A new technology allows us to visualize radio signals as expanding bubbles in space, that is, to intercept radio frequencies over vast areas, so naturally we scan the stars.
We discover that a massive portion of the galaxy is covered in an amorphous blob of white noise. The blob has no center and unclear boundaries. 1/
@futurebird When we were all waiting for Arizona to finish counting their vote in 2020 I had an idea for a sci-fi short story where the election for President of the Colonised Worlds was having to wait decades for the result to come in from distant star systems, the signal traveling at light speed, and the vaccuums of information and power existing in that time, but I couldn't really work the idea into a proper story
@pontulo@futurebird I could see it being where those running either zip up to near light speed, or do some sort of cryo sleep. Which I assume makes for interesting times for those that lost.
Also, how is the current government run? Do they get up to near ftl speeds, and govern for decades?
If there is an emergency, they slow down to real time?
The blob is expanding, not unlike the radio bubble expanding from earth. But our bubble is a neat sphere with a clear center, and the signals contain intelligible order.
The blob signal is just white noise, much of it similar to radio signals from natural sources like stars... but no stars could create a signal bubble with such a shape or strength.
It dawns on us that someone is trying very hard to mask their signals and locations. 2/
Dozens of crafts would have been deployed to catch up with the signals they sent out when they, like us, discovered radio, and these ships had one task: confuse the signal, erase it. And destroy any evidence of a center.
But, we think we can find the center-- using some fancy math... but what could the actions of our cosmic neighbors mean? Are we fools for not doing something similar?
Being annoying humans we resolve to go and ask them.
@futurebird When we do ask them, they say that they did it because they, just like us, found a blob and thought there must be a reason why that other civilization was masking their signals. They went and asked, but it turns out that other civilization also did it because they found a blob, and when they went and asked, it turned out that...
@futurebird
A few die-hard pessimists point out that anyone who can do this could make a laser using the same tech without any great difficulty.
A laser of comparable power.
The same people wonder out loud why anyone with that sort of capability... appears to be hiding from something.
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