Through the Cosmos

The second lot of signals came through the radio transmitter at dawn. Frost had collected on the dish. Dr. Stanley Leber. wondered if this had been causing interference. He had been awake since three in the morning, receiving the messages, and sending them through to the decoders over at the university. A team of physicists had been working with the top cryptographers in the country for two months, ever since the first feint signals began. It started with a single sound, coming from a galaxy 30 billion light years away, near the reaches of the observable universe. Dr. Sandra Gabrolinka, the celebrated linguist, had been the one to bring the findings to the joint government-military body, CIGR (Commitee for Intergalactic Relations). Why the military needed to be involved had never been explained adequately enough to convince Hoffman or Feynman of its appropriateness.

'We need to be prepared for all possibilities,' boomed General Harry Fullman.

'What possibilities are those?' demanded Sandra

'Come on, Doctor. We can't even trust the Chinese, are you telling me we should go in blind folded and unarmed against these aliens?'

'I think that we should at least show some diplomacy and openness, and not set ourselves up for some trigger happy cowboy to start an intergalactic war because he gets scared of the boogey man.'

'You've been translating the messages, Leber. What do they say.'

Gabrolinka interjected, 'Mr. President, as Dr. Leber is with the physics department he isn't qualified to answer questions regarding the communications aspect of the Commitee's work.

President Gareth Irons had been sitting at the head of a long conference table, around which were seated representatives of science, military, the world's major religions and the President's staff, listening to the back and forth between science and army, the two new forces in the United Western Nations.

'Carry on, Dr. Gabrolinka,'

'We don't know if the first signal was a word or a letter.'

'Why would it be a letter? Everybody knows letters aren't words,' the General looked quizically at Gabrolinka.

'But they may be in other language families. On Earth most languages descend from the common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European. Other languages not of the same family follow similar grammatical rules, identical in fact, just different vocabulary. We can't even say for sure that a language from a civilisation 33 billion light years away has the internally consistent subject verb agreements, or established syntax. They could have different case endings based on what the weather is like that day, or based on the speakers emotional state. They might have extra cases that don't correspond to anything we know in any language on Earth. We have nominative for subjects of sentences, vocative for calling a person by name, genitive for possessive nouns, dative for indirect objects of a sentence, accusative for direct objects, ablative for direction towards or preposition and locative for location in place. This culture might also have cases that communicate how fast something or someone is travelling; gender, age. My point is that because we can't be sure of this we can't be sure that a letter is not a word, or a sentence, or even a one thousand page novel.'

The President listened, intrigued. He adjusted his glasses, pushing them back onto the bridge of his nose.

'What about the science. What does this tell us, Dr. Leber? I'm interested to see how this fits in with your department.'

'Whoever is sending this messages is an extremely advanced society. The messages are far more sophisticated from a technological perspective than anything we have sent. It's possible that it isn't a biological organism sending these messages, but a machine.'

'Do you mean artificial intelligence.'

'They could have machines that are not artificial.'

A voice came from the table of representatives.

'How can something be not biological but also not artificial?'

It was Father Colm O'Shaughnessy, a tall, greying Irishman, who still retained in his face something of the youthfulness of his seminary days; those days of religious awe and wonder, of philosophical enquiry.

Leber looked just as confused as the representatives must have felt.

'I don't know, Father; but it's something that while not entirely possible, cannot be dismissed as impossible. This is a planet in our universe, so it must operate under the same physical laws that were set out at the Big Bang, but it doesn't have to follow that same laws regarding life.

'The creator who set in motion the laws of the physical world intended them to apply to the classification of things as much as to their movement. It is as true to say that a rose is a biological organism and a drawing of a rose is an artificial rendering, as it is to say that gravity is a force that acts on objects.'

'Yet gravity is weaker or stronger dependant on atmosphere.'

'In any case gravity still exists.'

'We're getting off track. What I'm getting at is that there may be life forms which have not been created organically, but are not artificial.'

'But this is rambling, man. You haven't answered the question or provided clarity; you've simply restated yoiur original premise.'

'I haven't established a premise yet. I'm merely conjecturing.'

'Merely. Ha. And you're right to say CONjecture.'

'I would have thought you'd be a little more charitable, Father.'

The general the whole time had been huffing under his breath. He loosened, then straightened, then loosened his tie. The President noticed this, and beckoned him, with a gesture, to speak.

'Hogwash. The two most important branches in the world are science and military. Industry I can give the time of day to because they make shit I can use, begging your pardon. But religion aint got no place in these discussions barring the Church of Eternal Salvation non-denominational Baptists, and even they don't take well to these here proceedings because they are against the possibility of intergalactic war; but what I want to know is why we need to have these philosophical discussions over the definition of words and things when this is really just a question of whether these creatures mean us good or ill, and if they mean good, is it a useful good, like something that will make us all rich, or make our lives easier, or is it. is it... hokum like what the witch doctors be pushing.'

'That's uncalled for, General,' the President boomed in.

'With all due respect, Sir, this whole thing challenges the idea of God, not only the existence. I admitted that I'm still a man of faith, but I'm barely holding on.'

'If there is no God, General, then surely there is nothing stopping all out galactic warfare,' warned the Father.

'The only thing stopping all out war is the distance between our galaxies. Science.'

'Distances which were defined by the creator of said galaxies; bounds set by Him.'

As the two opposing forces were engaged in their back and forth, a letter was brought in by a private, an intermediary taking it and handing it to an assistant, who gave it the Vice-President, who passed it to the President. The President tore open the envelope like a school girl eager to open her first love letter, and took out the letter inside. The room looked intently at the President. His hands shook. he cleared his voice.

'I have here the decoded messages of the first and second signals. The single sound is two sounds together, a chord, representing the letters X and P.'

Sandra lit up. 'That's not X and P. It's Chi and Rho.' She stood aghast.

'What does the second message say?' asked the Father excitedly.

'Isa. 9.6.'

The Father rose out of his chair and then immediately fell back, held by the weight of his wonderment.

"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."