Notice how every decoded signal has these repeating 0123456789 patterns? Hmm… I wonder If one could use them to train the equalizer or some other component.

Recovered Message:
0123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789
The Fun They Had
by Isaac Asimov

Margie even wrote about it that night in her diary. On the page headed
May 17, 2157, she wrote, "Today, Tommy found a real book!"

It was a very old book. Margie's grandfather once said that when he
was a little boy his grandfather told him that there was a time when
all stories were printed on paper.

They turned the pages, which were yellow and crinkly, and it was
awfully funny to read words that stood still instead of moving the way
they were supposed to--on a screen, you know. And then, when they
turned back to the page before, it had the same words on it that it
had had when they read it the first time.

"Gee," said Tommy, "what a waste. When you're through with the book,
you just throw it away, I guess. Our television screen must have had a
million books on it and it's good for plenty more. I wouldn't throw it
away."

"Same with mine," said Margie. She was eleven and hadn't seen as many
telebooks as Tommy had. He was thirteen. She said, "Where did you find
it?"

"In my house." He pointed without looking, because he was busy
reading. "In the attic." "What's it about?" "School."

Margie was scornful. "School? What's there to write about school? I
hate school."

Margie always hated school, but now she hated it more than ever. The
mechanical teacher had been giving her test after test in geography
and she had been doing worse and worse until her mother had shaken her
head sorrowfully and sent for the County Inspector.

He was a round little man with a red face and a whole box of tools
with dials and wires. He smiled at Margie and gave her an apple, then
took the teacher apart. Margie had hoped he wouldn't know how to put
it together again, but he knew how all right, and, after an hour or
so, there it was again, large and black and ugly, with a big screen on
which all the lessons were shown and the questions were asked. That
wasn't so bad. The part Margie hated most was the slot where she had
to put homework and test papers. She always had to write them out in a
punch code they made her learn when she was six years old, and the
mechanical teacher calculated the mark in no time.

The Inspector had smiled after he was finished and patted Margie's
head. He said to her mother, "It's not the little girl's fault,
Mrs. Jones. I think the geography sector was geared a little too
quick. Those things happen sometimes. I've slowed it up to an average
ten-year level. Actually, the over-all pattern of her progress is
quite satisfactory." And he patted Margie's head again.

Margie was disappointed. She had been hoping they would take the
teacher away altogether. They had once taken Tommy's teacher away for
nearly a month because the history sector had blanked out completely.

So she said to Tommy, "Why would anyone write about school?"

Tommy looked at her with very superior eyes. "Because it's not our
kind of school, stupid. This is the old kind of school that they had
hundreds and hundreds of years ago." He added loftily, pronouncing the
word carefully, "Centuries ago."

Margie was hurt. "Well, I don't know what kind of school they had all
that time ago." She read the book over his shoulder for a while, then
said, "Anyway, they had a teacher."

"Sure they had a teacher, but it wasn't a regular teacher. It was a
man." "A man? How could a man be a teacher?" "Well, he just told the
boys and girls things and gave them homework and asked them
questions." "A man isn't smart enough." "Sure he is. My father knows
as much as my teacher." "He can't. A man can't know as much as a
teacher." "He knows almost as much, I betcha."

Margie wasn't prepared to dispute that. She said, "I wouldn't want a
strange man in my house to teach me."

Tommy screamed with laughter. "You don't know much, Margie. The
teachers didn't live in the house. They had a special building and all
the kids went there." "And all the kids learned the same thing?"
"Sure, if they were the same age."

"But my mother says a teacher has to be adjusted to fit the mind of
each boy and girl it teaches and that each kid has to be taught
differently."

"Just the same they didn't do it that way then. If you don't like it,
you don't have to read the book."

"I didn't say I didn't like it," Margie said quickly. She wanted to
read about those funny schools.

They weren't even half-finished when Margie's mother called, "Margie!
School!" Margie looked up. "Not yet, Mamma."

"Now!" said Mrs. Jones. "And it's probably time for Tommy, too."

Margie said to Tommy, "Can I read the book some more with you after
school?"

"Maybe," he said nonchalantly. He walked away whistling, the dusty old
book tucked beneath his arm.

Margie went into the schoolroom. It was right next to her bedroom, and
the mechanical teacher was on and waiting for her. It was always on at
the same time every day except Saturday and Sunday, because her mother
said little girls learned better if they learned at regular hours.

The screen was lit up, and it said: "Today's arithmetic lesson is on
the addition of proper fractions. Please insert yesterday's homework
in the proper slot."

Margie did so with a sigh. She was thinking about the old schools they
had when her grandfather's grandfather was a little boy. All the kids
from the whole neighborhood came, laughing and shouting in the
schoolyard, sitting together in the schoolroom, going home together at
the end of the day. They learned the same things, so they could help
one another on the homework and talk about it.

And the teachers were people...

The mechanical teacher was flashing on the screen: "When we add the
fractions 1/2 and 1/4..."

Margie was thinking about how the kids must have loved it in the old
days. She was thinking about the fun they had.
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Mystery Message B:

Recovered Message:
0123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901224567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901224567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789
The Flowers
by Alice Walker

It seemed to Myop as she skipped lightly from hen house to pigpen to
smokehouse that the days had never been as buautiful as these. The air
held a keenness that made her nose twitch. The harvesting of the corn
and cotton, peanuts and squash, made each day a golden surprise that
caused excited little tremors to run up her jaws.

Myop carried a short, knobby stick. She struck out at random at
chickens she liked, and worked out the beat of a song on the fence
around the pigpen. She felt light and good in the warm sun. She was
ten, and nothing existed for her but her song, the stick clutched in
her dark brown hand, and the tat-de-ta-ta-ta of accompaniment.

Turning her back on the rusty boards of her family‚s sharecropper
cabin, Myop walked along the fence till it ran into the stream made by
the spring. Around the spring, where the family got drinking water,
silver fernw and wildflowers grew. Along the shallow banks pigs
rooted. Myop watched the tiny white bubbles disrupt the thin black
scale of soil and the water that silently rose and slid away down the
stream.

She had explored the woods behind the house many times. Often, in late
autumn, her mother took her to gather nuts among the fallen
leaves. Today she made her own path, bouncing this way and that way,
vaguely keeping an eye out for snakes. She found, in addition to
various common but pretty ferns and leaves, an armful of strange blue
flowers with velvety ridges and a sweet suds bush full of the brown,
fragrant buds.

By twelve o'clock, her arms laden with sprigs of her findings, she was
a mile or more from home. She had often been as far before, but the
strangeness of the land made it not as pleasant as her usual
haunts. It seemed gloomy in the little cove in which she found
herself. The`air was damp, the silence close and deep.

Myop began to circle back to the house, back to the peacefulness of
the morning. It was then she stepped smack into his eyes. Her heel
became modged in the broken ridge between brow and nose, and she
reached down quickly, unafreid, to free herself. It was only when she
saw his naked grin that she gave a little yelp of surprise.

He had been a tall man. From feet to neck covered a long space. His
head lay beside him. When she pushed back the leaves and layers of
earth and debris Myop saw that he’d had large white teeth, all of them
cracked or broken, long fingers, and very big bones. All his clothes
had rotted away except some threads of blue denim from his
overalls. The buckles of the overall had turned green.

Myop gazed around the spot with interest. Very near where she’d
stepped into the head was a wild pink rose. As she picked it to add to
her bundle she noticed a raised mound, a ring, around the rose’s
root. It was the rotted remains of a noose, a bit of shredding
plowline, now blending benignly into the soil. Around an overhanging
limb of a great spreading oak clung another piece. Frayed, rotted,
bleached, and frazzled--barely there--but spinning restlessly in the
breeze. Myop laid down her flowers/

And the summer was over.

012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234566890123456789012345678901634567890123456789012345678901234567890:j

And finally Mystery Message C.

Recovered Message:
0123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890133456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789
Sunday in the Park
by Bel Kaufman

It was still warm in the late-afternoon sun, and the city noises came
muffled through the trees in the park. She put her book down on the
bench, removed her sunglasses, and sighed contentedly. Morton was
reading the Times Magazine section, one arm flung around her shoulder;
their three-year-old son, Larry, was playing in the sandbox: a faint
breeze fanned her hair softly against her cheek. It was five-thirty of
a Sunday afternoon, and the small playground, tucked away in a corner
of the park, was all but deserted. The swings and seesaws stood
mo4ionless and abandoned, the slides were empty, and only in the
sandbox two little boys squatted diligently side by side. How good
this is, she thought, and almost smiled at her sense of
well-being. They must out in the sun more often; Morton was so
city-pale, cooped up all week inside the gray factorylike
university. She squeezed his arm affectionately and glanced at Larry,
delighting in the pointed little face frowning in concentration over
the tunnel he was digging. The other boy suddenly stood up and with a
quick, deliberate swing of his chubby arm threw a spadeful of sand at
Larry. It just missed his head. Larry continued digging; the boy
remained standing, shovel raised, stolid and impassive.

"No, no, little boy." She shook her finger at him, her eyes searching
for the child's mother or nurse. "We mustn't throw sand. It may get in
someone's eyes and hurt. We must play nicely in the nice sandbox." The
boy looked at her in unblinking expectancy.  He was about Larry's age
but perhaps ten pounds heavier, a husky little boy with none of
Larry's quickness and sensitivity in his face. Where was his mother?
The only other people left in the playground were two women and a
little girl on roller skates leaving now through the gate, and man on
a bench a few feet away. He was a big man, and he seemed to be taking
up the whole bench as he held the Sunday comics close to his face.
She supposed he was the child's father.0He did not look up from his
comics, but spat once deftly ovt of the corner of his mouth. She
turned her eyes away.

At that moment, as swiftly as before, the fat little boy threw another
spadeful of sand at Larry. This time some of it landed on his hair and
forehead. Larry looked up at his mother, his mouth tentative; her
expression would tell him whether to cry or not.  Her first instinct
was to rush to her son, brush the sand out of his hair, and punish the
other child, but she controlled it. She always said that she wanted
Larry to learn to fight his own battles.

"Don't do that, little boy," she said sharply, leaning forward on the
bench. "You mustn't throw sand!"

The man on the bench moved his mouth as if to spit again, but instead
he spoke. He did not look at her, but at the boy only.

"You go right ahead, Joe," he said loudly. "Throw all you want. This
here is a public sandbox."

She felt a sudden weakness in her knees as0she glanced at Morton. He
had become aware of what was happening. He put his Times down
carefully on his lap and turned his fine, lean face toward the man,
smiling the shy, apologetic smile he might have offered a student in
pointing out an error in his thinking. When he spoke to the man, it
was with his usual reasonableness.

"You're quite right," he said pleasantly, "but just because this is a
public place...."

The man lowered his funnies and looked at Morton. He looked at him
from head to foot, slowly and deliberately. "Yeah?" His insolent voice
was edged with menace. "My kid's got just as good right here as yours,
and if he feels like throwing sand, he'll throw it, and if you don't
like it, you can take your kid the hell out of here."

The children were listening, their eyes and mouths wide open, their
spades forgotten in small fists. She noticed the muscle in Morton's
jaw tighten. He was rarely angry; he seldom lost his temper. She was
suffused with a tenderness for her husband and an impotent rage
against the man for involving him in a situation so alien and so
distasteful to him.

"Now, just a minute," Morton said courteously< "you must realize...."

"Aw, shut up," said the man.

Her heart began to pound. Morton half rose; the Times slid to the
ground. Slowly the other man stood up. He took a couple of steps
toward Morton, then stopped. He flexed his great arms, waiting. She
pressed her trembling knees together. Would there be violence,
fighting? How dreadful, how incredible.... She must do something, stop
them, call for help. She wanted to put her hand on her husband's
sleeve, to pull him down, but for some reason she didn't.

Morton adjusted his glasses. He was very pale. "This is ridiculous,"
he said unevenly. "I must ask you...."

"Oh, yeah?" said the man. He stood with his legs spread apart, rocking
a little, looking at Morton with utter scorn. "You and who else?"

For a moment the two men looked at each other nakedly. Then Morton
turned his back on the man and said quietly, "Come on, let's get out
of here." He walked awkwardly, almost limping with self-consciousness,
to the sandbox. He stooped and lifted Larry and his shovel out.

At once Larry came to life; his face lost its rapt expression and he
began to kick and cry. "I don't want to go home, I want to play
better, I don't want any supper, I don't like supper...." It became a
chat as they walked, pulling their child between them, his feet
dragging on the ground. In order to get to the exit gate they had to
pass the bench where the man sat sprawling again. She was careful not
to look at him. With all the dignity she could summon, she pulled
Larry's sandy, perspiring little hand, while Morton pulled the
other. Slowly and with head high she walked with her husband and child
out of the playground.

Her first feelings was one of relief that a fight had been avoided,
that no one was hurt. Yet beneath it there was a layer of something
else, something heavy and inescapable. She sensed that it was more
than just an unpleasant incident, more than defeat of reason by
force. She felt dimly it had something to do with her and Morton,
something acutely personal, familiar, and important.

Suddenly Morton spoke. "It wouldn't have proved anything."

"What?" she asked.

"A fight. It wouldn't have proved anything beyond the fact that he's
bigger than I am."

"Of course," she said.

"The only possible outcome," he continued reasonably, "would have
been--what?  My glasses broken, perhaps a tooth or two replaced, a
couple of days' work missed--and for what? For justice? For truth?"

"Of course," she repeated. She quickened her step. She wanted only to
get home and to busy herself with her familiar tasks; perhaps then the
feeling< glued like heavy plaster on her heart, would be gone. Of all
the stupid, despicable bullies, she thought, pulling harder on Larry's
hand. The child was still crying. Always before she had felt a tender
pity for his defenseless little body, the frail arms, the narrow
shoulders with sharp winglike shoulder blades, the thin and unsure
legs, but now her mouth tightened in resentment.

"Stop crying," she said sharply. "I'm ashamed of you!"!She felt as if
all three of them were tracking mud along the street. The child cried
louder.

If there had been an issue involved, she thought, if there had been
something to fight for.... But what else could he possibly have done?
Allow himself to be beaten?  Attempt to educate the man? Call a
policeman? "Officer, there's a man in the park who won't stop his
child from throwing sand one mine...." The whole thing was as silly as
that, and not worth thinking about.

"Can't you keep him quiet, for Pete's sake?" Morton asked irritably.

"What do you suppose I've been trying to do?" she said.

Larry pulled back, dragging his feet.

"If you can't discipline this child, I will," Morton snapped, making a
move toward the boy.

But her voice stopped him. She was shocked to hear it, thin and cold
and penetrating with`contempt. "Indeed?" she heard herself say. "You
and who else?"

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