SETI
Excerpt from our new book: "Meandering"
Search for Intelligence
by Francis Mont
The old man lived alone. He hadn’t had a human companion for a long time - his children grown and gone, his wife bailed out years ago. He seldom talked to human beings, his once a week trip to Loblaws for food and sundries was the only contact he had with bipeds.
He wasn’t lonely though, he had animated conversations with himself, mostly about aliens. He knew that they were out there and was determined to find them. His house was full of computer equipment, and the little money he could save from his pension was all eaten up by his several broadband internet accounts - his lifeline to the outside world. More precisely, to the off-planet world.
He was a passionate SETI-at-home member, downloading data twenty four hours a day, onto his eight high speed computers, processing the packets he was given from the big Arecibo radio telescope that had been searching the sky for signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence.
In 1999 SETI-at-home was started, distributing the collected data to millions of voluntary home computer users, so their number-crunching power could be added to the supercomputer’s at Berkley. When he discovered SETI, the old man changed. He spent all their savings on computers, internet connection, network equipment. He locked himself into his basement workshop for most of the day, stopped talking to his wife of 47 years, coming up only for infrequent meals.
When every effort Sandra made to reach him had failed, she disappeared from the house one day, the old man hardly noticed. He kept going from one computer to the other, hoping for confirmation from Berkley that he had made contact.
There had to be intelligence somewhere in the universe, because he had given up, long ago, trying to find any on Earth. When his youngest son was blown up in Afghanistan, the old man was finished with the human race. He continued watching the news for a while still, and every day he was more and more convinced that his decision was justified.
He saw a species that was fast destroying the planet with its toxic waste, had thousands of nuclear warheads on hair trigger alert aimed at each other’s cities, each other’s wives and children, tolerated mass hunger and disease on large areas of the planet while their rich wallowed in ostentatious luxury. Their leaders were corrupt and power mad, they warped their citizens’ minds with irrational religious dogma and racial hatred.
After a while he had had enough, stopped watching the news, stopped talking to his friends, stopped even thinking about humans. His eyes were glued to the dance of pulsating multicolour signals across the screens, waiting, waiting, waiting.
The postman who delivered the telegram from Berkley, found the front door open and, getting no answer to his knocks, walked in for the required signature.
He found the old man’s body slumped forward in his chair, his hand still holding a pen over the last scrawled message on his notepad.
It said: “they are out there, intelligence must exist somewhere!”
Search for Intelligence
by Francis Mont
The old man lived alone. He hadn’t had a human companion for a long time - his children grown and gone, his wife bailed out years ago. He seldom talked to human beings, his once a week trip to Loblaws for food and sundries was the only contact he had with bipeds.
He wasn’t lonely though, he had animated conversations with himself, mostly about aliens. He knew that they were out there and was determined to find them. His house was full of computer equipment, and the little money he could save from his pension was all eaten up by his several broadband internet accounts - his lifeline to the outside world. More precisely, to the off-planet world.
He was a passionate SETI-at-home member, downloading data twenty four hours a day, onto his eight high speed computers, processing the packets he was given from the big Arecibo radio telescope that had been searching the sky for signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence.
In 1999 SETI-at-home was started, distributing the collected data to millions of voluntary home computer users, so their number-crunching power could be added to the supercomputer’s at Berkley. When he discovered SETI, the old man changed. He spent all their savings on computers, internet connection, network equipment. He locked himself into his basement workshop for most of the day, stopped talking to his wife of 47 years, coming up only for infrequent meals.
When every effort Sandra made to reach him had failed, she disappeared from the house one day, the old man hardly noticed. He kept going from one computer to the other, hoping for confirmation from Berkley that he had made contact.
There had to be intelligence somewhere in the universe, because he had given up, long ago, trying to find any on Earth. When his youngest son was blown up in Afghanistan, the old man was finished with the human race. He continued watching the news for a while still, and every day he was more and more convinced that his decision was justified.
He saw a species that was fast destroying the planet with its toxic waste, had thousands of nuclear warheads on hair trigger alert aimed at each other’s cities, each other’s wives and children, tolerated mass hunger and disease on large areas of the planet while their rich wallowed in ostentatious luxury. Their leaders were corrupt and power mad, they warped their citizens’ minds with irrational religious dogma and racial hatred.
After a while he had had enough, stopped watching the news, stopped talking to his friends, stopped even thinking about humans. His eyes were glued to the dance of pulsating multicolour signals across the screens, waiting, waiting, waiting.
The postman who delivered the telegram from Berkley, found the front door open and, getting no answer to his knocks, walked in for the required signature.
He found the old man’s body slumped forward in his chair, his hand still holding a pen over the last scrawled message on his notepad.
It said: “they are out there, intelligence must exist somewhere!”
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