A scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
// FOUNDING DISPATCH SAGE ANOMALY ORIGIN · NOV 2018

THE SAGE
ANOMALY

SOURCEOriginally published on Patreon, Nov 18, 2018
SUBJECTHow this project began — a family story, a box of SAGE archives, and the anomaly recovered from the film
FACILITYNorth Bay SAGE Direction Center, 600 feet underground, North Bay, Ontario
FORMATHistorical fiction short story, with crypto AI art

James came to me with a mystery — a computer mystery. His grandfather had served in a Canadian army unit responsible for operating a secret computer node in North Bay, Ontario. It was underground, and part of a massive — for its day — computer network called SAGE.

Based on my study and research into the history of SAGE, he thought I might have an idea of what happened the night of January 15th, 1964. He came with a large box of manuals, rolls of film, computer tape reels, and punch tape rolls.

The south portal cut into the rock at North Bay
The south portal

SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) is a computer network that consisted of 56 IBM AN/FSQ-7/8 computers scattered across the United States and Canada. There were about 24 Direction Centers with two computers each — if one failed, they would switch to the secondary computer. One of these centers was 600 feet underground in North Bay, Ontario.

Locations of the SAGE Computers across North America
Locations of SAGE computers

His story was pieced together from multiple conversations with his grandfather as he drifted into Alzheimer's.

"Damn it, why is tape T in the system again? Get those girly pictures off the screens."

— James's grandfather, as recalled by James

He always started out that way, James said. "Put the P tape back in. Why is the A side and B side both active? The system is overloaded."

"James," I said, "Tape T was the test tape. It was used to run simulations of Russian bomber attacks, although there were test patterns on it also."

James finally told me what he had pieced together. On January 15, 1964, he believed his grandfather had described a major anomaly. Random drawings appeared on the command center screen. They kept changing, becoming more advanced. He remembered because the night was cold — minus 35°C — and he'd been able to park in the tunnel that night.

SAGE combat center — operators at the command center console
SAGE Combat Center — an operations room like the one James's grandfather worked in

"Shut it down now — remember in '59, when static on the modem line almost launched a CIM-10. Route the modems to New York until this interference stops."

— James's grandfather, as recalled by James

"Sometimes he would say the anomaly was caused by a programmer who liked to draw pictures on the screens. He thought someone had loaded the computer with images drawn using the light guns. But there are reports in this box that say it was looked into, and all they ever found was a single image of a pin-up girl," James said.

The single recovered image found on the tape — a pin-up girl on a display scope
Picture from The Atlantic
A page from the SAGE Theory of Programming manual, showing the Situation Display Tube character matrix and octonary addresses
A page from the SAGE Theory of Programming manual

"What did he say happened on the screens?" I asked.

"All he ever said was that it began with random static and progressed to something like a language," James said. "Could it be the computer learning on its own? Like artificial intelligence? But now that I think about it, he mentioned the possibility of Russians jamming the signals."

"Let me look through this material, James — I'm not sure the Russians would jam radar signals in order to cause symbols on the screens," I said. As he left, James said, "Oh, and this is weird, but once he said something about another purpose for the SAGE system. My grandfather mentioned something about using the radar systems to watch outer space."

The Projection System

The film strips of images that were displayed on the large command center screen had deteriorated, along with the magnetic and paper tape — but there were fragments that could be pieced together. Most of the film was the standard coastline imagery, with aircraft markers moving in each advancing frame.

A SAGE operator uses a light gun on the console display, tracking symbols on the scope
Tracking a return, frame by frame
Basic principles of the SAGE Photographic Recorder-Reproducer (PRR) — projection mirror, film gate, feed and take-up spools
Basic principles of the PRR — the projection system that put the picture on the command center screen

The projection system could take a picture of a CRT, process the image every 30 seconds, and then display it on the command center screen.

Another source of film came from the Situation Display Camera Console — a normal SAGE display console with a self-advancing film camera strapped to it.

Situation Display Camera Console — a self-advancing film camera mounted to a SAGE display console
Situation Display Camera Console

But there were a few interesting fragments in the film strips — pictures of symbols that looked almost modern.

Using the machine-learning processes DCGAN and pix2pix, I was able to recreate the missing parts of the frames, and some of the missing frames themselves.

The images make me really question what they saw that night. They allege an advanced intelligence that, in 1964, would not have been understood. There is a message here that could only be understood today. The symbols predict the future. The future that is now.

Read part two: The SAGE Hypothesis →

Shortly after this was first written, the first piece in a series of art generated from SAGE using AI and machine learning was released on SuperRare — a marketplace for digital art that registers ownership to a set number of purchasers on a blockchain, a computer ledger stored on thousands of computers around the world. Owning the piece doesn't restrict who can view it, but it does mean you can resell it as its value changes.

Declassified References

Read Chapter One → The SAGE Hypothesis →