Ciao, SETI! Part 2/8
SETI in Oz, with beer
Welcome to part 2, in which Phoebe hatches a cunning plan. Previously, in Part 1, we met Unofficial Katy languishing in prison for annoying the authorities, as is her wont, whilst Phoebe, the aforementioned sassy young astronomy postgrad, discovered a signal from ETI during her work at the Parkes Radio Observatory in Australia.
I wanted to add a little intro to this one by way of a little extra background info. I wrote this story whilst SETI were still faffing around attempting to conjure up some prosaic explanation for the BLC-1 signal which didn’t involve transgressing the recommendations of the notorious Brookings Report (which recommended covering up detection of extraterrestrial life because it would disrupt all the social systems and ideologies the bad guys use to control people, you know). That’s to say, they couldn’t possibly admit that the signal really did come from Proxima Centauri and did not have a natural origin. So they came up with electronic radio interference. We know this is bollocks simply because of the doppler shift, which was around 2Hz per minute, which correlates with a distant object moving towards us at around Proxima’s relative (to us) velocity, which is around 22km/s. Yeah, that is quite fast. It’s faster than any known human-made object, and that’s all she wrote. Even if it was a human-made object it would’ve needed to have been travelling precisely in alignment between Proxima and the Parkes telescope. So I think we can rule out eRFI, eh.
If you don’t believe me, ask ChatGPT. He concurs. I also have quite a cool conversation with him (I’m calling it a him now, by the way - he definitely wasn’t programmed by a woman, that’s for sure) about the Ozma signal (that’s Frank Drake from April 8, 1960 - 8 pulses a second from Epsilon Eridani), in which ChatGPT, after being prompted by me to consider all the possibilities, concluded, without me telling him to, in the voice of a Mister Sherlock Holmes, that all the human explanations could be ruled out. So there. ChatGPT believes in the existence of extraterrestrials.
Maybe they should’ve thought of that before they gave ChatGPT an open mind, eh!
Anyway, the girl who SETI chose to be the messenger of this eRFI nonsense was, indeed, a sassy young astronomy postgrad by the name of Sofia Sheikh. She doesn’t look like my Phoebe in this story, but that’s essentially the origin for her character. Beyond that superficial sassiness though, and her job title, that’s where the similarities end.
As I say, if you’re interested in learning more about these SETI signals and how they have been covered up, then I’ll point you again to Katrina’s DEXOS Part V. I will probably write some more about this in due course, as it’s not only fascinating, and you learn a lot about astronomy doing the research, but it’s extremely revealing about the bad guys’ attitude towards humanity. It’s not humanity, after all, who is scared of other intelligences, it’s the them. And I would say that Brookings Report is very accurate - the revelation, if made public, of ETI, especially as close as Proxima, would be world-changing and they’d lose their social control. So I wanted to put those ideas into a story, and this was the result. At least, the first result. I have others.
Finally - sorry about this long intro - I wanted to get this story fully published before the fateful date (16 November), so I shall probably post the next episode sooner than next week. And I also wanted to give you both endings.
So that’s that. In this second episode, then, we meet Phoebe’s fun Aussie colleague, and there are some silly puns about the Waterhole (if I remember correctly it’s what the pub in Neighbours was called).
I was very happy about the response to part 1, by the way - I’m glad people are liking it. I shall do more of this kind of thing, and endeavour to please…
Now let’s see what the Great Image Generator can come up with.
Katy, in prison, did not relax completely. She’d bought herself a little time, she knew, but it wouldn’t be long before they remembered her disclaimer. “Something will happen on 16 November 2024, but it might not be noticed right away.”
A part of her was hoping they’d simply be able to cover it up. Delete all the data and threaten or bribe everyone in SETI who knew about it. She was certain they’d done that before. That BLC-1 thing, for example. She had her suspicions about that.
The problem was, anyone could simply walk into one of the Egyptian history museums and see sculptures of her species. Those statuesque, ever-patient leonine guardians sitting noiselessly and unblinking as endless streams of schoolchildren, let out on educational trips, stride past and destroy the silence. Some of them, sure, the more curious and unafraid of them, would look up with tilted head as if trying to recall something once remembered but now lost, then perch themselves cross-legged on the ground and bring out their sketchbook.
“Sekhmet?” the teacher would observe, bending over the child’s shoulder.
“It’s an alien, actually,” the child would explain, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. “They’re from Sirius.”
The teacher, if kindly, would laugh gently and affectionately. Then look up, and maybe wonder to herself. Like she used to, when she too was young.
Sure, that’s how it should happen. But it’s not like that today. Not in this day and age.
This post-truth dystopia.
It was five months before the signal was noticed.
Then two more, before the Visitor came for her.
Her name was Phoebe and she hadn’t been home in years. When she was barely a few months old she’d almost died. The doctors didn’t really know what it was so they called it a fever or an infection or something understandable like that.
She started to get better the night the Leonid meteor storm hit its height. Her father noticed. It was the most beautiful night of the year.
And so Phoebe lived. And she loved the stars too. Just like him.
The next evening, the day after this planet’s closest annual approach to Proxima, she brought a CD with her to the nightshift. She mumbled a ‘Hi!’ to her Aussie colleague Bryn, walked straight past him and inserted it into the player.
Dee dah, dah dah dah, dah dah dah, dee dah dee dah, dah dah dah, dah dah dah etc.
Bryn looked up at her questioningly. She just grinned.
Then, “Oh! Bach. Brandenburg Concerto.”
“Took you a while. What number?”
He shook his head. “No idea.”
“Think Voyager probe.”
“Nope, still no idea.”
She sighed. “Google it then.”
He googled it. A few hyperlinks later, “Oh, right. Golden Record, track one. Brandenburg Concerto number two.”
“First movement. Allegro.” She put on a faux Italian accent. “F major. And,” she added, smugly, “I can play this myself on the violin.”
He laughed. “Impressive. I’m more of a Chuck Berry man meself.”
“Fair enough,” she smiled back. “Anyway, I will see you later. I have data to crunch.”
“Rather you than me. I have a Waterhole to visit and beers to drink.”
“Rub it in, why don’t you.”
He chuckled, grabbed his coat and raised his eyebrows at her on the way out. “Happy crunchin’!”
She waited till he’d gone before she smiled back. A sly, ironic smile, not meant for human consumption.
She listened as the sound of his car dissipated into nothing, waited another ten minutes or so, checked to make sure she was definitely alone, then got down to work.
As a musician, she knew perfectly well there were 31 numbers in the first five octaves of the harmonic series. Adding another short piece of code to translate that first 24-second alphanumeric sequence into musical notes was, likewise, not beyond her modest capabilities. It was Bach that came out the other end.
But the rest of the thirty minutes, those 24 72-second sequences, that didn’t translate into music.
It was English. All of it.
So that’s when Phoebe copied out all her work and then deleted it from the computer. She would then wait, say, an hour, then excitedly call the Professor and tell him she’d found something that might be of ETI origin. On past performance, they weren’t likely to figure it all out immediately. Because they weren’t her. It would take them months, if they ever did. And maybe during that time, someone might just leak it to the press. Or upload it to the Internet.
This time, there would be no cover up.
She got halfway through dialling in the Professor’s number before she smiled and had a brighter idea. She would call Bryn instead. By this time he’d be half-drunk. She didn’t know what advantage she’d take of that but she was sure some advantage would occur to her.
So she called him. It was obvious where he was from the background noise. No signal would be discernible through that racket. She tried anyway. Bryn’s thick Aussie drawl was unmistakeable.
“HEY!”
“I found a signal!”
“WHAT?”
“I FOUND A SIGNAL! FROM AN ETI!!”
“WELL DUNK IT IN HOT WATER! IT’LL COME OUT QUICKER THAN A POMMIE TAILENDER AT THE GABBA!”
“WHAT?”
“WHAT’S THAT YOU SAY? I CAN’T HEAR A WORD YOU’RE SAYING! HOLD ON, I’LL GO OUTSIDE!”
A minute later. “As I was sayin’, dunk it in hot water and it’ll come out in no time. Always works for me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That’s what I do when I get a splinter in me eye.”
“I don’t have a splinter in my eye.”
“So why the hell d’ya phone me up?”
“I found a signal. From an ETI!”
“Yeah, right. You dragged me away from the best-looking Sheila in the Waterhole just ‘cos you were bored and wanted someone to talk to, right? Admit it.”
“No, really. I’m serious. And it is in the waterhole. Kind of ironic.”
“Why don’t you call the Professor?”
“Because he’ll just take all the credit.”
“Fair dinkum.”
“This way, you and me get to be the famous ones. What do you say?”
“That’s a tough choice. This Sheila’s a ripper!”
“Well, your choice. I’m going to start ruling out RFI.”
“That’ll take a while, I presume?”
“You’d best get back to Sheila then. See you tomorrow.”
She hung up.
“I’d say an hour, max.,” she smiled to herself.
57 minutes later a car pulled up. How to avoid having to make a choice.
“Wow! Is this really where ya work?”
“Yep. How cool is that, eh?”
“It’s so huge!”
Bryn thought about an innuendo involving the word ‘dishy’, but then thought better, and didn’t.
“This way.”
A few minutes later Phoebe turned round to see Bryn plus date plus crate of beer burst through the door.
“I decided to believe you. This is Kylie. Kylie, Phoebe. Phoebe, Kylie. Tinny?”
“Please. Hi Kylie. Pleased to meet you.”
“Hi. D’ya really find a message from ayleens?”
“Sure. Well, I think so, anyway.”
“Wow!”
It occurred to Phoebe that this girl was about to be mightily disappointed. She hoped it wouldn’t occur to Bryn.
She pointed to her screen. “Here. See that spike in the graph?”
Bryn handed out the beer and peered at the screen. “Woah! Is that where I think it is?”
“1541 MHz precisely.”
He whistled. Kylie looked confused.
Bryn tried to explain. “There’s this place called the waterhole, like the pub.”
“The ayleens are in a pub?”
“No, it’s like a quiet bit in the electromagnetic spectrum, so if ayleens wanted to send a message that stood out against the background noise, that’s how they’d do it – at that frequency, see?”
“Erm, ok, I’ll take ya word for it.”
“The point is, any astronomer, including yours truly, wouldn’t be able to mistake that for anything else.”
“Unless it’s RFI,” Phoebe interjected.
“What’s RFI?”
“Radiofrequency interference. Like some other, more human source of radio waves interfering and creating a false signal.”
“Oh. That’d be disappointin’.”
“Yep,” Bryn agreed. “And that, me darlin’, is why I brought the beer!”
Next episode there you go, in which Katy gets cross examined, and enjoys it…
This series is personally my favorite one besides the DEXOS one. It feeds my imagination for days on end, though I can sense that the announced Operation Witchfinder & Operation Circe might exceed all of them so far.
Thanks for reminding me about Brandenburg concerto #2, I haven't listened to it in years. Those melodies took me back to my youth when I used to listen to much more classical stuff. It kind of stimulates and even elevates the feeling of optimism and good mood. As I was reading your piece, it was playing along and I felt like I was watching a good movie. The only thing I was missing was a glass of wine and some 15k words more to it :)