“Our new version was based on the Relikt that was sent up.”
“Maybe it’s too precise, I just don’t know.”
“I’d bet my life on the accuracy of the Relikt data,” said Sasha.
“But that means our test datasets aren’t empty. Could the Relikt data still be somewhere in the memory, and we’ve accidentally analyzed it twice?”
“No, the memory gets wiped at the start. Then the program loads the code for the algorithm, and then it calls up the data.”
“But not this time, right? You didn’t do the last step.”
“Yes, Yuri, we wanted to run the program using an empty dataset.”
“Ha! Vot gde sobaka zaryta! That’s where the dog is buried! That’s the reason!”
“What do you mean?”
“The memory wasn’t empty. You loaded the algorithm. Then you set all the counters to zero, but the data was still available. And with your special time-saving addressing method, you bypassed the counters and accessed the still-full memory.”
“That would be a plausible explanation, Yuri.”
“Would be?”
“Yes, because the memory was filled with program routines, not measurement data. But the algorithm found these types of structures. So your theory can’t be right.”
“But it is, Sasha.”
Sasha had to sit down. Yuri’s explanation was actually faultless. But he was resisting it because he could only draw one completely crazy conclusion from it. “Are you clear about what this means, Yuri?” he asked.
“I’m just explaining to you that you didn’t actually use null data. We need to repeat the experiment. But with one change, you actually write zeroes into every memory cell before launching the algorithm.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
Yuri stared at him uncomprehendingly. “Are you being a defeatist like Katya now?”
“No, my dear Yuri. We’ve just made an unintentional discovery that really might change the world. The information in the background radiation isn’t natural. It’s program code!”
“What did you just say?” asked Katya.
“Oh, you’ve come back at just the right moment,” said Sasha. “We’ve established that someone’s sent us a program from the past.”
April 24, 1984, Akademgorodok
Katya was pacing back and forth between the control cabinets. They’d discussed their discovery until midnight—and what they should do about it. “But isn’t that dangerous? Starting a program without knowing what it’s for and who wrote it?”
“I can put your mind at rest,” said Yuri. “The BESM-6 has an excellent security system. Data and program code are strictly separated with flags in the memory. A program can’t simply alter itself or start up unauthorized areas.”
“I’m just wondering how we’re supposed to interpret this,” said Sasha. “Whoever hid this in the cosmic background radiation certainly wouldn’t have had a BESM-6, or even knowledge of FORTRAN.”
Yuri laughed. “Definitely not. The idea that aliens would feed us program code that could run directly on our processors is the stuff of utopian novels. But the code is real. So they must have intended for others to execute it. That means there must be instructions. We just need to decode them—then we can transfer the program to our computer.”
“Then we should start by searching for the instructions,” said Katya.
“I bet they’re right at the start,” said Yuri.
“Or at the end, if the sender—”
“You’re right, Sasha,” said Yuri. “We shouldn’t assume a human frame of reference. The sender could be an intelligent clay brick from the Andromeda Galaxy.”
“I don’t know if it’s possible for us to entirely avoid human reference systems,” said Katya. “After all, we’re human. We’re not bricks.”
“This is all too philosophical for me,” said Sasha. “I suggest all three of us simply take a close look at the beginning of the measurement data.”
“I’ve got it,” said Katya. They’d only started their analysis five minutes ago and Katya had already found the instructions?
“Insane,” said Yuri, who was standing next to Katya’s screen.
Sasha joined them. Katya’s index finger pointed at various values on the screen. “Those are spectra of the most common elements in the universe,” she said. “Then there’s a series of values. And then the same spectra show up again, but slightly altered.”
“That’s clever,” said Yuri. “Then the differences between the two spectra are the operators. We just have to figure out which operators were used to transform the first spectrum into the second one. Then we can assign the operation directly to the operators and then convert the entire program text into commands for the BESM-6.”
“That’s all a little too operatic for me,” said Sasha.
“Say you have an image of a circle on the left,” explained Yuri. “On the right is the same image, except the circle has a hole in the middle. Between the two you see a cross.”
Why a cross? Sasha’s thoughts were going around in circles. “Yes?” he asked.
“The cross is what, Sasha?”
“A geometric shape. What else?”
“The cross stands for the operation that stamps a hole in a shape,” Yuri explained. “If there’s a square in the next line, followed by a cross, what would the next symbol look like?”
Ah, of course. He slapped his forehead. “A square with a hole in the middle.”
“Congratulations. That’s how these instructions work. The altered spectra show us what symbols stand for what operations.”
“There are only twenty-four different commands, by the way,” said Katya.
“You’ve already figured that out?”
“It was easy, Sasha—there are exactly 48 spectra.”
“Twenty-four commands. That reminds me of a modern RISC processor.”
“Risk?” asked Sasha.
“Reduced instruction set computer,” Yuri explained. “They only need a few command types that they can execute very quickly. The BESM-6 is basically a RISC machine, too, even though the concept only came out a few years ago. Our Soviet engineers were quite ahead of their time.”
“Then it should be easy to translate the commands in the cosmic background.”
“I sure hope so, Sasha.”
Sasha wandered around the computer hall. Katya and Yuri didn’t need him. They’d been working together for the last two hours on the translation—Katya was taking care of the physics and Yuri was searching for the equivalent BESM-6 commands. He could have walked to the reservoir but the outside temperature discouraged him.
He wandered slowly over to the dot-matrix printer. Maybe he could make himself useful and replace the ribbon. He lifted up the lid of the printer. The printer head automatically moved to the center and the device beeped a few times.
“Sasha, are you at the printer?” Katya called across the warehouse. “The stupid thing isn’t printing!”
He closed the lid again. The device began its screeching at once. A sheet of faintly printed paper came out. He tore it off and took it with him to the other end of the room.
“That’s the translation table,” explained Yuri.
“You’ve already figured it out?”
“Sure. Now we just need to translate the background data into a program.”
“How many days will you need?”
“Days? About half an hour. It’s a simple IF-THEN query.”
“You mean we will have solved the great puzzle in thirty minutes? Shostakovich will be extremely pleased to have his Computing Center back.”
“You have my word.”
At that moment, Sasha was about as far as possible from making the head of the Computing Center happy. But neither Sasha nor Shostakovich knew that yet.
*EXECUTE, Sasha typed. He hesitated above the roof symbol.
“Yuri, you give the final command.”
Yuri was standing next to him and he now l
eaned across. Sasha could smell his aftershave. Yuri searched for the Enter key, pressed it, and the screen went dark.
“It’s running!” said Katya.
“At least there are no error messages,” said Sasha.
Then the cursor reappeared. The world was still turning. What was happening? Suddenly the card puncher at Yuri’s console started hammering away.
“I’m printing out the program on cards, just to be safe,” said Yuri.
The noise continued for three minutes, then all was quiet.
“That was quite a short program, wasn’t it?” asked Sasha.
Yuri didn’t answer, but his disappointment was palpable. He stood up, fetched the punch cards, and weighed them in his hand. “About two hundred lines of code,” he said. “I was expecting hundreds or thousands of times that.”
Only 200 lines of program code—that was definitely not the ultimate weapon Komikov was hoping for. It wouldn’t lead socialism to triumph. What could you program in 200 lines of code? More than ‘Hello, world!’ but not much more.
Yuri looked through the punch cards. His face brightened. “I should have thought of that,” he said.
“Of what?” asked Katya.
“This isn’t what we’re looking for.”
“So? Don’t make me drag every word out of you.”
“Whoever prepared this did it systematically. The introduction helped us to construct a kind of loading program, if I’m interpreting the source text correctly. Then this mini program apparently loads all the rest of the data.”
“And then?” asked Sasha.
“I don’t know. Maybe a larger, more sophisticated program will emerge, the real message from the past.”
“Shall we try it? Can you guarantee what emerges will be harmless?”
“That’s impossible. But I can’t imagine how the full program could harm us, and as long as it can’t escape the BESM-6, what could go wrong? It’s not like it’s a machine that can somehow attack us.”
“We have to try it,” said Katya. “We don’t have a choice. We’ve come this far.”
“Shouldn’t we involve Komikov?” suggested Sasha. “Then he can take responsibility.”
“But that would take at least three days, and surely he hasn’t recovered yet,” Katya moaned. “I will have died of impatience by then. I want to know now what we’ve got here, even if it doesn’t result in the Nobel Prize.”
“As far as I’m concerned, we can launch it now,” said Yuri.
“All right, do it,” said Sasha.
“May I?” asked Katya.
“Please.”
Sasha stepped aside and she typed in the execute command.
“Error.”
Yuri thumped his fist on the console.
“Wait,” he said.
“What is it?” asked Katya.
“I thought this would happen. We don’t have enough memory. The counter’s hit the wall.”
“Can you correct that, like you did last time with the analysis program?”
“No, Sasha. I don’t even know what the commands are for that this program is loading. I’d have to edit the alien code. We’re not that technically advanced yet. Maybe it’s too soon for humanity. The message could have been intended for a more technically advanced civilization.”
“We’ve been working on this for so long, we’re not going to give up right before the finish line,” said Katya. “I want to see this program run.”
“That won’t be possible here,” said Sasha. “Or to what extent can the BESM-6 be upgraded?”
“A hundred and ninety-two kilobytes,” said Yuri.
“Then it’s that simple. We need a more powerful computer. It would be laughable if our socialist industry had nothing better to offer than the BESM-6.”
“And how do you propose we get our hands on one? There must be faster systems, but they’re not cheap.”
“Your father could organize that for us.”
“I don’t think he has that much influence.”
“Let’s at least try.”
Sasha shrugged his shoulders. Katya was probably overestimating his father, but it was worth a try.
April 25, 1984, Akademgorodok
The dezhurnaya was standing at the door to his room. “Come on, Sasha, someone’s waiting for you! But put some clothes on. It’s cold.”
Yes, of course, good woman, I wasn’t intending to go outside in my pajamas. “Who’s waiting for me?” he called.
“Officers!”
It must be Komikov, or someone he had sent. Sasha closed the door again. While he was searching his wardrobe for clean underwear there was another knock. What did the dezhurnaya want now? He flung the door open and took a startled step back. His father, in uniform, was standing in front of him. Why wasn’t he still in the hospital?
“What are you doing here?”
“Good morning, son. I’m here to pick you up.”
“That’s not necessary.”
They’d filled Komikov in last night. Then Katya had insisted on talking to him privately afterward. She hadn’t come home with him that night. Something she had said to Komikov must have prompted him to come to Novosibirsk.
“Yes, it is necessary. Are you ready?”
“Almost.”
The Lada, painted in the color-scheme of the Army, stopped in front of a prestigious building in the middle of a snowy park. “Where are we?” asked Yuri.
“The headquarters of Military Intelligence is in this oblast,” explained Komikov. “I had to bring the comrades here in on it, because it’s a question of national security.”
“National security?” asked Sasha.
“We want to run a research program whose purpose, we don’t know, and which may have been written by enemies of the state.”
“By whom?”
“Come on, Sasha, we don’t need to discuss this. Anyway, I happen to know that the comrades here have what you need.”
“No interruptions for the next hour, please,” said the mustachioed secret service general to his secretary, who closed the tall door from the outside. They were sitting on elegantly upholstered chairs in a room with a stucco ceiling and floor-to-ceiling windows. The building probably once belonged to a wealthy aristocrat. The bars over the windows didn’t fit the look, but they’d probably been added after the Soviet government moved in.
“Please, give me your report,” said the secret service man, looking at Sasha.
He looked to his father. Komikov ranked higher than the secret service man. “The whole story?” he asked.
His father nodded. So he explained what had happened since the beginning of the year. The major general was visibly impressed and kept interrupting with intelligent questions. Afterward everyone was silent. Their hour wasn’t up yet.
“Do I understand correctly that you don’t know what the program does?”
“Correct,” said Sasha.
“You have no idea? Not even the slightest notion?”
“That’s right.”
“I appreciate your honesty.”
“I surely don’t need to emphasize the potential,” Komikov chimed in, “that such a message could contain. Information that could help socialism prevail would be invaluable for the propaganda war. But I’m also thinking of technology. Whoever compiled this message must have had incredible capabilities. If we don’t react, the Americans might get to it before we do. Those imperialists don’t have the same scruples.”
“Yes, comrade, we’re in agreement there. We can’t afford to waste this opportunity. I’m just wondering how best to organize it.”
“Surely you have a site with something better than a BMSE-16?”
“BESM-6,” Sasha corrected.
“Of course we do. But every relocation, every new site widens our circle. I’d prefer to solve this here and now.”
“There’s no faster computer in the whole of Akademgorodok,” Sasha added.
“Not yet,” said the secret service man. “It just
so happens we’re awaiting the delivery of our very first ES-1066. My specialists are very much looking forward to it, but the next exemplar will be ready in two months. They’ll just have to wait for that.”
“How much space does the computer need?” asked Sasha.
“Only a hundred and twenty square meters. Considering its performance, that’s nothing.”
“But there isn’t that much space in the Computing Center, Comrade Major General.”
“Did I hear you say you have a BESM-6 there? That takes up much more space.”
“That’s true, comrade. But because of that, there isn’t room for the new machine.”
“Don’t worry, my young friend. We can have the BESM-6 relocated. The Siberian Academy of Sciences in Akademgorodok will receive a new mainframe computer ahead of schedule. No one will complain about that. And if they do, send them to me.”
The man didn’t know Shostakovich. But that wasn’t their problem.
The Lada was driving at breakneck speed over the glassy-smooth Morskoy Prospekt. “Well, that was quick,” said Katya.
“You just have to ask the right people,” said his father.
“When will they deliver the machine?” asked Yuri.
“The day after tomorrow.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Everything is possible in our beautiful country.”
The car stopped. “And now get out,” said Komikov.
“Aren’t you going to eat with us?” asked Sasha.
“No, I have to get back to the hospital. The bandages have to be changed. Didn’t I hide them well under my uniform?”
“You haven’t recovered yet, and you still came?”
“It was nice to see you again, my son.”
The driver closed the Lada door and started the engine. His father waved. The old dog had discharged himself from hospital, still unwell, to help him. Sasha shivered in the cold, but he stood and watched until the car disappeared around the next corner.
April 26, 1984, Akademgorodok
The Death of the Universe: Rebirth: Hard Science Fiction (Big Rip Book 3) Page 20
