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By the time Liana was born, almost three hundred years had already passed since the Blood Storm of 2050 had killed most of the people on the planet, destroyed the machines, and laid to waste just about everything else. According to stories handed down from generation to generation, the computers and their power cells survived because they were deep underground when the cataclysm happened. How they came to be found and eventually brought to the surface, no one alive today knew for sure.
There were two bodies of information on the computers. One was a vast storehouse of data contained in millions of files, which spoke of many things that had existed or transpired on the planet in earlier times. Several years ago, someone figured out how to access these, and projects to classify and codify the information were begun. There were a limited number of computers available to view and study these documents though, so even with extensive hours of work put into it, it was a long process that would continue for many years.
Initially, it was considered that everything found in a file was factual just because it was there and spoken of or shown, but in the winnowing of information over the years, it became obvious that some things were true, while others were only creatively written, but fictional stories about science.
One of the last entries that had been made in one of the files told how the Blood Storm was brought about by terrible weapons of mass destruction in the form of great and powerful bombs hurled every which way in a full global war. Information like that though was clearly not true, as no people in their right minds would create such things, let alone throw them at each other. Fictional things like that were relegated to the interesting, entertaining, but “not useful” category.
There were many factual scientific items however that would ultimately be of great value once enough information was recovered about how exactly they worked. Even though it would likely be hundreds of years before the resources could even be developed to build such things again, the current generation of people knew that it was their responsibility, and would be the responsibility of those who followed them, to work ceaselessly and bit by bit unearth the data and organize it into useful form.
One item of strongly focused research had to do with devices pre-cataclysm called time machines. The earliest mention of time travel found so far was by a man named H.G. Wells, who wrote about the existence of one such machine as far back as 1895. There were many mentions of these later as well. If the full information about how these devices worked could be recovered so that they could be built again, it could change the fate of mankind. Unfortunately, despite the numerous writings about time machines that had been found, the data on how to actually build one remained sketchy at best.
Other items of great interest were the different types of intelligent, but non-human life forms that had once inhabited Earth at the same time as man. There was, for instance, a race of creatures called Vampires. They were similar to humans in appearance, but could live for centuries. The implications of this for future generations of man were staggering, but any really useful information on how they did this had not yet been coaxed out of the computer files.
Even more fascinating was an entire race of entities from what appeared to be some sort of odd looking, parallel universe to earth. These beings often had strange physical shapes and incredible abilities never seen in humans. Over the years of siphoning information from the files, certain representatives of this parallel universe had appeared repeatedly in the moving pictures of them, so it was assumed they had some special importance or standing. One was called Mickey Mouse, one was called Mighty Mouse, one was called Bullwinkle, and there were others as well. Like the vampires though, the information on how these people or creatures could do what they could do, continued to elude the researchers.
Liana’s job involved not the millions of computer files, but the other body of information that appeared on the computers called the Symbol Stream. It was because of this that there was unending speculation and argument about whether or not the computers were living entities in some way.
A computer screen remained blank until someone typed certain things on a keyboard and then tapped on other things, which brought up one of the data files. Nothing ever appeared on a screen without a person summoning it forth through these procedures. The exception to this was the Symbol Stream. Sometimes, when a computer was turned on, or even as one of the files sat open on the screen, columns of some kind of code would suddenly appear and start to scroll down the screen. This flow of symbols might last for minutes, hours or days, and once begun, could not be stopped through any means employed by the user, except to turn off the computer. When the computer was turned back on, if the stream had not already finished running of its own accord, it would still be there. No one knew what this was, why it was, or where it came from.
It was believed by some that the computers were living entities and that the symbol stream was their means of communication with each other, but the majority believed it was sent from a location not of earth and that it was an attempt to communicate with people here. Analyzers had been attempting to decode the symbols for many years, because a civilization that could send a message over such a great distance would have greatly advanced technology and thus held out much hope for the future of earth. Up to this time, the meaning of the symbols in the four scrolling columns of code had never been deciphered.
Liana job was to watch a stream when it occurred and record any changes or new symbols that appeared, as often the streams just repeated the same thing for hours or days on end. She’d been observing this one for two days now, when something unprecedented happened. The stream briefly stopped, and when it resumed, one of the four columns now appeared in ordinary English. The other three had changed into languages she had seen in files about other countries. Whether these communications were from the mind of some living, sentient computer or from living beings in places unimaginable distances from earth, one thing was clear: whoever sent them had finally found a way to get through to man.