Chapter 18: Chapter 18: TRILLION – Speaking with Aliens

Trillion floated, her legs and arms crossed. She relaxed her shoulders as she gently bobbed up and down. She could feel the Zen.

Ship entered her office, disrupting her meditation, excitement plastered all over his voice. “Our ANTs are in range.”

With a surge of anticipation, Trillion waved her hands in front of her, and a large screen appeared. She replayed footage of the planet while it had been out of their sight.

The planet stopped changing colours. It did nothing. She scratched her head, trying to make sense of it. “Ship, is this correct?”

As soon as they disappeared around the other side of the star, the planet stopped changing colours and did nothing at all. Trillion assumed the planet didn’t know about the ants. It could only see their ship. Or at least it chose not to focus its communication efforts on them and their ants.

Ship nodded his head. “I think the planet only knows about us. So as soon as we went onto the other side of the planet it stopped changing colours.”

Trillion nodded. That was the conclusion she was coming to herself.

They were nearing the other edge of the star, almost in direct line of sight with the planet. And the planet once again started cycling through the colours. Green. Orange. Purple. Green. Orange. Purple. Not so much fading between the colours, but flashing each of those colours.

Trillion scratched her head, trying to decipher what the colours might mean. She needed more information. “Ship, can the planet see us yet?”

“No.”

“Hmm,” she murmured with interest. “It should take our light twenty-seven minutes to reach this planet. So after they see us, it should take another twenty-seven minutes for their colour message to reach us. This means that the planet started playing the message twenty-seven minutes early. They understand that light takes time to travel.”

Ship nodded. “Yes, and they also have a very good grasp on orbital mechanics, knowing exactly when we would come around the other side of the planet.”

Trillion rewound the video back to the beginning. “Lex, how accurate was their timing?”

Lex made a beeping sound and numbers appeared on the screen in front of Trillion. It said 3 minutes and 32 seconds fast.

“Interesting,” Trillion said as she watched the video again. “Okay, so they aren’t tracking us. They don’t permanently know where we are. But they can predict based on our orbit.”

Trillion watched as the planet changed colours constantly. Green. Orange. Purple. “How hard would it be to build a large screen?”

Trillion realised she was still floating in the air. She stretched out her legs and dropped to the floor, making her way to the door. She motioned to Ship and Lex to follow her.

As they walked Trillion started building a plan. “Lex and Ship, can you create architecture plans for a large light projector? I want to construct a large projector, about the size of a two-bedroom apartment. One for each colour. They need to be modular. I’m thinking hexagon shaped. So they fit together like a honeycomb. We wanted it modular because we need to be able to add other colours if we find the planet communicates in other colours. That way if we need to add blue, we can add blue.” Trillion looked at Ship and Lex. “Can you get that done as soon as possible? I’m going to distract myself with the gym. Come grab me when it’s done.”

*

Trillion was in the gym when Ship called her. She no longer needed to work out, but she found it such a great way to meditate and process her thinking. She teleported to the bridge as soon as she heard Ship’s call.

The construction was completed just in time. They almost had to go around the star another time, But Lex and Ship had completed the construction of the large honeycomb lights before they were no longer visible. The whole time the planet kept flashing the same colours. Green. Orange. Purple. Or was it purple, green, orange? Trillion wasn’t sure which colour came first, but she guessed it didn’t matter. “Hurry, let’s start sending a message to them. Let’s just send back what they showed us. Use green as the first colour you send.”

Ship got the projector going. He turned the green light on. Then the orange. Then the purple. In that order. Making sure to match the timing of their colours down to the millisecond. It would be some time before a response came back.

Trillion paced in circles around the room as she waited anxiously. “Ship, let’s change our playback speed.” Why wait for something like this, she thought to herself.

Time sped up. What felt like five seconds later, the reply came. Same colours. But the order had changed.

Purple. Orange. Green.

“Lex, show me how long each colour was shown along the temporal scale.” Trillion wanted to see if the time each colour appeared had changed. She wondered if they spent more time on a particular colour. “Did any of the colours change in brightness? Or hue? Give me all the data you can.”

A spreadsheet appeared on the screen in front of her, showing rows and rows of data.

It was a long list. She started scrolling down. “Lex, this isn’t useful. Graph it. Highlight what I should be looking at.”

A second tab appeared on the spreadsheet. She clicked it. Several tabs and charts appeared on it.

She scanned the charts. Nothing. No change in brightness. No change in hue. She was about to dismiss the screen when she noticed something. One of the lines wasn’t perfectly flat. It didn’t have a key on it either, so she wasn’t sure what it pointed to. But she assumed the line should be perfectly straight. “Lex, did you just make a bunch of random charts?”

The orb flashed green.

Trillion slapped her forehead. “I’m trusting you to visualise the data in a meaningful way. It’s not useful like this.” She shook her head and pointed to where the line had a slight kink in it. “Show me this data in a spreadsheet.”

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The screen changed to the tab with all the data. On it a single box was highlighted green. One number had changed from 16.04 to 16.40.

She looked up at the top screen. It was the number of seconds purple was the colour the planet was projecting. Up until this point purple had only been shown for 16.04 seconds. And it was the exact length of time every single time. Same as the other colours.

Except it increased by three hundred and sixty milliseconds. A tiny fraction, but noticeable.

Trillion pondered what it might mean. “That change is not trivial. I think they made it intentionally to convey something.”

She looked up at the orb. “Lex, can you change each colour to flash the same duration as before, but increase purple to 16.4 seconds?”

The team waited thirty-five minutes for a response to arrive back to them. Even though it was four seconds of subjective time, Trillion still felt like it took forever.

It was a slightly different message this time. More seconds flashing purple. And less orange. They spent a good twenty seconds showing purple this time.

The time was long enough for Trillion to notice. “I wonder what this means. Purple is obviously a significant colour for them. What do you think, Ship?”

Ship shrugged. “Maybe purple is ‘hello’. It’s hard to say.”

Trillion nodded. “Purple might mean friends. Or it could mean ‘stay away, we are infected with a virus’. It’s almost impossible to say.”

Trillion looked out the port window. They were rounding the other side of the star now. “We have time to send one more message, and maybe get a reply. We need more data. We have enough time to test it once more, before we cross to the other side of the planet.”

Trillion looked at Ship. “Should we mirror them, change the pattern, or send back the first message we ever sent?” She looked up at Lex. “What do you think?”

Ship thought for a moment before making a decision. “We send our original message.”

“Okay, now what do you think Lex?”

Lex made the screen in front of Trillion purple.

“Lex, are you suggesting we just send back a solid colour purple?”

The orb flashed green.

Trillion scratched her head. She knew Lex would suggest the option that would yield the most data – the most data for him to analyse and re-analyse. She nodded. “Let’s go with Lex’s suggestion.”

“Ship, send back a message of solid purple.”

Lex was right. Exactly thirty-five minutes later their reply appeared. And exactly fifty-three minutes later they crossed to the other side of the planet. For eighteen minutes they received the same pattern. No orange this time. No green.

Just purple.

Purple. Then nothing. Then purple again.

It was the first time they had seen just a single colour. And the first time the planet showed no colour. The intervals were random. It wasn’t a constant blinking light – it was a light flashing randomly. A purple light.

Trillion was thrilled. The response was so different from any other response. “Great idea, Lex. They responded so differently. I have so many theories running through my head.”

Trillion’s mind was going a million miles an hour. “Lex, what are your theories now?” She looked over at Ship. “And how about yours?”

She started floating up to the ceiling, her excitement causing her to rise higher. She couldn’t wait to get to the other side of the planet, to attempt to communicate with the aliens again. “What do you think they look like? Do you think we’re talking to them? Or one of their AIs?”

Ship smiled. “We have to be talking to an AI. Their responses are too exact. But I’m itching to find out what they look like.”

“Itching?” Trillion said, a little surprised by Ships response. “Since when are you itching for anything, Ship?”

“Leave me alone, I’m just testing different ways of speaking. I thought itching was a nice way to communicate that I’m excited. Apparently it’s not.” He seemed highly offended.

Trillion smiled. “Aww,” she said, holding back a laugh. “Sorry Ship, I didn’t mean to tease you, I’m itching to find out too. Let’s change our playback speed so we can get around the star faster.”

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