Tangle in the Dark - Kassidor

would have to decode some information out of it. I seegeometry here.”“I feel I have come as far as we did with those signalsfrom the study planet.”“Alan made that all up,” she told him. “You know that. Ihave the whole interface library in the data from the capturedavatar.”“He made up the humans and all the pretty animals, butthere was something in the ruins of that planet and thosecrystal balls on poles, those signals were real.""They were part of the hack.""We looked at those ourselves," he said."He got into the hardware data of the perception buses,we can't trust anything we saw with our own eyes.""The Brazilians claim it was all real.""They can say what they will, but I don’t think so. ThoseBrazilians became infected as soon as they touched the hulkwe left behind. That silicon was heavily contaminated rightinto the foundry blanks. That hack took over their ancient anddefenseless electronics in microseconds. Of course they thinkthey’ve found the same thing.”“They disappeared into the population my dear,” Thomsaid, there was still an interstellar channel open with theBrazilian expedition at 61 Cygni and Gordon’s Lamp wasable to monitor all the traffic on it. “We were duped!” healmost shouted, “and you can’t admit it, not even toyourself.”137