Guardian Of The Gate: The Ratio

Eldon needed the tape examined by an expert. After a short phone call, he had an appointment to meet with Wanda Evers, a sound technician who worked for a Lehigh Valley filmmaker. She kept a small studio in her Franklin Township home where she taped and edited her podcasts. Eldon arrived with three reels of magnetic tape in his backpack – the recording of the abnormality, an older recording of the Crab Pulsar, and a “blank sky” recording. After several minutes of coffee and conversation, the two old friends adjourned to Wanda’s studio.

Wanda loaded all three sound profiles into her computer. “This will be a first. I’m usually asked to remove noise from a recording, which is what the first pass will accomplish. But this will be the first time that I will be removing a significant signal from a recording to look at some noise.” After a few passes, the software was able to remove the noise of the pulsar and the background radiation from the recent recording. The remaining signal was almost musical. But the question of whether it was deliberate remained. Wanda emailed the resulting digital file to Eldon.

Eldon opened the email on his laptop and listened to the rhythmic clicking emanating from its speakers. “It looks like what I thought were glitches were actually instances of signal interference between the pulsar and whatever this is.”

“Based on my quick calculations, the signal-to-noise ratio is one point one between the pulsar and the new signal. If you figure out what it is, could you let me in on it?”

“It could be nothing, maybe a satellite flyby or the ISS. I’ll have to check out what was up where first, but I promise not to leave you hanging. Now, about this documentary you were working on.”