Escaping the Cradle

by Karen Page

Part 19

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Part 19
DATE:FC+44

For two days the scientists Evan and Liam, helped by Becky and Jessica, had pored over the original letter from the aliens. They'd not managed to fully translate it, but they were close. There were lines of time-based formula to locate the communications beacon. There was a section on the communication tunnel mechanisms. Then there was the section on what went through the tunnel. That was the area that there were still a few gaps and the bit that was the most important. They knew how to create a tunnel. It was knowing what to send was the important knowledge. Without it, data may be sent but not received or understood.

Henry and Sam were finalising the ground tests of Eos. It was the first 'production' ship. While sending it to the factory with the remote unit, Henry had spotted the start of another one. He wasn't surprised, but they would need somewhere else to store the fitted-out ones, as they would quickly run out of space. A problem he hadn't even contemplated, but hoped other people had. He might work closely with Becky, Evan and Liam, but he wasn't a company owner like them. It wasn't something he wanted to be.

"So, oscillations," said Becky. "Any ideas why there are two Hytuna words for the same English word?"

There was silence and nobody wanted to look at Becky.

"I was thinking," said Jessica slowly. "A silly idea."

"I'm up for even silly ideas," said Liam.

"In English we might say 'river', but in France they have two different words. 'Fleuve', which is a river that flows into the sea, and 'rivière', which is a river which flows into another river."

"Ah, so what looks like a generic term might actually have several specific meanings."

"Exactly. The other thing is that their Earth language might not be up to scratch. They will only know what they've heard or seen used. We've been assuming it is perfect. What if oscillation is referring to Electromagnetic Waves. Instead of frequency or wavelength, what if they measure in the number of oscillations in their time. Frequency is the number of complete oscillations in an Earth second. One hundred oscillations in two seconds is 50Hz. What is their time reference? Could it be where we might talk Hz, MHz, GHz and they have these words as a way to describe the banding."

"And this is just the primer," sighed Evan. "Imagine what fun we'll have with the next instalment."

"This is like one of those intelligence tests where you're given so much information and you have to work out the rest," complained Liam. "I hated them."

"Yet you are in this country's top ten," retorted Evan.

"Stalker," laughed Liam. "I didn't think you knew!"

They gave each other fist bumps. Becky rolled her eyes.

"Okay, back to this. Superficially, what Jessica is suggesting makes sense. How do we test it?"

"The sensor recording," said Evan. "We haven't had chance to look at it. If they were communicating, would we have picked up anything?"

"Doubtful," said Liam. "If it was via a tunnel, which wouldn't have been visible. But if they were trying to communicate with Aurora, they would have used their bands."

Becky nodded. "Okay, we seem to have some communication protocol information which we have deciphered. Why don't I work with Jessica on this while you two crawl through the data."

"Any news from Ashleigh?" asked Jessica, as they started assembling the information in a way that Becky would be able to program the logic required.

Becky smiled, a genuine grin. "Yes. Her sister had a baby boy. 3.2kg. Ashleigh's mother was due to arrive this morning and was going to be staying a few weeks to help out. It seems Caroline's husband, Aaron, has stepped up and Ashleigh feels she is just getting in the way. She will be back tonight."

"Do you remember Caroline from when you were younger?"

"A little. She played hockey, which is how I met Ashleigh."

"You've got the patience of a saint," said Jessica.

"How do you mean?" asked Becky, puzzled.

"Ashleigh going home each night. I see how you've been missing her while she's gone to see her nephew. You love her so much. Is she not wanting to move in until you're married?"

Becky gasped. "That's a bit personal."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to intrude. It's just you two seem so wonderful together."

Becky frowned and looked to make sure that Liam and Evan weren't in earshot. She didn't want people thinking Ashleigh was leading her on. "It's me who is pulling back, not Ashleigh. You know I'm trans, don't you?"

Jessica shrugged. "You don't look it, but you've never made it a secret to anybody on the team. It's nothing to be worried about. I was born male."

Becky gaped. "You were? Sorry."

Jessica gave a small carefree giggle. "People are more likely to wonder about Sam than me. You pass, and I pass. It isn't something anybody on the street know. Anyway, I don't think Ashleigh is put off. She knew you when you were young."

"She's the one that gave me the name Becky. Anyway, I don't want her staying the night, because I'm not ready."

"Not ready?" queried Jessica, not understanding. "You can't cope because she would be in the same bed Hilda was in?"

Becky glanced around and whispered, "I'm pre-op."

"And? Doesn't she know?"

"Of course she knows."

"So, what's the issue? I think she loves you for you, not what's in your underwear. Isn't it more how you feel about yourself? What does your shrink say?"

"Hilda used to be my gender psychiatrist."

Jessica paused, wondering how someone so smart could be so stupid. "Idiot. You're not supposed to have medical treatment from family. So why haven't you been referred to someone else?"

"This project took my time."

"No, it didn't. There's always time for medical treatment. And now you have a super-duper fast ship that could get you to London for an appointment and back without missing anything."

"I saw my GP. He's sent a referral but there is a waiting list," said Becky tired of this. "I've gone well over the two years Real Life Test."

"Have you not thought about private, rather than NHS?"

"Yeah, I've just been letting it slide. It hasn't been an issue until now. And I'm a little scared. I've never had surgery before."

"I get that. And the recovery can be a pain, but you get over it. I'm sure Ashleigh will support you through it."

While they'd been talking, they'd still been working, and had the basic protocol structure laid out.

"Perhaps the aliens have more advanced doctors that could help," said Jessica jokingly.

Becky knew that Jessica was teasing, but it was an interesting idea. One that she'd not considered.

"They may but would they know the human body as well?" answered Becky, automatically. "And how would I pay for it? It probably wouldn't be done free of charge."

"You never know. Their economy might be beyond individual wealth. If energy and goods are abundant, why charge."

"And now we're back into Star Trek thoughts."

"Not really. What happened when phone calls became so cheap? They stopped charging per call. Just a monthly fee for using them. There are economic theories. In 1930 John Maynard Keynes wrote an essay Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren also called his Vision of Utopia."

"You certainly got a broad education."

She laughed. "You've no idea."

"Do you regret getting chosen to go to that school?"

"No," she said with passion. "It taught me so much about myself and the world. It taught me how to succeed which I wouldn't have got from my previous school. It was a school that listened to their pupils and did everything in their power to make sure the pupil got the most from their time there. My older sister also went there, though she didn't do the school exchange."

"She runs a homelessness project in Glasgow. Her wife is a therapist at a Special Needs school in the area."

"Did you speak with Laura about setting up a satellite company?"

"Yes. She is willing to help me start a satellite company, but she said a license agreement would need a discussion between her, you, Evan and Liam. She said if it was a sister company of Star Bright with a new holding company over it, then that might be easier as the technology would stay in-house. I think you mentioned those options the other day. But setting up a satellite company from scratch takes time. It might not fit in the timescales you want."

"The tooling and setting up clean rooms?"

"Yes. Then getting a parts flow, the system programming, and a prototype test regime. There is another option. The company I used to be a co-owner in. The contracts she thought were going to happen didn't. The value of the company is a lot less than it was. If she doesn't get more work, they will start having to lay off staff. I could rescue it and turn it into building gateway 1. If the slot for the tunnel is modularised, we can keep that secure. Create the satellite in America, you add the tunnel and place it into orbit."

"What does Sam think about it."

"We haven't discussed yet. I won't need to be in America often. It has a good General Manager. Leadership seemed to disappear when I went."

"I was going to suggest Aurora going to a museum. Perhaps Sam can use it to taxi you to the office when needed. It isn't in the middle of a busy street, is it?"

Jessica didn't get chance to answer, as Evan called from across the room. "Do you two have a minute?"

"What's up?" asked Becky going across to see the issue.

"We've got some reading from the ship, but the values are weird."

"How do you mean?"

"All in the THz frequency we have 256, 288, 320, 352. I suppose the 320 isn't too bad, but 288?" said Evan.

"They're jumping in blocks of 32," added Liam.

"And?" said Becky. "If they want to, why not?"

"Technically there's no reason," said Evan. "It's just odd. Why choose those frequencies to transmit on."

"The numbers seem familiar," said Jessica. "I've no idea why, but they do."

"Okay, write them on the board we've reserved for things to think about later. Mark it as 'weird stuff to come back to'. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what frequency they use."

"At those frequencies, it is a very precise beam," mused Jessica. "Did you look at frequencies VHF, UHF, L-band or even S-band?"

"You wouldn't get much throughput on those," said Liam.

They might be scientists, thought Jessica, but they certainly weren't communications specialists. "No, but they are much more 'spray-and-pray' frequencies that someone contacting someone in space might use. Heck, remember when you were younger the old Wi-Fi units used to use 2.4 GHz, which is on the low end of the S-band. You didn't need to be facing the router or even be in the same room."

"Ah, so you are thinking two different types of communication. The ship-to-ship type when they find someone they've never seen before. And the communication via tunnel where the endpoint is very much known."

"Probably," said Jessica. "It's just a theory, but it is what I would do, from a communications perspective."

"We did analyse those ranges and others," said Evan. "But we've been concentrating on analysing the data on the ranges we expected tunnel communications on. That way we could use that to map against the document. We can come back to the other analysis later for a larger understanding."

"It's going to take me several hours to code these protocols and make sure data tracing is going to cope with this traffic. If we do connect, we've no idea what we're going to get back. We will need to review before testing again."

"While you have fun coding, why don't we nip down to the factory. See how Eos testing is going," suggested Evan.

"I hope the testing is more refined," said Liam. "We did tighten down a lot based on what we learnt putting Aurora together."

"I never thought the testing on Aurora was ever going to end. We fixed one thing and found another issue. I'm so glad we didn't just jump into space. That would have been a really bad idea."

"All this going to the factory and back," said Jessica. "And if I'm going to be working some of the time in America. Could we build one for humans to use? Walk into a box, dial in the destination and you arrive. You could have one at the factory, and one here. It saves that driving."

"It would be okay between here and the factory. You heard the warning Colin gave when he visited. Be mindful of borders. We've gone out of our way to be careful. We don't want to cause more attention than needed. We have enough of that."

Jessica sighed and nodded. "I know. If I get too enthusiastic, please reign me in."

* * *

The alarm going off broke Becky from her coding. She blinked a few times, stretched and sighed. She'd got most of it done. Another five minutes. But she didn't go back to her coding. She backed out and locked up. She'd gone down the "just five minutes" hole once and had a worried call from the school. Five minutes had turned into more than thirty. The thought of a terrified Jenny was enough to get her moving. That bad experience had only been a month after losing Hilda and Ryan. Jenny had thought something had happened to her ma.

The drive to the school was the same as normal. There never seemed to be a tractor on the road at this time of day, and she wondered if it was just coincidence, or if the farmers did it out of consideration.

"Hi," Becky said to Grace Brown. "How's things going?"

"Not bad. A mad rush to get Kelly to her studies. I thought she would have given up, but she seems to be loving it."

"Good, as long as she loves it. Jenny often joins me to see what we're up to. So, what brought on Kelly's sudden desire?"

"She's been reading about this thing with the aliens, and it got her interested in science and space. She decided that she needed to be better at science and maths and asked if we could help. I'm hopeless at it, but we found a tutor three nights a week."

"Isn't the school giving them good science lessons?"

"Oh sure, but nothing to do with space. She looks out of her window at night with a telescope. She hasn't spotted Aurora yet, or any aliens, but she is in hope."

"At least you are away from the lights of the city," said Becky. "She sees more stars than others. Though with all the clouds today, not a good chance for star gazing."

"No. Tomorrow's looking better. At least it isn't as cold for her now that winter has gone."

"True. Ah, here they come."

Jenny and Kelly came out, chattering away to each other without a care in the world. Becky smiled to see her daughter so happy.

"Ma," she shrieked pleased to see Becky. She rushed across like she'd not seen her for days. "Bye Kelly."

Becky smiled, glad her daughter still appreciated seeing her.

"So, how was school?" Becky asked her daughter when they were both in the car.

"It was fun. I got to do these tests."

"Now I know you're having me on. Tests are never fun."

Jenny giggled. "No, two different things. School was fun. I did some of the tests. I've more to do. I did an English one, a Maths one and a science one."

"Did you manage to do them all?"

"No, but they told me I wouldn't be able to. They seemed to start easy but got harder as I went on."

"I suppose they wanted to see what you knew and didn't know."

"I've more on Monday," informed Jenny without concern. "They are only doing the tests in lessons I'm ahead on."

"Good. Were there any subjective tests? Questions asking how you feel about things or what you would do in certain situations?"

"No. Why?"

"Just curious," said Becky. "Oh, and Mum is on the way home."

"Great. I've missed her."

They got back to The Anchor, and when Becky had unlocked, Jenny followed her in. "Can I do my homework downstairs?"

"Sure. I'll be coding. The others are down at the factory."

Jenny spied the new queries on the wall. "Why are those flagged as weird?"

"Those are frequencies we found the aliens transmitting. Sorry to just refer to them as aliens, but we don't know what race that was."

"Those are all numbers listed in the primer appendix," said Jenny. "Where they talk about decimal to octal translation."

"Oh, aren't we silly. We never thought of that. Jessica said they seemed familiar. She and Sam have studied that primer more than the rest of us."

Jenny went up to the board and wrote the octal translation. '256=400, 288=440, 320=500, 352=540'

"That's better," she said, grabbing her homework from her school bag.