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Michael considered fate at 14:58   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment

Imagine, if you will, a room somewhere deep within the headquarters of a very large corporation. Down in the sublevels somewhere near the mailroom and the copy room but nowhere near the top floor. Not even close to middle-management. Imagine that in this room there is a telephone hooked up to an old tape-driven answering machine from the early 90's. Imagine that the door on this room, although unlocked, is closed and the seal between the door and the frame is enough to block any light from coming through. People walk by all the time but they are all peons, grunts, and gophers of the lowest kind and they rarely enter this room - in fact no one knows what it is for. Occasionally someone might slip into it to sneak a cigarette before their government mandated 15 minute break but otherwise it's entirely empty.

Now Imagine me living on a far off planet somewhere out past the far reaches of the solar system, out past beetlejuice even. Imagine that I live on this planet by myself as so many space-hermits do in countless sci-fi novels. Imagine I'm a recluse.

Finally, imagine that I manage to construct a transmission device to communicate with other planets but having limited resources it only works by imprinting messages on early 90's answering machine tapes. Imagine, as well, that a malfunction in the machine's security module causes it to recognize only one specific answering machine - the machine found in the recesses of the very large corporate headquarters outlined above.

Now that you've done all this imagining it won't be much of a stretch to imagine me using this machine to leave messages on the answering machine in the deep dark sublevel of the corporate headquarters in the hope that I may make contact with some form of intelligent life. In fact, my ultimate dream would be to be able to confirm that I have indeed connected with someone, somewhere. Some peon, grunt, or gopher. Anyone at all, really.

Imagine that, on occasion, a particularly disgruntled employee of the very large corporation might waste away some hours hiding out in the room deep within the headquarters and that, becoming bored with staring at the wall, they might begin to play with the answering machine - might, in fact, actually listen to those messages imprinted onto the tape by a device located several millions of miles away.

Now this last part requires no imagination. Answering machines record messages. They are not two-way communication machines. Despite the amazing technology in the device used to send messages to this particular answering machine there is no technology to either assure the message was received or assure that the message was even listened to.

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