The first attempts at contact employed special electronic devices that transformed stimuli sent in both directions. The ocean played an active part in the design of the devices though all this happened in complete darkness. It modified certain components of the equipment lowered into it, as a result of which the discharges it registered would change, and the devices would record a multitude of signals that were like fragments of some vast advanced analysis. In fact, certain results were obtained. The oceana source of electrical, magnetic, and gravitational impulsesspoke as it were in the language of mathematics certain sequences of its electrical discharges could be classified by drawing on the most abstract branches of terrestrial analysis and of set theory they contained homologues of structures known from the area of physics that is concerned with the mutual relationship between energy and matter, finite and infinite magnitude, particles and fields. All this led scientists to believe they were dealing with a thinking monster, that it was some kind of protoplasmic sealikebrain grown so vast it covered an entire planet, which passed time engrossed in theoretical reflections on an inconceivable scale concerning the nature of the universe and that what the instruments captured were no more than tiny, accidentally overheard snippets of a stupendous monologue, utterly beyond our comprehension, that was endlessly being performed in its depths.
device, analysis, certain, electrical, discharge