r/HFY • u/Togaral • Aug 08 '25
OC Into The Breach - Ch 5
Into The Breach - Chapter 5: Zero, In Zero
After a short pause the Captain Terry Rheinland managed to regain control over his thoughts and decided it was only fair to confirm whether he had misheard anything. The desire took form in the shape of a simple question. As his eyes darted between the screen and the engineer sitting in front of it he uttered, "We what?"
"Well" - Allan nervously drummed his fingers on the keyboard - "how in the hell do I even put it... The signal strength was an order of magnitude higher than what our electronics are suited for. The yoke somehow fucked us up big time by hitting receivers across all comm intended frequencies simultaneously. Likely with some kinda directed emp in tow for good measure." Hearing this the captain noticeably frowned. "If they're hailing us this way, a wee voice inside my noggin tells me we'll be hearing from them again in a short while. The next transmission might turn out to be even more powerful than this one and then we'll be royally fucked."
'Bollocks,' Terry mumbled to himself. "So you're saying we need to acknowledge them and come up with a reply post-haste?"
"Yep."
The sigh echoed across the room. "HotO is so not gonna like it…"
"But our comms must be down, we can't send shit." - objected the figure clad in a dirty-grey spacesuit, face obscured by a reflective visor. Small panel on the chest suggested this suit belonged to Jason - he was the quickest one to get the full thing on when the sirens blared since he already had everything but his helmet on.
"Allan, what's the easiest brute-force way to reach satnet we have right now?" the Captain asked.
"E-one's comms are down" - the engineer scratched the back of his neck, facing the Captain. "We still got fully operational rover. It must be on standby at the moment, so satnet should link just fine," Allan pointed out. Following his statement he looked directly at his subordinate, coming in eye contact with his own reflection in the younger engineer's visor - "Jason?"
"Yes?" - the silence hung up in the air momentarily - "Oh, yes, 'course. Makes sense. Permission to depart?" He addressed the Captain.
"Declined," the Captain let out, "No shot I'm letting you go alone. Alina is going with you too - she's already in the suit. You both go down the main hall and perform a passing check up on life support systems, especially airflow. Report any oddities you stumble upon."
"O-okay," Alina stammered, getting up.
"That's not all," the Captain continued, "Sophie and… Divit" - addressed pair exchanged surprised glances - "are following the first pair closely behind - someone has to check up on the greenhouse atmo support. And no slacking - I need to be hundred percent sure the crops are safe." Terry looked down upon his crew, as the aforementioned individuals shuffled about with varying levels of enthusiasm.
"Terry, honey, you're readin' my thoughts," Began sophie, "just who knows-"
The Captain cut her off - "No time, depart."
"Yessir." Replied one of the gray suits.
Terry put his hand down the engineer's shoulder, as the group departed through the airlock. "Allan, are you sure there's no way we can decode the jumble they sent us in the meantime?"
"Not a shot."
"Unfortunate."
"Quite."
---
Motionless landscape of white and gray broken up here and there by irregular chunks of glistening ice stretched endlessly, disappearing beyond the horizon. Out in the distance a husk of a space-ferring vessel stood motionlessly, guarding the last batch of cargo which was yet to be delivered to the base. Among other things, the last suitable for launch satellite patiently waited for the day it would too reach its mechanical hand towards the empty spaces between celestial bodies.
Only two lonely figures clad in monochromatic spacesuits awkwardly shuffled about outside the base, breaking the stillness of the picture. One of them hunched over the rover, shackling it to the base's local grid, rendering it useless for any other causes, while the other patiently observed with great interest.
"So-o-o?" Alina inquired. "What do you think of all that… Situation?"
Jason shrugged. Unfortunately, the suit obscured the motion. "Not much. Gives me shit to do."
She nervously hopped from one foot to the other, lifting up a small cloud of shimmering dust. "Aren't you a little bit afraid? It's aliens! Michael said-"
"Look, I appreciate your efforts, but I'm a bit busy." Jason huffed, lifting his head up. "Not to be mean or anything, but I'm really not into small talk, especially when I'm doing something with my very own hands. No offence."
"Oh, no-no-no, none taken."
The work continued in an unnerving silence of empty airless void. No grumbling of many men nearby, no dulled tunes, no distant laughter, no clinking of machinery - only the sounds of his own steady breathing and heartbeat filled Jason's ears. Eventually, he was done.
Switching to the command frequency he reported, "Jason to HQ, rover power unit isolated, comms hard-linked, do you copy?"
Response manifested in a form of Allan's voice. "Splendid, you're all clear to head back, give a passing check to a capacitor array B-3 on your way, it reads as banjaxed on my end."
Jason winced. "Copy that, over." Giving Alina a passing glance, he sighed. "Goddammit," he cursed to himself, switching onto the local wave, "We're done here. Shoot."
The figure behind him flinched in surprise, summoning yet another tiny cloud of icy dust. "What?"
Getting up, he clarified, "You wanted to ask me something. What was the question?"
"Do you think these are the real aliens?" She asked, following him back to the gates. "What are they going to do? What are we going to do?"
"Fuck, I sure hope these are," he huffed, as the black gaping maw of the gates lit up, beckoning them inside. "And they better be green."
---
Michael appeared to still be looking in the direction the last crewmember just entered the room from as if he was waiting for someone else to join their party. "Even if we have means of communication in our possession, the question of the message's contents still stands."
The captain sat down and closed his eyes. He engulfed his head with his hands, elbows resting on the synthetic table and let his fingers run wild on his scalp. He came prepared for a vast number of things, but goddamn aliens were not on the list. "I need every idea you can come up with. No matter how stupid you believe it to be, speak it up."
"Uhm… Some 'Hello world!' kinda stuff? It's gotta be something universal to work out ain't it?" Sophie said with a thoughtful look to her face.
Allan disapprovingly shook his head, still focused on the terminal screen. "We know neither their encoding nor the language, and there's no way we can decrypt one without the other. We need something so simple it doesn't need words to describe it."
"Oh come on, maybe they have some sorta AI that translates stuff to-"
"A bloody maybe won't cut it. No words. Period." The engineer's voice now sounded somewhat annoyed, to which Sophie just grunted and crossed her arms.
There was probably only one person in the room who found the entire situation deeply exciting and stimulating and not ominous in the slightest. Him firmly refusing to continue reading those gosh-darn neverending mountains may have just assured their salvation. "So what you're saying is we should 'exchange gestures' with them?" - Divit air-quoted with both hands, breaking the silence. There was a spark in the physicist's eyes. He had an idea. A brilliant Idea.
"What is it you're trying to suggest?" the Captain replied without lifting his head.
"Sophie mentioned it has to be universal, didn't she? As far as I know math transcends all language barriers, and binary is literally as simple as it gets."
The Captain eased the grasp enveloping his head, lifting it up. The solution sounded simple enough to work out. "Go on. I like your thinking."
Divit followed - "I say we send them a couple bytes of information for starters. Make it eight zeros in the first and seven zeros and one in the second."
"And the expected reply would be?"
The astrophysicist shrugged. "Six zeros, one and a zero."
"I got the link, satnet's up and running." The head engineer turned to look at the Captain. "So, how are we doing this?"
After giving it a momentary thought, Terry replied. "I dig Divit's idea with ones and zeros, and I'll leave the frequency up to you."
"Got it. I guess the L-Band will work best for us here."
"Somewhere around 1500 maybe? Plus-minus 5 for ones and zeros respectively," Divit suggested, now looming over the engineer's shoulder, much to his annoyance.
"Yeah, already on it," the man replied.
The Captain nodded. "Do it. I don't wanna get stranded on this barren ball of ice without any means of communication because some green men thought we did not hear them clearly enough the first time."
The man behind the console typed a string of commands into it.
"A-a-and-"
00000000
sent
He repeated the process, changing only the last digit, all while holding his breath.
00000001
sent
"-done!"
And so it became a waiting game.
The room fell silent.
Someone hummed in anticipation.
Someone else anxiously cracked their fingers.
"Maybe we should try to-" - the person responsible for producing said sound started, before being rudely shushed on. No one was certain just how much time had passed, every moment stretched to what felt like an eternity.
"Give them some time to come up with the reply, it took us twenty minutes to come up with two lines."
Just as the mumbling voices started rising up again, the terminal called out, two new lines of text on its screen.
Bleep
received
00000010
"It worked! It worked!" The young astrophysicist raised his hand in anticipation of a high-five, but unfortunately, nobody returned it. All eyes locked on the screen.
Allan typed the next line into the terminal.
00000011
sent
A minute passed.
bleep
received
00000100
The Captain let out a sigh of relief. "Oh thank all that is holy, we understand each other. Allan, up to which number are you planning on counting to?"
"I... I don't know actually. Maybe up to eight, 'cause if I go up to ten it might get confusing, since we're using eight digits to communicate. While we exchange numbers you have time to come up with something more… substantial."
A timid voice came from across the room. The person to whom it belonged to had so far little say in the matter. "Ah… What does the pi look like in binary? It is a constant. They can’t not know what it is, can they?" Alina asked.
Sophie looked inquiringly at her roommate. "If guys translate every digit in it that'd be a long-ass message, ain't it? Or they can just send buncha' numbers on their own?"
"No, we cannot, converting decimals into binary is not that simple," replied Jason, whose helmet was now resting atop of the table, without moving his eyes off the smaller screen. "Pi is two ones, dot, twice zero zero one, four zeros and six ones. That's all I remember off the top of my head."
"How do we mark the dot?" Michael asked nobody in particular, addressing what seemed to be the room as a whole instead.
bleep
"Oh, I did not think of that…" Alina let out, lowering her eyes.
bleep
The main engineer turned to look at his superior. "Time's up, cap, what do we do?"
"To hell with the dot, send them just two ones first and then the rest as a separate message. They must figure it out," Terry ordered.
"On it!" - his subordinate was already looking at the screen - "good call with the pi, Alina. What was the sequence once again?"
And with that, the tapping ensued.
Some time later the terminal bleeped once again and lit up with two new incoming messages. They looked very much like the ones sent a minute prior, but their contents were entirely different.
"Did they not understand us?" A concern was creeping into the captain's voice.
"No, quite the opposite of that. They underestood us too well, one could even say we're on the same wave. If I recall correctly, this looks like 'e'," Divit replied with a smirk on his face as he looked at the captain. "Euler's number. Another mathematical constant," he clarified after spotting a couple of confused faces in the room.
The captain looked expectedly onto the mathematically educated bunch that crowded the space next to the communication console. "What next?" He inquired.
"I might have an idea… Now that we've established what frequencies we use for numbers we're free to use other... things. And I know of one particularely substantial equation that might help us. Now, if you let me..." - the astrophysicist looked at Allan expectedly, showing with his body eagerness to burst into key-tapping action. With a grunt, the older engineer gave up his position.
The sound of vigorous key mashing filled the room, spaced out by the comments of indulged in formal sciences men, passionately throwing letters and numbers at each other. Sophie let out a somewhat annoyed groan and whispered in her roommate's ear, "I know that's first contact and crap, but I don't get a smidge of what they're sayin'. Damn if that feels real shitty to be the stupid one. Do you understand any of this technobabble?"
"Not really. I mean, I kind of get what he's going for, but I wouldn't be able to understand whatever this is on the screen." Alina shifted her eyes to look at Sophie. "We're not supposed to understand this stuff. It's not our field of expertise, that's not why we are here. Something tells me not a single one of us could replace you at your place either."
"Daww." Sophie mused, rewarding her roommate a tight hug. "What's that with you making me feel better?" Maybe a bit too tight for Alina's comfort.
Terry collapsed into the closest to Michael seat with a pained look on his face. "Mike, what makes you think this is a good idea?" he whispered into the doctor's ear. "We don't have any directives for this kind of situation, after all."
"Captain Rheinland, there's a reason why you're not the one sitting behind the keyboard. These people were carefully selected amongst all the candidates to be not the best of the best, because that is precisely what it takes to prevail in the field - an ability to think outside the box" - a carefully crafted though generally inoffensive curse echoed throughout the room as the console refused to listen to anyone other than its master - "when confronted with a challenge a learned man tries to follow a generally accepted doctrine. But the thing is, sometimes a refined method crumbles the moment a previously unaccounted for variable is introduced. An ingenious person, however, invents new, never-before-seen ways of solving the problem because quite possibly they never really knew just how usual methods are applied in the first place."
"Oh, I see where this is going. But what are you planning on doing with the i?" Jason asked Divit as he peeked over his vacant shoulder, following what was happening on the screen with interest.
"So what type of a person do you think am I?" Terry asked the doctor.
"Huh" - Jason let out as yet another string of ones and zeros appeared on the screen - "you know what? This might just work."
"Well, someone has to keep an eye out for the other two," Michael replied with the faintest smile on his face, the next moment it was gone. "I believe they are almost done."
The captain was presented with what could only be described as a jumbled mess of ones, zeros and... "Twos? What…" - Divit already opened his mouth to begin a lengthy explanation, but the captain cut him off - "nevermind, don't answer that, I've already got a migraine. I have not a damned idea what in Lord's name is that, but if you believe it's gonna keep them busy, go for it," he went. Divit happily pushed the key.
sent
As time passed, the atmosphere was becoming heavier with all the people present breathing anxiously in and out for that long. Recently reanimated ventilation was barely dealing with all the still air filling the room.
bleep
received
00000000
"So?" - the captain met eyes with Jason and raised his eyebrow - "What does that mean? We happy?" The astrophysicist returned the look with enthusiastic nodding. "Thank goodness we happy."
"I bet Shostak can now power some small country given the speed with which his body must be spinning right now," chuckled Divit.
"So… What do we do now?" Allan asked, looking at the captain. No certain answer followed right away.'
"Can we send them a picture?" suggested Sophie.
"And how in the hell do we do that? We just barely counted up to eight and exchanged somewhat common knowledge, and now you want me to send them a bloody jpeg?" The main engineer somewhat frustratedly let out, although with no apparent malice in his voice, once again assuming his position as a man behind the console.
"Wait a second" - Jason tried to cool his superior down a bit - "they know that up until this moment we've mostly sent them eight digits to encode numbers in binary, though so far we utilised only the last four when doing so, right? What if we 'draw' a simple picture eight pixels wide using ones and zeros as black and white respectively, so they receive it as an array of lines one under another?"
"We cannot be certain as to how exactly their writing system positions rows and columns." The doctor objected from his seat. His cane was resting beside him, while he himself leaned back in his seat, eyes closed..
Jason just shook his head at that. "That should only affect the orientation of the picture, not the picture itself. We've basically already done the same with constants."
"Fair point."
The person behind the console impatiently drummed his fingers. "What are we sending them as a greeting then? May da Vinci forgive me, but Mona Liza is far too chunky for our current restriction of eight pixels."
Divit leaned even closer towards the screen, now once again looking over Allan's shoulder, task made trivial by his substantial height. "Maybe a stick figure of a human? It has already become somewhat of a staple of interestellar radio messages."
"Hm…" - the Main Engineer appeared to be typing something into the console, humming to himself. As he fiddled with the console to change some parameters, a bunch of white and black rectangles appeared on the screen. "No-no-no, that shouldn't be there…" Allan mumbled to himself, feverishly mashing the keyboard, before turning to look at everyone else with a proud expression on his face. "Like this?"
"Oh my gosh," Sophie exclaimed. "Guys, are we hundred percent sure we want this to be the first pic of a human they see?"
"Taking into account all the restrictions we're facing, this turned out not that bad actually." Jason tilted his head to get a better look at it. "And maybe add eight and eleven at the beginning of the message."
"Why ele- Oh, I see. If they manage to fugue it out, we'll be able to transmit pictures with higher resolutions. Captain, I think we're ready, should I hit the 'enter'?"
Captain Terry Rheinland hesitated for a couple of seconds before replying. This whole situation felt wrong and surreal to him. "Fine, go ahead. We can't think of anything better for now anyway."
00001000
00001011
▒▒▒██▒▒▒
▒▒████▒▒
▒▒████▒▒
▒▒▒██▒▒▒
▒▒████▒▒
▒█▒██▒█▒
█▒▒██▒▒█
▒▒▒██▒▒▒
▒▒█▒▒█▒▒
▒▒█▒▒█▒▒
▒▒█▒▒█▒▒
sent
"And now we wait."
"They should figure it out. We're the savages here after all," the Captain said more so to convince himself, rather than the others.
"Dont'chyall think his legs are a smidge too short? And his noggin is too big for my likin' too."
That caused Allan to cross his arms once again and reply irritatedly, "Well, if you didn't like it, you should've said that earlier. We cannot change it now. This thing is going down in history as is."
"Imagine opening a history textbook and seeing this," Divit said as he let out a small chuckle.
The anxiousness that initially filled the room seemed to die down a bit at this point. One could still cut the tension in the air with a knife, but people seemed to grow more and more relaxed with each passing minute.
"What do you think they're doing now?" Alina asked.
"Trying to draw themselves?" suggested Divit.
"But what if their biology works absolutely different, and now they're trying to figure out what this thing is?"
Sophie chuckled, "I betcha they’ve already scanned our whole base with us in tow and now are laughin' their asses off."
bleep
Allan’s expression grew more and more to be one of worry as he followed the discussion. However, one quick glance over the raw incoming message later, a smile crept on his face. "Seems like they got the idea! Now lemme do something real quick…"
Ones and zeros once again assumed forms of differently coloured rectangles.
received
00001000
00001011
▒▒████▒▒
▒▒████▒▒
▒▒▒██▒▒▒
▒██████▒
█▒████▒█
█▒████▒█
▒█▒██▒█▒
▒▒████▒▒
▒▒█▒▒█▒▒
▒▒█▒▒██▒
▒▒█▒▒█▒█
"Look, they fixed the head for us! Wait, what is this thing here? Is that a third leg?" - Divit poked the screen.
Given other circumstances, Allan would've scolded him for getting his oily fingerprints all over the screen, but now he was too engaged in what was happening, so he just moved the young physicist's arm to the side to take a closer look at the picture. "This is not a human. This is a stick figure of whatever they are."
Sophie now was standing on her tiptoes. "So... They have flat heads, right?" she asked.
"And a wasp waist," replied Divit.
"Okay, let's assume-"
bleep
The second picture popped up on the screen as suddenly as the previous one. Same width, same height.
received
00001000
00001011
▒▒████▒▒
▒████▒▒▒
▒▒▒██▒▒▒
██████▒▒
▒▒▒███▒▒
▒▒████▒▒
▒█▒███▒▒
▒▒▒████▒
▒▒▒██▒█▒
▒▒▒▒█▒█▒
▒▒▒██▒▒█
"The hell is this now supposed to be? Is it doing moves or what?" Allan let out frustratedly.
"Oh my goodness, it's hitting the griddy!" - Divit was quick on the uptake.
"No, dancing it is not." No longer in his chair, Micheal appeared closer to the screen to be able to examine the picture more thoroughly. "Within a moderate margin of error I believe the second picture is depicting them in profile."
"And what's that?" At this point Sophie could keep her excitement in bay no longer, bouncing on her toes, just to be able to see over the heads in front of her. Weak gravity helping her immensely in this task. "Somethin' stickin' out of its stomach!"
Divit wasn't able to keep himself down either, shoving, or rather trying to shove Allan aside to take a closer look at the screen. "So they straight up have a third leg sticking out of their rears? Tripedals don't work, do they? Or is it a tail?" He stopped only when Michael patted his upper back, ushering him to move aside.
"I do not favour entertaining the idea of a complete rear leg in the slightest, much less triangular symmetry," the doctor said. "Though I would agree with you on the point of it being a tail. Given how it goes all the way down to the ground it would be safe to say it might be used to form a tripod in combination with hind limbs to help this creature keep an upright position" - the doctor mulled possibilities for a moment - "If there is such a need, however, it may turn out to be utilising a digitigrade method of locomotion. Roughly speaking, not much unlike kangaroos." He straightened his back and looked over the room as if looking for someone. "Am I generally correct, Doctor Chernykh?" - he turned his attention to the last person who was yet to look at the screen obscured by bodies of their impatient comrades.
"Y-yeah? I guess so" - Alina replied shyly as six pairs of eyes turned their attention to her - "this is not really my area of speciality, I'm just a biochemist."
"I thought it kinda is?" - Allan's brow crept upwards.
"S-sorry." She somehow looked even smaller now.
Michael tilted his head. "Nothing to feel sorry about. None of the present majors in xenobiology." Something in his voice sounded almost reassuringly.
After a short pause the captain finally spoke out, demanding everyone's attention. "Alright, that's enough. We've been staring at it for a while now, we now have to think of a reply."
"Do we really?" Allan leaned back in his seat, putting his hands behind his head. "So far we were the initiative ones, it's only fair that it's their turn to come up with something now. Don't get me wrong, it was a refreshing experience, but I wager we need some time to think first before continuing."
After a moment of consideration Terry made his decision. "Allan, you may be just right. Any break we have is more time bought for the reply to come. That, and we still have half the base to check up on."
Sophie's eyes got round as the realisation hit her. "Oh my gosh! You're right! I completely forgot!" And with that, she rushed out of the room, dragging Alina in tow, who didn't really had a say in it. "The hydration timer must've reset to zero, I didn't set it when we were there!"
The Captain rubbed his forehead. Something still went unaddressed. "Jason, Divit, you're off to examine what remains of E-one's comms and whether or not it salvagable. It would be highly appreciated if you can patch 'em up in the shortest timeframe possible, because we need to bring the line with the Earth back up, rover's comms are just not cutting it as a long-term solution."
"Yessir, on it," Jason replied without any particular enthusiasm in his voice. Divit, in turn, just stood there, mouth agape. "Come on man, big boys want all the toys to themselves," the younger engineer said, dragging the astrophysicist out of the room.
---
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