My name Koran, Koran Bonelli to be exact, it's been many years but only recently, I managed to put hands on the diary of my old friend Alex and I can now, with precision and pain, to tell you this story gruesome perhaps the result of a fatal intersection of chance, or perhaps part of a universe far more savage and hostile to what we believe .
years were devoted to pure research which we used, me and Alex , stroll along the courtyard of department of physics whenever he returned the summer. Even more relaxing, gentle walk in the night temperature was looking at the stars. Me and Alex were in charge of a project aimed at finding new forms of life and as tools to we could not wish for better: we had full control of a series of powerful radio telescopes which task was to probe deep space day and night in a moltutitudine directions then transmitting, the radio signals received at the central computer that analyzing tried evidence of a form of intelligent life . An ethereal chaos to unravel a knot indecipherable. Needless to say, employ our students in the most boring jobs such as maintenance or dismissed out of hand signals that gave negative results right away from the computer. The amount of data was so large that it takes almost a sixty men at work briefcase and a day after all the failures were quite content.
Our office, as well as the headquarters mainframe consisted of two desks on either side of the room positioned in opposite directions, while in the middle, lying on the wall, lay a-video terminal connected to our electronic giant. The position of the desk made sure that our eyes could never come together in some form of distraction and I swear, there was no place quieter and more inclined to search for that lab. The silence was broken only by a printer located at the side of the terminal, it prints on a huge roll paper to the most significant and signals interesting.
Time passed and for a very long period, the radio telescopes yielded no results. At the beginning of the project it often happens that some of the students did peek at the door of our office believes that the printouts, we already rigorously inspected, there was a signal that could be due to a form of extraterrestrial life . systematically rebut this presumption, and soon we were bored and increasingly disaffected. In winter we used to walk back and forth in our office covered with carpet with long silences watching the monitor of the terminal on green phosphors until one day, one fateful day there was something extraordinary , something unique unrepeatable . Printouts of the computer from among thousands of other trivial signals appeared an inscription:
"answer".
This seemed pointless, pushed through the idea that it was a joke or a failure, this was due to the fact that there was a radio telescope dedicated to data transmission only. These data translated into radio consisted in sentences identical to those received as well as some pictures and small descriptions of the earth and maps of the human race. A few days passed and again the fact happened. Asked all our students, Alex in particular was very angry and was convinced that someone would make fun of us and that was how to end almost all the staff / student went away because of the tremendous mood swings Alex . Needless to say, and I Alex had to make an unimaginable amount of work and now lived in our office day and night with our beards and our eyes were not treated red stripes from sleep.
One morning Alex told me it was time to change the signal to be transmitted and a joke or annoyance to insert the following sentence:
"here and alex koran from the earth, answer intergalactic slime .
A week went by and between all the signals analyzed, we found the following message:
ugly joke, settle accounts. "
was then that Alex and I went on a rampage: it was almost certainly a joke. Settacciammo the configuration of radio telescopes but there seemed to be no anomaly were screened inexorably deeper into space, thus we checked all cables and connections, but there was nothing I did think of an intrusion by some saboteur. A real enigma . launched another message:
" alex koran and are very angry. "
Ben two weeks later while we were sleeping on the carpet of the office we got the following response:
" .. . I wish it could still angry alex ...".
What chilling response came from the cold and deep space? arguing almost immediately
" Who are you? ".
The answer this time came a few days later:
"are koran, who are you? If alex could be here ...".
All this was beyond our comprehension , we were naïve, we thought it was a joke and was still so out of boredom we decided to spend time with this absurd situation. We sent another message:
"if you're koran who are we? alex here and koran .
Answer:
" alex is dead. koran I am. "
So it was definitely a joke in bad taste. One night Alex drunk surmise that we were actually communicating with ourselves and the universe was a mirror where once it reaches its borders (not so remote as the signal bounced off a couple of days) crossed an area where was projected another universe but with a greater time shift, in practice it was the future. We laughed at and swore to write an article about this gambling alcohol.
something happened that marked my life forever, after a few months Alex died due to a car accident and after the mourning ripresomi tried again, taken by anxiety and the fumes of alcohol, to send another message:
" alex is dead."
Answer:
"I know.."
I communicated at length with this remote party and by the time I plugged it into the facts and convinced that the hypothesis of Alex was not a joke and that I was probably communicating with a projected myself into the future. Alas we had not taken into account his warnings especially Koran that I, on the other side of the universe probably did not realize that they are talking with his namesake. I gave him alcohol in an increasingly strong and one day, one day I gave fire to the office mainframe including losing the precious unique and unrepeatable coordinates transmission.
Now you believe me a fool, I found an old wardrobe full of notes and journal papers on the work of my former colleague Alex . I decided to disclose this matter that can never be proven or demonstrated. What I want is to live in peace, but sometimes I want to understand how my past choices have an impact on my future. Better not to know.
