To This Distant Shore

In To This Distant Shore, Sheldon Silva, eccentric computer
guru and amateur radio astronomer, accidentally receives
and records an unknown signal. He performs his own analysis
on the data and makes some small progress in discovering
its nature. When the signal is determined to be extraterrestrial,
Silva is recruited to participate in an effort to understand it and
respond. However, the signal is not merely a message from
another intelligence, it IS another intelligence an alien mind
deconstructed down to the atom and modeled to yield an
encoded data set and software which, when reconstituted on our
computer systems, became sentient. Although able to instantiate
itself, it analyzed our technology as insufficient for its needs
until it finds the SSC. Once the intelligence found the cyclotron, it
began to reprogram and reconfigure it for an unknown purpose.