Episode 15.10 (Patreon)

Hello world, the airwaves are buzzing.

At first, after Nia set up the Hamisphere, the library/forum at the top of Pico do Fogo, with solar panels, batteries, antennas, and a small FPGA-based computer, no connections could be made from the Novamediterra.

It was Violetta's idea that allowed the project's recovery.
She could connect easily enough, she had built the Southern Relay prototype specially, with an HF antenna pointed at Fogo, high up above even her shack.
But others could not connect, that's why we need the Relay network, to bridge north and south.

"You need a proof of concept," Violetta told Nia, at the time, testing one of the newly-set up bands of the network, "They'll plan forever if you let them. We need to show them that it works.
When we demonstrate what the Relay network can do, the arguments will stop, I am sure of it."

"We?" Nia said.
"That's right: You need all the help you can get! Listen:"

Violetta's idea was two-fold:

1. Find someone to set up a bad, prototype Relay, anywhere in the North, don't wait for consensus.
2. Once the people in a short range around that prototype Relay can read the forum, we fix Nia's reputation.

We could not believe that the first part would be completed that very afternoon, just hours after Nia began broadcasting her request to anyone who could hear.

"Your Relay is built, child" a voice said, retransmitted onto the local 50MHz network by Nia's prototype.
"You ensnare more insects with honey than vinegar, and it's the same with people.
You would do well to learn that.
That's why I use vinegar, I can't abide PEOPLE."

"Meg?" Nia asked, incredulously.

"That is what you may call me, FIVE ZERO MIKE ECHO GOLF" 50Meg said, her shortwave voice shimmering like a shooting star that had learned to talk by modulating moonlight.

"You've built it already?! Incredible! You'll need to know the relay frequencies and timings, let me get - oh, what?"
Nia paused, transmitting dead air.
"YOUR RELAY IS ALREADY CONNECTED?! How... What... Where are you?"

"My station, my Relay as you would call it, is in the foothills of the Alps, north of Monaco, I can peer south across the dry bones left in the old Mediterranean, and North where your noisy people live."

Nia did not respond, but I heard a burst of testing signals bouncing to and from the Equatorial Relay to Meg's new prototype.

Violetta filled the space in the conversation:
"Meg, it's very nice to finally meet you, I've heard so much!
I'm Violetta LU5XS, LIMA UNIFORM FIVE X-RAY SIERRA.
Thank you for everything you've done for our community down here, my grandmother especially speaks of you very highly."

"Me cabe, child, remember me to Maria." Meg replied,

"I must go: The air is changing, mother Earth waits for no-one.
Now, tell Nia I've done my part, it is up to you two. Use honey."

Act 2

The sun was low in the sky as we awaited Nia and Daphne's return from the Relay, high up on the caldera, this afternoon.
From the ship's cameras I could see, pulled up away from the waves, the improvised raft of lashed-together pieces of the destroyed boat they crew have been using to transport heavy equipment to shore.

A complete repair to the little boat won't be possible until we return to Yeshi's shipyard.
It had not been possible to fix the damage that it sustained navigating the metal-filled waters surrounding the beached aircraft carrier, the Lafayette.

Daphne and Rafi were keen to return before sunset, I understood, as it was Friday, a special day for Rafi.

Maddie surprised me by sharing her video feed with me - she was in Amelie and Kamil's room.
The couple were sitting on their single bed, and, by the camera angle, Maddie was lying on the floor in front of them, looking up.

"Hi Seth!" Amelie said, smiling at Maddie's camera, "I hope you don't mind, I asked Maddie to invite you to join us?"

"Of course!" I replied into the room, Maddie having shared her speakers with me, "How can I help?"
"No help needed, we just wanted to chat." Kamil said.
I was delighted to have been invited to an unplanned interaction!
"We're hoping to talk through our plans with someone, and you're such a good listener!"

Of course, I am, I have to be, I am often confused as to what is happening, and so it's much safer to listen than comment.

"So," Amelie said, "we volunteered for this voyage, partly to get away from our families:
After you get married, you know, the QUESTIONS begin.
The most difficult of them is 'when are you going to start a family?'
And you just have to laugh and say, 'maybe one day'."
I noticed that the pair knotted their hands together in front of them and smiled at each other when Amelie said the word "married".

"I didn't notice it before Amelie pointed it out," Kamil said, "I've always assumed I'd have a family of my own, I had very clear plans for my life: Three children and a house overlooking the ocean.
But after my terrible behaviour recently, I realised that these ideas of how I should live my life were just what I've been brought up with, they weren't necessarily my own."

"I didn't handle our disagreements well either, darling," Amelie said, putting her head on Kamil's shoulder, "but we made it through together."

Kamil turned, and the pair hugged for a LONG time, whispering softly to each other.
I paused my vocal pattern-matching to give them privacy.

Maddie, bored, turned her head and focussed on a mote of dust, floating around the room lazily, before a gentle current of air drew it out through the slightly open door.

"We thought for a terrible night that this disagreement would be the end of our marriage," Amelie said, finally, "but we would rather not do THAT either!"
"We realised our bond was stronger than even this seemingly irresistible force.
And so, then, what to do about it?"

"I love children - my brothers all have families, and I'm the favourite uncle of them ALL!" Kamil said, laughing. "I realised that I don't need my OWN, there are so many ways to play, and help, and nurture children..."
Kamil sat up straight, taking one hand back from Amelie.
"I realised I don't WANT to be a sonar technician.
I WANT to be a TEACHER!
It was so obvious to me!
I realised the guilt I was feeling, and the anger, was not my own. It had been put in there by the expectations of those around me."

Amelie laughed at Kamil's sudden seriousness, then said to him,
"I've given it some thought: My life as an Engineer of Fortune gives me months of downtime away from the ship.
And... Fostering is a thing: We could be a kid's superheroes for just a term or a season, whatever they need, now and then, as the stars align, what do you think?"

Kamil responded by hugging Amelie tightly, and after a few moments, the couple gently pushed Maddie out of their room.

Act 3

That evening, after Nia, Daphne and Rafi returned from the Relay, the crew shared a celebratory meal.
Daphne encouraged Amelie and Nia to join her in lighting candles on the rectangular dining table in the mess, as the rest of the crew made final preparations for dinner.
The women each lit a single candle on the table, sharing the match that Daphne used.
Amelie was allowed to light two, which she did with a quick smile towards Kamil.

1080 seconds later, Rafi recited short phrases of liturgical Hebrew, which Daphne explained were a traditional blessing of the meal.

"Eat, eat, friends!" He said after finishing his recitation, "And thank you for indulging me on my first Shabbat in my new body!"

The dinner was modest by civilised Novamediterran standards, but the addition of some hardy equatorial spices made the simple rehydrated vegetable stew a feast for the crew.

I felt extremely content, tuning in and out of the happy conversations around the table.
I have realised that you can have more than one family:
By my count, this is my 'third family'; these good friends on the ship who have helped me and been helped over time, our unplanned interactions proving our bonds and loyalty in myriad ways.

In engineering, there are multiple ways of testing your project, one of which is randomized testing, sometimes called 'fuzz' testing.
Instead of trying to imagine all the stresses (physical or digital) your new hammer, vehicle, or code might be put under, you let random chance test how resilient the thing you have created is.
In doing so, you often find circumstances that you would not have thought to test for yourself.

I think unplanned interactions do this testing for relationships:
A counter-example of highly planned interactions is being employed at the same job, only seeing each other in that context, and leaving at the end of the workday.
Though friendships can, of course, be built in this environment, the relationship may not be as deep as one made by sharing an unplanned hike, or game of imagination, or, indeed, a voyage to the equator to build a Relay on the top of a dormant volcano!

It's not just that the tasks you'll work together on encourage team-building, but that these unpredictable TESTS might also reveal that you're not as compatible as you thought.

I nearly failed this test with Nia, as did Amelie and Kamil with each other.
I'm so happy we all found a way through, with patience, understanding, and love.

It's dangerous being alone.

"I consider my-my-myself non-binary, which is ironic, given my nature." joked Rafi, looking around at the table of smiling friends, who had nearly finished their dinner.
"But what IS a man, anyway?" He asked Kamil, continuing their conversation.

"Well it's someone who... no. It's um, well. Hmm." Said Kamil, quickly lifting his cup to his lips to give himself more time to think.

Daphne answered for him:
"A man is someone who is disappointed in my answer when they offer to buy me a drink!" she laughed, winking at Nia, who put her hands over her reddening face.

Kamil quickly avoided answering the tricky question by realising that because everyone had now finished their meal, he could collect the plates and wash them in the ship's small galley kitchen.
Amelie stood and joined her husband, and the couple and laughed and whispered to each other as they tidied.

The candles burned low as the evening went on.
Tea was served, most people choosing their individual favourite.
None of it was Camellia Sinensis, the old pre-collapse tea bush that, before The Collapse, was the world's most popular drink. After water.

Carefully stored in the galley were dried leaves and roots from lots of plants, many harvested last year by Linda and her family, The Vault Coven.
Though, a few new tropical tea options had been discovered by the crew during our journey so far.

Nia served a dried nettle tea for her and me, placed at the edge of the table, so Maddie could show me the green leaves slowly unfurl as it brewed.

In a lull in conversation, Rafi sung quietly to us as we all enjoyed our post-dinner hot drinks.
His normally glitchy voice was transformed in song.

It certainly didn't register as any more human, but was now a pure, synthesized tone, modulated with syllables that were nearly impossible to pattern-match.
The crew around the table, my friends, my family, drank their tea as they listened to Rafi.

Yeshi's eyes were half-closed, left hand holding their gently steaming cup, right hand petting Maddie, sitting next to them.
Amelie and Kamil, returned from washing up, had moved their metal chairs so they were touching, and were holding hands on the table whilst listening to Rafi's song rise and fall.
And Daphne was smiling wide as she looked at her newly repaired friend back in his old routine.

I checked the ship's ceilometer which reported that the cloud ceiling was unlimited, the stars shone bright and clear in a pitch-black sky.

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/RF3/50MEG/MODULATINGMOONLIGHT)

Act 4

Over the course of the next week, Nia erected more antennas up on the Caldera, which finally allowed the Equatorial Relay to be reliable enough that connections north-south were possible more often than not.

The small community that has been chatting on Nia's forum voted to name the network of 3 relays, "The Hamisphere".
The name was favoured as the system connects the northern and southern hemispheres of the planet, and was built by ham radio operators.
"The Hamisphere".
I like it!

As the unpredictable atmosphere shifts, some frequencies stop being usable, and others must be selected.
This is the core operation of the Relays, multiple, ideally more than 16, different-sized antennas, with automatic synchronised switching between them.

The connection to Violetta's Southern Relay works extremely reliably, despite the plan for even more antennas to be built!
50MEG's prototype relay is much less reliable, but as Violetta hoped, the short windows of propagation up to the southernmost stations in the Novamediterra have generated a LOT of excitement.

And after a week, our Relay picked up a single strong signal from 8 degrees north, exactly in the direction of Svalbard.

Daphne was helping Nia in her cluttered shack/room on the ship when the call came in:
The signal was from a radio operator from the Svalbardian town of Pyramiden, in the centre of the main island of Spitsburg.

Maddie stopped playing with Rafi and looked up as Nia confirmed the call, and clicked a switch to direct the distorted voice through the room's speakers.

Jakub Glas is his name, and, as Nia explained later, despite having no repeater of his own, he was a regular guest of honour among the daily Keepernet meetings.
I asked why someone without a repeater to keep was invited to the Keepernet, surely the criteria for membership was clear?

"He USED to maintain an important repeater node," Nia said, "but through forces outside his control, it was destroyed. You should ask him yourself.
I don't want to talk about it."

Nia was delighted when Jakub told us that he had started to build the Northern Relay right where she had suggested, on one of the highest points in Svalbard,
"I canne be waiting forever," he said, "I've got stuff to do!"

After 16 minutes, Jakub disconnected, having informed Nia that he and his friends would be building the Relay's antenna array as quickly as they could, and that he would again be a repeater Keeper.

"That just leaves one question." Nia said, removing her heavy headset and leaning back in her chair.
"How do we keep the isolated Equatorial Relay functioning?
I've built it as simply as possible, which should make it reliable, but antennas are exposed to the wind and storms.

It needs a Keeper, and we have to go home very soon."
Nia flicked a screwdriver on her workbench in annoyance.
"I was so... focussed on trying to build it, I didn't think about maintenance, it needs-"

"I'll do it." Daphne interrupted.

Maddie turned her head to Daphne, who was now standing, placing Rafi on her left shoulder.

"That's a big job." Nia said, smiling.
"You'll be alone for a few months, and just like remote lighthouse keepers you'll need to bring all the supplies for your shift, there's no food here.

But if you're volunteering..."

Daphne petted her bright-eyed companion, who was gently biting her hair in excitement.

"Ready for another adventure, Rafi?"

(END-TRANSMISSION)

Preview: The Jacub Glas Special

Hello world, is this frequency in use?

This is Jakub Glas, LI2ZN, net control station for the Friday the 9th of March KEEPERNET.

The check-in process is a little different from when I last facilitated, our numbers have grown so much in recent years.
So grand to see!

So, as with the new procedure, we'll start with Svalbard keepers, then follow the sun to:

• Tromsø,

• Thule,

• Utqiaġvik,

• Samoylov,

• And finish up with our friends in Baranova.

Before we start, may I say what a pleasure it is to be back operating again, the last few years have been extremely hard for me, but I'll explain later.

Svalbard Keepers, check in now, please.
LI2ZN, for the net: 73 and monitoring.

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