“I guess,” Kevin said.
“Good. I’ve got an idea that just might take the edge of those headaches of yours. I’m not saying you have to become a programmer, but I’d like you to leave here with at least a basic understanding of how these machines work. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because two decades from now computers will be running the world. There will be a microchip in everything from your car to your television. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like the idea of anyone coming of age in a world dominated by mystery. It has a tendency to make people introverted.”
“Make them what?” Kevin asked.
“Withdrawn.”
This time it was Kevin’s turn to laugh. He pointed at the computer. “There’s going to be one of those in my car?”
Peter smiled. “Don’t be fooled by the size of that. Most things might be getting bigger, but these machines will only get smaller. You watch. Now go on, get out of here and be back by twelve o’clock.”
Peter was on his way to the cafeteria when his office secretary caught up to him and handed him a small cardboard box. “This just arrived for you, professor. I wasn’t sure if you were waiting for it.”
Peter examined the box with only a hint of curiosity.
“It’s from NASA!” She pointed at the address label.
“So it would seem,” Peter said. “Just go ahead and leave it on my desk. I’ll have a look at it after lunch.”
When she made no move to go, Peter rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to open it here, Mabel. Whatever it is, it can wait.”
Appearing simultaneously disappointed and embarrassed at the rebuke, Mabel stood there a moment longer, then turned, said something he couldn’t make out and walked back down the hall.
Peter had all but forgotten about the box by the time he got back to the office. He picked it up, turned it over, then gave it a little shake. The return address was in California, but there was no name.
There were four magnetic tape reels inside, the kind used to store electronic data. On the small label in the center of one reel was a date: July 15 1985. He took his reading glasses from his pocket and examined the reel more closely, then removed the rest of them and found a note at the bottom of the box. Typed on it was this message:
Professor Bershadsky,
Please find enclosed four IBM S/360 9-track magnetic tapes.
After careful examination we have concluded that the data packets transferred to these, received from Voyager II between 0046 and 1149 hours on 15 September 1985, originated from the DFPCS module on the Jupiter Eye. However, all attempts to decompress the code using the software provided by your team at the time of delivery have thus far proven unsuccessful.
As you know, The Jupiter Eye malfunctioned during take-off and has been transmitting only intermittent status reports in the interim. We therefore suspect that the data may be partially or wholly corrupt. As the chief engineer on the DFPCS project, I would like to request your assistance in retrieving any information that may be recoverable, assuming you still have access to the project’s original resources.
All data from Voyager II is of vital importance. We would therefore ask that you refrain from advertising your results until such time as we have had a chance to review and classify them. On behalf of NASA and the Voyager program, I would like to thank you in advance for any assistance you may be able to provide in this matter.
Sincerely,
Neil Lopez
Assistant Project Supervisor for Research
Jet Propulsion Laboratories
Peter read the letter twice before folding it and putting it in his pocket.
“Sons of bitches,” he said to the empty room.
DPFCS, a convoluted acronym standing for Dual Pass File Compression System, was an experimental bit-compression technology created by a team of grad students he had supervised in the first year of his tenure. The project had come to the attention of a team at Kodak who were assembling a high-resolution camera called the Jupiter Eye for the Voyager program. Kodak had agreed to purchase a temporary license to use the DFPCS protocol to meet the file transfer specifications stipulated by NASA.
But the Jupiter Eye had only been a backup system, slated to replace one of the probe’s original modules in case of a malfunction that could not be fixed in time for launch. And following a few initial tests at which Peter and his team had been present, they had heard nothing from Kodak or NASA, and so had assumed the program had simply been mothballed, as was the case with most such projects at the time.
Peter tried to recall who had worked on the program and found he couldn’t remember a single one of their names. They had all graduated that year and headed off to God only knew where to begin their own careers.
“Mabel,” Peter said, “Can you come in here for a minute?”
Mabel appeared in the doorway a moment later. “Anything nice?”
“No, just some archive stuff I requested for a class. Listen, can you look up a number for me? Neil Lopez. He’s the Assistant Project Supervisor for Research at JPL.”
“Sure. Just give me a minute.”
It took her five. She handed Peter a sheet of notepaper with a number written on it in a script so flawless it could almost have been type. He followed her to the door, closed it behind her and called the number. The receptionist at JPL informed him it might take her a while to find Mr. Lopez, but Peter insisted on waiting. By the time Lopez actually came to the phone, Peter had started grading the stack of assignments on his desk and was about to hang up in frustration.
“This is Neil Lopez.”
“Mr. Lopez, it’s Professor Peter Bershadsky.”
Lopez was silent for a moment, then said, “Oh yes, from Kodak, right? I was wondering when you would call.”
“Actually, I’m with MIT.”
He could hear Lopez speaking to someone on the other end. When he came back he said, “Let’s see. Oh yes, MIT. You’ll have to forgive me, professor, things are a little hectic here at the moment.”
“I’m sure they are,” Peter said. “When were you guys going to let us know the Jupiter Eye made it onto Voyager? As a member of the team that worked on the project, I figured we’d have a right to know.”
Lopez hesitated again. “Professor, if I can be candid, we try not to advertise our failures if we don’t have to. I appreciate that may not seem fair to a man in your position, but I can assure you, I’m not the one making those decisions.”
“Does Kodak know?” Peter asked.
When Lopez didn’t answer, Peter said, “Never mind. You said you tried to run the decompression sequence using the software we provided. Can you tell me what happened?”
When Lopez fell silent again Peter began to get annoyed. “Mr. Lopez?”
“Yes, I’m here. Sorry, I’m just looking over the file. It actually looks like we were unable to find the software. According to the engineer’s report they tried decompressing the data with one of our newer systems but the results were—”
“A dog’s breakfast,” Peter finished, finally losing his patience. “Sir, have you actually seen the letter you sent me or did you just sign it? DFPCS uses a dual-pass algorithm. Another system wouldn’t work. That should be obvious to anyone.”
“Professor,” Lopez said, “forgive me if I sound insensitive, but the Jupiter Eye is a redundant system. To answer your question, no, I probably didn’t read the letter. If I read every letter that left my desk I’d have no time for anything else. That said, if we can recover the data on those reels, it may prove valuable, so any help you could offer would be greatly appreciated.”
Peter made a concerted effort to calm himself before he spoke. “I’ll have a look at them.”
He considered adding that the university was under no obligation to pay him for his time and decided it would be pointless.
“Thank you,” Lopez said. “I appreciate it. And I apologize if I’ve come across the wrong way. The truth is I could use another s
ix people in this office.”
“That’s all right,” Peter said. “I understand. I’ll get back to you as soon as I’ve got something.”
“That would be great,” Lopez said. “I look forward to hearing from you, professor.”
Peter put the phone down and stood looking at the tape reels for a long time. His frustration notwithstanding, the thought of being the first person to see a picture taken several million miles from Earth had a certain appeal. Assuming there was anything on the tapes but scrambled data. It also occurred to him that if the people who had sent him the reels weren’t as disorganized as they were he might never have had the chance. In fact, he would never have known the Jupiter Eye had even been used.
Kevin was waiting for him outside the office when Peter stepped out.
“I’m afraid the lesson is going to have to wait,” Peter said. “I need your help with something.”
Kevin was visibly relieved. “What is it?”
“Just give me a minute,” Peter said and walked back into the office.
Mabel wasn’t there, but the keys in the press on the wall were clearly labeled and he found the one he was looking for.
They made their way to the archive building on the east corner of the campus. Kevin waited as Peter wrestled with the rusting padlock on the door.
“You try,” Peter finally said, standing back.
Kevin grabbed the lock and pulled. It opened with a faint screech.
“All right,” Peter said when he saw Kevin was smiling, “don’t rub it in. I’m old enough to be your grandfather.”
Peter’s heart sank as the overhead strip-lights began to flicker on, revealing an enormous room with high, tightly spaced shelving running wall to wall.
“Over here,” Kevin said, pointing to a notebook gathering dust on a small desk just inside the door.
Peter had all but given up when he finally found the entry he was looking for and realized why he hadn’t seen it sooner. The date was March 1980, several months after the project had been terminated. That meant the person who had brought the box in here either hadn’t cared enough to look, or the box itself had languished in the corner of an office for six months before someone got tired of looking at it. He thought the latter was more likely.
“Third row, second shelf,” Peter said. “It should say DFPCS on it. You get the box, I need to find something to run it on.”
Kevin looked puzzled but didn’t say anything. Peter walked to the other end of the room and began scanning the shelves. He found what he was looking for at the end of the second row.
“Kevin?”
Kevin came around the corner holding a large box.
“Up there,” Peter said. “Second shelf from the top. We need to get it down.”
Kevin looked up and frowned. “The thing that looks like a printing press.”
Peter laughed. “Yeah, I guess it does. It’s a DEC minicomputer. It’s probably the only tape drive machine in here that will run the program in that box you’re holding.”
Kevin walked back to the door and returned a moment later with a ladder. “You better stand back, professor. That thing looks pretty heavy.”
Peter watched from a safe distance as Kevin climbed to the top and had a brief nightmarish vision of both Kevin and the computer hurtling toward the ground as the ladder collapsed beneath him.
“You okay up there?” Peter asked.
“I would be if I could get a grip on this thing,” Kevin said.
Peter watched him descend the ladder slowly, wincing as the awkward housing of the machine dug into his shoulder and decided Kevin might pass computer programming after all, albeit with a C minus.
When Kevin asked him where they were taking the computer, Peter considered for a moment and said, “If there’s power in here I don’t think we need to take it anywhere.”
There was.
When he had finished setting up the machine, Peter scribbled something on one of the empty pages in the index, tore it out and handed it to Kevin. “Take this to my office and tell Mabel I need them right away. If she asks you what for, tell her you don’t know.”
“I don’t,” Kevin said.
“Yes, good point. Just hurry back.”
When Kevin was gone Peter offered the gods a short prayer, turned on the computer and breathed a sigh of relief when it began to boot up. He took the reel out of the box Kevin had found and spooled it onto the machine, then picked up the notebook containing most of his own notes and spent several minutes reorienting himself with the commands. By the time Kevin returned he had loaded the program into memory and replaced the reel with the first of the ones he had received that morning.
“Here goes nothing,” Peter said and pressed the “enter” key.
The reel began to spin, first one way, then the other at a series of seemingly random intervals.
“What’s it doing?” Kevin asked.
“Converting the compressed files on that tape into something we can use,” Peter said. “At least that’s what I hope it’s doing.”
Kevin nodded to suggest this made perfect sense.
Five minutes later the reel stopped and the words compression sequence completed appeared on the small screen. Peter removed the reel and replaced it with one of the empty ones Kevin had brought. He studied the notebook in his hand for a moment, then typed: transfer://all-k: and pressed enter. The reel began to spin again, only this time it ran at a constant speed in only one direction. When it stopped Peter removed the tape and began the sequence again with the second reel.
It took half an hour to decompress and transfer the remaining three reels. When it was done Peter shut down the computer and said, “I don’t suppose you’d be up for putting this thing back.”
“I’m not sure I can,” Kevin said.
“No. And I don’t think I want to see you kill yourself trying. But we’ll have to put it somewhere. If Mabel comes in and sees it here she would kill us both.”
“I believe you,” Kevin said.
“Did she put up a fight when you asked for the reels?”
“She wasn’t happy, let’s put it that way.”
“Mabel’s a nosy old bitch,” Peter said, “but I wouldn’t trade her for anything. Let’s stick this on the bottom shelf somewhere out of the way. She’ll find it eventually, you can bet your ass on that. But with any luck you’ll have graduated by then and I’ll be retired.”
Peter put the box containing the project files back where it had been before they left but made no entry in the catalog to say he had retrieved it. He didn’t know why, but it felt like the right thing to do, and Peter had always gone with his gut when he was in two minds about anything.
When they had turned off the lights and locked up, Peter thanked Kevin for his help and sent him to his next class, but not before extracting a promise from the boy that they would pick up where they had left off the following week. It was a promise Kevin would never get a chance to keep.
Peter returned to the lecture hall for his final class of the day, but soon discovered he was too distracted to do anything but prod at the subject matter. His eyes kept wandering back to the box on his desk. He dismissed the students early and didn’t realize he had forgotten to assign them any work until one of his more enthusiastic pupils pointed it out to him.
“Then I suggest you take advantage of my absentmindedness and catch up on anything you’re not on top of,” Peter said. “Now go on, get out of here before I change my mind.”
The Research and Development center was located in a new building not far from the old archive. Peter found a room on the second floor that contained the equipment he needed. Several students were using it for whatever project they were working on and they were less than enthusiastic at being kicked out.
When they were gone—he actually helped the last one out the door with a gentle push—he set to work transferring the newly decompressed files into the machine that would render the actual images on a large color TV at the back of th
e room.
Half an hour later, exhausted with anticipation, he stood back and watched the first of the images render on the screen. If not for the faint lines at the bottom of the picture, he might have suspected that he had forgotten to turn on the TV. He cycled through the remaining images on the first reel and found they were all the same; black.
By the time he got to the last image on the third reel his anticipation had given way to dread. He wasn’t sure what frustrated him more, the fact that DFPCS was apparently working just fine—the pictures on the screen were valid image files—or the fact that it was apparently wasted on the Jupiter Eye, which clearly wasn’t working.
He loaded the last reel more out of habit than expectation, so his surprise at what he saw when he opened the first file was all the greater. The image was still mostly black; however, there was a faint but clear curve running along one edge. When he loaded the next one the curve was sharper and he was damned if there wasn’t just a hint of color. He cycled forward quickly, watching as the shape filled out and took on a clear tint of orange-brown. By the time he reached the fifteenth of the twenty pictures on the reel there was no mistaking the planet; it was Jupiter.
He stood looking at the picture for a long time, feeling his heart begin to beat faster. He knew he wasn’t the first person to see images of the gas giant from this distance—Voyager II had plenty of other cameras that worked just fine—but he was the first person to see these, and the idea filled him with a sense of mystic euphoria.
He cycled through the last five pictures. They were all the same, the image changing only slightly as the planet revolved. By the time he reached the last picture the feeling that he was standing on the bow of history was already beginning to fade a little. He reached for the keyboard, intending to put the reels back in the box and call Lopez in the morning with the good news, then stopped. He walked to the TV and ran a finger across the top right-hand corner of the screen, then stood back. The longer he looked at it the more obvious it became that it wasn’t just some coding error or problem with the camera. The black shape on the screen was just that: a shape. To Peter it looked a little like a fish, only the lines were symmetrical—too symmetrical. He walked back and called the preceding image back onto the screen. And there it was again. Only in this picture the tip of the shape was no longer in the image. He cycled to the picture in front and saw only half of it. In the last of the four shots only a small section of the end was visible.
Origin - Season Two Page 39