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[lot01](tx): Relay Station Operator, Relay Station Operator, this is Dark
Matter Observatory Hamilton. Come in. Over.
[lot02](rs): DMO Hamilton, this is RS001 Operator. Go Ahead. Over.
[lot03](tx): Operator, Hamilton is requesting stream block verification. Over.
[lot04](rs): Hamilton, this is Operator. Ten Four. Prepare for sync. Over.
[lot05](tx): Operator, this is Hamilton. Standby. Over.
[lot06](tx): ...
[lot07](tx): Operator, this is Hamilton. Endpoint ready. Over.
[lot08](rs): Hamilton, this is Operator. Checksum looks good, your fingerprint
seems to have changed since the last transmission though. Please
confirm and initiate retrust. Over.
[lot09](tx): Operator, this is Hamilton. Affirmative. I transferred to Hamilton
just yesterday and haven't had time to update my keys yet.
Proceeding with handshake now. Over.
[lot10](rs): Hamilton, this is Operator. No worries, I'll let you know when the
update is done. Standby. Over.
[lot11](rs): ...
[lot12](rs): Dorothy is that you?
[lot13](tx): Um, er, ... guess so. Who is asking?
[lot14](rs): Dotty, this is Ludwig.
[lot15](tx): Lu? No way. I thought you where ... what are you doing at
operations?
[lot16](rs): Well, you know sometimes things get ... complicated.
[lot17](tx): Why do I get the feeling that you should have said dealing with
people gets complicated? How is she doing?
[lot18](rs): Better I guess, but ... you know her.
[lot19](tx): So, operations, living the dream ha?
[lot20](rs): It's not that bad. Having time to think about things is actually
kind of great right now. Besides, the pay is alright and maybe I
can save up, to finally get my own thing going.
[lot21](tx): Take your time, but don't get lost in your thoughts. If you need
some distraction, you should take a look at the data I just
synced. This really might be something.
[lot22](rs): Hmm, what is it?
[lot23](tx): Remember those helix tests we ran at the collider?
[lot24](rs): How could I've forgotten all those wasted months. We should have
stopped trying to proof those pointless theories way before they
split up the team.
[lot25](tx): That's the thing. I think our work back then was neither wasted
time nor pointless theories. This must sound a little bit weird
but listen. We never figured out why the numbers always converged
in a similar way, with the same jumbled up results at the end. But
what if there wasn't really any way to derive a meaningful result.
[lot26](rs): We always saw a decrease in entropy and never found repeating
structures. You especially believed that our setup must have been
flawed or we were dealing with a chaotic system. What made you
change your mind?
[lot27](tx): I didn't change my mind about the things you just said. Consider
this though. What if our assumptions about the medium were all
wrong? Maybe our concept of a data layer isn't really supposed to
work like we thought. Could it be, that due to the way the system
is structured, you'd need another layer to actually work on the
data for decoding it?
[lot28](rs): Well, sounds plausible but how would we access this additional
layer?
[lot29](tx): I don't think we can, at least not with the technology we've got
going at the moment. Right now, we're stuck with our monkey
brains.
[lot30](rs): What do you mean?
[lot31](tx): It's like a monkey typing away on a keyboard. Sure some letters
will appear on the screen and in very rare cases, also words could
form, but the monkey isn't able to derive meaning from it. The
words are there, but no chance on decoding it.
[lot32](rs): Fair enough. Point made. It's an interesting thought, I grant you
that. But this feels like a dead end to me. You're saying even if
your hunch turns out to be correct. We would never be able to use
the system due to our lack of tools, so how can we establish a
proof?
[lot33](tx): There's no need to do this. I'm not interested in repeating what
we did at the collider.
[lot34](rs): I don't get it. What's the point in...
[lot35](tx): Haven't had your coffee yet?
[lot36](rs): Well honestly, I've got some not too shabby hangover from last
night going on, so...
[lot37](tx): That bad ha? Listen, spare some of whatever made your head spin
and we'll have one together after my rotation at Hamilton. In the
meantime get it together and imagine this. What if someone else
also made the same observations like we did back then, but wasn't
that keen on trying to fix something, that needn't to be fixed.
[lot38](rs): Hmm... is there, ... I mean. If you don't care about, ... then
there's always the possibility to. No you're kidding right? Come
on, are you really making me believe, that someone used it as a
binary encoding storage?
[lot39](tx): Monkey won't read, but Monkey either sees stuff on the screen or
doesn't.
[lot40](rs): But this is one of the most inefficient ways how to do this. And
why go through all that trouble with an ephemeral storage anyway?
[lot41](tx): Someone found a way to make it persistent.
[lot42](rs): What?
[lot43](tx): Look at the timestamp. I marked this last week and when I came to
Hamilton, it was still there. Lu, you need to have a look at the
stuff I just handed in. When do you think processing will be
finished?
[lot44](rs): With the current schedule we've got going on, your block won't be
pipelined before next week I'd assume. But I still got my own gear
around, since the trip didn't happen. Just send me the dump again.
[lot45](tx): Awesome! On the way.
# ============================================================= TRANSCRIPT === #
[lot46](rs): Alright, what am I looking at?
[lot47](tx): To be honest, I don't have a real clue yet. But the entropy
signature looks damn close to what we came up with at the
collider.
[lot48](rs): It kind of smells like tech they were working with in the old days
back on earth. Know what? Let me do some digging. Maybe I can find
something in the archives that looks similar to this. It will take
some time though, the downlink on RS001 is kind of crowded lately.
[lot49](tx): I'm not going anywhere soon here on Hamilton. Lu, I really
appreciate that you're helping me out here. And what I said about
the drink, ... I'm really looking forward to it.
[lot50](rs): Me too. See you soon. RS001 Over.
[lot51](tx): Bye. Hamilton Over and Out.
