replied. Long enough to make her worry just how deep of a grudge he might hold against her for taking his life down the crapper with hers.
“ I don’t blame you, you know,” he finally typed, reading her mind.
“ No, I don’t know that. I like what you’ve done with the new website.”
“ Thanks. The rest of the gang wants you back.”
“ I can’t make it on pizza money.”
“ It was only the stuffed shirts that abandoned you, abandoned us really. The real sky watchers are still faithful.”
“ Really?”
“ Really. You were sitting in the chair E.T. called. You’re the hero. I get a thousand hits a day on your section of the site, a hundred times that on the anniversary of first contact. As for pizza money, we’ve got some prospects for funding.”
Mindy sat up a little straighter. “All forgive and forget with Uncle Sam?”
“ Hardly, this is semiprivate, corporate cash.” Another pause, shorter this time. “I think we’ll need you to get this money.”
“ I’ve got a new life, a new career.”
“ Right, and sooner or later you might even get married.”
“ Am I that transparent?”
“ Do you want me to answer that?”
“ Not really.”
Another pause before her old friend resumed. “We’ve been chewing on that signal with surplus PCs and borrowed mainframe time for five years now. We’re no closer to getting anything from it than we were when we started. Five layers of data, all in frequency harmonics with a base multiplier of one hundred forty-four, all tightly compressed into a transmission only five seconds long.”
“ We got nineteen seconds of seamless data” she started to complain, then stopped typing.
“ Uh-huh,” came the reply.
“ You made a breakthrough?” She had to type it three times before she got it right, her hands were shaking so bad.
“ I wouldn’t call it a breakthrough. Let’s just say we found what looks like terminators in the signal.”
“ Then it was repeating.”
“ Almost certainly. The signal is so complex we probably would have spent another five years trying to find the repeating sequences. Leon had a brain stroke one night while tripping on some particularly righteous Columbian weed,” she shook her head as she read on, “and decided to look for anything that resembled a terminator block, like you would find in a program. He found three of them.”
“ No shit.”
“ Nope, good shit. I’ve tried it. Anyway, once we had the terminators we isolated a five second block of signal and overlaid it with another five second block.”
“ Did they match?”
“ Not in the least.”
“ Fuck!” Mindy snapped aloud, then typed the same thing.
“ That was our reply too. How could we have found such a clear indication of structured signal length and not had it played out? Simple really, looks like each five second block is a unique block. We’ve been chewing ten millisecond segments of each one looking for repeats.”
“ Any luck?”
“ None, until last night. Funny that you IM me just now since I was about to ping you.”
“ You trying to give me a heart attack?”
“ No, just dragging out the drama.”
“ Well, enough dragging. Spill it.”
“ It’s taken a lot of computer time, and a lot of bread we don’t have, but we’ve found ten recurring data groups. All are nearly identical. Nine are in packets one, two and three. Those are the complete packets. At least as complete as we have. One is in packet four, that’s the one on the end of the data stream right before we lost the signal. The last one is the least interesting, only really useful to prove a theory. The data groups are 12 milliseconds long. It looks like they are ALL twelve milliseconds long. These groups occur through the entire length of the transmissions. We’re searching for more matches, but it could take years. Centuries. It’s unfuckingbelievable!”
“ It sounds like it.”
“ Remember how I said they are NEARLY identical?”
“
“ I don’t blame you, you know,” he finally typed, reading her mind.
“ No, I don’t know that. I like what you’ve done with the new website.”
“ Thanks. The rest of the gang wants you back.”
“ I can’t make it on pizza money.”
“ It was only the stuffed shirts that abandoned you, abandoned us really. The real sky watchers are still faithful.”
“ Really?”
“ Really. You were sitting in the chair E.T. called. You’re the hero. I get a thousand hits a day on your section of the site, a hundred times that on the anniversary of first contact. As for pizza money, we’ve got some prospects for funding.”
Mindy sat up a little straighter. “All forgive and forget with Uncle Sam?”
“ Hardly, this is semiprivate, corporate cash.” Another pause, shorter this time. “I think we’ll need you to get this money.”
“ I’ve got a new life, a new career.”
“ Right, and sooner or later you might even get married.”
“ Am I that transparent?”
“ Do you want me to answer that?”
“ Not really.”
Another pause before her old friend resumed. “We’ve been chewing on that signal with surplus PCs and borrowed mainframe time for five years now. We’re no closer to getting anything from it than we were when we started. Five layers of data, all in frequency harmonics with a base multiplier of one hundred forty-four, all tightly compressed into a transmission only five seconds long.”
“ We got nineteen seconds of seamless data” she started to complain, then stopped typing.
“ Uh-huh,” came the reply.
“ You made a breakthrough?” She had to type it three times before she got it right, her hands were shaking so bad.
“ I wouldn’t call it a breakthrough. Let’s just say we found what looks like terminators in the signal.”
“ Then it was repeating.”
“ Almost certainly. The signal is so complex we probably would have spent another five years trying to find the repeating sequences. Leon had a brain stroke one night while tripping on some particularly righteous Columbian weed,” she shook her head as she read on, “and decided to look for anything that resembled a terminator block, like you would find in a program. He found three of them.”
“ No shit.”
“ Nope, good shit. I’ve tried it. Anyway, once we had the terminators we isolated a five second block of signal and overlaid it with another five second block.”
“ Did they match?”
“ Not in the least.”
“ Fuck!” Mindy snapped aloud, then typed the same thing.
“ That was our reply too. How could we have found such a clear indication of structured signal length and not had it played out? Simple really, looks like each five second block is a unique block. We’ve been chewing ten millisecond segments of each one looking for repeats.”
“ Any luck?”
“ None, until last night. Funny that you IM me just now since I was about to ping you.”
“ You trying to give me a heart attack?”
“ No, just dragging out the drama.”
“ Well, enough dragging. Spill it.”
“ It’s taken a lot of computer time, and a lot of bread we don’t have, but we’ve found ten recurring data groups. All are nearly identical. Nine are in packets one, two and three. Those are the complete packets. At least as complete as we have. One is in packet four, that’s the one on the end of the data stream right before we lost the signal. The last one is the least interesting, only really useful to prove a theory. The data groups are 12 milliseconds long. It looks like they are ALL twelve milliseconds long. These groups occur through the entire length of the transmissions. We’re searching for more matches, but it could take years. Centuries. It’s unfuckingbelievable!”
“ It sounds like it.”
“ Remember how I said they are NEARLY identical?”
“
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