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Thursday Prompt: Transmission
by Walt46
Writer / Degenerate
6 months ago
“Professor!” one student blurted as the okapi entered the room. “It’s happening again!” The setter vacated his chair, almost stumbling as he waved for the older fur to take a seat.
Felicia Garza took the proffered chair, smoothing her headfur back and studying the various graphs. “It’s a repeating signal, Tom?” she asked.
“Loud and clear,” the setter said excitedly. “Fourteen-twenty megahertz, bandwidth of fifteen kilohertz. Duration’s measured in seconds.” Garza glanced at him and Tom added, “The computer’s already looking at it.”
“Good.” It had been nearly fifty years since an energy spike matching those characteristics had been detected coming in from deep space, but apart from one instance it had never repeated.
Now it was back, and it was repeating, with tiny modulations that suggested an intelligence was behind it.
One of the many windows on the computer screens showed a new graph and the professor swiveled in her seat to look at it. “Variations in hydrogen . . . definite patterns . . . “ She sat back, momentarily numb. “Someone is sending this.” She swallowed hard against a mouth gone quite suddenly dry. “Where is the antenna pointing?”
“M55, in Sagittarius,” Tom replied. “Where the original signal was heard.” They were both trying hard to stay calm. Since the first reception of the signal pulse in nineteen seventy-seven, there had been far too many false leads and faulty conclusions.
Still . . . “Can the computer translate it?” Garza asked.
Tom nodded. “Simple binary,” as the frequency modulations were parsed by the computer in the closet next door. A stream of ones and zeros crossed the screen.
The screen then went blank, and for a second that felt like a year, the okapi and the setter held their breath.
The translated message then flashed up on the screen, a total of seven words in English:
LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE SAYS DRINK YOUR OVALTINE
Professor Garza raised an eyebrow. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me . . . “ she said, giving the message an accusing glare. “Someone’s playing a very sick joke.”
“Professor – “
“No,” she said. “It’s like the first extraterrestrial message was a Yo Mama joke or something.”
Felicia Garza took the proffered chair, smoothing her headfur back and studying the various graphs. “It’s a repeating signal, Tom?” she asked.
“Loud and clear,” the setter said excitedly. “Fourteen-twenty megahertz, bandwidth of fifteen kilohertz. Duration’s measured in seconds.” Garza glanced at him and Tom added, “The computer’s already looking at it.”
“Good.” It had been nearly fifty years since an energy spike matching those characteristics had been detected coming in from deep space, but apart from one instance it had never repeated.
Now it was back, and it was repeating, with tiny modulations that suggested an intelligence was behind it.
One of the many windows on the computer screens showed a new graph and the professor swiveled in her seat to look at it. “Variations in hydrogen . . . definite patterns . . . “ She sat back, momentarily numb. “Someone is sending this.” She swallowed hard against a mouth gone quite suddenly dry. “Where is the antenna pointing?”
“M55, in Sagittarius,” Tom replied. “Where the original signal was heard.” They were both trying hard to stay calm. Since the first reception of the signal pulse in nineteen seventy-seven, there had been far too many false leads and faulty conclusions.
Still . . . “Can the computer translate it?” Garza asked.
Tom nodded. “Simple binary,” as the frequency modulations were parsed by the computer in the closet next door. A stream of ones and zeros crossed the screen.
The screen then went blank, and for a second that felt like a year, the okapi and the setter held their breath.
The translated message then flashed up on the screen, a total of seven words in English:
LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE SAYS DRINK YOUR OVALTINE
Professor Garza raised an eyebrow. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me . . . “ she said, giving the message an accusing glare. “Someone’s playing a very sick joke.”
“Professor – “
“No,” she said. “It’s like the first extraterrestrial message was a Yo Mama joke or something.”
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I say I keep trying.
Loved this one Walt.
Vix
So, okay.
Really cute! See, humor is intergalactic! I liked it! >^_^<
"Yo Mama so dumb she mates out of season."
"Yo Mama so fat she consumes singularities."
The Ovaltine ad is from very old comics of Little Orphan Annie, which sold Secret Decoders. One of the encrypted items was the slogan I incorporated into the story. It was the first thing that popped into my head when I saw the Prompt, and it refused to back off.
The problem with that is the inverse square law. A full-power radio transmission beamed directly into space would be barely noticeable by the time it reached Alpha Centauri, let alone any farther (it takes the full Deep Space Network days to pick up data from the Voyagers, which are only barely out of the Solar System).