Episode 18.3 (Patreon)

Hello world, It's quiet here.

We have arrived at Mosslodge, a settlement so small that it barely qualifies for the "Hamlet" designation.
4 families live here, in 4 wood and straw cottages surrounding a central larger stone building, shared among the others.
Thought we were very welcome, there was no planned trading or market today, one of the people who met the crew at the shore told us.
It is a very quiet place.

"Life comes at you fast." Yeshi told me as they worked on the radio equipment on the bridge of the Molly Hughes II.
"There's a lot to remember, and if you miss a single vital thing, out here on the ocean, that can be fatal!"
"Well quite, and even outside a nautical environment, there is information so important that it must not be forgotten." I replied, then asked,
"How do you manage your memory, keeping the Important and Urgent separate but compatible?"
Yeshi rolled out from under a metal instrument panel and grabbed a screwdriver before pausing and saying, "Well. You just... do it, you know?"
I explained that I did not know, that was the problem.
"Well," said Yeshi, standing and looking out of the large windows at the Inland Sea, "If it's important, you'll remember it, and if it's not, you won't."
"That's how it works for me, anyway." They said, lying on their back returning to the work.
"So your advice is to try really, really hard to not forget?" I asked.
"That's exactly it!" Yeshi said, voice muffled behind the panel.
"Always works for me, just pay attention and you'll be fine!".

Act 2

"I'm very well, thank you for asking" Arctica said.
I knew I was forgetting something!
"I'm sorry, it's been so long, how are you, and how is the Vault Coven?" I replied.
"I just told you. The rest are also doing well here, we are on schedule with the spring seed rotation.
I recently spotted something strange in Vault 2, at the back, obscured from nearly every camera.
I sent Iris in, and she discovered a split packet of seed potatoes, their roots reaching out across many shelves."
Arctica transmitted a photo.
It was a dark corner of one of the Vaults, the light in the ceiling was broken, and I could see the white-purple tendrils of the potatoes, seemingly many meters, stretched out in all directions.
I didn't like the look of that.
"They do that to search for soil, Iris told me.
Potatoes have a huge store of energy, that's why they're cultivated of course, and if left to their own devices, they will use that to try to survive."
"Like any of us, I suppose." I said.

"I believe the potato incident was due to Iris distracting Linda." Arctica continued.
"She has taken up painting, and her favourite subject is her wife."
"That's lovely!" I said.
"It is a distraction." Arctica corrected. "And a drain on our resources."
"She has used nearly all of the flax harvest in this new hobby, both for linen fabric for making canvas, and linseed oil as a base for the paints she makes."
"That REALLY does seem lovely?" I repeated.
"Lovely? Is it lovely that she spends all her time processing plants for pigments, mixing them into far more colours than she needs, and then wasting them on paintings that amount to nothing but practice?"
"Everyone needs art," I said, "what does her new family think of it?"
"I believe they all think it's wonderful." She said eventually.
"Well then, isn't that enough?"
"Yes I suppose so. But..."
There was a pause on the line.
"But she offered to paint a portrait of me, recently. Can you imagine, Seth?"
I believe I could.
"I told her no, thank you. What would she do, paint my databanks? We're not like them, I thought she wouldn't understand."
I let Arctica continue.
"But... she did, I think.
We had been talking about my past, getting to know each other, as I told you about. I'm excellent at Human-computer interaction now.
I told her about travelling the Antarctica wastes in my old Ground Vehicle, about my experiments, and the slow years of melting ice.
She painted something for me, after all, even without my permission.
Are all artists so disobedient?!"
I laughed and told Arctica that they might well be!
"One day, she showed me what she was working on, in the garden behind the Vault.
It was a nearly monochrome landscape painting, her biggest yet - it must have taken her days to make a canvas that large.
When I zoomed in the camera feed and calibrated the gain, I saw it:
Stark white mountains framing empty wide tundra, but with a yellow sun silhouetting the tiny black outline of a, rather brave, vehicle."

Act 3

Mosslodge is a very colourful place, and that colour is specifically: Green.
Dark green moss grows up the trunks of the green forest trees that surround the village, and across the roof of every house.
This green colour extends into the sea, where long tendrils of bright seaweed grow in the shallow water and wash up onto the stone beach.
Maddie and Lyosha spent their time today following a local girl along the verdant shoreline of the Inland Sea.
The girl, called Manouchka, was taking the pair fishing for local squid she called "Hazers".

"Look, I think I've found one!" Lyosha whispered as the trio were walking along the rock beach front.
In the background of Maddie's feed, I could see the white-painted Molly Hughes II about 64m down the shore, back towards the village.
Lyosha was crouching next to a pool of water that was trapped by the receding tide in the hollow of a rock.
Maddie looked closer, following the finger poking out of Lyosha's oilskin sleeve.
Inside the water was a small squid-like creature.
"These little frekans always damaging the boats." Manouchka said, poking the green-blue squid with a fallen tree branch.
"Why, are they dangerous?" Lyosha asked.
"Non, they just hurt the machines, Manman hates them." She replied, and then violently struck the water with her stick, shouting, "ALE VOU!"
"Hey! He's not harming anyone here!" Lyosha said, putting his arm out to stop the assault.
Manouchka dropped the stick, and carried on walking along the rocky beach, seemingly having lost interest.
She turned and shouted back, "There's a bit in the woods up here where there's, like, a MILLION snails, you wanna see'em?"
Lyosha did not reply, he had carefully picked up the small squid-like creature and was showing it to Maddie.
It was unhurt, but squirmed its four tentacles made of interlocking flexible sections, obviously unhappy about being out of the water.
"Captive for a while..." Lyosha whispered to it.
The 'Hazer' had a single camera lens for an eye, surrounded by a grey-flecked, purple iris.
This eye was moving around just as hurriedly as its tentacles.
"Should you put it back, Lyosha?" I asked, voice transmitted through Maddie's speakers.
Lyosha did not let the poor thing go, but looked between it and Maddie for 8s.
"Something wrong?" I asked.
He responded by holding the Hazer close to Maddie's camera for me to see, gently stretching out one of its legs, stopping its wriggling.
There were letters in a neat line along the leg, printed in the segmented biomechanical flesh.
Context hit me as my text recognition finished, `(:certainty 99 :text-result "HAAPALA HEAVY INDUSTRIES")
Maddie's feed was overlaid with recognition glyphs too, finishing only milliseconds after my own.
She looked up at Lyosha, who was frowning, then down to her own body, lifting her forelegs to her camera one at a time, inspecting the minute writing stamped on them.
On her orange leg was stamped the manufacturer's mark, "HAAPALA HEAVY INDUSTRIES", and her black one read "HAAPALA DEFENCE".

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/SDAJ38/HAAPALA)

Act 4

While Lyosha and Maddie were making friends below the sea, someone was talking to friends far above it.
I noticed very quiet signals in the HF radio band during the afternoon, almost indistinguishable from the noise.
My speech recognition was not able to pull out more than a word or two from the song of the static, but I was just able to guess the callsign of the operator.
At the start and end of the incomprehensible messages was the callsign, S0EE1. Nia Andersen.

"Hi Seth!" Nia said, after I called her on the Novamediterran repeaternet's local calling frequency, 50.2MHz.
Her signal on this higher frequency was very clear, and I told her so:
"You're 5 and 5, Nia! Did I hear you on the 20m band?"
"Yes, I've hiked up into the hills behind Mosslodge to get a clear signal, oh it's a beautiful day, Seth, Maddie would love it I bet!" She replied.
"Very likely, but she's down by the shore with Lyosha investigating the interesting local animals." I said.
"The wild biotech?" Nia asked, "Yes, I've seen quite a few of those on my way up here, I saw this flying centipede go from tree to tree on the path ahead of me. The folks in the village say they're not dangerous, but I'm steering clear from them anyway.
Bright colours mean 'stay away' in nature, and this thing was red and green striped - I'm not taking any chances!"
"Good idea," I said, "but what are you doing up in the hills?"
"OH!" she replied, "There is a CONTEST!"

In between pauses to check her other radio, Nia explained what she meant by 'contest'.
Amateur Radio contests are scheduled periods of time where all operators are invited to make as many confirmed 2-way contacts as possible, overseen by some organiser.
These kinds of contests have been taking place since the 1930s, and continued right through The Collapse and into the present day.
The Amateur Radio community were largely unaffected by the death of the old Internet in the resource wars.
You can't, I am glad to say, stop the signal.
During contests, because conversation other than swapping of callsigns and reception reports is discouraged, it is possible to make a great many of these contacts.
A contest, for Repeater Keepers like Nia, is an excellent way to test out the range and directionality of your radio set up.
Indeed, today she was testing an antenna that she described as "a bit of wire I threw into a tree".
I was surprised to learn that Nia has been most pleased by how well her signal is being heard around the Novamediterra.
I explained that using the big antennas on the Molly Hughes II, I couldn't hear her very well at all.
"That's just how it goes with the atmosphere and radio, Seth!" Nia said, "Sometimes you can get out there, and sometimes the stars just aren't right.
That's no-one's fault, so it's nothing to worry about.
The important thing is to get the wire into the air, turn on your equipment, and keep trying."
I think I knew what she meant.

(END-TRANSMISSION)

Lost Terminal is a NAMTAO production.
It is written & produced by Tris Oaten,
Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer
Thank you so much to our Patreon producers:

• Ada Phillips

• Kit

• Jade Felicity Bilkey

• Stephen McCandless

• Mike Schneider

• Trixie !

• Ada Phillips
  and to all our patrons!
  Follow us on mastodon @lostterminal@namtao.com,
  subscribe to the podcast on
  Spotify, iTunes, or your favourite network.
  For bonus content and other perks,
  support us at patreon.com/lostterminalpod
  that would be lovely of you!
  Lost Terminal will return next week