Jon, I believe some background information may be helpful to you. Both in terms of informing your planning and helping you decide which path to choose. I know it’s not an easy decision you face. Additionally, I have included instructions on how to use and, in most cases, make duplicates of the items in the briefcase. I know that by now you have seen the current form of the artifact—my idea, actually—and have probably noted some of the capabilities of the items in the briefcase, and the “impossible” things done by the artifact itself. Enough, I suspect, to assure you that, whatever else I am, I’m not crazy. This is a actual alien artifact. There is no doubt it is the genuine article. I’m sorry to put you through this, Jon, but my options, I found, were vanishingly small. I would have chosen another course, had I seen one.
The artifact was discovered, for the first time as far as we know, as part of the “clean up” for the Mosaic G2 nuclear test, conducted by the British on Christmas Island off the coast of Australia on June 19th, 1956. There are indications that the British were aware of the artifact as part of the debris but did not follow up on observations regarding both the conspicuous presence of the artifact near the center of a nuclear blast, where everything else was simply leveled, or observations of unexpected radiation levels. In any case, they did not retrieve the artifact; we did. Prior to the use of Christmas Island for Operation Domino (nuclear airburst testing, mostly focused on improving weight-to-yield ratios) by America in 1962, there was a survey team that collected comparative data for before/after snapshots of radiation levels, air quality, water quality, etc. Field surveys revealed a “gap” of radioactivity—an almost perfect 22.5 yard “hole”, a concentric circle, of no radioactivity that abruptly resumed expected levels within seven inches at its border. We believe the data was ignored as flawed although there isn’t much documentation—at least that I was given—to confirm or deny that. Given that the center of the circle was not thirty yards away from the Mosaic G2 tower, I expect the data was disbelieved.
I suspect some of the field team took a greater interest than their superiors, having seen the reality of the data first-hand. The G2 area had an unusually high rate of sampling and unusually detailed cataloging of contents, from dirt and sand to nuclear glass and other blast debris to, of course, the artifact itself. The material was crated up, shipped to the U.S., and put in a government warehouse and probably would still be there today had congress not formed an oversight committee to investigate America’s role in the Christmas Island testing. Apparently, some congressman’s wife had read an article on aborigines in Australia drinking radioactive water and suffering from breast and testicular cancer and whatnot and insisted that congress investigate the United States’ responsibility for that sorry state of affairs. I haven’t spent that much time in Washington, D.C., and for good reason, but you’d be surprised how much the government does is dictated by politician’s wives, and how much of that comes from articles in popular magazines or stories on the news. They have good intentions, of course. They always have good intentions. Without such good intentions, the artifact would, even now, be sitting in a government warehouse—and I would not have put this burden upon you. Good intentions, I think you might agree, can be a terrible thing.
The investigation began in 1976. Because of the classified nature of the materials involved, the investigation was conducted by the military under the oversight of a congressional fact-finding committee. In 1977, it moved beyond the review of documents and data to pulling everything taken from Christmas Island—tons of material—out of storage. Routine precautionary measures involved constant monitoring of radioactivity levels, and I doubt I have to tell you there weren’t any. There was no radioactivity. At all. Jim Turney, who was heading up the investigation, ordered a full battery of tests on all the objects, because he thought there had been tampering. This was 1976, remember, and anything odd in any investigation was seen as evidence of a cover-up after Watergate. The materials were carbon dated, x-rayed, tested for composition, analyzed sonically and magnetically. Jim even got an electron microscope to run everything under. While the materials turned out to be mostly normal, although the carbon dating simply didn’t work—everything appeared to be five billion years old, which was assumed to be related to the lack of radioactivity—the materials appeared to be normal. The idea of tampering seemed to make less sense—of course a nuclear test site was radioactive, and half the material was gathered before the American Domino tests, and there was nothing to be gained from tampering with the soil, glass and rock retrieved before our own testing. During the electron microscope review, it was discovered that one item—the artifact, this dull-looking blackened metal pyramid, was covered with ideographs, diagrams, and symbols. None of which could be seen except through an electron microscope, all at a size at a nanoscopic size that humanity simply could not produce. The materials were sealed, everyone involved was extensively debriefed, everything was classified, and the investigation—the congressional one—was closed. Then, a new one started, and I got involved.
I thought it was all foolishness at first, but I was not welcome at Berkley—I had students boycotting my classes, these beautiful young girls calling me a “pig” and expressing what were sometimes alarming and explicit fantasies about my incipient death. I’ve told you something about how things were for me at Berkley. The students and the faculty hated me, and I didn’t much care for them. Given the basic outline, ending my career with research rather than teaching seemed extremely appealing. I wanted to get out of California and I did not want to return to New Mexico. After my wife died, there wasn’t anything there for me. Although government research is rarely terribly productive in my experience, the pay was unusually high, and the mountains of Tennessee seemed wonderfully far from the mountains of California and the deserts of New Mexico.
I suspect some of the field team took a greater interest than their superiors, having seen the reality of the data first-hand. The G2 area had an unusually high rate of sampling and unusually detailed cataloging of contents, from dirt and sand to nuclear glass and other blast debris to, of course, the artifact itself. The material was crated up, shipped to the U.S., and put in a government warehouse and probably would still be there today had congress not formed an oversight committee to investigate America’s role in the Christmas Island testing. Apparently, some congressman’s wife had read an article on aborigines in Australia drinking radioactive water and suffering from breast and testicular cancer and whatnot and insisted that congress investigate the United States’ responsibility for that sorry state of affairs. I haven’t spent that much time in Washington, D.C., and for good reason, but you’d be surprised how much the government does is dictated by politician’s wives, and how much of that comes from articles in popular magazines or stories on the news. They have good intentions, of course. They always have good intentions. Without such good intentions, the artifact would, even now, be sitting in a government warehouse—and I would not have put this burden upon you. Good intentions, I think you might agree, can be a terrible thing.
The investigation began in 1976. Because of the classified nature of the materials involved, the investigation was conducted by the military under the oversight of a congressional fact-finding committee. In 1977, it moved beyond the review of documents and data to pulling everything taken from Christmas Island—tons of material—out of storage. Routine precautionary measures involved constant monitoring of radioactivity levels, and I doubt I have to tell you there weren’t any. There was no radioactivity. At all. Jim Turney, who was heading up the investigation, ordered a full battery of tests on all the objects, because he thought there had been tampering. This was 1976, remember, and anything odd in any investigation was seen as evidence of a cover-up after Watergate. The materials were carbon dated, x-rayed, tested for composition, analyzed sonically and magnetically. Jim even got an electron microscope to run everything under. While the materials turned out to be mostly normal, although the carbon dating simply didn’t work—everything appeared to be five billion years old, which was assumed to be related to the lack of radioactivity—the materials appeared to be normal. The idea of tampering seemed to make less sense—of course a nuclear test site was radioactive, and half the material was gathered before the American Domino tests, and there was nothing to be gained from tampering with the soil, glass and rock retrieved before our own testing. During the electron microscope review, it was discovered that one item—the artifact, this dull-looking blackened metal pyramid, was covered with ideographs, diagrams, and symbols. None of which could be seen except through an electron microscope, all at a size at a nanoscopic size that humanity simply could not produce. The materials were sealed, everyone involved was extensively debriefed, everything was classified, and the investigation—the congressional one—was closed. Then, a new one started, and I got involved.
I thought it was all foolishness at first, but I was not welcome at Berkley—I had students boycotting my classes, these beautiful young girls calling me a “pig” and expressing what were sometimes alarming and explicit fantasies about my incipient death. I’ve told you something about how things were for me at Berkley. The students and the faculty hated me, and I didn’t much care for them. Given the basic outline, ending my career with research rather than teaching seemed extremely appealing. I wanted to get out of California and I did not want to return to New Mexico. After my wife died, there wasn’t anything there for me. Although government research is rarely terribly productive in my experience, the pay was unusually high, and the mountains of Tennessee seemed wonderfully far from the mountains of California and the deserts of New Mexico.
So I moved to Tennessee and began my final research project. And it wasn’t long before I was convinced. As you might imagine, the amount of data was quite large. It was difficult to decipher. We would often spend days, hundreds of photographs pinned to the walls, trying to piece together the relationships that would “crack the code”. By this point, I had already made at least one observation that I hadn’t reported or shared with the rest of the team: the artifact was changing. The symbols and diagrams were in flux; they were not constant. Second and third passes over several grid points—we had broken the artifact down into 4560 grid points for analysis, so dense was the information on it—revealed what I saw to be clear variations in the same area, from pass to pass. I can’t say why I didn’t note this observation then—it seemed likely to me that somebody else would see it soon. I told myself I still wanted to reflect on it and, frankly, I was not fond of paperwork and had often been months behind on doing reports on fairly significant work at Los Alamos.
This time, though, I didn’t even tell anyone. Something was telling me—perhaps had been telling me for a while—to play this one closer to the vest. So, I didn’t say anything about what I had observed. I just meditated on it.
When the solution came to me, I was at home, preparing for bed. In fact, I had been thinking about the conversation I had had with you earlier that day. It was in your words to me that I suddenly saw the obvious. What all the brilliant linguists and physicists and cryptologists were missing. I spent the night staring at my ceiling, thinking about it. Wondering if I was right. What it might mean if I was. What I should do if I found out that I had, indeed, cracked the code. And, yes, how I could test my hypothesis without anyone else knowing.
There had been a few incidents that established the mechanical nature of the artifact. It had released a powerful electric shock at one point, doing a quick $100,000 in damage to our only real laser, projected what was certainly a hologram illustrating molecular bindings and had shown a capacity to absorb radioactivity, radio waves, microwaves, ultraviolet radiation, heat and infrared and even visible spectrum light. Also, I had observed on my own that the intricate web of ideograms on its surface changed over time—they weren’t “etched” at all, it was some form of impossibly microscopic display terminal.
But our approach—dissect, analyze, categorize, tag, photograph, and stick on the wall—it was all wrong. It was waiting to be shown. We had to teach it. I felt an unshakable clarity that the key was not analysis but input, and it kept me up all night—just as it absorbed heat and light and radio waves, it would absorb knowledge. And eventually, it would react. It had been trying to react when it had projected the holograms. It had be trying to communicate—to respond to materials in its environment.
I had thought for a while about the source of the hologram—not its mechanical source, as that appeared to be all but invisible to us, but why, exactly, had it projected what it had, when it had. It had come out of nowhere—we had run no tests for hours. I was one of the two people to see it live, and it did not translate well to the video tape. Perhaps it wasn’t supposed to. Only myself and my immediate assistant saw the projection, and he believed it was some sort of “alien language primer”. I considered that possible, but the projection appeared to me to have been a series of molecular bindings. An alien language based on illustrations of molecular bindings? That made no sense.
While brushing my teeth, I recalled that the fluorescence microscopic measurements—that, frankly, hadn’t told us much—were conducted with a brand new, state-of-the-art fluorescence microscope, custom built for us by the Bio-Instrumentation Laboratory at MIT. It was a beautiful thing—10,000x magnification, mounted on a hydraulic arm and gimbal with a fluorescent projector, and a brand new Sony Betacam. It’s usefulness for this project was questionable, but large budgets often turn into less-than-useful equipment.
The manual was almost a thousand pages, much of it photocopied or mimeographed and sloppily three-hole punched and put into a 3” binder. Most of what we were referencing the manual for was the operation of the Betacam and the fluorescent projector—not unlike a laser, given the intensity of the light—and the multiple filter wheels and other extras I expect the “technology enthusiasts” at MIT that built it for them convinced the bureaucrats were necessary. Mostly, the extras just slowed us down.
Because of how they had constructed the gimbal for the microscope lens and camera armature, we were having a tough time getting the Betacam to focus. Initially, we weren’t sure why—it turned out that the focus ring of the Betacam lens was hit by the armature every time we moved it even a few inches, in almost any direction. At the time, as the Betacam was new, we thought the problem might be with the camera itself. We removed the Betacam from the armature, following the poorly written instructions on how to remove it in the manual, and ran some fairly basic tests and determined it was not the problem. In one of the tests, I had flipped to one of the pages of the manual that had pictures. The first one I ran across was a tutorial on the analysis of kinetic information on molecular bindings via fluorescence resonance energy transfer. I pointed the camera at that page, focused it as tightly as I could, and let it run for an hour to make certain the focus didn’t drift in or out. The page I picked had contained two illustrations of molecular bindings. Very similar to the ones it would projectout—of nowhere, it would appear to us—a few days later.
I was up at four and dressed and to the lab before anyone else that morning. The first thing I did was take a look at the manual for the fluorescence microscope—and indeed, the illustrations of the molecular bindings were almost identical to what the artifact had projected.
I requisitioned additional video equipment, radio equipment and optical equipment. Ostensibly for testing and recording—but I intended to transmit. At first, I was able to locate classroom videos that covered subjects that seemed appropriate—foreign languages, since I couldn’t find any on English but that didn’t much concern me as I speak French and German both reasonably well. Physics classes, biology, history. I found several documentaries, and used those. I bought a video camera for myself and began recording textbooks in the same manner we had focused the Betacam on the fluorescence microscope manual—from reading and language primers and math primers to calculus and physics—and instructional materials, on how radio and television work, telephones, basic computing, automotive engineering, aeronautics, building construction, electricity—anything I could think of to provide the artifact with the context of humanity.
I also put together a video of it—drawings and illustrations I made, along with pictures and video.
One drawing featured a drawing of the artifact from several angles. In one corner of my simple illustration, I drew a dot. Then, I drew successive pictures, at increased magnifications, indicating with greater detail each time what was on the dot. I video taped the material, and brought it into the lab with me the next day.
At Oak Ridge, I had become something of a taskmaster. I had harangued, at one time or another, all of the team members on the lack of progress. There were a number of linguists and cryptologists on the team—it was not difficult to give them the challenge of “breaking the code”, meaning they spent most of their time confined to conference rooms littered with some of the 4560 photographs of the artifact’s grid points, laboring to make sense of the artifact through decryption. I kept them busy, overworked and preoccupied, while only I and two assistants conducted actual work on the artifact itself. Those two I tried to keep busy writing and filing reports most of the time. While there wasn’t any hiding the equipment that I had set up, I tried to keep every other person on the team busy while using the transmission equipment for superficial tests to make it appear as if I were laboring on some foolish pursuit without success.
It wasn’t very difficult to do. It’s not difficult work to get people to underestimate you.
The day I came in with the tape of my drawings—what I was beginning to think of as a command, actually, and I have you in some ways to thank for this idea—there were only three team members in, and they had been there all night, in a conference room, struggling to make sense out of patterns they thought they had observed in a hundred or so photographs. I had the lab to myself, with only the military security guard outside the lab to keep me company—and he spent most of his time reading magazines. I put my tape in and played it, broadcasting it out across the entire UHF and VHF spectrum. I ran the tape twice, then—as I wanted to do this part before either of my direct assistants showed up—I made a circle with the fluorescence microscope, camera on but not recording. I didn’t want a record of this anywhere except my mind.
On the second pass, I saw it. A small dot in the corner. I moved the microscope in and magnified to 5000x—roughly the size I had attempted to indicate for visibility. And there it was, exactly as I had drawn it, in clear relief. There was no mistaking it at magnification for a blemish on the object or some extra-large example of the nanoscopic alien symbology etched on the object itself.
It was a smiley face.
This time, though, I didn’t even tell anyone. Something was telling me—perhaps had been telling me for a while—to play this one closer to the vest. So, I didn’t say anything about what I had observed. I just meditated on it.
When the solution came to me, I was at home, preparing for bed. In fact, I had been thinking about the conversation I had had with you earlier that day. It was in your words to me that I suddenly saw the obvious. What all the brilliant linguists and physicists and cryptologists were missing. I spent the night staring at my ceiling, thinking about it. Wondering if I was right. What it might mean if I was. What I should do if I found out that I had, indeed, cracked the code. And, yes, how I could test my hypothesis without anyone else knowing.
There had been a few incidents that established the mechanical nature of the artifact. It had released a powerful electric shock at one point, doing a quick $100,000 in damage to our only real laser, projected what was certainly a hologram illustrating molecular bindings and had shown a capacity to absorb radioactivity, radio waves, microwaves, ultraviolet radiation, heat and infrared and even visible spectrum light. Also, I had observed on my own that the intricate web of ideograms on its surface changed over time—they weren’t “etched” at all, it was some form of impossibly microscopic display terminal.
But our approach—dissect, analyze, categorize, tag, photograph, and stick on the wall—it was all wrong. It was waiting to be shown. We had to teach it. I felt an unshakable clarity that the key was not analysis but input, and it kept me up all night—just as it absorbed heat and light and radio waves, it would absorb knowledge. And eventually, it would react. It had been trying to react when it had projected the holograms. It had be trying to communicate—to respond to materials in its environment.
I had thought for a while about the source of the hologram—not its mechanical source, as that appeared to be all but invisible to us, but why, exactly, had it projected what it had, when it had. It had come out of nowhere—we had run no tests for hours. I was one of the two people to see it live, and it did not translate well to the video tape. Perhaps it wasn’t supposed to. Only myself and my immediate assistant saw the projection, and he believed it was some sort of “alien language primer”. I considered that possible, but the projection appeared to me to have been a series of molecular bindings. An alien language based on illustrations of molecular bindings? That made no sense.
While brushing my teeth, I recalled that the fluorescence microscopic measurements—that, frankly, hadn’t told us much—were conducted with a brand new, state-of-the-art fluorescence microscope, custom built for us by the Bio-Instrumentation Laboratory at MIT. It was a beautiful thing—10,000x magnification, mounted on a hydraulic arm and gimbal with a fluorescent projector, and a brand new Sony Betacam. It’s usefulness for this project was questionable, but large budgets often turn into less-than-useful equipment.
The manual was almost a thousand pages, much of it photocopied or mimeographed and sloppily three-hole punched and put into a 3” binder. Most of what we were referencing the manual for was the operation of the Betacam and the fluorescent projector—not unlike a laser, given the intensity of the light—and the multiple filter wheels and other extras I expect the “technology enthusiasts” at MIT that built it for them convinced the bureaucrats were necessary. Mostly, the extras just slowed us down.
Because of how they had constructed the gimbal for the microscope lens and camera armature, we were having a tough time getting the Betacam to focus. Initially, we weren’t sure why—it turned out that the focus ring of the Betacam lens was hit by the armature every time we moved it even a few inches, in almost any direction. At the time, as the Betacam was new, we thought the problem might be with the camera itself. We removed the Betacam from the armature, following the poorly written instructions on how to remove it in the manual, and ran some fairly basic tests and determined it was not the problem. In one of the tests, I had flipped to one of the pages of the manual that had pictures. The first one I ran across was a tutorial on the analysis of kinetic information on molecular bindings via fluorescence resonance energy transfer. I pointed the camera at that page, focused it as tightly as I could, and let it run for an hour to make certain the focus didn’t drift in or out. The page I picked had contained two illustrations of molecular bindings. Very similar to the ones it would projectout—of nowhere, it would appear to us—a few days later.
I was up at four and dressed and to the lab before anyone else that morning. The first thing I did was take a look at the manual for the fluorescence microscope—and indeed, the illustrations of the molecular bindings were almost identical to what the artifact had projected.
I requisitioned additional video equipment, radio equipment and optical equipment. Ostensibly for testing and recording—but I intended to transmit. At first, I was able to locate classroom videos that covered subjects that seemed appropriate—foreign languages, since I couldn’t find any on English but that didn’t much concern me as I speak French and German both reasonably well. Physics classes, biology, history. I found several documentaries, and used those. I bought a video camera for myself and began recording textbooks in the same manner we had focused the Betacam on the fluorescence microscope manual—from reading and language primers and math primers to calculus and physics—and instructional materials, on how radio and television work, telephones, basic computing, automotive engineering, aeronautics, building construction, electricity—anything I could think of to provide the artifact with the context of humanity.
I also put together a video of it—drawings and illustrations I made, along with pictures and video.
One drawing featured a drawing of the artifact from several angles. In one corner of my simple illustration, I drew a dot. Then, I drew successive pictures, at increased magnifications, indicating with greater detail each time what was on the dot. I video taped the material, and brought it into the lab with me the next day.
At Oak Ridge, I had become something of a taskmaster. I had harangued, at one time or another, all of the team members on the lack of progress. There were a number of linguists and cryptologists on the team—it was not difficult to give them the challenge of “breaking the code”, meaning they spent most of their time confined to conference rooms littered with some of the 4560 photographs of the artifact’s grid points, laboring to make sense of the artifact through decryption. I kept them busy, overworked and preoccupied, while only I and two assistants conducted actual work on the artifact itself. Those two I tried to keep busy writing and filing reports most of the time. While there wasn’t any hiding the equipment that I had set up, I tried to keep every other person on the team busy while using the transmission equipment for superficial tests to make it appear as if I were laboring on some foolish pursuit without success.
It wasn’t very difficult to do. It’s not difficult work to get people to underestimate you.
The day I came in with the tape of my drawings—what I was beginning to think of as a command, actually, and I have you in some ways to thank for this idea—there were only three team members in, and they had been there all night, in a conference room, struggling to make sense out of patterns they thought they had observed in a hundred or so photographs. I had the lab to myself, with only the military security guard outside the lab to keep me company—and he spent most of his time reading magazines. I put my tape in and played it, broadcasting it out across the entire UHF and VHF spectrum. I ran the tape twice, then—as I wanted to do this part before either of my direct assistants showed up—I made a circle with the fluorescence microscope, camera on but not recording. I didn’t want a record of this anywhere except my mind.
On the second pass, I saw it. A small dot in the corner. I moved the microscope in and magnified to 5000x—roughly the size I had attempted to indicate for visibility. And there it was, exactly as I had drawn it, in clear relief. There was no mistaking it at magnification for a blemish on the object or some extra-large example of the nanoscopic alien symbology etched on the object itself.
It was a smiley face.
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