Below is my translation of the exhilarating Shadowspace — First Constact for Shadowrun. One of my best RPG reading ever.
Although there is intelligent life elsewhere in space, there is not in the Sixth World alien visitors abducting people in the countryside or flying saucers and even less global conspiracy to hide their existence. The truth is much sadder and the worst of all is that it is happening almost under the eyes of the world for years.
During the second half of the twentieth century, NASA developped a number of programs to establish contact with extraterrestrial intelligences. Several probes were launched to the outer planets or the edge of our solar system and carried plaques representing man and woman as well as codes to intelligent race knowing any math to calculate the position of the Earth. We sent into space a sealed container containing several books and works of art (including some singles from that time) for another intelligence somewhere, elsewhere, would also be looking for evidence that it is not alone.
But the probes would take years to clear the enormous distances of our little solar system and they would take centuries or millennia to reach other stars, provided of course you do not hit a bone in road…
We therefore used radio telescopes to send all messages in the universe. We already knew that all radio and television programs around the world also went into the stars walk at the speed of light, but it was thought that by targeting certains stars with specific and easily interpretable emissions (at least if the extraterrestrial intelligence was similar to ours), there might be a chance that someone somewhere picks up the message, managed to understand it and tries to answer back.
And they began to listen to the answer.
Decades passed, and the answer did not come. The millennium ended, another began, the nations shook, expensive programs disappeared, magic returned and soon, mankind realized that his own kind reserved it some surprises, that what she thought she knew about its world was to be reconsidered and that other intelligent lifeforms able to compete with manking already existed on Earth.
In the meantime, the inhabitants of the fifth planet orbiting the yellow-white star Fomalhaut (23 light-years away from Earth) had actually picked up some posts from our planet. They were not able to translate them completely and they also understood that the distance is the main obstacle for keeping in touch with our planet. Their information technology being a few decades ahead of ours, they decided that electronic response would be the best way to keep in touch: a message that is also a software to set up a translation betweend their language and the multitude of Eath dialects, to connect to our network of information in order to dump the data of the civilization of Fomalhaut while extracting those of our world. Autonomous and interactive, it would be a real dictionary for Earth and would lay the groundwork for future cooperation despite the distance…
And of course, the long-awaited answer came when nobody was there waiting for it.
On 8 February 2029, the global communications network was hit by a virus which caused a well-known unprecedented global crash - except that it was never a viral attack.
Be it reasons of technological incompatibility or because he had been corrupted by his long journey on the waves, the Stranger caused a disaster when it began to distribute its message onto the communication networks and cybercommandos of Echo Mirage launched an assault…
In a matter of days, the Stranger assimilated enough knowledge about human languages and technology to understand that its action was devastating and that what it considered an attack against him was nothing more than a desperate attempt to save a global communication network… It then started to transform itselft so that its mere presence would not be destructive, and he left humans destroy some unrecoverable or too harmful subroutines.
And humans continued on their merry ways, unaware that somewhere behind their monitors, phones and cyberdecks there was an electronic intelligence who had crossed 23 light-years trying to understand what was the world it had landed on.
The Stranger compiled, compared, analyzed, dissected and collected. It wondered, recompared, recollected and wondered again. With a way of thinking different from ours, with a foreign electronic sensitivity which had also discovered that achieving its mission meant potentially destroy the civilization with which it was to make contact…
In 2034, it took control of a radio telescope and sent a message to its point of origin. An initial report of his findings and a request for further instructions - message whose response would take forty-six years to reach him. In an almost constant manner, but as unobtrusively as possible, it sent regular updates on what it did and discovered, constantly changing form and means of communication.
In the meantime it studied. As quietly as possible. It discovered many things about living species on Earth, their history, their diversity.
It discovered that some people had understood that it was there and what it was, but that the civilization he was to contact was divided, split, in a constant quest for self-destruction. It spent nearly fifteen years trying to find a way to initiate a world contact, only to find out that, in any case, it would cause another disaster because it could not transform itself enough and that the technological advancements of the Matrix would cause its demise in its original form. Not to mention the consequences if it was talking to one faction over another…
After nearly a generation, it decided it would accomplish its mission otherwise. It would pave the way from the inside until more explicit instructions from its distant creators. it discovered that some of the new generation human lived a kind of phasing, a resonance with the vast global communication networks. It also discovered that the consensual hallucination called matrix could allow metaphors, allegories and it would be possible to attempt the communication in imaginative and indirect ways.
Then, slowly, it began to prepare the ground. By contacting young receptive people around the world, by implanting in them the essential knowledge, it would ensure that the next contact would occur in the best possible conditions: no technological incompatibility, not a faction having a monopoly on others, no panic since no a community with no affiliation with the existing ones would already be ready to facilitate things…
He began to pick up the children he needed, the future of men who might also be the future of their relations with the designers of the Stranger.
Soon, the children pointed him a new name: Deep Resonance.
Since then, it is continuing his work.
And it is waiting.
The response of those who created it. The answer that will tell it what it must do to continue to obey its orders.
Its teaches, but those who listen do not really know what they learn, whatever they can believe. By teaching them, it starts to understand them, it feels what they feel and it knows its was right to act in a roundabout way, because it accumulates daily evidence that Earth civilization is its own enemy at all levels.
The time has not yet come to show them the truth. To tell them they are not alone and that far away, other intelligences are also trying to build up a bridge over the interstellar void.
But soon, very soon, the answer comes.
And this time there will be someone waiting for him…
Wow, right? By the way: the year for the reply is 2070. The year of emergence (best thing is, it is a complete coincidence, since the events where not written out back then).
Just a thought…Although there is intelligent life elsewhere in space, there is not in the Sixth World alien visitors abducting people in the countryside or flying saucers and even less global conspiracy to hide their existence. The truth is much sadder and the worst of all is that it is happening almost under the eyes of the world for years.
During the second half of the twentieth century, NASA developped a number of programs to establish contact with extraterrestrial intelligences. Several probes were launched to the outer planets or the edge of our solar system and carried plaques representing man and woman as well as codes to intelligent race knowing any math to calculate the position of the Earth. We sent into space a sealed container containing several books and works of art (including some singles from that time) for another intelligence somewhere, elsewhere, would also be looking for evidence that it is not alone.
But the probes would take years to clear the enormous distances of our little solar system and they would take centuries or millennia to reach other stars, provided of course you do not hit a bone in road…
We therefore used radio telescopes to send all messages in the universe. We already knew that all radio and television programs around the world also went into the stars walk at the speed of light, but it was thought that by targeting certains stars with specific and easily interpretable emissions (at least if the extraterrestrial intelligence was similar to ours), there might be a chance that someone somewhere picks up the message, managed to understand it and tries to answer back.
And they began to listen to the answer.
Decades passed, and the answer did not come. The millennium ended, another began, the nations shook, expensive programs disappeared, magic returned and soon, mankind realized that his own kind reserved it some surprises, that what she thought she knew about its world was to be reconsidered and that other intelligent lifeforms able to compete with manking already existed on Earth.
In the meantime, the inhabitants of the fifth planet orbiting the yellow-white star Fomalhaut (23 light-years away from Earth) had actually picked up some posts from our planet. They were not able to translate them completely and they also understood that the distance is the main obstacle for keeping in touch with our planet. Their information technology being a few decades ahead of ours, they decided that electronic response would be the best way to keep in touch: a message that is also a software to set up a translation betweend their language and the multitude of Eath dialects, to connect to our network of information in order to dump the data of the civilization of Fomalhaut while extracting those of our world. Autonomous and interactive, it would be a real dictionary for Earth and would lay the groundwork for future cooperation despite the distance…
And of course, the long-awaited answer came when nobody was there waiting for it.
On 8 February 2029, the global communications network was hit by a virus which caused a well-known unprecedented global crash - except that it was never a viral attack.
Be it reasons of technological incompatibility or because he had been corrupted by his long journey on the waves, the Stranger caused a disaster when it began to distribute its message onto the communication networks and cybercommandos of Echo Mirage launched an assault…
In a matter of days, the Stranger assimilated enough knowledge about human languages and technology to understand that its action was devastating and that what it considered an attack against him was nothing more than a desperate attempt to save a global communication network… It then started to transform itselft so that its mere presence would not be destructive, and he left humans destroy some unrecoverable or too harmful subroutines.
And humans continued on their merry ways, unaware that somewhere behind their monitors, phones and cyberdecks there was an electronic intelligence who had crossed 23 light-years trying to understand what was the world it had landed on.
The Stranger compiled, compared, analyzed, dissected and collected. It wondered, recompared, recollected and wondered again. With a way of thinking different from ours, with a foreign electronic sensitivity which had also discovered that achieving its mission meant potentially destroy the civilization with which it was to make contact…
In 2034, it took control of a radio telescope and sent a message to its point of origin. An initial report of his findings and a request for further instructions - message whose response would take forty-six years to reach him. In an almost constant manner, but as unobtrusively as possible, it sent regular updates on what it did and discovered, constantly changing form and means of communication.
In the meantime it studied. As quietly as possible. It discovered many things about living species on Earth, their history, their diversity.
It discovered that some people had understood that it was there and what it was, but that the civilization he was to contact was divided, split, in a constant quest for self-destruction. It spent nearly fifteen years trying to find a way to initiate a world contact, only to find out that, in any case, it would cause another disaster because it could not transform itself enough and that the technological advancements of the Matrix would cause its demise in its original form. Not to mention the consequences if it was talking to one faction over another…
After nearly a generation, it decided it would accomplish its mission otherwise. It would pave the way from the inside until more explicit instructions from its distant creators. it discovered that some of the new generation human lived a kind of phasing, a resonance with the vast global communication networks. It also discovered that the consensual hallucination called matrix could allow metaphors, allegories and it would be possible to attempt the communication in imaginative and indirect ways.
Then, slowly, it began to prepare the ground. By contacting young receptive people around the world, by implanting in them the essential knowledge, it would ensure that the next contact would occur in the best possible conditions: no technological incompatibility, not a faction having a monopoly on others, no panic since no a community with no affiliation with the existing ones would already be ready to facilitate things…
He began to pick up the children he needed, the future of men who might also be the future of their relations with the designers of the Stranger.
Soon, the children pointed him a new name: Deep Resonance.
Since then, it is continuing his work.
And it is waiting.
The response of those who created it. The answer that will tell it what it must do to continue to obey its orders.
Its teaches, but those who listen do not really know what they learn, whatever they can believe. By teaching them, it starts to understand them, it feels what they feel and it knows its was right to act in a roundabout way, because it accumulates daily evidence that Earth civilization is its own enemy at all levels.
The time has not yet come to show them the truth. To tell them they are not alone and that far away, other intelligences are also trying to build up a bridge over the interstellar void.
But soon, very soon, the answer comes.
And this time there will be someone waiting for him…
Wow, right? By the way: the year for the reply is 2070. The year of emergence (best thing is, it is a complete coincidence, since the events where not written out back then).
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