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There is always time to make a drink.
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Picknar continued speaking with the alien through Val’s phone and said, “can you pick us up tonight?” The alien said, “squeal” in affirmation. Picknar then said, “in a half hour?” The alien said, “squeal” again. Picknar then said, “thank you. We’ll see you at the coordinates we sent you.” Bouyed by this news, Rodrigo lifted two bottles of alcohol and said, “a half hour? I guess I do have time to make drinks for everyone. No? No takers?” Zack said with glee, “that was amazing! Getting an alien to reply to us humans has never happened before! And it happened so quickly! And they can get here so quickly! And I’m floored that you two are actually aliens! It’ll take me an hour or two to compile all the data from the communication, but once it’s done I can’t wait to pore over it for years.” Hands on his hips, Knox said, “you’re a strange man, Zack.”
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Computers are great! They aren’t smart – I mean, they only do exactly what they are instructed to do, so if they’re coded to do it wrong they do it wrong every time – but they are incredibly FAST at it – compared to humans. Tell a computer to log data a hundred times a second and, in almost no time at the human scale, you’ve got enough data to keep you as busy as Zack foresees he is gonna be. Of course, he’ll use the computer to analyze the data … which will be great so long as he codes the analysis right. If not, re-code, check. If still not, re-code, check. This little revolving cycle either hones in on an answer or drives the coder round the bend. If it’s a little of both, the coder will feel like they’re getting closer while losing their grip.
So are cranks drawn to solving things like this -or- are cranks created by trying to solve things like this?
Yes.
Pore over the data for years, oooorrr, and I’m just throwing this out there, Zack, buuut maybe you could go to the chosen sight with them and see the aliens and their ship for yourself?
ORrrrr… You can get the data from the aliens in person in a half-hour.
I wonder whose house the ship is gonna land on *this* time?
Hey! Nogg has never set his ship down on a house. He’s nailed the flower bed, but never the house. That we know of. It was the doggie-looking ones that got your house.
How can they know who it is? What if it’s O’Kingly coming back from an Irish pub crawl with his pals?
Now comes the part where these two get on the ship, and the two dogs get off (as it turns out, those weren’t earth years).
Then eventually Nogg will show up for another cake at Zorzilla, and pick-up the dogs too.
Some technologies just show up, and suddenly are all over the map. The classic example on Earth is the bow and arrow. For thousands of years primitive man, some of them just barely hominid, had used flung rocks and then pointed sticks to hunt game. Sometimes with sharp stones at one end. Then suddenly comes a smaller stick, with a smaller pointy stone at one end, and FEATHERS from a BIRD at the back to help it fly straight. Suddenly thereafter, bows and arrows are everywhere. Was this tech that easy to copy, once it was invented? And how did primitive man come up with this idea, string and stick and pointy stick with feathers? It’s a dramatic leap in hunting capability.
Christopher’s Galaxy has the same thing happening with translator chips. All of a sudden, BLAMMO! And yes yes yes, I know the argument about the Eebs making them. In that case, where did the Eebs get the idea?
Right now I’m thinking Zack’s little transmitter/receiver could help humanity comprehend the madness that is the Galaxy and the GOB, and in so doing ease the transition from being a dark world to being…. uh…. Well, better-known, at least. A bow and arrow for our day and age, and the Galaxy’s.
We have a saying in research and development: When it’s time to railroad, everybody railroads.
ALL ABOARD!!