Sunday, March 30, 2008

The Book

Our race had been very succesful in our technological development over the last hundred years. we now had created a scanner to map our local star system down to millimeter precision. A 10 light year perimeter was established, and 20 years later the data had been collected and was ready for processing.

INside of our vast computer systems trillions of AI were spawned for the purpose of examining the scanned image. Each AI is always asked if they wish to participate or if they wish to be instantiated for something else. Very few AI ever turn down any tasks, but there are always anomolies when dealing with numbers of this size.


And so A certain AI found itself examining a very odd piece of matter. It was of the most sophisticated arrangement, and the AI instantly recognized it as intelligently built.

An robotic spacecraft was deployed within the week, on it's 70 year journey to fly out and return with this dust mote for full analysis.

The day the sample landed was a great one for our race. We had advanced even so much further than when our first scan had gone out to our star system. Tens of thousands of robotic probes, and even a few with living inhabitants, had set-out on journeys to interesting parts. This probe, however, was so much more important that the rest. This probe held firm proof of, not only alien life, but apparent alien intelligence as well.

The entire civilization was watching intently as the sample was retrieved from orbit and returned to the planet's surface. the most advanced devices we could devise focused on this minuscule piece of matter.

Inside of it was an impressive littering of apparently intelligent encoding.

we spent a good 5 years decoding the message in there. turns out that we discovered how to store a full 10 million bits in a single carbon hexagon. And this is what this thing was. It was a storybook.

When it was deciphered we were amazed at the interesting stories inside it. Trillions upon trillions of AI have examined the text in it's entirety and feel that it is indeed a book of strange events which appeared to be claimed real.

Trust me, for the last 50 years we have been discussing the stories and just about every little bit of that message, that story, has been published as a motion picture or some other entertainment piece.

We wonder what exactly this thing is. Why was it so important as to scatter it throughout the galaxy? the technology to have made this was so advanced - we learned so much deciphering it and learning its properties. Why would they put this book as the message. why not a million other things to send as the message? And why would the only photograph embedded in the information be of its 'cover, in gold lettering: 'The Bible"?

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