Well, maybe my machine was was displaying the “blue screen of
death” or something (Bill Gates often sends me messages that way at
work), but no, I’m running a Mac at home, not a PC, so that ruled
out a message from old Bill.
Having eliminated the obvious, I thought “Maybe SETI@home got an
alien message!” and after a bit of thought I was sure of it - the
aliens were trying to get in touch with us through my computer!
The message was just a bunch of periods, x’s, n’s and w’s. No
“take me to your leader” or “Would you like to join the galactic
federation?” or anything I could make heads or tails of, but I just
knew the aliens had hidden a message in there somewhere.
I tried decoding the message for a while and finally fell asleep
with the problem on my mind. In the morning, I realized the aliens
had been sending me another message telepathically while I was
asleep (I was so engrossed in the problem that I forgot to put on
my tinfoil hat that night). The message I received in my sleep was
(just as I had thought) that earth humans are being tested for
possible admission to the Greater Galactic Geocaching Association
(GGGA) as 0th class members (out of 8 possible classes).
The aliens have hidden a cache for us to find! To prove our
worthiness to join the GGGA, we geocachers must demonstrate that we
are able to locate simple difficulty 0 caches (theirs go to a
maximum difficulty of 63; I normally sleep 7 hours a night, so the
aliens didn’t have nearly enough time to finish explaining what a
difficulty 1 cache was, let alone the galactic coordinate system
we’d need to find one. It was something about locating a cache in
four full dimensions and two rolled-up dimensions though).
To make the test easy enough for primates, they even placed two
caches on the planet Earth (they knew about the cost of gas these
days and cut us a break), and of all places, near the state
capitals of South Carolina and Nebraska(there must be a faction in
the GGGA that wants to exclude earth since the aliens chose places
with such a high population of politicians for an intelligence
test!!). They did however make it simple enough for us to locate
with our primitive GPS equipment by using a coordinate system we
are all familiar with.
OK, we need to get a lot of geocachers to find this cache quick.
Of course, the cache isn't at the above location. I had to make up
some sort of coordinates for the website, but the aliens didn't
make it THAT easy (besides, I already looked there).
I don’t know what the aliens have left for us, but we should
leave things that would interest the aliens and show what
interesting goodies we would bring to the galactic caches if we get
to join.
I copied the message down carefully – this is it:
.NNN......NN......NNN...N.......NNN....NNN...N.............
..................N...N....N.N.....N...N..N......N...N..N..
.N..N...................................N...N..N.....N...N.
.N......N..........N..N.................................NN.
..N...N.....N...N..N......NNNN.....NN...N..................
.................N..NNNNN.....N...N..N......N...N......N..N
...............................N...N......N.....N...NWWX..N
X..N...XWWN...N.WX......W...WWW....WWW............NNN......
.N......NNN...N..NN...NNNW...XNNW..N..W...W....W.W......W..
W...W..W...W.............................................W.
..W..W.....W...W...W..W......W..W...W..W...................
...............................WWW...W.....W...W..W...W....
..W..W...W..WWWW...........................................
...W...W..W.....W...W..WWWWW......W..W...W..W...W..........
...................................W...W..W.....W...W......
W..WW..W..W...W..W...W.....................................
.........WWW...W......WWW.......W..WW..W...WWW....WWW....
Go get 'em, earth geocachers!