The SAGE Hypothesis
James, I have a possible solution to what the anomaly looked like. I have been thinking about how to capture the SAGE signals — the oscilloscope traces that the technicians photographed onto film during the anomaly event.
The idea: photograph the oscilloscope on film, develop and dry it in 30 seconds, then display it on the large screen in the control center.
Another source of film that was fed into the machine learning training model.
Notice it starts out in a learning mode — creating cells and then they start forming symbols and letters. They are never going to be clear because of the film deterioration.
But notice the last frame.
James said, "I see a series of letters. What! How... Could it be?"
The letters in the last frame of the oscilloscope recording — run through the machine learning model trained on 60 years of degraded film — spelled something.
Not random noise. Not equipment artifact. A deliberate pattern embedded in what the SAGE network had recorded in 1959.
The Entity had been there. It had used the SAGE computers' own recording equipment to leave a message. The oscilloscope traces — faithfully photographed by technicians who had no idea what they were capturing — contained coordinates.
Coordinates in time, not space.
"The machine was not detecting a foreign aircraft. It was detecting a foreign intelligence — one that was traveling through the network itself."
— James, theoretical physicist, North Bay research team, 1959
See the next art piece at Async.art — the chapter continues in visual form.