“So it was for nothing?” Third asks the team of developers as they sat with cramped expressions.
Gary shared their expression from beside Third as he read over the result that the two-day-long expenditure had provided them. ‘0 total results, 0 possible natural gas deposits, 0 possible oil deposits, 0 possible coal deposits, 0 possible thermo-geological deposits, 255 possible anomalies.’
“Why won’t anyone say anything?” Third reiterates whipping around the table with his eyes in hopes someone might have something positive to add. He refused to believe it could all be negative. “What about anomalies? Are those anything?”
“Well if the number were anything else maybe I’d say it was worth looking at.” Frank answers with a shake of his head. “255 is probably an integer overflow. The program found so many anomalies that it just bounced off the highest number it could count to.”
“255?” Third asks trying to find a mathematical significance but failing.
“From 0 to 255, are all the possible numbers a single byte of data can store,” Derek explains, scattering a handful of sugar packets across the table and pointing to the final one in the line.
“If the program tries to count to 256 without proper interger overflow protection,” Tracing his finger around the previous packets and landing back on the first in the line he continues. “Then it would just revert back to zero, like the odometer of a car.”
“That’s not how it works,” Sven mutters with a confused expression painting his face. “This is python, the integers are arbitrary.”
“Yeah a lot of it’s Python, but C# is the entire basis of Uptick. And Uptick is the only reason the algorithm can tell what it’s looking at.” Frank explains to the junior developer with a roll of his eyes.
“EH!?” Sven almost yelps in shock. “Didn’t I spend fourteen hours rewriting that shit in Python? Who tapes a music note to a snake?”
“What?” Frank exclaims in utter shock. “Did you? Let me see.”
“Eh sure, s’easy.” Sven explains with a smug grin. It had not been easy. But that didn’t need to be said. Pulling a laptop from his nearby bag, Sven wiggles the cursor and begins maneuvering to the project files for Frank to see.
Only Third seemed to be connecting the dots. Or perhaps only he was willing to voice them.
“Okay, well all that aside.” Third begins pointing to the final packet of sugar in the now messy line. “If all you just said means that the program could count higher than 255, does that mean these anomalies could be something? And not just a glitch or bug?”
“Well,” Derek begins before formulating a more complete answer than that.
“Could be something like, nothing.” Sven shrugs carelessly. “If the program finds something that doesn’t make sense. It’s anomaly.”
“I mean,” Third begins to say as he glances out the window momentarily. “Does anything make sense here? Who’s to say the oil deposits here ‘make sense’?”
“Well, then we are better off pointing our drills under our feet and drilling.” Gary sighs before exploring the thought a bit more. Geothermal power was an industry they’d explored in the past. It wasn’t the cheapest electricity to gather but with options narrowing choices would need to be made quickly.
“Let's see them.” Third continues. “Put them on the screen.”
“There won’t be a ton to see, it’s a list of coordinates.” Derek explains glancing at Ted and motioning for him to pull up the database ‘floor six’ had spit out.
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“With Python it’s easy.” Sven interrupts again with a snicker. Stabbing away at his keyboard for a handful of moments he eventually raises his head and looks at Ted. “Location?”
“11.0.0.155, Z: drive, Geo-report.CSV”
“Fuckin’ .CSV,” Sven mutters under his breath at the accursed file format as he taps away on the keyboard. “Done.”
Gripping for an HDMI cable from the meeting table he waits for the screen to flicker before finally executing the code.
“First anomaly,” Sven begins as the code converts the Comma Separated Value from the database into a frame captured via the UAVs.
The image was dark which made it unclear why the program had even identified it as an anomaly.
“Here’s with the IR sweep and Radar superimposed.” Sven continues as he presses another key on the laptop.
Now it became clear why it was considered an anomaly. Under the sparsely treed underbrush and growth, strange geometric shapes could be seen with the addition of the Radar to better highlight the depressions and rises.
“Ruins, maybe?” Derek ponders as he connects a few of the shapes in his head and attempts to visualize what the structure that might have sat above the odd foundations would look like.
“It’s not oil.” Frank points out to the group who weren’t asking.
“But it works.” Third reasons with a shrug. “Maybe it just needs to see more.”
“We fed it every inch of scans we’d gathered, nearly three million square miles!”
“Anomaly two.” Sven continues, ignoring the rising emotions and curiously continuing to browse. “Now, with IR and Radar.”
This image was just a mess. It was just a wide meadow but the radar data had somehow become scrambled, the heightmap looked more like television static than any coherent image.
“Vibration,” Gary explains, getting a few nods from across the table.
“Anomaly three.”
This continued with varied results for around twenty minutes before patience ran extremely short. Three of the software team who’d collectively gotten less than four hours of sleep over the past few days had finally had enough and decided to go to sleep. And Frank, who’d been testy ever since the result was displayed had stormed off to smoke his last cigarette.
“Anomly…” Sven yawns out an unrecognizable number and taps through the commands mindlessly.
“D…”
“Dragon?” Derek asks with glowing eyes as they all attempt to wrap their head around the brightly glowing IR blob superimposed over the image.
It wasn’t crystal clear, but none of them could identify the mass as shaped like anything but a dragon. With a serpent-like tail and a long beak-like snout, the image of such a creature existing was completely unbelievable.
“Sven, this isn’t a joke is it?”
“I’m good,” Sven begins to explain with a shake of his head. “But I’m not… Eh, well.”
Seemingly unable to complete the sentence, Sven starts over. “Not a joke. This is the data.”
“My god. We really are in a different world.” Gary mutters in disbelief as he tilts his head back and forth to fully take in the heat signature.
“Is there a way to tell how deep underground it is?” Third asks, worrying they’d have more on the horizon to worry about.
“Not without knowing the dragon’s ambient temperature,” Sven explains with a shrug. “Could guess based on ground temperature and soil composition. But it would be wrong.”
“Right, gotcha.”
Giving the dragon no more time, Sven slaps a key loading the next anomaly in the sequence. “Anomaly 212.”
The image they saw was a first. Most of the glitches were either with the radar misinterpreting something like vibration or a high-flying bird, or the IR scanner assuming a large creature is something it isn’t. This one however had a visual glitch. It looked as if a small section of the camera sensor was blinded somehow.
“Weird,” Sven murmurs as he flips the image to its IR and Radar versions. “The glitch persists.”
Just as he said, the same spot that showed up blank in the image, showed up bright red on the IR sensor.
Only the Radar remained untouched by the strange anomaly. Although even that, with a closer look indicated a small divot exactly where the other two had placed it.
“It’s not a glitch.” Third says without a single piece of evidence to back up his claim.
“It’s not,” Ted confirms, rising from his chair and stepping closer to the screen with heavy footfalls. “It’s tar. A tar pit.”
“Oh my god.” Gary gasps as he reaches the conclusion nearly simultaneously. The shock soon switches to joy as a wide grin grows across his cheeks.
“Can we burn tar?” Third asks, unwilling to let the others’ excitement sway his own.
“Not exactly, but where there’s tar there’s oil,” Gary explains with a quick shake of his head. “Tar is what’s left over when oil seeps to the surface and the lighter compounds boil off naturally. If that’s a tar pit, then all we need to do is trace the fault line it's seeping from.”
“If we can tap the deposit-feeding that, we’ll never have fuel worries again.” Derek gleefully adds with a strange giggle.
“I don’t know, that’s thinking a bit too small, isn’t it?” Third asks, drawing more than a few odd glances from around the table. But he ignored them, thinking it silly to argue over it.
It wouldn’t be long before they all realized the truth behind his words. This could only be the beginning.