By the time Sonny arrived into town, the "listening centers" had long been dilapidated. The driving force behind the institute had left with Gene Andrews. Those who stayed behind had put their energy into developing the transmitter. They were successful with this endeavor, yet it didn't produce the desired effect. Gene was right. They thought it would somehow allow them to communicate with the outsiders who had been sending messages, but it didn't work. In fact, they were now worse off than they were before. Soon after they began transmitting out, the incoming transmissions changed. They didn't sound the same anymore and all the previous study and analysis of the messages had gone down the drain. The listeners would now have to start from scratch. But this didn't happen. Instead, they began to listen in a different way. Instead of listening analytically, they began to listen intuitively. This was the path of least resistance. Analyzing the patterns in the way of Gene Andrews was a tedious process, and without much gratification. People are naturally impatient and usually take the easiest if they can. So what emerged was a sort of madhouse where listeners were hearing things that weren't there. They would hear a sound that, by coincidence, sounded similar to a word in their own language, and then they would give that sound the same meaning as that word from their own language. In essence, they weren't translating at all, just picking out words that sounded like their own. At other times they would hear a sound that would remind them of something, and they would apply that image in their brain to that sound. What this lead to was many people having many different meanings for the same sound, and if any of them actually coincided with what the outsider was saying it was by pure luck. Nobody really had any sensible, consistent way to explain what they heard to anyone else. Their definitions of the words would change many times as they forgot they had them defined or as their feelings changed. It was hard for them to speak this language in which they only had defined bits and pieces of. Their understanding was just an illusion. Most of the peole outside of the listening centers began to think of these people as a bunch of crazies, and in some sense they were. The listening centers in this broken state seemed to attract broken people. The more people adding their delusions to the pile, the more the listening centers spiraled out of control.
All was not lost at the listening centers. Their saving grace was that the listeners still believed that the sounds they heard were indeed messages coming from another place. Most of the general population doubted that, they thought the messages were just noise. But now, Sonny was here ready to breathe life back into the Institute. The sending of transmissions out to the outsiders had brought success in a different form. Over the years they had continued to send out transmissions feeling like it was a longshot but they had nothing to lose by trying. Since they didn't see immediate results they had thought their requests had fell on deaf ears, but they hadn't. Sonny had heard them and it brought him to the city.
Sonny was here and ready to connect the two cities. He believed he could do this using the mathematics he had discovered in the outer lands. He used it to study the corrupted signal and had come to an understanding. He could use the math in order to convert the signal back to the original signal. Then, he could show the people at the "listening center" what the transmissions were saying. Then the two cities could communicate and show each other that they weren't monsters.
The transformation of the signal was to be a complicated process. The signal was corrupted by combining the signal with a series of delayed, reduced versions of itself. This in turn changed the tone of the sound; it boosted and cut different frequencies of the sound. Here is an explanation why:
A sound wave is the variation of pressure around an ambient state. When the sound wave is added to another sound wave the pressures at each moment are added. This is what happens when the sound wave is delayed and added to itself. By delaying the wave, its' pressue will be different than the original wave's at any given moment. Sometimes the pressures will be in opposite directions of the ambient state, and the waves will destructively intefere which cuts the sound. Other times the pressures will be in similiar directions around the ambient state so that they constructively intefere, which boosts the sound. Different delays will make different pressures to be added and thus determine the type and amount of inteference. Furthermore, a sound wave can be broken up into a series of waves of individual frequencies. Each frequency of wave has it's own amplitude. If the wave has large amplitudes for high frequencies the sound will be heard as a treble sound. If the wave has large amplitudes for low frequencies the sound will be heard as a bass sound. When two sound waves are added you can add up each of the individual frequencies independently. For different frequencies, the same delay will produce a different type/amount of inteference among the frequencies. Some of the frequencies will constructively intefer, while some destructively, even though the delay is the same. Thus, the frequencies of the sound will be altered in a seemingly haphazard way. Some of them cut, some of them boosted, and with different amounts. This wiil totally change what we hear. The altered signal will sound much different than the original signal. Sonny knew how the different frequencies were being boosted and cut from studying the corrupter plans given to him. Knowing this, he just needed to boost and cut the frequencies in order to get them back to original state. To do this he needed a computer. He needed to sample the sequence of pressures in the sound wave with the computer, and then modify the pressures accordingly. These pressures could then be played back to produce the orignal signal. The mathematics used in changing the pressures is called Fourier theory. The sequence of pressures could be put into a calculation called a Fourier Transform to produce the amplitudes of the various frequencies. These amplitudes can be altered, cut and boosted as dictated by plans. These amplitudes can then be put into an inverse Fourier Transform to produce the modified pressures. VOILA!
This is what Sonny did. He found a computer and got it to work. Then he programmed it and hooked it up to the output of the radio recievers. Nobody really cared when he brought it into the listening centers and set it up. But, when he got it to work the people were impressed. The older folks were stunned to hear the radio talk in ways they hadn't heard since the transmissions changed. People were intrigued by Sonny and they listened to him when he talked. Sure there was a chance that he was just like all the other crazies who said they understood the sounds, but he was different. He was smart enough to be able to produce the new technology, he must know something. Also, he could fluently speak the way the radio did, unlike the other listeners claiming comprehension. But the real reason is, they wanted him to be right. They had been believing in the outside for years, and here was a chance at contact. So they listened. And after a while he started to make sense. He was consistent and could explain what the messages were saying with great detail. Soon a following grew of those wanting to learn the language through Sonny. Others from the general population who had thought they were nuts, now became interested. The listening centers had experienced a great rebirth attracting the interest it had while in its' former glory with Gene Andrews.
All of this excitement was just a means to an end. Sonny knew he had to make a big splash so that people would take him seriously. Then he could bring them the true message. And so he did. He told them that the people who talked over the radios had recieved our transmissions back in the day. They had failed to understand the transmissions and they were scared. They had corrupted their outgoing signals hoping to protect themselves from the unknown. This was the reason for the change in sounds back then. He said we must not do the same. We can not be afraid of them and lash out in fear. Instead, we must try to understand the foreigners, and calm their fears. Then we can come together and share our knowledge. Then we can come together and become stronger than we are alone.
