Chapter 17: Deciphering the Omega Records(Edited)

[Rohan POV]

After returning, I went to my room. For the next hour, I carefully cleaned and polished the Phonograph, even got a new sharp needle, put it together, then loaded in the record cylinder to play.

To my disappointment, it was the same annoying static noises as I found on the other vinyl records.

In search of clues, I decided to completely disassemble the Phonograph, so I summoned my smartphone and watched youtube and web tutorials. After about an hour, I was finally able to take it apart without damaging anything.

While examining it, I found that this phonograph was heavily modified; It seemed that the previous owner regularly damaged it and did his own repairs and modifications. The playback speed was intentionally fixed at a certain speed and I could not change it. The gear system was also custom-made and better than the original retail version. The cylinder did not have any name or text; other than the symbol ' Ω ' (omega) etched on the inner side that could hardly be noticed.

After I put it back together, I once again played it, but the same static sound was still there. I was getting frustrated.

I still didn't give my hopes up "system, record the audio sample" I then played the phonograph and held the phone as close as I could to record every minute detail.

{recording...}

{done}

"Ok now play it back 2X slower "

{playing...}

"Now increase the background noise and play it back"

{Playing....}

Just like that, I had spent hours editing and manipulating the static audio, but I found nothing. It was a dead end. I was disheartened and losing hope. I slouch down from the chair and looked at the ceiling lost in thought. "what can the static noise mean? hmm, hiding somthing in sound...." This question sparked a sudden realization in me. I jolted up and grabbed my phone. All the fatigue in my eyes was gone.

"system, Remind me, what were the Voyager Golden Records? "

{The Voyager Golden Records are two phonograph records that were included aboard both Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977. The records contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life from who may find them.}

"what was recorded on them?"

{The Golden Record consists of 116 analog-encoded photographs, greetings in 55 languages, a 12-minute montage of sounds on Earth, and 90 minutes of music}

"How did they store these on the record?"

{They stored the greetings and sounds on one side of the record, and the 116 images were converted into waveforms that needed to be further processed to view them}

"can you play the audio for the images?" I had my fingers crossed.

{searching.....Playing....}

After listening to it, I had a big smile on my face. " haha eureka !" I exclaimed. The static sound was identical to what was on the Cylinder. I finally found a lead.

In 1977, NASA wanted to send a message to outer space that would aimlessly drift through space until any alien life finds it. This was meant to be a sort of time capsule with the humanities knowledge that would remain well after we go extinct. It was a challenging task as they needed to store the message in a way that the aliens could read them even after a billion years.

They found a clever way where they used sound recorded on gold-plated records that had the images hidden in them in the form of waveforms. They achieved this by creating the audio waveforms in such a way that the multiple waveform lines would make an image if put together correctly.

A similar technique may have been used here; but am I to believe that someone did all this in the 1920s decades before the Voyager 1 did it?

I now had two options: either the disks were made recently, or someone was able to make them decades before Voyager 1. Either way, I had to solve the cylinder first to prove that there are indeed images in the cylinder record.

In the Voyager Golden Records, the method was simple; they already gave three waveforms as an example and also the time interval. The time interval was important as it said the exact size the waveform segments needed to be cut to successfully make the image. This was the key. All someone had to do was cut the waveforms at the specified time intervals and interlace (stack) them, like how old CRT TVs did to make pictures.

But I did not have such information. The only thing I can do now is to find the interval myself. I started by cutting the audio segments in large sizes such as 50ms then went down each time and repeated the process.

After hours, I finally found a 'C' shape. I clenched my smartphone, hard to see it. I was very happy and excited. I was on the right track. I did not know what was on the records, but all I knew was that there was something very special hidden in them. It was my gut feeling.

As I finally found the correct time interval, I decided to cut the whole audio sample into equal parts. I then waited for my smartphone to finish. What I found at the end was not just a 'C' but other symbols of different sizes. I finally had an image.

The next day I was very happy. I looked at the results and thought to myself, 'after all the hard work I finally found the answer. This combination of waveform lines was the 'key' to the records in the basement'

Now I only had to go and use the 'key' on the vinyl records.

===

When I came to the house, I asked the house elves to move the vinyl records to an empty room on the first floor and clean up the basement. The house elves did not ask any questions and quickly moved them and returned to work. I stood at the door looking at the mountain of boxes, and sighed "This is going to take time"

The records were kept randomly in different boxes. The records had nothing written on them; only a number. I started to look for the first record in the boxes. I kept on opening the boxes, taking out each record and checking the number, and putting it on the side. As I went by each box, I started to organize the records in numerical order. In my search, I found many records that were repeats of the same number and some that were broken. I kept them to the side to repair them later with magic. With my handling of the records, I am now sure that they were from the 1920s.

After I had collected the first 30 or so records, I was ready to read them. I looked out the door and saw no one. Most of the work was now being done on the third floor and ground floor, so this floor was free for now. I shut the door and went back to where I was.

I open my bag and bring out a vinyl record player. I bought this today before going to the house. I was full of expectations; I carefully put the record in and lowered the pin. Soon the familiar static sound started playing. I use my phone to record the whole thing. I named this recorded sample 1.

I then used the same technique as last time and divided the recorded sample into exactly the same time interval I found on the cylindrical record. There were now hundreds of fragments of waveforms of exactly the same size.

Now I used the phone to combine all of them to make the image. It only took a few minutes to complete. The image finally formed was made of gibberish. I could not make up any of this.

I was confused. "that's not it, there must be somthing I missed. There is no way that each record has something like this that needs to be deciphered. "

I played the other records and for the next 3 hours, I worked on them thoroughly, but the result was the same. All of them had gibberish that I did not understand.

I was thinking hard about what I might have missed. And then it hit me. "I am such an idiot! the fucking omega" I said out loud.

'In Voyager Golden Record, there was a circle etched on the surface that acted as the calibration image. It was somthing that the aliens would compare to make sure that they had correctly deciphered the record.'

I open the image formed from the cylindrical record and look at it closely. There were different images of symbols and numbers of different sizes on it.

"isn't it odd that out of so many symbols, none of them is the omega symbol? and it just so happens that the cylinder only had that one specific symbol out of all that are found here.".

I didn't know what it was back then, but now I realize that it was a calibration image, something to compare the result with and find the right combination for deciphering but, in this case, there was no omega on the image.

"if there is no omega, then I will have to make one"

I then started to copy and paste each waveform segment one by one from different parts of the image and successfully made a blurry ' Ω ' (omega) symbol.

"system makes this more clear by replacing the waveforms with better-suited ones."

{Please wait...}

After 3 hours of hard work, I was happy to see a big omega 'Ω' appear on the screen.

Out of hundreds of audio segments, only a particular combination of waveform segments was necessary to make the omega. The rest were just decoys

I once again returned to the first record sample and looked at the image with gibberish in it.

"system split the audio sample into the exact number of parts as the cylindrical record and use the same combination of waveform segments as used to make the omega to make the image"

{Please wait....}

After the final image came out, I could not hold my excitement. What I saw was an image of a big Omega symbol. Both the cylindrical record and the first vinyl record had made the same image; this confirms that I had successfully cracked the code. my heart was pounding.

I could not believe that someone in the 1920s had invented such an extraordinary method of hiding something. It is to note that the first TV was invented in 1927 that barely worked as a proof of concept, which means whoever made the records was an expert on the bleeding edge of technology at that time.

It is also to note that the records were in large numbers and had ear-piercing noise. Any ordinary person would think that they were damaged junk and not look at them twice. This was the perfect disguise.

Even if someone could guess that there was something hidden in them, they would not be able to find them. I am sure that there must be different images based on different combinations of waveform segments. Only the one with the cylindrical record could successfully decipher them. This was truly ingenious. Even now, in the 1990s, it would take a team of people a long time to correctly decode the records. I was lucky to have the AI.

I once again went back to work. I decided to organize and record as much as I could as the upcoming days were going to be very busy.