Part 1 The Signals 05/16/2011

The signals started coming through Grover Hudson’s cell phone.

If anybody could figure out the SETI budget, it is probably something larger than Grover Hudson’s cell phone bill.  But that’s how it started.

Born and raised in a small southern Indiana town, Grover came by his swearing quite naturally.  His language proficiency began with his first word.  At 18 months he was stomping around the trailer clothed in just a diaper as his dad visited with a new neighbor.

Grover’s trailer was at right angles to the newly occupied 10 X 40 single-wide next door.  When Grover’s dad saw his new neighbor bringing home some groceries, he introduced himself by saying, “Hey, there.  I heard you are the new schoolmarm here in town. You drink beer? Yeah? Well come on over here, then.

“Well hey, welcome to the banks of the Ohio.  People here in New Boston are easy goin’ and pretty friendly.  That is unless you do somethin’ stupid.  Then they might shoot ya.  That’s ma’ boy Grover walkin’ around.  He’s a smart one.  Almost talks.  Say shit for the man, Grover.  Say shit.  That’s right say shit for the man.”

“Shit,” Grover spit out with a slobbering grin as the new schoolmarm wondered exactly what constituted “somethin’ stupid” in New Boston, Indiana.  A proud father saluted and took a sip from a bottle of Old Style.

Thirty years later, Grover was trying to call his fishing buddy on his cell and all he could hear was what sounded like a million beeps all run together in a stream.

Grover first analysis of the problem was expressed by, “Shit.”  Then he put his phone away in his pocket.  The next day he went to the phone store and they replaced it with a working model.  The phone then went back to Motorola for repairs.  They couldn’t fix it.  Whatever they did, it continued to receive that same sound.  According to the technician, there was nothing wrong with the phone.  You just couldn’t make or receive calls on it.

The technical supervisor assigned to this particular model believed that a group of wealthy businessmen met periodically to plan a government take over and re-institute slavery, abolish the unions, outlaw foreign languages, fire the teachers, shoot the gays, mandate church attendance, abolish the Department of Education, cut taxes, starve the poor and the elderly, mandate gun ownership, and we would all end up rolling Cuban cigars for pennies a day.

He believed that this phone had been altered by this cult to affect brainwaves to distrust government and cast doubt on their ability to solve life’s problems.  So he sent it to the CIA, then wrote about it on his blog, www.neo-newdeal.com

At the CIA it got passed around to a number of different departments, none of whom would claim ownership of such a problem, it ended up in the covert operations break room refrigerator with a label that read Stu’s on it.  In time the battery died and it made its way to a lower level manager’s desk drawer for two years and six months.

When this lower level manager was on a boondoggle junket to The Sagamore Resort on Lake George in upstate New York, he ran across a cell phone charger in the hotel room and threw it in his suitcase while packing up at night after drinking four designer martinis.

When he got back to his office he was about to throw the charger in the drawer with the old cell phone and decided to try it.  It worked.  The phone got charged and lower-level guy got to hear the beep stream. 

Traveling with him on the junket was Rob Mayer, a young engineer from a company called Amtech, a government defense contractor in Illinois.  Rob got a cell phone in by FedEx with a note from the CIA agent asking him, “Can you guys check this out? It beeps.”

Listening to the phone, Rob recognized the sounds as not being random, but patterned.  Thinking that it may be some kind of code developed by our enemies, Rob brought the phone up to the Sound Lab and asked the manager up there to “Check it out.  It beeps.”

Rob got a call at home that night from Jim Cascio, the manager of the Sound Lab.   “Rob, where did you get this cell phone and who the hell is Grover Hudson?  You better get down here right now.”

Rob told his wife he was needed at work and off he went.  When he arrived at the sound lab he was surprised to see the whole department was still there.  He found Jim looking at some blue lines on his computer.  “Looks like a blueprint,” Rob greeted Jim.

“It’s a blueprint alright – lots of blueprints and a complete design of something.  Who is Grover Hudson? – It was his phone.  The data keeps coming in – tons of it.  It’s mostly electronic with very few moving parts.  So far it seems to be made of materials and processes we can do here on Earth, but it’s going to take a while.”

“Here on Earth?  What’s that all about?  What do you mean ‘here on Earth?’ And no, I don’t know who Grover Hudson is.  Did you get me down here with some kind of ET story?”

“This ain’t from here, Man – look at this circuit - talk about nano.  Ever seen anything like that?  We took a look at the beeps coming in, slowed them down by a few factors of the speed of light, and ran them through some filters these guys have put together and then nobody would go home.  I think they’re scared.  We captured the complete signal before it started to repeat itself.  It starts over every four hours, but before it begins we hear some southern guy use two syllables to say ‘shit.’  Weirdest thing.”

Rob studied the lines on the screen. “What is this thing?”

“It’s either from outer space or the future, man.  If we had this kind of technology, I would know about it. The integrated circuits are below the molecular level and use the dam tachyon for circuit gating.  That thing is just a theory – yet there is it going in and out of existence in a circuit.  Look there’s more.  It looks like there’s a dam wormhole in there controlling tachyon travel.”

Rob’s analytic mode was in a conundrum.  The information looks real and technically logical, but very far advanced - too advanced for Rob to reconcile with his analytics.  He sat down and studied a small piece of the data.

“This can’t be real.”  Rob had a condescending tone with Jim, getting upset about getting called in over a what looked like a hoax.

“There is a problem.  The math is wrong.  Throughout the circuits we have seen so far, physics and math break down into impossible equations.  Two violations – speed beyond that of light and division by 0.  These two concepts are used nonchalantly all over the place as if they were pi or something.  Just matter-of-fact violations of reality”  Jim waited for Rob’s response.

Not getting one, Jim added, “But this will work – It shouldn’t, but I think it will work.  It’s just too good, very thorough.  Either that or some genius worked his whole life on a very well done, complex scam. “Where did you get Grover’s phone, anyway?”

“It was in a drawer at the CIA for years - before that, in a fridge in a break room.  I met the guy who had it on that Pentagon funded boondoggle conference on nanotechnology weapons in upstate New York.  He just sent it to me to check out.  All he said was that it beeps.  I suppose I should call him back.”

“Be sure to tell him the dam thing says ‘shit” every four hours.”  Rob didn’t hear that.

Studying formulas and developing programs to interpret the data started to mush the brains of the programmers and engineers in the Sound Lab Department and after 11:00 pm they started to leave, but they weren’t ready to let go of what they had seen.  The Plains Bar and Grill was a popular eating and watering hole for the Amtech crowd and five of the Sound Lab engineers decided to stop by for a beer.

Part of the contract the employees signed off on when they agreed to work in the Sound Lab was that they cannot discuss any work outside of approved contractors and fellow employees, and even that has restrictions.  Too many government black hole projects were done there and it was easier to just gag everybody about everything.  Not exactly within the spirit of the rule, they couldn’t help but discuss projects together outside of work.

‘I’m freakin’ shaking, guys.  This looks kinda historical.”  - John Fride, Engineer
“Holy crap, did you see those circuits.  What the hell is this thing?”  Paula Jacobs, Engineer.

“This has to be a hoax.  Nobody does this stuff, And the math is wrong.  It’s a scam.  Like we can deal with matter coming and going – everybody knows that without stability, the outcome is unpredictable.”  – Bob Pennington, Mathematician.

“I think it’s real, Bob.  It’s those constraints that have kept us from understanding the related physics of the largest and the smallest of matter.  This could clear that up – how it’s all related.  This stuff is very far advanced.  It’s always been exciting to work in the Sound Lab, but this tops it all.  If this pans out like I think it will, I’m going to be a very happy girl.” – Sue Thompson, Physicist.

“There’s Jim.  Jim – over here.”

“Hi, guys.  I told the others, but I missed you guys.  It’s going to be very hard keeping this quiet, but we have to.  More than ever, I need to count on you guys to not say anything to anybody.  And when you’re together in public like this, stay separated from the rest of the people.  This is really important. I don’t know what we got here, but until I get some of the higher ups involved, we have to lay low. 
“I have to remind you that we all signed and swore to the Security Protocol, but it’s going to be hard to keep this from our wives, husbands, girlfriends, whatever.  But this could turn into a media and weirdo circus.

“Understand?”

Nods all around.

“I know I can’t keep you guys from working things out together after work.  As a matter of fact, I think it’s healthy.  But, I can’t emphasize enough how much trouble we all would be in if this got out right now.  Oh, it will get out, but the brass knows how to handle such stuff we will let them deal with the public.”

“What do you think we got, Jim?” asked Sue.

“I think we actually have a machine from another world or the future or something, and I’m a little scared.  We’re all in over our heads right now, but I swear, there’s not another group in the world that would be able to handle this.  If it’s at all possible, we will have to build this thing – no doubt about that.  I’ll see you guys in the morning.”

And so starts a top-secret, cost-plus government project that will show up in the budget as enhancements to the Department of Education’s funding for the Every Child Ready to Learn Program.

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Lee’s been the owner of the Plains Bar and Grill for 16 years and knows too much about almost everybody in Pana.  He was working late that night because the usual bartender had asked for the night off to go to the band concert at the high school to watch his son try to play a saxophone.

Lee looked a little confused about the group from Amtech.   It seemed to Lee that they were quieter and more serious than usual.  And they never show up this late on a weeknight.  He packed the idea away and started to clean up the tables.