Come Find Me(25)

I’m only seeing a video of his data, so I can’t get the numbers exact, but I can get a rough estimate. And it looks like the spike happens every three seconds.

    I wonder now whether the pattern means something.

I look at the math study guide again. A bunch of questions asking me to Calculate the area, Calculate the circumference. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, and my spine straightens.

The geometry of a circle. Pi. It’s a universal ratio between the circumference and diameter of any circle: 3.14. The numbers go on and on from there, to infinity. Could it be?

I’m sure there’s something more to pi than what I know from Algebra 2, so I look it up online, more convinced than ever.

It’s an irrational number, unable to be expressed as a common fraction. Well, this is an irrational event.

It’s a transcendental number, whatever that means. But also: this is a transcendental event.

I dump everything into my bag, preparing to go. My hands are shaking as I hit Reply.

I wish I were better at math. I hope KJ is better. I’m sure he is, with a radio telescope pointed at the sky. I’m guessing astronomy requires a lot of math.

I’m hoping he’s open to suggestions on this, though, because there is no way this signal in my house is coming from outer space. It’s my brother’s room. KJ is wrong. It’s related, but he’s wrong.

My brother trying to tell me something. With the fever dream. With this.

I need to go back to the scene of his disappearance, where he must’ve slipped through. If this is a clue, this pattern, this pi, I wonder if Liam’s trying to tell me something about how he disappeared, or why. If he can’t breach the barrier with language, but with math.

    I write quickly:


I think I know what we’re missing. Like you said, it’s the timing. Every three seconds or so—could it be pi? 3.14, etc, etc. That’s some universal constant, right? For something to do with circles? Wouldn’t it make sense, if something was trying to speak to us but they couldn’t just speak to us, they’d do it with math?


PS—Has it occurred to you that maybe the signal isn’t coming from space? (Could it be something closer? Say, whatever’s in my house?)


PPS—I don’t know what the 37th parallel north is exactly, except I think I’m on it, too. But for clarity’s sake, I’ll say this instead: I’m in Virginia.



I read it over and laugh at my use of etc, etc. Maybe he’ll think I’m smarter than I am, talking like that. I don’t know why this is funny. The moment feels irrational. Transcendental.

As if I, Nolan Chandler, am finally onto something.





The one thing I wanted to do at the house tonight was to look through Elliot’s notes, to try to understand. To see if I could figure out what was happening on December fourth, while I was gone.

By the time I arrive at the house, though, and hide my bike under the shadow of the front porch, I have a new message on the forum. But I can only check with my phone, since the house no longer has Internet.

I read it on the way to the shed around back, where I’ve left the box of Elliot’s notes, with my bag slung over my shoulder.

There are two things that stick out in the message. That make me freeze. That make the goose bumps rise across my arms.

The first: pi. How did I not see that? I’m practically running to the computer out back to see if he’s right, when I notice the second part of his message: Virginia.

Holy. Crap.

    So what if he doesn’t want to think this is coming from space? I’ll deal with that later. There’s no way this radio telescope picks up something from his house. It’s pointing at the sky. Anyway, he’s mapping electromagnetic fields, and I’m documenting radio frequencies. We’re not even looking at the same thing.

There’s something more important here. The location. And the pattern itself. Pi. Holy crap, I think he might be right.

I write back immediately, telling him I’m in the process of confirming, and then I tell him the name of my county before I can stop myself and think about whether this is a good idea or not.

For a second, I wonder if he’s some master computer hacker or something, who has hacked into my forum account, has seen where I was sending my message from, and has responded accordingly. If he’s doing this to play me, prey on me. But then I think of his notes about his brother, the video with the blue wall, and no. It’s not possible.

We have something here. Something real.



* * *



—

The problem with Elliot’s equipment is that it isn’t exactly the highest-tech equipment in the world. This began as some independent project last summer, before the start of his freshman year of college, and it took on a life of its own after that—he brought at least one friend back from college to see it: I saw them at night after, lying on their backs, looking up at the stars.

It’s an old satellite dish, plus scraps he acquired from various old electronics, and a computer program I think he partly copied and partly made himself, and I’m having difficulty pulling the exact times from the readout. But I think Visitor357 is right, even with my inexact calculations. It’s definitely right around three seconds. And he’s right; that’s close enough that it could be pi.