A Crop Of Issues
Posted: 04 April 2011
Word Count: 500
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“We’re getting reports of more appearing Sir”.
Kelly Peters delivered her news to Colonel Masterson and stood to attention waiting for his response.
“Stand easy Kelly”, Ken Masterson had worked with Kelly for a number of years now and had learned to trust and respect the brilliant young Master Sergeant. At only 24 she was the brightest computer technician he had ever seen.
“Yes Sir!”
NORAD had been notified when the second 20 mile diameter “crop” circle had appeared overnight across the Everglades in Florida of the United States. Most seemed like regular circles, large swathes of reed and latterly grass land. Some however were lines terminated by semicircles at each end. Ken called Kelly to come forward to the displayed map of North America.
“So where are these new circles Kelly?”, he stood to one side to allow her access to the display.
“Here, here and here Sir. This time three linear features running in succession South to North. We have footage of the last ones appearance Sir”.
“My initial analysis routines show they’re slowly extending Northwards towards the central plains.”
Ken moved forward to get a better look at the data table.
“Do you still have the program? I think we need to escalate this issue and I’d like to better understand where this is leading.”
“Of course Sir! I’ll copy the routines to a shared drive and give you unlimited access”.
She touched her earpiece momentarily, a look of concentration on her face.
“Sir I think you’d better see this. The imaging techs have cleaned up the footage we got of the third formation.”
She sat at the data table interface and started typing. A large window appeared, overlapping the North America map, with high altitude footage of the Mississippi Delta. The camera zoomed in on a farm in the centre of the formation. Only flora seemed affected; several bemused cattle ran around obviously spooked but unharmed.
“What the hell?…”, Ken muttered under his breath.
Again Kelly touched her ear, started typing and cleared the aerial footage from the table. In its place a satellite image of North America zoomed out.
“More reports coming in Sir. I have a hunch, I’m patching in the high orbit surveillance satellite.”
From this distance the whole of the Earth was in view and the continental United States could clearly be seen. Across its length the formations showed faintly from Florida and into Canada as far as Kugluktuk on the North West Passage.
Kelly switched the imaging to ultraviolet and the formations now shone out crystal clear.
“There seems to be a pattern Sir, can you make it out?”
She tilted the image angle bringing the formations to the horizontal.
“Sweet Jesus….”, muttered Ken, then apologetically
“I’m sorry Kelly, what was the question again?”
“There seems to be a pattern Sir, can you make it out?”
“I think I do Kelly, the formations are morse code:
..-. --- .-. -.. . -- --- .-.. .. - .. --- -.
FOR DEMOLITION.
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Comments by other Members
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 Prospero at 16:34 on 04 April 2011
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Oh-oh. Are the Vogons back?
Very, very good, David, very slick. You have set a high standard. Was 'flora' the foreign word? You snuck the prompts in so skillfully I had to read the story twice to find them. Very well done.
Best
John
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 dharker at 17:35 on 04 April 2011
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Thanks Prosp!
Either flora, or the word I intended Kugluktuk - a small Innuit town on the North coast of Canada!
Thank you for reading!
Dave
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 fiona_j at 18:26 on 04 April 2011
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Hello,
This was very good, excellent use of the phrases and a worrying but funny ending.
Well done,
Fi
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 firethorne at 21:05 on 04 April 2011
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-. - . - .... .- - .. ... .-. . .- .-.. .-.. -. .- -.-. . .-.-.- .-.. - ...- . -.. .. - .-.-.-
-... -. .-
Andy
<Added>
Oops!
-. --- .-- - .... .- - .. ... .-. . .- .-.. .- -.-. . .-.. --- ...- . -.. .. -
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 Cornelia at 08:59 on 05 April 2011
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A bit too mysterious and technical for me to understand, at first and I got bogged down in the middle. I was initially willing to follow the explanations and admired the use of jargon. It reads convincingly like the start of an 'alien invasion' story.
Some minor glitches:
| had learned to trust and respect the brilliant young Master Sergeant. |
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Showing, not telling, and unneccessary. We can infer from the subsequent exchange that her chief respects her and she's obviously very competent.
That said, the relationship was convincing amd reminded me of a scifi film I saw yesterday, where Jake Gyllenhaal keeps being sent back in time and then communicates with a bright female officer. She interprets data for her boss who makes the decisions.(well, for most of the film, anyway)
| several bemused cattle ran around |
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'Bemused' means deep in thought, so they wouldn't be running around.
| 'Do you still have the program?' |
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made me pause, but I won't hold the American spelling against you. As I understood it (I think) the computer programme was the she used to analyse the crop signs. (Although the wrong end of a telescope would have done just as well) She was unlikely to have deleted it.
There don't seem to be any circles in the message, although they are mentioned earlier. I suppose they are the dots.
| Everglades in Florida of the United States. |
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Everglades would be enough, or at most Everglades, Florida. I think this bit and the way the jargon goes too long suggests this needs to be shorter
I wonder why aliens intending to demolish America would employ a visual representations of a human audio communication system. Surely, they would use their own more developed, language.
Still, this is nit-picking and I thought it was a clever story about a popular scifi issue with an ingenious explanation.
Sheila
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 Bunbry at 10:28 on 05 April 2011
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Hi Dave this is a very clever idea, i have to agree with Sheila regarding the Morse issue as I’m afraid on close examination it doesn’t quite work. You see, Morse was a code invented for when less sophisticated means of communication were not available. Indeed if we accept that aliens have to ‘write’ on a planet (rather than using electronic tagging or such like), then I imagine they would use there own alphabet, not Morse (which when decoded is conveniently in English!!).
Getting Sci fi right is a bugger, but there are plenty geeks out there who will pull it apart if you don’t, so it’s well worth the effort.
If you turned this into a comic piece it may well work though.
Sorry not to be more positive.
Nick
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dharker at 11:08 on 05 April 2011
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Thanks Sheila and Nick for giving your honest critique. It makes me look that little bit harder at my writing so please don;'t ever feel you have to apologise for pointing things out.
I was trying to use "bemused" in the more confused sense and felt the cattle would have every right to run around in a confused panic if all vegetation around them had instantly been flattened without visible cause. I think I would anyway! LOL!
As for the program (routine) Kelly wrote - its quite common for people to write one off queries and/or routines which would be deleted after use.
Morse was developed as an efficient means of using radio to deliver a message. Radio is still used for communication with probes etc. However I do agree it's way too convenient that the morse resolves to English. Without the word count I could have developed a trail which would lead to the deciphering of a more alien message.
Thank you both so much
Dave
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Bunbry at 13:13 on 05 April 2011
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| Morse was developed as an efficient means of using radio to deliver a message. |
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This is not the case Dave, it was developed pre-radio and was sent along telegraph wires. Once radio became sophisticated enough to send voice messages Morse had no real use. I agree radio is used to communicate with Space Probes, but I don't think they use Morse. I suspect they would use the binary lanuage of computers.
Nick
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dharker at 13:27 on 05 April 2011
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Crikey this petard is getting tight Nick! You're right of course...
Dave
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Bunbry at 20:30 on 05 April 2011
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Hi Andy, good that you joined the debate!
| Ah, if they were from a 'long way away' and traveled 'instantly' they might still think our main form of communication is radio waves in the form of Morse Code |
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Fair point. But by listening to the radio all they would hear would be bleeps. They would not know we transcribed them into dots and dashes. For example we might well have used crosses and ticks or circles and squares.
Also, why would they write it in big 'letters' on the Earth? I assumed it was so their people would know which planet to demolish, rather than to inform us of their intentions.
I think the most probable form of communication with aliens would be based on maths as rules about numbers are universal.
Nick
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firethorne at 06:49 on 06 April 2011
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Like wow!
This is what I was looking for last night .
A black hole is giving out the deepest note.
An atomic nucleus is giving out the highest (converted to musical scale) which is a Gamma measuring in at 10 picometeres, about the 'size' of an atom.
Neutron stars can be like lighthouses sending out regular pulses of EM which..... can sound like Morse or Binary Code.
Electromagnetic radiation is so totally amazing.
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dharker at 07:08 on 06 April 2011
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Deep Space harmonics? Wow! When I wrote this story it was meant to be a light hearted attempt at fulfilling the challenge criteria! I never for one moment thought it would lead to such a deep and insightful debate. It's not rocket science - but it might as well be! Thanks everyone for such an educational, lively and entertaining debate!  )
Dave
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 Manusha at 11:38 on 07 April 2011
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Hi Dave,
I really like the idea behind this story and I think the twist a real classic. It makes me think of the film ‘Men in Black’ – there’s something bigger going on out there than we can possibly imagine! I wonder if, in the spirit of MIB, a more obvious humorous slant would have given this flash all the credibility it needed without the ensuing debate over scientific integrity.
But I must say that I’ve enjoyed the comments that followed just as much as if they were a continuation of your story - it certainly has brought about an interesting discussion that has drawn some fascinating thoughts. What more could a writer wish for than to get their readers thinking? So in that I think your story has succeeded in more ways than it was perhaps intended.
In the spirit of debate, I’d like to throw in the following as an added viewpoint. Taking the premise of the material universe having its root in the spiritual world then all material sound must be based on the eternal 'Aum', known also as unstruck sound for no friction or contact between one object and another causes it, it simply exists as the background vibration that all existence emanates from. Therefore, deep space harmonics must be true, for there must be a reflection of that eternal sound resonating within this temporary universe of material manifestation. If such a sound is so grand that all existence lies upon it, then certainly the stars and black-holes would hold its trace in some materially identifiable manner.
Cheers for a story that has provoked such thought, Dave.
P.S. I’d love to hear that 57 octaves below C bass note! Mmm! ;
Andy
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firethorne at 16:42 on 07 April 2011
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Thought occurred to me today- how would a really advanced race communicate ? Say one that could form star systems ? Maybe 'all this' could be a form of communication, right down to the pear blossom that's been quietly going about it's business, unfolding from its buds this afternoon.
Lovely stuff blossom, best week of year in this weather.
Cheers.
Andy.
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Bunbry at 18:05 on 07 April 2011
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Interesting question Andy. If you are talking about how they would communicate through space, I think they would continue to use the elecromagnetic spectrum, be it radio waves or even light waves.
If you are wondering what way they might have evolved to talk with each other anything is possible. Most animals on earth rely on sound, so it could be a good guess to suspect the same on other worlds - it is a versatile way of spreading information in many differing environments.
However some animals use scent or colour or goodness knows what, so we shouldn't automatically assume it is a sound based language.
Incidentally there was a good debate on TV recently regarding the old chestnut
'Does a tree make a sound if it falls and there is no one there to hear it?'
The answer is more complex that one might imagine.
Nick
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firethorne at 18:22 on 07 April 2011
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Not quite , I was trying to say is: What if the whole universe, matter-energy , space-time, everything was an advanced communications system we can not comprehend ?
Wouldn't make a funny flash fiction if billions in resources ( like SETI ) was spent
listening for the signal, and the 'signal' was in fact everything around us and there's like something massive beyond , but within the universe trying to communicate, with the
flowers and life and stars that are in front of our eyes and we don't get it- like the character in Shutter Island , except its what emerges when these forces are brought together , just like radio waves are directed EM, but far more complex.
<Added>
"the flowers and life and stars that are in front of our eyes and we don't get it."
ie (without wobbling over the edge into religion,) they are, this is, the message.
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Manusha at 21:00 on 08 April 2011
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It is all a message, a grand comunication if you like, but without the proper way of translating it you ain't gonna get it, baby! And trying to figure it out with the limited mind is like looking for the sun at night with a torch. ;
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