Decoding my first Thargoid Link
13 Nov 2020Abexuro
Getting involvedAfter a day's work I found myself discussing Thargoid technology with some fellow commanders of the Turning The Wheel initiative. I had read quite a few of the papers that were published by the Canonn Interstellar Research Group over the years. I had dabbled with some of the tools required for data analysis, even fought an Interceptor head on. But never had I gone out there and look for their structures, their technology. After some interesting discussions and a few drinks I was getting ready to leave when I was approached by commander Micha Maverick. They had overheard some of the conversation and were looking for help. They had just recovered a Thargoid Link from one of the planetary structures and needed someone with the right tools to analyze the data.
A first transmission
The next day we went out and dropped to normal space in a quiet part of the system. We needed as little interference as possible to get a clean transmission from the Link. It took a few attempts but I managed to position my ship just right and in front of the Link's dish-antenna and played the request message.
This is the start of the recording that includes my ship interface and the start of the Link's response:
The frequency range is a lot higher to get the full image in view, all the way up to 15kHz, the actual data packets are best analyzed with a limit of 5kHz.
In the image, the left system is Merope, the right system is Col 70 Sector FY-N c21-3, the bottom system is my current location and the top system is the target location this Link is pointing to.
Now for the actual data:
There are 3 main chunks, each comprised of sets of 3 bits and a separator. The bits can be distinguished by an audible difference in pitch, as well as visibly in the spectrogram.
The actual data:
| LLL HLH | / | HHL LLL LHL |
| HLH HLL | / | LHL HHH |
| LHL | / | LHH |
This translates the data into this:
| 111010/001111101 | = | 58/125 |
| 010011/101000 | = | 19/40 |
| 101/100 | = | 5/4 |
This means that the target is:
- 58/125*871=404Ly from Merope
- 19/40*871=413Ly from the current system
- 5/4*871=1088Ly from Col 70 Sector FY-N c21-3
After this we got our target system and all there's left to do is plot a route...