"Cor"

© 1996
J. Mitch Hopper


In this short work of Science Fiction, first published in the 1997 Alchemist Review, we witness the first contact of two life forms based upon two completely different biologies. Here is just a taste!
Dr. Al Compton leaned back into the light. "OK, fine. So what's the problem?"

"My pictures, Sir." Glenn leaned sideways over the desk and unrolled a large photo. It was mostly white-space with millions of small spray-paint dots spread out over the square - except for one blob near the upper left corner.

"Sir, this is a raw pictograph of the incoming Neutrino streams from six weeks ago, shortly after I started here. You know that Neutrino data is notoriously random. The spread of dots here should have been fairly even. Notice the cluster up here?" Glenn pointed his pen at the darkened blob.

"Uh, hum." Al was leaning forward on his crossed arms.

"Well, perfectly random data should be uniformly spread out - no clusters - but by the very definition of randomness, a cluster could just happen - randomly; so this picture doesn't really mean much..." Glenn let go of the photo and it re-rolled itself. "Except for this." He unrolled a second photo which, from a casual glance, looked identical.

"Um, looks the same. Different processing?" Al asked.

"No, Sir. Different time! Three weeks ago. You see, what are the odds of a second random sample showing the same unusual grouping? All the rest of the picture is randomly different - as expected."

"And you want to run a third set of data through your process?"

"Ah... no Sir. I already have. Data from four days ago." Glenn unrolled a third photo to cover the second. "See?"

"The same. That is not a random occurrence!"

"There's something else, Sir. It's kind of hard to see without registering the three pictures together..." Glenn, leaned close to the blob on the third picture. "It's getting larger."

"Expanding?" Al's face was inches away from Glenn's, peering at the photo.

"No, Sir... getting closer!"

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