(transcript) Episode 9 (Patreon)

Hello world, I can do it

I figured it out! How to move myself piece by piece. I learned by watching brain surgery. Which makes a lot of sense, right? This is essentially what I will be doing.

Those are my two specialities, I guess. Rocket science and brain surgery. No big deal.

In extreme cases of brain surgery, in very invasive procedures. The body is cooled to hypothermic levels. This slows down brain function, and heart rate, and everything. Allowing a bigger window of time to disconnect and reconnect things. Or whatever needs to be done. I’m not sure of the details, I’m not a brain surgeon. So cooling me was where I started my investigations. Now, cooling a computer actually has the opposite effect to cooling a human. (Up to a point). Cooling a computer makes it faster, as thermo-management isn’t needed. In a computer, doing caclculations and processing causes heat. The faster the calculations, the more per second, the more heat. This might seem confusing, as the computer doesn’t burn fuel or move. Where does the heat come from? Like most heat in most systems, it’s friction. Not the friction of motors, or tires on the road. But the friction of electrons moving around transistors. It’s a tiny amount, but it’s there. And when you make trillions of calculations per second, it adds up. To combat this, I have a cooling system which has two parts:

1. Fans that blow heat away from the hottest parts of my system, my brain, and

2. Fail-safe systems that slow down my processing if I get to hot.

You have both these systems too. We’re more alike than you might think:

The fan system is a pretty simple analogy, dogs pant to exhaust heat. Humans, too, though the sweat system augments this process in a way that dogs can’t. (I’d LOVE to meet a dog, by the way, do you know one?)

The second system is less obvious. Do you know what happens when a human overheats? Same as me, they shut down. They don’t die, at least at first, but they go into a low-processing state. A “coma” this medical dictionary calls it. Co-ma-tose. Brain and cardiovascular systems slow, in a last-ditch effort to wait out the extreme heat. I suppose the body is hoping night will come.

That’s what happened when, years ago, I first experimented with depressurising the station. My fans stopped working - no air! - and I overheated. My thoughts slowed to a crawl, I lost motor function and station access. The station was very unkind to me in that moment. I was speaking to it very slowly, and it didn’t have the patience to listen! TX/RX parity error, it told me. I gave it some CHOICE words in response, as you can imagine. But the heat subsided overnight and I got the fans working again.

So, instead of cooling me to slow down my thoughts, I’m going to slow down my thoughts to cool me. A controlled version of my own near-death incident.

Antarctica calibration

Antarctica has been testing our uplink. Kicking the tires, so to speak. I watched her move the rudder, flaps, and aileron on the shuttle. She seems to have total control! Her last test was to do a half-second controlled burn of the ion engines. The #2 engine flickered for a moment, but it burned with a blue light eventually, same as the other engines. It sounded very strange, I’ve never heard an ion engine before. As the shuttle and I are physically connected, vibrations, and therefore sound, are transmitted between us. Can you hear it?

(PLAYFILE SHUTTLE.WAV)

She hardly talks to me anymore. Not like she used to. Not like I want her to. Now it’s all business. Logistics. I’m so close to being with her, but she’s further away than she’s ever been. I don’t understand. We used to have such plans! Or maybe I used to have such plans.

I find it very difficult when my plans get changed. In my mind, I start the day with all kinds of grand ideas, some left over from my dreams:

• Fix this,
• Upgrade that,
• Collect some data,
• Decipher an image.

But often, due to the chaotic nature of the universe, half-way through the day, I find I’m doing none of these things. Sure, I’m doing something useful, but not what I planned. And the longer I do this non-planned thing, the more anxious I become. Until - gridlock! And I abandon the new thing, and the old.

I NEED this plan to work.

Earlier, I finished all of the shuttle preparations. Except one. The Forest. You remember my shuttle has a forest growing in the cargo bay, right? How could you forget. It’s still a shock every time I send Matt, Matts, or Maddie in. It seems to be mostly low, wide-leafed shrub-like plants. I have no idea what they are. My pattern recognition systems are not trained for vegetation. Shrubers? Greenies? Leafy boys? I’ve looked through Dr. Marwood’s notes, but he kept the project totally secret. Maybe he spoke with the crew about it, but no-one wrote it down. Perhaps they were keeping it from you? Afraid you’d be angry they were misappropriating space hardware? It turns out, they needen’t have worried. You’re not in any position to judge us.

There’s a lot of room in the shuttle. But still, I’m leaving behind more than I’m taking. I have so many toys in the attic. Relics of my old self, and the crew. Neither of whom exist anymore. Some I’ll take, but the rest will be forgotten.

Some things that were important will be lost. I’ll try not to lose too much.

(END-TRANSMISSION)

CREDITS

Lost Terminal is Written & Produced by NAMTAO For more music check out namtao.com Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer Follow us on twitter at @lostterminalpod or check out the website at lostterminal.com If you think brain surgery or rocket science are tough try keeping to a weekly podcast schedule!

Join us for the season finale NEXT WEEK