In reply to Heather MacKenzie (msg # 74):

"A Carinian that decided to take US with him!" Horace said.

(Boris and Horace are back at the Carinian ship, waiting for the boat to return.  Heather is with it now)

The inflatable boat reaches the Albatross, and they wrangle the strange alien things out of the boat and into the ship's hold.

It has changed shape.  It is still a big cluster of tiny marbles, but now they are packed tight into a dense sphere.

Back at the Carinian ship, waiting for the boat to return...

"It might take us with it, if it blows up or does something like that," Boris says.  "We should put some distance between us and it.  It might be tricky footing but it is better than blowing up if this thing suddenly remembers it is supposed to do that!"

In reply to The Boss (msg # 76):

"Lead the way, if you sink, I know to take another path." Horace says with a grin.

Boris looks out over the broad expanse of slush.

"I have no idea what the way is other than that way," he says, pointing in the direction of the Albatross.

He takes some experimental steps towards it.  Then he stops and looks back at the Carinian ship.

"Nothing is making sense.  Carinian ships have self destruct mechanisms and use them whenever they are in danger of being captured.  They would rather lose the ship than expose the technology.  So all we recover are parts and pieces.  Always.  Then there is this thing we find.  It is obviously so important that the Carinian ship does not destroy itself, instead, it makes a crash landing.  Maybe to wait for other Carinian ships to rescue it.  Instead we show up.  We take the thing off.  Now that should end the Carinian ship's reason not to destroy itself, right?  So it should have.  But so far it hasn't."

He starts walking away again, slowly.

"Maybe it needs time to warm up?"

*** *** *** *** ***

Back on the bridge of the Albatross.... the ship's sensors show that the thing is very electromagnetically active, and busily broadcasting on a number of frequencies simultaneously.  Very dense, rapidly changing signals.

The computer scientist makes sure all the cyber security systems are up and running, especially for all the vital ship equipment.

"Let's not have that thing decide to start our engines or shut off life support," Hannah says.

The boat goes back for the others.

In reply to The Boss (msg # 78):

"Maybe we should wait Boris, they'll be back in a few minutes." He steps off and follows Boris through the slush.

In reply to Horace Wymp (msg # 79):

"How do we damp it with an ECM somehow?" Einar wondered out loud.

Horace continues to trudge through the slush, hoping the ship doesn't blow up while they are too close.

ECM...

It's one of those "so advanced it's almost magic" things that most people, even among starship crews, knows very little about.  It's always been like that- ECM began appearing in it's "real" form in the Cold War, and a half century later all but a tiny fraction of humanity had any inkling of how it worked.  This was by design, as it was always a very classified subject area, and also because it involved an appreciation of sensor and computer operations that most people didn't have.  And no one studies obsolete ECM, because its useless.  The only time its actually taught is when it is cutting edge and top secret.

It's common enough, though, so that every military ship and every major commercial ship is equipped.  But not the Albatross.  It's systems were classified, and stripped out when the ship was converted over to civilian use.  New equipment is expensive, and the crew hasn't acquired any.

Of course what the ship could really use now would be a Faraday Cage, a very simple box of conductive material that blocks electromagnetic energy.  (A microwave oven is a Faraday Cage).Characters with the right skills could assemble one around the alien thing, using equipment on the Albatross.  But it's not something they can just "activate" with the flip of a switch.

Hannah, though, reports that all of the ship's critical systems are secure.  She's a computer scientist, this is right up her alley.  She has set a "watchdog" program to look out for strange activity in the ship systems, and so far, absolutely none.  Firewalls protect all of the ship's operating software from outside interference... that IS standard.


** *** ** ** ** ** **

Boris and Horace try to put some distance between themselves and the Carinian ship.

"I'm a little surprised that it hasn't destroyed itself," Boris says.  "On the one hand I feel like we could go back for more.  On the other I know that what we do have is extraordinary, and why tempt fate being greedy?  As they say, better is the enemy of good enough."

The boat returns for them, and picks them up.  Very shortly thereafter, they are back with the Albatross and the group is reunited.

"Well, what do we do about the electronic signals coming off of it? We can't dampen it with our computers, who can build a Faraday Cage around it? I'm a computer expert, not electronics, so I can help if needed."
This message was last edited by the player at 15:00, Sun 01 Nov 2020.

Horace is quite a computer expert!  A few things he would realize, then:

It's sending signals, but very weak signals.  It certainly can't be violating the basic laws of the universe, so those weak signals will proportionate to distance squared.  At this strength they're not going to get very far.

But the ship is another matter. Certainly the ship can be reached, and the computer scientist on board seems to know what she's doing, making sure all the ship's important operating programs are isolated from any outside influence.

She's only one person and working on a ship she's not all that familiar with, though. Horace would realize that if its security he's after, helping out there is probably the best thing he could do.  Computer 3 is nothing to sneeze at.

In reply to The Boss (msg # 84):

"Oh, I can help secure the ship's systems from it too."

"I would really like to know if this is one of the Carinian's or not. If we could get a datapad or terminal that's completely isolated from any kind of network or, better yet, take away any ability to access a network, we would hook it up to this...whatever it is and see if we can communicate with it. If this is a Carinian then we're going to be the ones to make First Contact," Heather said, sounding very excited at the possibility.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:33, Sun 08 Nov 2020.

Aboard the Albatross, Heather tries isolating a single portable datapad and using it to communicate with the Carinian.

The first part of this is quite simple, and she has more than enough competent help around.  Hannah is a computer scientist and Horace is an expert as well.

They use an ordinary datapad, and effectively wall it off, isolating it from the ship’s computers, which themselves have some serious firewalls around the key systems.

There are some hitches- some of the ordinary abilities of the datapad are designed to tap into more powerful computers nearby.  But the datapad is sophisticated enough to be fully functional entirely on its own.

While this is going on, they make preparations to leave.  Whatever is left behind might be extremely valuable, but compared to what they have, which looks like it goes beyond “valuable” to “historical”, it isn’t worth the risk.  Plus, a small ship, alone in a place no one else would think to look for you, is no place to gamble with fate.  The sooner the ship is back in Commonwealth space, with friendly radio traffic and controllers asking for course information and things like that, the more secure everyone will feel, even the most hard core spacers.

But once returned to space, they learn they are not alone.  There is a signal from another vessel, distant, but closing- maybe hours away.  It is Carinian.  The Albatross doesn't have the fancy signal analysis capabilities of a warship, but by the strength and type of signal, it seems to be a search radar from something fairly small.

In reply to The Boss (msg # 87):

"Hmmm, we're not up to snuff for a naval battle. We need to vamoose! Set course back to where we came from Mister Wymp!"

In reply to Einar Karvonen (msg # 88):

"Aye-aye sir, back to the starting line!" He sets the jump coordinates for the trip and sends them to the pilot too.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:02, Fri 13 Nov 2020.

Alwin makes note of the jump coordinates, even as he also considers any necessary evasive maneuvers, should they be required.  Not that it should come to that - the Albatross should be able to enter jump before the other vessel got too close.

Humans and Carinians build their ships differently.

Carinians have no critical on board life support to maintain.  This helps them out greatly.  They do have an atmosphere on board- their electronic systems require air for cooling.  But they are not nearly so picky, nor do they devote so much room.

On the other hand, they have disadvantages, which serve to balance things out.  They are far from home, and their ships are expected to last a long time in space without access to a steady supply of parts, replaceable, and regular maintenance.   They tend to be more frugal with fuel, but cannot match the quick dashes Human ships, especially the smaller ones, are capable of.

Alwin quickly puts distance between them.  The sensors keep tracking the Carinian's search radar from its pulses, but is unable to accurately identify it.

It is headed towards the planet.

There isn't any signal coming from their ship on the planet.  Finding a "dead" thing on a planet surface with a radar can be hard, and no one knows how good Carinians are with that.

But there is still the very, very mute signal coming from the thing aboard the ship, and Heather is busy trying to figure out how to interact with it.  There's no physical port to connect to, but the datapad naturally is wireless anyway...

So after a little work, she has it receiving the alien signal.

"Yes!" She says in excitement once the starts getting the signal. She quickly sets the pad to give her a visual of the signal so she can start examining the parts. She speaks nearly every alien language humans are able to comprehend or speak so she approaches this as methodically as she would any language and the first part is isolating something she can grab hold of.

In reply to Heather MacKenzie (msg # 92):

"Excellent Heather! You will be the first human to speak Carinian!"

"Maybe so. If I can isolate something that I can use as a cypher to start running a translation. It's not the first time I cracked an alien language but this is the first from a species that isn't organic and it's definitely nothing so simple as binary," she said as she started pulling apart the signal and checking for layers of signalling hidden amongst the rest.

"If it's a conceptual language that makes it harder but not impossible. This is my area of expertise and I don't give up," she said with a smile, still staring intently at her pad.

As far back as the dawn of the 21st century, there was discussion in certain circles of the hypothetical "AI Box" as a thought experiment: that is, given an Artificial Intelligence that might be smarter that humans, was it possible to keep it successfully confined?

Heather and her Datapad may be attempting to play that out... or not.  It's hard to tell.

Although communications are isolated to the datapad, doing so also keeps the more powerful computer of the Albatross from being used to directly monitor the datapad itself.  Doing so would create links that could be exploited.

So Heather, Horace, and Hannah have to work with what they have- one small datapad, and its own diagnostic software.

The incoming signals are extremely complex, at first, too complex for the datapad to even receive.  They exceed its capacity.  But they slow.

The flow becomes two way.  From what the gaggle of computer experts can tell, it is attempting to "read" the datapad... not easy to do, with no prior knowledge of the computer languages involved.  There is communication, but it is entirely mathematical.

"Right...math I can work with. Let's see if we can get an idea of the type of math our guest here is using. What is its base? We use Base 10 but they could use something far afield of that. Math is the universal language once we find something common."

She thought for a moment and then smiled before inputting something simple: the molecular formula of Hydrogen.

"75% of all baryonic mass is made up of Hydrogen so let's start there."

They send basic signals to the alien.
The alien sends basic signals back.

From there, they work hard on the alien signal.  From the look of things, the alien is working hard as well, because it continuously tests the datapad with different signals.  It was doing that to the ship as well, but stopped when it was cut off.

On the voyage back towards Merlin there is a breakthrough.  Maybe.  A strange one.

Datapads generally come with basic "bundles" of all the standard thingsthat the owner d oesn't even  think of.    Often, these are introductory versions of more advanced software available for sale.  Things like standard cooking recipes for the kitchen, translators, and even children's game.

Quite strangely, a children's game called “Fanny Flamingo Fun Farm" keeps activating on the data pad.  Turn it off, and minutes later it is back.

It wants you to choose a character.

"Ah hah! Now I'm getting somewhere. We're moving beyond simple maths into something our guest may have figured out a way to communicate through."

Heather looked through the characters and chose one that seemed to be most indicative of her personality and waited to see how the Carinian responded. She also highlighted the dictionary the pad was equipped with.

She was in her environment now. Establishing communication and opening dialogue between other races was her raison d'être. The excitement was almost uncontrollable but she didn't broker peace or negotiate trillion dollar contracts by losing her self-control.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:29, Sat 28 Nov 2020.

Computer games have come a long way since the 20th century.  “Fanny Flamingo Fun Farm" is a very simple game meant for young children, but it is a product of its time.  The game creates a world, richly detailed and perfectly animated, though of course, cheery, colorful, and cute.

All the characters are animals, of course.   And they are running a farm.. or in some cases being farmed.  It's probably not polite to tell the pigs why they are really here- although there don't seem to be any humans to eat them, and the list of virtual commodities the farm can sell doesn't include pork.

The game is named for the Flamingo character, which supposedly owns the farm but doesn't do much between comment, make suggestions, answer questions and tell others what must be done.  Players take the role of other characters.

Fanny Flamingo appears only to do its game thing, welcoming you, telling you to look over the place since its your first time here, ask any questions... and by the way there's someone else here to, maybe a friend you can meet!

Fanny introduces Heather to "62252964011", an armadillo clutching an assortment of farming and gardening implements.   Farms don't use those these days.  Mostly, that work is done by robot.  But hobbyist gardeners still know what a watering can is.

"011 is sufficient for identification here," the armadillo says.  "I have acquired devices used for the sustainment of life forms under my care."