// SIGNAL: INTERGENERATIONAL LINK

Big kid has been learning about WWII at school.
He took in a photo of his great grandfather (my Grandpa on my Dad’s side).

Grandpa Fred was a coder.
He was in the Royal Signal Corps, decoding Morse code messages from the Nazis.

// SIGNAL: CHANCE & FATE

When war broke, he tried to join the Royal Navy.
Because he knew Morse code from his job at the Post Office, they sent him to Scotland.

If he’d joined the Atlantic or Arctic convoys,
he’d very likely have ended up at the bottom of the cold, dark sea.
And we wouldn’t be here.

// SIGNAL: MY EARLY CODE

As a teenager, I spent hours typing pages of machine code
from computer magazines into my Dragon 32 PC.

One wrong keystroke and the game wouldn’t load.
But if I got it right, I’d have “Bomber” to play.

// SIGNAL: THE HUMAN PROJECT

We’re all coding — encoding and decoding —
stories that give our lives meaning and purpose.

Weaving unique patterns in the fabric of space-time.
Searching for answers in the world wide web.
Gazing at the stars, as we always have.

Using threads from the code of life
handed down by our ancestors, since time immemorial.

// SIGNAL: MARKS WE LEAVE

From cave paintings to fossils and footsteps on the moon,
from the Pyramids to the Parthenon to the Pentagon —
we’re leaving reminders of our existence.

Building structures to organise, process,
and understand information about our world.

// SIGNAL: THE NEW CODE

Now we’re coding large language models.
Training them on the whole of human knowledge and history.

Hoping they’ll tell us the meaning of life —
or at least not destroy us
in the hands of our new Nazi overlords,
or serve us up tasteless slop.

// SIGNAL: THE OLD GUARD

I’m not sure what Fred would have made of it all.

Like my great grandfather Frank before him,
he was from another time. Conservative. Happy with his lot.

He loved Oldham Athletic (“Latics”),
the Telegraph crossword,
driving carefully, and Freemasonry.

He wrote letters on a typewriter.

// SIGNAL: A BODY REMEMBERED

He had all his teeth removed at a relatively young age
in a “buy one get them all removed free” kind of deal.

The dentures never fit properly.
He spent years struggling to eat anything that wasn’t tasteless slop.

Raw egg mixed with milk and Ribena was a particular favourite.
If I remember correctly.

// FINAL PULSE

Fred would have loved his great grandkids.
It’s a shame they never got to meet.

He would probably have said:
“Give over, lad.”