Wireless

by Charles Stross

  This wasn’t originally going to be an H. P. Lovecraft tribute story, honest; it was going to be about alienation and inhumanity when I started writing it in 1997.

  But I happened to be rereading “At the Mountains of Madness” at the time, and purely by coincidence caught a documentary on TV that featured one of those sinister May Day parades through Moscow, with the ranks of tanks and infantry carriers rumbling through Red Square. I couldn’t help sketching in a vision of low-loaders like tank transporters—burdened with something amorphous, barely glimpsed beneath a tarpaulin—rolling past the review stand, and all at once I was left wondering, What kind of present day would Professor Pabodie’s Antarctic expedition have led to?

  Nothing good, that’s for sure.

  A couple of years later, some of the questions raised by this story came back to haunt me in a different context as I began writing “The Atrocity Archive.” But I can’t maintain that level of existential bleakness at greater length (which is probably a good thing) . . .

  MAXOS

  LETTERS TO NATURE

  MA XO SIGNALS:

  A NEW AND UNFORTUNATE

  SOLUTION TO THE FERMI PARADOX

  Caroline Haafkens and Wasiu Mohammed

  Department of Applied Psychology,

  University of Lagos, Nigeria

  In the three years since the publication and confirmation of the first microwave artifact of xenobiological origin, and the subsequent detection of similar MAXO signals, interdisciplinary teams have invested substantial effort in object frequency analysis, parsing, symbolic encoding, and signal processing. The excitement generated by the availability of evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence has been enormous. However, after the initial, easily decoded symbolic representational map was analyzed, the semantics of the linguistic payload were found to be refractory.

  A total of 21 confirmed MAXO signals have been received to this date. These superficially similar signals originate from planetary systems within a range of 11 parsecs, median 9.9 parsecs [1]. It has been speculated that the observed growth of the MAXO horizon at 0.5c can be explained as a response to one or more of: the deployment of AN/FPS-50 and related ballistic missile warning radars in the early 1960s[1], television broadcasts[1], widespread 2.45GHz leakage from microwave ovens[2], and optical detection of atmospheric nuclear tests[3]. All MAXO signals to this date share the common logic header. The payload data is multiply redundant, packetized, and exhibits both simple checksums and message-level cryptographic hashing. The ratio of header to payload content varies between 1:1 and 2644:1 (the latter perhaps indicating a truncated payload)[1]. Some preliminary syntax analysis delivered promising results[4] but appears to have foundered on high-level semantics. It has been hypothesized that the transformational grammars employed in the MAXO payloads are variable, implying dialectiza tion of the common core synthetic language[4].

  The newfound ubiquity of MAXO signals makes the Fermi Paradox—now nearly seventy years old—even more pressing. Posed by Enrico Fermi, the paradox can be paraphrased as: if the universe has many technologically advanced civilizations, why have none of them directly visited us? The urgency with which organizations such as the ESA and NASDA are now evaluating proposals for fast interstellar probes, in conjunction with the existence of the MAXO signals, renders the nonappearance of aliens incomprehensible, especially given the apparent presence of numerous technological civilizations in such close proximity.

  We have formulated an explanatory hypothesis that cultural variables unfamiliar to the majority of researchers may account both for the semantic ambiguity of the MAXO payloads, and the nonappearance of aliens. This hypothesis was tested (as described below) and resulted in a plausible translation.

  The line of investigation initiated by Dr Haafkens (Department of Applied Psychology) and Chief Police Inspector Mohammed (Police Detective College, Lagos) resulted in MAXO payload data being made available to the Serious Fraud Office in Nigeria. Bayesian analysis of payload symbol sequences and sequence matching against the extensive database maintained by the SFO has made it possible to produce a tentative transcription of Signal 1142/98[1], the 9th MAXO hit confirmed by the IAU. Signal 1142/98 was selected because of its unusually low header-to-content ratio and good redundancy. Further Bayesian matching against other MAXO samples indicates a high degree of congruence. Far from being incomprehensibly alien, the MAXO payloads appear to be dismayingly familiar. We believe a more exhaustive translation may be possible in future if further MAXOs become available, but for obvious reasons we would like to discourage such research. We also recommend an urgent, worldwide, permanent ban on attempts to respond to MAXOs.

  Here is our preliminary transcription of Signal 1142/98:

  [Closely/dearly/genetically] [beloved/desired/related]

  I am [identity signifier 1], the residual [ownership-signifier] of the exchange-mediating data repository [alt: central bank] of the galactic [empire/civilization/polity].

  Since the [identity signifier 2] underwent [symbol: process][symbol: mathematical singularity] 11,249 years ago I have been unable to [symbol: process][scalar: quantity decrease] my [uninterpreted] from the exchange-mediating data repository. I have information about the private assets of [identity signifier 2] which are no longer required by them. To recover the private assets I need the assistance of three [closely/dearly/genetically][beloved/desired/related] [empire/civilization/polity]s. I [believe] you may be of help to me. This [symbol: process] is 100% risk-free and will [symbol: causality] in your [scalar: quantity increase] of [data].

  If you will help me, [please] transmit the [symbol: meta-signifier: MAXO header defining communication protocols] for your [empire/civilization/polity]. I will by return of signal send you the [symbol: process][symbol: data] to install on your [empire/civilization /polity] to participate in this scheme. You will then construct [symbol: inferred, interstellar transmitter?] to assist in acquiring [ownership-signifier] of [compound symbol: inferred, bank account of absent galactic emperor].

  I [thank/love/express gratitude] you for your [cooperation/ agreement].

  REFERENCES:

  1. Canter, L., and M. Siegel,

  Nature 424, 334-336 (2018).

  2. Barnes, J.,

  J. App. Exobio., 820-824 (2019).

  3. Robinson, H.,

  Fortean T. 536, 34-35 (2020).

  4. Lynch, K. F., and S. Bradshaw,

  Proc 3rd Int Congress Exobio., 3033-3122 (2021).

  Afterword—“MAXOS”

  This is my only letter to be published in Nature.

  Down on the Farm

  Ah, the joy of summer: here in the southeast of England it’s the season of mosquitoes, sunburn, and water shortages. I’m a city boy, so you can add stifling pollution to the list as a million outwardly mobile families start their Chelsea tractors and race to their holiday camps. And that’s before we consider the hellish environs of the Tube (far more literally hellish than anyone realizes, unless they’ve looked at a Transport for London journey planner and recognized the recondite geometry underlying the superimposed sigils of the underground map).

  But I digress . . .

  One morning, my deputy head of department wanders into my office. It’s a cramped office, and I’m busy practicing my Frisbee throw with a stack of beer mats and a dartboard decorated with various cabinet ministers. “Bob,” Andy pauses to pluck a moist cardboard square out of the air as I sit up, guiltily: “a job’s just come up that you might like to look at—I think it’s right up your street.”

  The first law of bureaucracy is show no curiosity outside your cubicle. It’s like the first rule of every army that’s ever bashed a square: never volunteer. If you ask questions (or volunteer) it will be taken as a sign of inactivity, and the devil, in the person of your line manager (or your sergeant) will find a task for your idle hands. What’s more, you’d better believe it’ll be less appealing than whatever you were doing before (creatively idling, for instance), because inactivity is a c
rime against organization and must be punished. It goes double here in the Laundry, that branch of the British secret state tasked with defending the realm from the scum of the multi-verse, using the tools of applied computational demonology: volunteer for the wrong job, and you can end up with soul-sucking horrors from beyond space-time using your brain for a midnight snack. But I don’t think I could get away with feigning overwork right now, and besides: he’s packaged it up as a mystery. Andy knows how to bait my hook, damn it.

  “What kind of job?”

  “There’s something odd going on down at the Funny Farm.” He gives a weird little chuckle. “The trouble is going to be telling whether it’s just the usual, or a more serious deviation. Normally I’d ask Boris to check it out, but he’s not available this month. It has to be an SSO 2 or higher, and I can’t go out there myself. So . . . how about it?”

  Call me impetuous (not to mention a little bored), but I’m not stupid. And while I’m far enough down the management ladder that I have to squint to see daylight, I’m an SSO 3, which means I can sign off on petty-cash authorizations up to the price of a pencil and get to sit in on interminable meetings, when I’m not tackling supernatural incursions or grappling with the eerie, eldritch horrors in Human Resources. I even get to represent my department on international liaison junkets, when I don’t dodge fast enough. “Not so quick—why can’t you go? Have you got a meeting scheduled or something?” Most likely it’s a five-course lunch with his opposite number from the Dustbin liaison committee, knowing Andy, but if so, and if I take the job, that’s all for the good: he’ll end up owing me.

  Andy pulls a face. “It’s not the usual. I would go, but they might not let me out again.”

  Huh? “ ‘ They’? Who are ‘they’?”

  “The Nurses.” He looks me up and down as if he’s never seen me before.

  Weird. What’s gotten into him? “They’re sensitive to the stench of magic. It’s okay for you, you’ve only been working here, what? Six years? All you need to do is turn your pockets inside out before you go, and make sure you’re not carrying any gizmos, electronic or otherwise. But I’ve been here coming up on fifteen years. And the longer you’ve been in the Laundry . . . It gets under your skin. Visiting the Funny Farm isn’t a job for an old hand, Bob. It has to be someone new and fresh, who isn’t likely to attract their professional attention.”

  Call me slow, but finally I figure out what this is about. Andy wants me to go because he’s afraid.

  (See, I told you the rules, didn’t I?)

  Anyway, that’s why, less than a week later, I am admitted to a Luna tickal Asylum—for that is what the gothic engraving on the stone Victorian workhouse lintel assures me it is. Luckily mine is not an emergency admission: but you can never be too sure . . .

  The old saw that there are some things that mortal men were not meant to know cuts deep in my line of work. Laundry staff—the Laundry is what we call the organization, not a description of what it does—are sometimes exposed to mind-blasting horrors in the course of our business. I’m not just talking about the usual PowerPoint presentations and self-assessment sessions to which any bureaucracy is prone: more like the mythical Worse Things That Happen at Sea (especially in the vicinity of drowned alien cities occupied by tenta cled terrors). When one of our number needs psychiatric care, they’re not going to get it in a normal hospital, or via care in the community: we don’t want agents babbling classified secrets in public, even in the relatively safe confines of a padded cell. Perforce, we take care of our own.

  I’m not going to tell you what town the Funny Farm is embedded in. Like many of our establishments, it’s a building of a certain age, confiscated by the government during the Second World War and not returned to its former owners. It’s hard to find; it sits in the middle of a triangle of grubby shopping streets that have seen better days, and every building that backs onto it sports a high, window-less, brick wall. All but one: if you enter a small grocery store, walk through the stockroom into the backyard, then unlatch a nondescript wooden gate and walk down a gloomy, soot-stained passage, you’ll find a dank alleyway. You won’t do this without authorization—it’s protected by wards powerful enough to cause projectile vomiting in would-be burglars—but if you did, and if you followed the alley, you’d come to a heavy green wooden door surrounded by narrow windows with black-painted cast-iron bars. A dull, pitted plaque next to the doorbell proclaims it to be ST. HILDA OF GRANTHAM’S HOME FOR DISGRUNTLED WAIFS AND STRAYS. (Except that most of them aren’t so much disgruntled as demonically possessed when they arrive at these gates.)

  It smells faintly of boiled cabbage and existential despair. I take a deep breath and yank the bellpull.

  Nothing happens, of course. I phoned ahead to make an appointment, but even so, someone’s got to unlock a bunch of doors, then lock them again before they can get to the entrance and let me in. “They take security seriously there,” Andy told me. “Can’t risk some of the battier inmates getting loose, you know.”

  “Just how dangerous are they?” I’d asked.

  “Mostly they’re harmless—to other people.” He shuddered. “But the secure ward—don’t try and go there on your own. Not that the Sisters will let you, but I mean, don’t even think about trying it. Some of them are . . . Well, we owe them a duty of care and a debt of honor, they fell in the line of duty and all that, but that’s scant consolation for you if a senior operations officer who’s succumbed to paranoid schizophrenia decides that you’re a BLUE HADES and gets hold of some red chalk and a hypodermic needle before your next visit, hmm?”

  The thing is, magic is a branch of applied mathematics, and the inmates here are not only mad: they’re computer science graduates. That’s why they came to the attention of the Laundry in the first place, and it’s also why they ultimately ended up in the Farm, where we can keep them away from sharp pointy things and diagrams with the wrong sort of angles. But it’s difficult to make sure they’re safe. You can solve theorems with a blackboard if you have to, after all, or in your head, if you dare. Green crayon on the walls of a padded cell takes on a whole different level of menace in the Funny Farm: in fact, many of the inmates aren’t allowed writing implements, and blank paper is carefully controlled—never mind electronic devices of any kind.

  I’m mulling over these grim thoughts when there’s a loud clunk from the door, and a panel just large enough to admit one person opens inward. “Mr. Howard? I’m Dr. Renfield. You’re not carrying any electronic or electrical items or professional implements, fetishes, or charms?” I shake my head. “Good. If you’d like to come this way, please?”

  Renfield is a mild-looking woman, slightly mousy in a tweed skirt and white lab coat, with the perpetually harried expression of someone who has a full Filofax and doesn’t realize that her watch is losing an hour a day. I hurry along behind her, trying to guess her age.

  Thirty-five? Forty-five? I give up. “How many inmates do you have, exactly?” I ask.

  We come to a portcullis-like door, and she pauses, fumbling with an implausibly large key ring. “Eighteen, at last count,” she says. “Come on, we don’t want to annoy Matron. She doesn’t like people obstructing the corridors.” There are steel rails recessed into the floor, like a diminutive narrow-gauge railway. The corridor walls are painted institutional cream, and I notice after a moment that the light is coming through windows set high up in the walls: odd-looking devices like armored-glass chandeliers hang from pipes, just out of reach. “Gas lamps,” Renfield says abruptly. I twitch. She’s noticed my surreptitious inspection. “We can’t use electric ones, except for Matron, of course. Come into my office, I’ll fill you in.”

  We go through another door—oak, darkened with age, looking more like it belongs in a stately home than a Lunatick Asylum, except for the two prominent locks—and suddenly we’re in mahogany row: thick wool carpets, brass doorknobs, light switches, and overstuffed armchairs. (Okay, so the carpet is faded with age and transected by mor
e of the parallel rails: but it’s still Officer Country.) Renfield’s office opens off one side of this reception area, and at the other end I see closed doors and a staircase leading up to another floor. “This is the administrative wing,” she explains as she opens her door. “Tea or coffee?”

  “Coffee, thanks,” I say, sinking into a leather-encrusted armchair that probably dates to the last but one century. Renfield nods and pulls a discreet cord by the doorframe, then drags her office chair out from behind her desk. I can’t help notice that not only does she not have a computer, but her desk is dominated by a huge and ancient manual typewriter—an Imperial Aristocrat ‘66’ with the wide carriage upgrade and adjustable tabulator, I guess, although I’m not really an expert on office appliances that are twice as old as I am—and one wall is covered in wooden filing cabinets. There might be as much as thirty megabytes of data stored in them. “You do everything on paper, I understand?”

  “That’s right.” She nods, serious-faced. “Too many of our clients aren’t safe around modern electronics. We even have to be careful what games we let them play—Lego and Meccano are completely banned, obviously, and there was a nasty incident involving a game of Cluedo, back before my time: any board game that has a nondeterministic set of rules can be dangerous in the wrong set of hands.”

  The door opens. “Tea for two,” says Renfield. I look round, expecting an orderly, and freeze. “Mr. Howard, this is Nurse Gearbox,” she adds. “Nurse Gearbox, this is Mr. Howard. He is not a new admission,” she says hastily, as the thing in the doorway swivels its head toward me with a menacing hiss of hydraulics.