Descending Road - EXPERIMENTING by Dana W. Paxson

EXPERIMENTING

1561 4D

At last, after thirty years, the alien stone was yielding its secrets. Arlen strode through the mine’s entry tunnel at 788 Signo, trailing his physics team. They reached a sealed door; four guards from Arlen‘s best corpo unit greeted them, opened the door, and let them into an equipment-bogged chamber.

“What have you found?”

“We’ve tested changes in the stimulated-emission signal under different regimes of electric, magnetic, and electromagnetic input at a wide range of direction vectors, field strengths and frequencies,” an older man in ArCorp coveralls said. He was Arlen‘s chief physicist, Dumiv, gray-haired and heavily-muscled. “There seem to be peculiar resonance transients in these ranges.” He showed Arlen a databook, on which a holo display danced and shimmered in many colors. “We can’t interpret them yet. They seem to be some kind of image or intelligent signal; there is too much structured content to be noise, and too much entropy to be mechanical.”

“Do you have transcriptions I can take with me?”

“Yes, sir. Here.” Dumiv handed Arlen the databook. “We’re working with the original data, and still accumulating more. We’ll send you more as we get it reduced.”

“Reduced?”

“Yes, sir. It comes in terabits every second. We boil out the vacant stretches and the noise as best we can. You’re holding the equivalent of half the entire human archives there.”

“Is that why this has taken so long?”

“Yes, sir.”

This was as much data as five thousand years of recorded human history had generated here on Tarnus, together with the priceless Old Archive of Earth. Arlen cradled the databook, excited. It would be hard to wait for more. Now that they had this much, he would drive them to get the rest.

“Have you located more ore yet?”

“No, sir. We will have to increase the tank size by a factor of two to improve its sensitivity by one-fourth. As you can see, it won’t fit in any mine shaft at that size.”

“What about the magnet experiment?”

“It’s almost ready. We have no idea what will happen, we’re just–“

“I don’t want to hear a lot of gabble, not after all the years you’ve had the thing. Just report the results to me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Arlen?” An aide appeared, carrying a comm.

Arlen took the comm and said, “Yes?”

It was Wandaji, his Land Resources Office chief. She said, “We’ve run into a minor problem. Some farmers have just bought the properties below 788 Signo; they completed the closures with DurCorp before we got the report from our contacts there.”

Arlen suppressed an outburst. Had his spies at DurCorp had been turned? “Go to the farmers. Make the usual offer. If we have to, we can double it.” There were other ways of raising the stakes, but it was better not to expose them, not yet. Most people accepted Arlen‘s first offers.

Arlen strode out of the mine to the flyer. Back to the City, to study the data, and enjoy other more-personal pursuits.

Story List	SURPRISE ME	Author Page
USER SURVEY	PUZZLE ME	MAKE ELM MARK

HOVER Lucida Bright BARE	HOVER Lucida Bright FULL	HOVER Palatino Linotype BARE
HOVER Palatino Linotype FULL	HOVER Times New Roman BARE	HOVER Times New Roman FULL
PAD Arial BARE	PAD Arial FULL	PAD Lucida Bright BARE
PAD Lucida Bright FULL	PAD Times New Roman BARE	PAD Times New Roman FULL


	EXPERIMENTING 1561 4D At last, after thirty years, the alien stone was yielding its secrets. Arlen strode through the mine’s entry tunnel at 788 Signo, trailing his physics team. They reached a sealed door; four guards from Arlen‘s best corpo unit greeted them, opened the door, and let them into an equipment-bogged chamber. “What have you found?” “We’ve tested changes in the stimulated-emission signal under different regimes of electric, magnetic, and electromagnetic input at a wide range of direction vectors, field strengths and frequencies,” an older man in ArCorp coveralls said. He was Arlen‘s chief physicist, Dumiv, gray-haired and heavily-muscled. “There seem to be peculiar resonance transients in these ranges.” He showed Arlen a databook, on which a holo display danced and shimmered in many colors. “We can’t interpret them yet. They seem to be some kind of image or intelligent signal; there is too much structured content to be noise, and too much entropy to be mechanical.” “Do you have transcriptions I can take with me?” “Yes, sir. Here.” Dumiv handed Arlen the databook. “We’re working with the original data, and still accumulating more. We’ll send you more as we get it reduced.” “Reduced?” “Yes, sir. It comes in terabits every second. We boil out the vacant stretches and the noise as best we can. You’re holding the equivalent of half the entire human archives there.” “Is that why this has taken so long?” “Yes, sir.” This was as much data as five thousand years of recorded human history had generated here on Tarnus, together with the priceless Old Archive of Earth. Arlen cradled the databook, excited. It would be hard to wait for more. Now that they had this much, he would drive them to get the rest. “Have you located more ore yet?” “No, sir. We will have to increase the tank size by a factor of two to improve its sensitivity by one-fourth. As you can see, it won’t fit in any mine shaft at that size.” “What about the magnet experiment?” “It’s almost ready. We have no idea what will happen, we’re just–“ “I don’t want to hear a lot of gabble, not after all the years you’ve had the thing. Just report the results to me.” “Yes, sir.” “Arlen?” An aide appeared, carrying a comm. Arlen took the comm and said, “Yes?” It was Wandaji, his Land Resources Office chief. She said, “We’ve run into a minor problem. Some farmers have just bought the properties below 788 Signo; they completed the closures with DurCorp before we got the report from our contacts there.” Arlen suppressed an outburst. Had his spies at DurCorp had been turned? “Go to the farmers. Make the usual offer. If we have to, we can double it.” There were other ways of raising the stakes, but it was better not to expose them, not yet. Most people accepted Arlen‘s first offers. Arlen strode out of the mine to the flyer. Back to the City, to study the data, and enjoy other more-personal pursuits.