The only way

Ralph entered the premises of hangar No. 1 at 8:30 in the morning, as he had been doing this daily for several years. His gaze immediately went to the center of the hall, where on the pedestal, surrounded by many devices and a web of cables, was the meaning of his work. In fact, not only him - millions of people around the world. The first alien ship. A decade and a half ago, he made an emergency landing and was partially damaged, leaving, however, a lot of material to study. The real miracle was that politicians and scientists after this event did not quarrel, but were able to organize an effective study of a gift that fell from heaven. The reverse minds of the ship threw the best minds of the planet. Ralph, the head of the communications instrument research team, was in the hangar and once again admired the ship’s rapid, arrow-like form. He remembered everything

Almost immediately, it became clear that the technical thought of the creators of the apparatus went far ahead. It was found, nevertheless, in an alien technique and something familiar. Year after year, scientists studied the ship, tried to restore its individual nodes - and over time, something began to turn out. First managed to get inside. Unfortunately, the ship turned out to be unmanned, so it was not possible to meet inside the living or even dead aliens. Then, little by little, other secrets began to be revealed: the composition of the body material, the principle of operation of the engines, the purpose of some auxiliary mechanisms. The great fortune turned out to be the intact state of the on-board computer - it was possible to turn it on and even eventually to remove all the information stored inside. Of course, she was in completely unfamiliar alien and machine languages, but general coding principles were soon decrypted. For a decade and a half in an alien ship, almost everything was understood. The engine operation mechanism turned out to be very complicated, and the engines themselves were damaged, but work has already begun on building their own, similar ones. But even according to the most optimistic forecasts, there were still several tens of years before the end of these works. Another success was the discovery of the principles of super-long-distance communication. The elegant theory of T-waves made it possible to send messages instantly to arbitrary distances, leaving relativism far in the wake with its ridiculous belief in the maximum speed of light. Secrets receded one after the other - star charts, ship's “black box” records, algorithms for the operation of on-board systems, device sensors.

A few weeks ago, the first T-wave communications station was completed. Finally, it became possible to send a message to the creators of the ship. To this, however, because of the imperfection of the new technology, it was necessary to throw all the energy of the planet - and even this was barely enough to transfer several kilobytes of data, and half an hour to wait for an answer. But it was worth a try.

Or was it not worth it? The world is divided into two camps. The first believed that it was definitely necessary to make an attempt to communicate, greet the alien mind, report on the found ship, tell about yourself and wait for an answer. The latter were more careful. Their main argument was a few unsolved mysteries in an alien ship. For example, the purpose of his flight has still not been understood. According to the decrypted algorithms of the on-board systems, the ship was given the task of "flying forward, dodging obstacles." To infinity. Some nonsense! He was not supposed to return, he was not supposed to achieve any specific goal, he was not carrying passengers or cargo. Moreover, he fell solely due to an error in the flight control program (it turned out that a certain combination of the type of star, planet, the masses of its satellite and several other parameters threw the program into a branch with an uninitialized parameter - and this is precisely what led to the emergency landing). Or maybe this was the goal - when such a combination of parameters appeared - to sit down, enabling local residents to explore advanced technologies and get in touch? Or did the ship still fly somewhere, and this accident destroyed the important plans of aliens? In this case, they may be unhappy, they may fly in and pick up their property, they may make claims about the seizure and damage of their equipment, and in general - you never know how things will turn out ... It was scary. enabling locals to research cutting-edge technology and get in touch? Or did the ship still fly somewhere, and this accident destroyed the important plans of aliens? In this case, they may be unhappy, they may fly in and pick up their property, they may make claims about the seizure and damage of their equipment, and in general - you never know how things will turn out ... It was scary. enabling locals to research cutting-edge technology and get in touch? Or did the ship still fly somewhere, and this accident destroyed the important plans of aliens? In this case, they may be unhappy, they may fly in and pick up their property, they may make claims about the seizure and damage of their equipment, and in general - you never know how things will turn out ... It was scary.

After much debate, it was decided to get in touch. In the message, tell about the ship’s wreck and attach a detailed description of the found causes of the accident, emphasizing that no external impact on the ship was undertaken and the only reason for the emergency landing was an error in the subprogram (calculations and logs were attached). A time was set for sending a message, and at this key moment in history, the whole world froze, knowing that the available energy would be enough only for half an hour to wait for an answer, and hoping that it would come in that time.

...

The project manager for the creation of long-range UAVs Strela entered the premises of the on-board systems programming department and immediately called to the lead developer: “

Anton, again a message arrived. 7 minutes ago.
- Where from this time?
—Alfa Swan. More precisely necessary?
-Not. We sent only one prototype in that direction ... Wait a second ... Yes, KL-15300. What's in the message?
—Bagreport. Uninitialized variable. Very well composed, I tell you. I already looked through the source - they are right. Our bug.
“Well, let’s fix it.”
—Fix, of course. But what answer is this, with Alpha? They emphasized that they have little energy to wait for an answer.
—Standard form.
—Standard form? "Hello! Your appeal is very important to us, it was registered in our bugtracker under the number ... ", etc.? Oh well. But are you sure we are doing everything right? What is necessary?
“Andrew, we have discussed this a thousand times.”
“Yes, but ...”
“No, but you know this is no worse than me.” Many years have already passed since the cost of manufacturing equipment similar to our drones, and even much more complex, has become disproportionately low in comparison with the salary of human testers. Yes, we could hire a living person to find this bug with a forgotten variable, and he would spend on it - how much? Well, let 2 days work. At current rates, it's 500 ergs! And the creation of that drone cost us 15 ergs. Even though 9 out of 10 Strel prototypes are lost forever, the profit from the bug report of the tenth accident covers everything. You yourself know - it turned out that this is the only way.