. “I can’t wait for it to be done.”

“Listen,” pleaded Sa∙ma. “I know the Council members have trouble agreeing on decisions, but that’s okay. Only the important ones are actually needed, and those are the ones they agree on. The real danger is having one Polyan making the decisions. There will be no balance, no counter opinion. Everything will be in service to Fa∙ro’s personal agenda.”

“Correction. Fa∙ro’s and the new god’s. It can’t be selfish with two of them. Together they can fulfill the purpose that the Council has floundered at.”

“So what of the Council then? What role does it play in all this?”

“I'm not sure. I'm not involved in those discussions. But I would guess the Leaders will debate and provide options, and the gods will then decide on courses of action.”

“I find it hard to believe Fa∙ro will care about anyone’s opinion. Something doesn’t add up. Why would he want another god to compete with him?”

“Gods don’t think the way we do. They are divine, after all. They don’t get caught up in the paralysis that prevents the Council from making decisions. Fa∙ro calls it the ‘duality,’ two gods are stronger than one.”

“Fa∙ro was created by the Council. He may have seven legs, but he is no god. We both have seen his rage, his temper tantrums, his loss of control. That’s not the behavior of a god. That’s the behavior of a child with too much power and no constraints. Our blind devotion to him merely because he appears to be god has weakened the Colony. It’s divided us, pitting Polyan against Polyan. Look at me in this cage. It was never like this before. We always worked as a cohesive unit, a single mind functioning together for the good of all.”

“He is no god?” mused Ga∙zo. His vision sensors focused, and he stared at Sa∙ma. “You will pay for your blasphemy. Once Fa∙ro hears your words, even he won’t be willing to keep you alive any longer.” Ga∙zo grabbed the yellow shard and stood in one quick motion. The door opened, again bathing the room in light. Then with a crash, the room returned to darkness.

Sa∙ma sat in the stillness. His fate was with the gods now.

Chapter 33 - Coffee Break

“I like coffee because it gives me the illusion that I might be awake.” - Lewis Black

The lighting in the office was reduced to a scattering of incandescent lamps on desktops. Min was the only one still there. The others had all gone home, having worked most of the night. Tomorrow was a big day. Graham was arriving early for an update on their progress, and they wanted to have reliable results. Their continued funding depended on it.

Min needed to finish a critical set of calculations for a report. She’d gotten used to working late, becoming a night owl, so she didn’t mind it in the least. She kept working, even after the cleaning crew came and went, shutting off the main lights when they left.

She rubbed her eyes beneath her glasses. They felt gritty, as if she was developing rheum while awake. She blinked a few times and the lines on her monitor blurred.

“Blasted numbers!” she exclaimed out loud. She looked around embarrassed but realized nobody was around to hear her. So she shouted, “BLASTED… NUMBERS!” It felt good.
 

She stood up and, grabbing her over-sized mug, walked to the kitchenette. The Keurig blinked its yellow LEDs like a puppy asking for attention or to get a treat. Min complied, feeding a Dark Embers k-cup into the machine. Soon her mug was filling up with the glorious liquid fuel. Since one wasn’t enough, she put in another cartridge and filled her cup to the rim. After taking a sip, her vision seemed to instantly clear.

“Ah,” she sighed. “That’s better. Good boy,” she said, patting the coffee machine.

Upon returning to her cubicle, she noticed her screen had changed. It was all blue with large white letters. It said, “System Failure, reboot required,” along with a bunch of meaningless numbers.
 

“What the…”

She pressed enter but nothing happened.

“Goddamn, son of a bitch!”

The computer wouldn’t respond.

She pressed ctrl-alt-delete. Nothing.

She moved the mouse. There was no visible cursor.

After a moment of frustration, she turned off the power. The screen went black. She took another sip of coffee, noticing the similarity of the fluid to the monitor before her. After about 20 seconds, she turned the computer back on. It booted up to the login screen, and she entered her credentials. Once the desktop appeared, she clicked the icon for the “Spheria Development Environment.” Her screen changed again to the words “System Failure, reboot required.”