Message, The

The Message
By Steve Laker

Sebastian Lem stared at the flickering screen in front of him. The
culmination of a decade's work was about to manifest in front of him
and on every television screen the world over as the "Penulti-mate"
computer completed its calculations.

For the past ten years, Lem had been a martyr to his cause and had been
in self-imposed exile, away from the corporate world, run by the
commercial behemoths and driven by advertising, outside.

It was ten years ago that Lem had been sifting through terabytes of
data and had found the telltale blip that was to signal the outset of a
search for his Holy Grail.

The anomaly was one of many millions returned by the myriad home
computers running the SETI@HOME client program to his computer for
analysis. Invariably these blips would be from areas of the sky known
to contain bodies that emitted natural radio signals. They would be
checked and this confirmed to be the case. This rogue anomaly did not
pass the tests though.

Further analysis of the signal revealed patterns that almost certainly
confirmed it as having an artificial source. To confirm this and
eliminate the possibility that the signal was not merely terrestrial
interference, the Aracebo radio telescope, which had originally picked
up the anomaly, was pointed at the source once more and confirmed that
the signal was still being transmitted. A further two radio telescopes
returned the same findings and the SETI community grew excited.

Lem travelled Europe and the Americas consulting with mathematicians
and astronomers from the Independent Collective. The "Indies" was a
loosely formed, resource-sharing group of SETI scientists that operated
outside of the corporate constraints of the mainstream scientific
community to their own ends and for the advancement of the sciences for
the benefit of all and not just the behemoths. The financial rewards
were poor compared to the conformist scientific community but
independence was a price worth paying to be able to live in
accommodation other than that provided by the corporates. Corporate
accommodation was luxurious in comparison to his own hut, miles from
any civilisation but his hut looked out upon the real world and not an
artificial "nature scene", projected onto the wall, complete with
corporate logo in the top left-hand corner.

The Indies' co-operative nature afforded him free berth with his peers
whilst he travelled. This was good, as it was beyond his means to pay
the premiums demanded by the hotel corporations for an ad-free
room.

Everywhere that one travelled in this corporate world, advertising was
there. Sometimes it was subtle, other times it was sensational. Always
it was targeted and effective. Even in his hideaway, the natural scene
outside was rendered artificial by the McDonald's logo, occupying its
three-month tenure on the surface of the moon as it was beamed from
Earth. Oh, to escape! Lem thought.

Following the initial discovery of the radio signal, two years of study
revealed a pattern. The signal was being broadcast for finite periods
of time. First for one second, then a pause. Two seconds of
transmission and another gap, then three seconds, a gap and five
seconds. The lengths of transmissions were prime numbers.

Trillions of binary digits made up the transmissions and the equipment
receiving them was not powerful enough to receive them over the vast
distances that they were travelling in their entirety. There were
gaps.

Study of the gaps between the transmissions revealed a further fact:
that the gaps were growing shorter. The source was moving closer.

Further, more powerful radio telescopes were needed and SETI made
applications for government funding. The whole phenomenon was being
withheld from the public's attention for fear of mass hysteria and the
requests were rebuked. Against the Indies' better judgement, finance
was secured secretly from the corporations. They got all that they
asked for.

New telescopes were constructed and the binary signals were eventually
received in their entirety. Something was still missing though: if each
"1" and "0" represented a square in a grid to be filled in or left
blank, they were lacking the formation of that grid and without it, the
data was meaningless.

Analysis concentrated on the lengths of the transmissions: one second,
two, three, five, seven, eleven? Two prime numbers were absent from the
eventual data: 17'987 and 25'693: the axes of the grid.

With all of the accumulated information, "Penulti-mate" was now placing
each binary digit in its rightful place in the grid to form the image
that the world awaited.

Lem's screen blinked and displayed an image, blurred and
indecipherable. He zoomed out and it began to become clearer. As he
scrolled upwards and zoomed outwards, a word manifested at the top of
the image: "enjoy" in stylised white letters on a red background. We
will, he thought as he contemplated for a second the importance of this
culmination of his work.

Further and further he zoomed out and eventually the whole image was
contained within the screen:

"Enjoy."

"Coca Cola".

? Steve Laker 2002 - 2003. With thanks to Helen.