Contact II E-Book

C.-A. Rebaf

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 212

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

40 years after the publication of the novel 'Contact' by Carl Sagan, it is time to write an updated new version. C. - A. Rebaf has delivered it. In the age of molecular biology, it is no longer rocket blueprints that are sent to Earth by extraterrestrials, as in the 1980s, but other mysterious blueprints. These are written in a language that has already been described by Sagan. Andromeda is able to crack the code and decipher the information. A chat group on the net translates it into reality and falls for the aliens' ruse. The characters of the novel Andromeda, a bioinformatician from Leipzig with her boyfriend Mike. Thor, an anthropologist from Leipzig. Carol, his wife, who, like Hera, watches over their marriage. These characters are already known from the previous novel 'I'-Gene. Chris a Swiss molecular biologist Pit a radio astronomer from Mexico Jasper a Norwegian reproductive physician in Israel Eric a project manager from the USA All of these people are part of a globally organized chat group Eve, Lilith, Adam , beings from Trappist - 1 -Epsilon Titan a Neanderthal

Leseprobe

Logo & Titel

selfpublishing wespen-kontor

C.-A. Rebaf

Contact II

Genetic imperialism

novel

Impressum

Any similarities with living persons in this novel are purely coincidental. All named persons in the novel are fictitious.

This novel contains explicit descriptions of sexual acts and is written for adults only.

Text and book cover: All rights by C.-A. Rebaf 2023/2025 using

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdfunkstelle_Raisting: Image by Richard Bartz, Munich aka Macro Freak

Translation by deepL with corrections by C.-A. Rebaf.

selfpuplishing: [email protected]

Dedication

Dedicated to Carl Sagan

Foreword by the author

I am very dissatisfied with Carl Sagan's novel 'Contact' because a very, very good beginning is followed by a mediocre, but in the style of the time, therefore forgivable middle section where the construction plan of the rocket takes center stage. The Saturn V had just been successfully launched to carry people to the moon. This made science fiction writers boldly dream of light speed rockets.

I don't believe in it at all!

This is followed by what for me is a terrible ending to the novel, which adopts motifs from the film Odyssey 2001. This was released in 1968 and its screenplay was written by the renowned science fiction writer Arthur C. Clark together with the director Stanley Kubrik. Sagan published the first drafts in 1979, more than ten years later. For me, Sagan's novel ends in a mystical-religious LSD intoxication, which is reminiscent of the end of Odyssey 2001 and is, again, an expression of its time, probably due to the hippie era.

I have the feeling that after an excellent start, an author is avoiding making concrete statements at the end!

The ingenious beginning of 'Contact', however, lives from the expertise that Sagan brings as an astronomer and allows to flow into the text. As a reader who writes, I understand that after years of searching in vain for contact with extraterrestrials as a scientist, the writer in Sagan has suddenly taken over the power in his mind and imagines wonderfully in his writing what it might have been like with a possible contact. For me, that is perfect writing! Just like Max Frisch: I imagine ...

The idea with the television pictures of the 1936 Olympic Games is ingenious, but unfortunately inadequate in that I am convinced that these signals will never penetrate as far into space as Sagan had described in his exuberance. But if you think about it more carefully, you will find a plausible solution!

When I was having lunch with my friend, the painter Ralf Rabemann, in an Asian restaurant in Böblingen and we suddenly started talking about the movie, which we both only had a vague memory of because we had last seen it 25 years ago, the initial spark came: Ralf said that a genetic blueprint had been sent to earth in the movie, hadn't it?

The very next day, I began my research, realized that Ralf was misremembering, but immediately saw what an ingenious idea emerged from his scant memory.

Of course, I realize that I am writing in the age of biotechnology now and that there was only once a rocket age in my youth.

All these aspects taken together led me to the conclusion that I had to write a cover version of ’Contact’. In music, an infinite number of cover versions of original songs are published. Why not in literature too? My version 2023 of the brilliant novel by Carl Sagan from 1986.

I am aware that another cover version will be necessary in 50 years' time. As an evolutionary humanist, I recognize the progress of science as the driving force of humanity and do not cling desperately to the old ways that define my time. For this reason, Carl Sagan's version also has its justification for me.

February 2025

C.-A. Rebaf

Part 1 The radio signal

Leipzig 2023

Bored, Andromeda looked at her screen. Ever since she had completed the sensational project on the intelligence genes with Thor, her life had been running along the same lines, which she hated. Mike, too, still lived in a room in her apartment with the special 'sublet relationship'1 that Andromeda had designed years ago. But time wears everything down and so their special sex became stale. The excitement of the beginning had faded, even if they did invite a call boy or girl every now and then to add a breath of fresh air. In the meantime, they had seen all the swingers' clubs between Leipzig and Frankfurt. And of course the ones in the capital as far as the neighboring countries of Poland and the Czech Republic. Nevertheless, or perhaps precisely because of this, she often fell into long depressive phases in which Mike withdrew as much as possible and she just sat dully in front of her screen.

It was the same today. She had become a member of a chat group that discussed possible signals from extraterrestrials. After the disaster with the sphere machine, which had been built by mankind on the basis of extraterrestrial information, all other signals from outer space were ignored or, even worse, defamed as humbug. The meticulous account of this event by Carl Sagan was completely forgotten, as was the movie by Robert Zemekis with the unforgettable Jodie Foster, which had completely disappeared into oblivion. Only a few weirdos watched this movie from an old DVD or old archive hard drives on their computers.

Andromeda, like all the other members of her chat group, also had a copy, of course. When she was feeling really down, she would get high on the excitement with which the first extraterrestrial signal had been recorded on Earth.

Then there were always phases where individual members wanted to receive such signals again. But the astute bioinformatician always found plausible explanations for their natural origin.

And so the years passed.

In the meantime, nobody on earth still believed in creatures living out there at distances of light years. Hope also faded for Andromeda until day X.

Her own search engine, which searched the Internet day and night for topics relevant to her, spit out a message:

Irregular sequence of '0' and '1' received as a simple radio signal with a comparably high energy level.

"What kind of joker has struck again?" she mumbled to herself:

"Such a signal strength can't come from an exoplanet! That contradicts all the laws of nature!"

"Don't always be so negative!" Mike suddenly intervened from behind. That wasn't his style at all.

She gave him a scathing look and he immediately disappeared into his room.

"Maybe he's right. I'm impossible!" she admitted quietly to herself, criticizing her strange behavior.

Wanting to be a good person to him and not out of scientific conviction, she downloaded the attachment with the signal data and looked at the result.

■■■■■■□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□■■■■■■□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□■■■■■■□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□■■■■■■□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□■■■■■■□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□■■■■■■□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□■■■■■■ etc.

It recognized 6x'1', i.e. black pixels, followed by 26 white pixels. Then, from position 32, 6 black again and 26 white, 6 black and so on. This went on for minutes at a time.

But then suddenly some black pixels appeared in the area of the 26 white pixels. So at position 19, then at 18 and 19, then at 17 and 19.

"What are they trying to tell me?" she wondered aloud.

"I need a simple formatting first! That will be it!" she exclaimed triumphantly.

Mike came running up and asked if she was okay? Then he looked at her happy face and knew he could leave because everything was fine.

It therefore subdivided the information into 32 characters, 6 black for a line break and 26 white as a possible information field.

It was easy for Andromeda to use a software program to convert the extraterrestrial information into a graphic representation with 32-character formatting. When she saw the result, she was both amazed and delighted:

The ’out-there’ or die 'da-draussen', as she likes to put it in German, had sent a '1' and she had understood it in Leipzig!

But she was already having doubts again! How on earth could intelligent cultures, light years away from Earth, know our number system? It could only be a fake!

In the meantime, her software continued to eat through the data and brought up a '2' and a '3'.

But then there were no more numbers; instead, roughly gridded symbols appeared on her screen

1ᴂ1

2ᴂ2

3ᴂ3

1ʄ2

1ʄ3

2ʄ1

2ʄ3

3ʄ1

3ʄ2

1Ⴥ1ᴂ2

1Ⴥ1ʄ1

1Ⴥ1ʄ3

Of course, Andromeda knew what this sequence of characters meant and recognized the first self-explanatory rules of Lincos, a language that a certain Hans Freudenthal had developed around 1960 with the aim of establishing unidirectional communication with extraterrestrials. Carl Sagan also described this approach in his novel, but without referring to the actual inventor. What a pity!

She told her chat group about her discovery, but was still convinced that a funny citizen of the world, with whatever technical means, would allow himself to have fun with his fellow human beings.

However, he was probably a very creative and clever person to use signs such as 'ᴂ' for '=' or 'ʄ' for '≠' and 'Ⴥ' for '+'. Was he deliberately not using Freudenthal's original nomenclature?

In addition, she kept getting stuck on the legitimate question of how the aliens would come to know that the sign '1' really means one here on earth and '2' two and '3' three?

She sent the message, curled up in her bed like a cat and fell into a particularly deep sleep.

Where does the new radio signal come from?

Pit, a member of the chat group in Mexico, followed up the information from Leipzig. He worked on a small radio telescope there and established beyond doubt that the strong signal came from outer space. But not from the same place where the Sagan signal from 1986 was received. That's what they called it in chat slang, i.e. the first contact back then.

I measured an angular deviation from the Sagan beam.

By this Pit meant that the new signal showed a deviation compared to the one measured by the Wega at the time.

Andromeda was very puzzled when she saw this on her screen. She called Mike over and cleared her throat:

"So first of all: sorry! You were right. The new signal may be real!"

She lowered her eyes in shame.

"Actually, I just wanted to cheer you up a little back then," he remarked meekly.

"Secondly, I'm 75% convinced it's not a human April Fool's joke," she took the helm again.

"Thirdly: Pit, who measured the radio steel, is a reliable scientist!"

"Fourth, 'Huston, we have a problem!' There is an angular deviation from the Sagan radiation source. The signal is definitely not coming from the Sagan aliens. How could that be? Have others picked it up?"

"I'm glad to see that sparkle in your eyes again. If you have a problem to solve, everything will be fine again," Mike smiled at her.

"And fifthly, there is the matter of the correct earthly numerals. How can all this be?"

"If you take the strength of the new radio signal as a measure of the intelligence of the new aliens, they must be vastly superior to us!" she burst out laughing at her own joke.

After a while, she remembered a new piece of the puzzle:

"The newcomers seem to know Lincos. We communicated with the 'Sagans' like that back then. But there wasn't much communication possible at a distance of 25 light years. Who wants to wait 25 years for an answer? We had actually only received the blueprint for the machine. I feel in my gut that the newcomers have a more intelligent approach."

"You'll figure it out!"

Then he looked at her with a seductive gaze.

"Do you fancy it?"

She looks back at him in love.

Just like in the old days ...

... the new radio signal works wonders for our couple.

The next day, Andromeda agreed that Pit should record the radio signal for 24 hours. She would take care of decoding it herself.

Pit reported that in the meantime he had collected everything that had been broadcast on this 'channel' from various sources.

It was already an extensive jumble of data.

Andromeda then meticulously continued analyzing the data and was glad to have a real job again that filled her and her life.

The first pages continued with the description of the Lincos language. As soon as a character was sufficiently defined, there was a sudden change. The elaborate black-and-white pixel representation was replaced by a kind of ASCII character language, after which a clear definition was made on a pixel basis.

'A first stage of data compression,' Andromeda thought to herself, 'That's clever! Obviously they want to send a lot more data!

In the meantime, she had downloaded Hans Freudenthal's treatise from the Internet:

Lincos_Design_of_a_Language_for_Cosmic_Intercourse_Part_I

The pages that she subsequently deciphered were identical in content. The only difference was that, with the exception of 1,2,3, other characters were used. She was only surprised that single, double and even triple swastikas appeared on prominent characters. She also found corresponding SS runes in the design of the characteristic Nazi symbols. She couldn't make any sense of it. But it really couldn't be a coincidence.

Hans Freudenthal, whose family and he were persecuted by the Nazis, actually wanted to publish a Part_II. However, this did not happen in his lifetime. He had planned to add a language of everyday life to the more mathematically logical one.

But in this first part he had already succeeded in explaining the following topics linguistically from within himself with logical thinking alone by means of uni-directional communication:

1. math2. time3. behavior4. space, mass and movement

Andromeda found all the correspondences, albeit with different signs, the further her deciphering progressed.

In the beginning was hydrogen2

When Andromeda had finished chapter 4, she suddenly found herself in new territory. But somehow she sensed that it would continue with scientific content.

She suddenly came across a pixelated drawing again, but it also contained ASCIIs. The whole time she had only ever had to deal with pure ASCII characters or pure pixel representations.

She had already learned the signs ‽ for '-' and 'Ⴥ' for '+'.

'Is this a minus circling a plus?' Andromeda pondered for a while.

Then came information in ASCII format:

1Ⴥ1‽ᴂ[followed by a character in ASCII-like format].

Translated into the language of Andromeda, this meant:

1+1-=[ASCII-like format1]

She pondered again, but had a suspicion that the hydrogen atom could be meant.

"Perhaps the new chapter that follows describes the language of chemistry?" she mumbled to herself.

2Ⴥ2‽ᴂ[followed here by another character in ASCII-like format]. In the translation:

2+2-=[ASCII-like format2]

Now there was only 3ᴂ [followed by a third character in ASCII-like format].

In translation:

3=[ASCII-like format3]

It went on like this and stopped at the number 118.

Then there was a new chapter, which was opened as follows:

1Ⴥ1‽Ⴥ1Ⴥ1Ⴥ1‽ᴂ1Ⴥ1‽2ᴂ [again an ASCII-like format, but with a completely different structure than before]. So that meant:

1+1-+1+1-=1+1-2=[new ASCII-like format]

Since Andromeda knew all the numbers of the aliens from the previously described text, she translated the following line as follows:

21+1-+116+16-=1+1-216+16-=[new ASCII-like format2]

Andromeda was talking to herself again:

"Assuming my first hypothesis is correct and the drawing refers to hydrogen, which we abbreviate as 'H', this would mean that '1Ⴥ1‽' means this atom, consisting of 1 proton (+) and 1 electron (-), i.e. 'H'.

In the second chapter, 2 'H' become 'H2', the hydrogen gas.

In the third equation, 2H + 1O=H2O. There you go, that fits!"

As she wasn't sure, she wanted to consult an expert, posted everything in the chat room and asked for support.

He was soon found and his name was Chris. He confirmed her findings and offered to help with the further revision of this chapter.

He also confirmed that this chapter 5, which went beyond the Freudenthal description, was specifically devoted to chemistry, for whatever reason.

He also pointed out that Carl Sagan also describes a 'chemistry' part in his version of the intercosmic language and justifies and constructs it in a very similar way. He needs this to be able to understand and explain his 'erbium dowels'. However, his main focus is on inorganic chemistry.

Chris cracks the code

Andromeda then sent Chris a rough translation of the following chapters, asking him to provide a description that laymen could understand. Chris was a molecular biologist and juggled genes on a daily basis.

It took a while, but then he made his findings known to the chat group;

Apparently, the matter of the new extraterrestrials has an identical or very similar structure to that of us on Earth.

They describe three levels:

1 an atomic

2 a molecular

3 a genetic

A special ASCII coding is used for each level. The different number of elements is taken into account by the code.

184 elements (atoms), several billion molecules, a few dozen genetic ones. The latter ultimately correspond to the bases that we find in deoxyribonucleic acid. The entire structure of Chapter 5 seems to be geared towards explaining this base structure.

With Andromeda's hypothesis, it is easy for the expert to see which ASCII-like codes correspond to our four bases adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine. Of course, this also includes the base variants known to us.

I conclude from this that the life of aliens is similar or identical to that of us humans and all other living beings. I had the impression that the description of the language is now finished.

We can look forward to seeing what information we receive now.

Andromeda has done a great job.

When should we go public with this?

However, the general tenor was to wait and see.

Andromeda tried to decipher and translate the following information, but couldn't figure it out, as only ASCII-like characters of level 3 (genetics) followed. Page, after page, after page.

Desperate, she turned to the group and in particular to Chris, who soon replied:

I consider the preserved information to be a genetic blueprint. We need translation software to make it comparable for our molecular biological databases. Would you like to do that, Andro-meda? You're our specialist for that.

This news hit like a bomb in the chat group. Wild speculation was immediately voiced.

Back then with the Sagan signal a construction plan for a machine was sent, now a genetic construction plan!

The sensation was perfect, but what was to be done with it? The aliens had so far kept quiet about it.

Was that an ingenious way to bridge several dozen light years?

Did Sagan miss something?

There was still the question of where the new radio signal actually came from and why the digits '1', '2', '3' and common Nazi symbols were used by the ETI civilization as a matter of course. A well-structured member of the chat group summarized some further facts as follows. He explicitly pointed out once again that all of this evidence was gathered within the chatgroup. Specialist circles or the general public had not yet been informed. The group knew too well the dramatic events that Sagan had described because of the announcement of the signal at that time and wanted to avoid any complications, especially those with a national defense ministry:

# All experts confirm that the weak television signal of 1936 could only be received error-free in space within a maximum radius of five light years. By 'error-free' we mainly mean 'sufficiently decodable'. After all, the beams attenuate to the second power with distance. At that time, terrestrial reception of a television picture was only guaranteed in the greater Berlin area. From a distance of two light years, however, excellent reception technology would be required, if possible using telescopic satellites, in order to be able to recognize the images. Did the 'Sagan-ETI culture' already have such technology back then?

## The location of the Sagan signal at that time showed a distance to Earth of about 26 light years, which is in stark contradiction to point 1.

### 6 months after the discovery of our first signals, i.e. after the Earth had completed half an orbit of the sun, a classical measurement of the distance from the Earth to the new extraterrestrial transmitting station was made and revealed a distance of about 40 light years.

#### It should be emphasized once again that our new ETI must have information from us because of the Nazi symbols used.

Does anyone have even the slightest idea for an initial hypothesis that does justice to these facts?

The message remained in the room for a long time and nobody knew the answer. Was Carl Sagan so wrong about the propagation of television waves in space? In any case, he didn't say anything about the quality of the reception technology of his 'Weganians'. Did he miss something?

Pit, the Mexican from the radio telescope, confronted the group one day with the following:

I see the only solution to the dilemma with the weak transmission signal (point 1 of the last chat statement) in an amplifying relay station.

There is the theoretical possibility that Sagan's Weganians had sent a relay satellite towards Earth. However, considering all the facts, I think this is extremely unlikely:

# To move such a probe over 22 Lj from the area of Vega, for example, to the area of Centauri (about four Lj from Earth) would, in my estimation, take several thousand years, assuming realistic flight speeds. Would a device even survive such a journey? Hardly!

## Why would the Weganians advance towards Earth of all places?

My conclusion is therefore that another, previously unknown ETI civilization lives 4 Lj away at alpha or proxima Centauri, which received the terrestrial signal, amplified it and sent it further into space. This information then reached Vega after about 21 light years on the planet. After that, everything went as Sagan had described.

This was followed by a flood of chat messages that mainly revolved around the question:

Why hadn't the Centaurians contacted us directly themselves? That would have been much easier and, above all, faster at a distance of 4 Lj?

Pit had a very simple answer to this:

They certainly did that and the signal reached us on Earth in 1944. Who was supposed to be able to receive it back then? We had this damn war! Nobody cared about ETI civilizations.

Pit had hit the nail on the head and everyone knew it.

It was only due to the time delay caused by the vast distances of space that a signal from Sagan's Weganians arrived on Earth in the 1980s. Now humanity was finally sufficiently prepared.

The genetic blueprint

Andromeda had little trouble with the translation software. After all, she was the outstanding head of humanity who was most familiar with this Lincos language of the aliens. She was also an outstanding bioinformatician.

Then she started a first translation run and promptly the genetic codes readable by a molecular biologist, the one with the C-Gs and A-Ts, appeared. She sent it directly to Chris, who had it compared with the known gene databases.

After a few days, he reported back to the group:

#The analysis of the genetic blueprint initially confirmed that it is one and that my first assumption was correct.

* It is not prokaryotic, i.e. viral or bacterial DNA, but eukaryotic DNA, as it occurs in higher cells on earth

## So far only part of the information has been processed, but I recognize signs that it could result in a structure with a chromosomal character.

### It is striking how similar the extraterrestrial genome is to those on Earth. Does this lead to the conclusion that all life in space has identical basic features?

His last sentence caused a storm of indignation in the group, as he was branded far too hasty. Some also complained that, as scientists, they should not be dealing with such a rather philosophical question.

Andromeda offered to cooperate with Chris and put forward the theory that identical genes could perhaps even be found with such a match if one searched specifically. She was happy to take on this task, as it was her specialty.

The group was skeptical, but Chris welcomed the proposal enthusiastically.

After just a few weeks, Andromeda sent confusing information to everyone:

The analysis revealed that several photosynthesis enzymes were found in the blueprint with a high degree of sequence fidelity compared to our own. These include the enzymes magnesium chelatase, cyclases and oxidoreductases, which are required for the biosynthesis of chlorophyll in our plants and algae. In contrast, the enzyme ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate-carboxylase-oxyge-nase, colloquially known as RuBisCo, the enzyme that occurs most frequently on earth, could not be identified. The genetic match was over 95 % compared to our terrestrial plant sequences.

To evaluate and classify these facts, it can only be assumed at this point in time that, in contrast to Earth, the colorant chlorophyll plays an important role on the exoplanet Trap-pist-1-ε, the function of which was initially completely unclear.

The reactions to Andromeda's announcement were overwhelming.

One group repeatedly warned against jumping to conclusions, while others believed in green Martians. The most daring were those who saw these creatures with built-in photosynthesis as a miracle cure for the ever-increasing CO2