Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2007 10:16:47 -0500 From: "Maggie Hutchison" THE BEAUTIFUL GALACTIC GAME PROLOGUE Juan Carlos Arena Vega took a long, deep breath of the chilled night air as he gazed into the depths of Milky Way. He stood at the edge of the drop-off at the base of the main observatory dome. Only a small guardrail separated him from the plunge of nearly a thousand feet. The black night, peppered with a myriad of pinpoint stars and painted with great celestial clouds seemed to envelop him, lifting him from the face of the Earth. He could imagine himself flying, soaring through the universe, reaching out. Reaching out to find the others. Whoever they were, whatever they were, they had to be out there, somewhere. He could not accept that Humans were the sole inhabitants of Universe. No. Impossible. Es imposible. Growing up in Santiago, Chile, the stars had been faint flickers through the city’s haze -- of no consequence to a young boy who cared only about his friends and beating them at a good game of futbol. Soccer, in fact, had been his life and his passion. he followed his favorite teams and cheered the Chilean National Team, la Roja, in all of its competitions. And he vowed that, he too, one day, would feel the roar of the crowd as they cheered on their team. Stars, faint lights in a hazy evening sky, meant nothing to him. until, that is, he took a hiking trip with his father when he was seven. They drove to the Andean foothills and hiked straight up into Universe. He remembered it as if it were yesterday. They had driven into the national preserve in the midmorning, set up camp in a clearing that looked to the east, towards Argentina. They had hiked and explored until, tired from the altitude and excitement, he had slipped into his tent to sleep for several hours. When he awoke, it was night, but not the obscure darkness like back in Santiago, where lights from the city traffic forever filled his bedroom. No, it was black. For a brief moment, he panicked, screaming, crying frantically for his father. Papi had rushed into the tent, not bothering to locate a flashlight, to grab his son and comfort him, to remind him of where they were. “Ven,” he had said quietly, “Mira el Cielo.” Come. Look at the Heavens. Holding his father’s hand, he had slipped out of the tent and into a world he had never know existed. Stars, millions and millions of them, swarming across the black skies. At that instant in his life a new passion gipped him -- the desire to explore those vast Heavens and to reach out into the universe. Years later, after an injured knee ended for certain any true dream of being a “footballer,” he had focused on his other dream and had earned his masters in physics and astronomy. Now, he worked as one of the scientists at the La Silla Observatory. Their projects included a wide variety of objectives, including the search for earth-like planets around other stars. It was that concept that fascinated him the most. He knew, he just knew, that there had to be intelligent life out there, somewhere. Somewhere. So, as a personal project and as a diversion, he had built his own radio telescope, but not with the intention of listening for signals. No, he had another idea. Just for amusement. He created a short digital recording, and every evening, he aimed his radio telescope at a different location in the sky to transmit his recording out into space. He chose his coordinates at random, sometimes letting his computer choose or using numbers related to nonsensical things, such as the birth dates of Chilean Footballers. It as all just for fun, anyway. A joke, really, among the astronomers and scientists, because while he had included about three minutes of serious, scientific footage to describe the Earth, the majority of the recording consisted of highlights from the Chilean National Team’s victory over France in the 2010 World Cup quarter finals and ended with the words, “Viva la Roja!” *** The End