Necrophage

Signal Received

"And what about Jacob?' Larry inquired, "He was hired almost exclusively for the SETI project."

Eric Larson looked him squarely in the eye and stated, "I think you just answered your own question Lawrence, the other duties, non SETI related that Mr. Peterson was working on can be reassigned to the various other members of your staff. Just be grateful it is only one pink slip you have worry about handing out."

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 Jacob Peterson was enjoying his favorite pastime of playing a quick game of spider solitaire when Olivia walked into the office. He barely glanced from his game as she placed a cup of Starbucks coffee on his desk. ”Hey Olivia, thanks a lot, how’s it hanging?’

“You are going to be the one hanging,” she said, “if Professor Schinger catches you goofing off again” She looked at him with concern and asked, “Do you ever actually do anything here other than play games and watch TV”

Jacob considered his response before he said, “Hey everyone knows I am the golden boy around and ‘ole Larry would be lost without me to come to bail him out when he needs something tweaked. Besides,” he stated, “what he does not know will not hurt him”

“What won’t hurt me” asked Larry

“Oh, uh nothing sir,” stammered Jacob, “Olivia is just messing around.” Jacob quickly clicked out of the game and brought of the current radio logs.  Jacob wondered exactly how long his boss was standing there. Olivia was right his good graces with the Professor would only go so far.  He watching Larry carefully for signs that he could be mad at him and when he did notice anything is quickly decided that now was a great time to drink some of his coffee.

“How are we going with the nighttime logs Jacob, anything out of the ordinary?” asked Larry

“No sir, it has been fairly quiet,” replied Jacob, “I did notice something coming from SHGb02+14a, and I logged something for a total of three times at a frequency of about 1420 MHz I do suspect this is the same as the false alarm that we had back in 2003”

“Jacob, that location has been done to death, it has be the consensus that it due to a resonating pulsar across a normal Gaussian belt.”

“True professor, but you did ask.” Jacob replied.

 Larry looked at his assistant with a concerned look on his face.Thoughts of Jacob's family ran thru his head.

How am I gong to break this to him?

 Larry walked up to Jacob, and put his hand on Jacob’s shoulder in a fatherly manner. “Jacob, come with me for a moment to my office, I need to speak with you, okay?”

“Alright, boss, no problem... what’s going on?”, Jacob asked.

“Not here, Jacob, let’s go in the office.”

Jacob got up, and looked at Larry strangely. Larry remained quiet. He followed Larry across the outer office into Larry’s office and squeezed past him, as his boss closed the door and looked at him. Jacob sat down, and wondered what the Hell was going on. Is he really that pissed at me for playing around on the computer? Jacob pondered, as he waited for Larry to speak.

“Jacob, how are things at home? Is everything okay?”, Larry asked.

“Woo, you got me scared there for a second, Boss”, Jacob laughed, “I thought for a second there that I was in trouble and you were gonna fire me! But yeah, everything is fine at home. Oh and I forgot to tell you, I have good news about that, Abbey’s pregnant!”