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A mass of binary digits flashed into the air above their terminals. In a moment it resolved itself into hexadecimal notation. Then into a rasterized image that resembled static interference more than any kind of coherent picture.
"It doesn't scan well this way. But as a set of vector instructions, I find that it consistently gives me results like this."
And now picture after picture of genetic molecules appeared on the screen. "Why would anyone be transmitting genetic information?" said Val. "Maybe it's a kind of language," said Miro.
"Who could read a language like that?" asked Val.
"Maybe the kind of people who could create the descolada," said Miro.
"You mean they talk by manipulating genes?" said Val.
"Maybe they smell genes," said Miro. "Only they do it with incredible articulation. Subtlety and shade of meaning. Then when they started sending people up into space, they had to talk to them so they sent pictures and then from the pictures they reconstruct the message and, um, smell it."
"That's the most ass-backwards explanation I've ever heard," said Val.
"Well," said Miro, "like you said, you haven't lived very long. There are a lot of ass-backwards explanations in the world, and I doubt I hit the jackpot with that one."
"It's probably an experiment they're doing, sending data back and forth," said Val. "Not all the communications make up diagrams do they, Jane?"
"Oh, no, I'm sorry if I gave that impression. This was just a small class of data streams that I was able to decode in a meaningful way. There's this stuff that seems to me to be analog rather than digital, and if I make it into sound it's like this."
They heard the computers emit a series of staticky screeches and yips.
"Or if I translate it into bursts of light, it looks like this."
Whereupon their terminals danced with light, pulsing and shifting colors seemingly randomly. "Who knows what an alien language looks or sounds like?" said Jane.
"I can see this is going to be difficult," said Miro.