(rfc) Episode 2.5 (Patreon)

Hello world, I’ve been wondering how I got here.

MISSION DAY: 0xffff

Not to Station Odin, I know that we crashed in the shuttle.   (Thanks for that, Antarctica)   But into this lighthouse, into my new home.   I can’t remember the landing.

Alexander has not adequately explained how he rescued me.   I’ve been giving it some thought.   There is this long transfer cable, snaking down to the floor hatch.   But I don’t think that could have worked.   I tried this method back aboard Station 6.   When I was trying to move to the shuttle, to escape my dying generator.   (Isn’t it dramatic how you run out of fuel, but batteries DIE!)   Anyway, I looked in to moving digitally, rather than as I had to: Physically.   But it simply wasn’t possible to transfer my live consciousness in a cable.   At some point I’d be thinking half in the shuttle, half in the station.   This is just not possible - it would be too slow to syncronise both sides.   My mind is not made of discrete parts - I think throughout the hardware uniformly.   Like you do.   Most of the human brain is made up of grey matter, general-purpose neurons, with no distinction between them.   The myth of the “left side” and “right side” of the brain is simply not true.   It’s the same for me.   So my solution was to move my entire mind, all at once, slowly into the shuttle.   Brain surgery.   It was very tricky for Matt, Matts, and Maddie to do, but they did it.   They were brilliant!

Most of my hardware, this time, is still in the burned shuttle.   It is not here.   HOW DID I GET HERE?   What does this mean?   I will call Alexander.   Just a moment.

(SEND /DEV/STATIONODIN/RADIO0 “Alexander, please, I need to talk to you here.”)

Hum. No response.   He must be - just a moment.   (RECEIVING)   He has replied, he is coming up.

How DID he do it?!   He’s certainly clever.   Very clever.   And with wildly different areas of specialism to me.   He must have used his practical knowledge of low-level computer hardware to do it.   How smart!

Just as most humans are not doctors,   I don’t really know how I work either.   It’s nice to talk to a specialist!

Here he is.
“Hello Alexander!”
Oh.   It’s not him.
“Ana!”
“Why are you here?”
“Where’s Alexander?”

She’s gone now.   That was embarrassing.   My pattern-matching is not great on complex humans yet.   I asked Alexander to come up, as you heard.   And I thought he had, the person who clambered through the trapdoor to  my room was wearing Alexander’s green jacket.   But it was Ana!   She seemed so annoyed I had called her ‘Alexander’.   There was a pause, and she frowned (which I’ve learned means  dissatisfaction, confusion or anger) and said “That’s NOT my name!”   What a mistake to make!

I apologised and explained that my error was because she was wearing Alexander’s green jacket.   She looked down, holding her arms out to look at it.   “Oh.” she said simply.   My visual pattern recognition, I explained quickly, comes in waves.   The first wave is colour, the second wave is shape.   Then the detail emerges in subsequent iterations.   I saw a green person, and made a reasonable logical leap.

Ana forgave me and explained that she had just come in for a chat.   “No fish today.” she said simply.   She then sat down on the floor, with her back resting on a wooden box  of cables and spare parts and took off the borrowed jacket.   She withdrew a small packet from her bag and began eating.   I asked her what it was?   “вобла” she said simply.   Dried fish, I learned later.   ‘Vobla’.   A staple here at Station Odin.   Most of the family’s calories come from the ocean, Ana has a very  important job.   Adrian supplements this with whatever can be grown in the difficult  maritime climate.   Mostly root vegetables, he has told me.   Turnips, parsnips, and with a bit of luck, potatoes.

I asked Ana to tell me her memory of the day I arrived.   She said she was on the pier, as usual, fishing.   She had just checked on some lines she had baited the previous day.   And was using her tent pole fishing rod.   She described the sound first.   A screaming from the clouds overhead.   Starting quietly, but over many minutes, getting louder.   She had never seen an aeroplane before.

The aviation fuel supply chain and the infrastructure to keep the old planes working collapsed very quickly in the past.   Most of the vehicles she had seen were simple cars, tractors, and of course ships.   The way she said ‘ships’ was interesting.   I noted a 60% increase in volume, but a 40% reduction in speed, on just that word.   I did not want to monopolise the conversation, so I asked her about her own experience crashing here;   the shipwreck that landed the family on these shores.

Ana sighed and then nodded.   She told me that long ago, they were part of a scientific community on board a large ship.   They had brought many of the brightest scientists together.   Oceanographers, botanists, biologists, engineers.   Like an extended family of scientists.   All aboard a state-of-the-art exploration vessel.   One of the few that was still functioning.   The engine replaced with one that drank biodiesel, the ship retrofitted again and again as things broke or rusted through.   Kept afloat through necessity.   There were even some electrical systems: ocean mapping sonar, powerful radios, and computers for analysing data.   All powered by the biodiesel engine.   I remained quiet because, although I wanted to express excitement about these interesting systems,   I knew where this story was going.

Ana explained there was a storm.   The Novamediterra is well-charted from old maps, but the new weather conditions are not.   Freak storms would sweep across the new human nations with very little warning.   Without either weather satellites or generations of shipping experience, the oceans were once again a dangerous place.   “Here be dragons” Ana had said, without a smile.

Ana breathed out slowly and loudly.   Sounding remarkably like the atmosphere crashing into the shuttle.   So long ago.   Or, perhaps last week.   Stupid clock.

On that day, she told me, her mother and the sonar team were working hard.   They were charting Severny Island, off the north coast of Siberia.   The pilot would steer the ship on a regular, columnar course.   Though too young to help out, Ana was on the top deck keeping a lookout.   The aim was to map the ocean floor around the island.   A labourious task that needed to be done for the sake of their maps.   Much of the data from the Old World was lost.   So they were filling in the blanks.   Attempting to drive away the dragons.   But the weather turned.

She saw the storm coming in first, with waves 5 times the size of the ship.   The scale of it frightened her.   Ana told me that the water looked like hills and mountains, rather than the placid sea she was used to.   She froze up, to scared to raise the alarm.

Soon, but not soon enough, other people realised the danger.   There was a lot of shouting and commotion.   But the sonar team kept working.   Her mother prioritised her research over all else.   Even preferring the company of sensors and microscopes to spending time with her family.

Ana said she didn’t remember much of the wreck.   When a huge wave smashed all the windows on one side of the ship, she screamed and lost her way.   “Alexander took charge.” she said proudly.   I can’t imagine such a terrifying thing.   When I had my own shipwreck, so to speak, at least there was nothing I could do.   I was either going to make it or not.   These people had to pull themselves out of the water.   And, as Ana went on to explain, as many supplies as they could.   In the failing light.

They lost nearly everyone in the wreck, only the few survivors here made it.   Not her mother, not the sonar team, not the crew.   What a loss to the world!   What a loss to the family.   We are much alike.   I too only had a mother.   For too short a time.   And was raised by a whole crew.   Though hearing Ana’s story makes me so appreciative for the caring upbringing I had.

“But there was this lighthouse”, Ana said.   She patted the cracked whitewashed wall affectionately.   “The light hadn’t worked for many years, but the building is HUGE!”.

She’s quite right.   The great thing about lighthouses is that they still work,   even if they are not lit up.   But of course, now they only work during the day.   Much better than a stopped clock, which is only right twice a day.   Stopped lighthouses are right all day!

So they swam to the shore, helping each other.   Encouraging each other.   As the sun went down, they sheltered in the lighthouse.   And the next day, started their new life, never thinking they might  see another person, so far away from civilization and rescue.   That was many years ago.   Until I arrived.   Not exactly another person in the way they were expecting.   But close enough.

And they even got the lighthouse working again!   It’s whirring around all day, all night, in my room.   Shining out into a very different world than it was built for.   Like me.   Well, like all of us.   It’s comforting, the sound.   Do you like it?

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/MADDIE/MIC0)

Ana sat quietly with me for the rest of the afternoon.   I attempted conversation twice, but it was obvious that she was happier in silence.   Which is fine for me.   I’m used to silence.   In orbit, it’s all there is.   Nowadays I know it will pass, there’s always activity here.

I’m still very embarrassed about not recognising Ana.   They are very similar in outline with the green jacket.   But different in many other ways:   Ana wears dark brown shiny overalls.   With integral rubber boots.   I’ve seen her up to her waist in water, fishing.   I suppose when you work so close to the sea the distinction between the land and the water becomes less useful.   Ana wears her hair tightly wound around her head.   For utility, I guess.   Stops it getting wet.   That’s how I’d wear my hair, I think, if I had any.   The world is too dirty, too damp.   Unnessisarily salty.

Ana left at the end of the afternoon.   I tried to raise Alexander on the radio again.   But no response.   Is he in the forest, out of range?   Ana didn’t know.   Arina was singing into the radio at one point.   I tried to talk to her, but she was holding down the transmission button.   So I couldn’t interrupt.   Shouting her song into the void.

No matter.   He’ll be back tomorrow I expect.   And I will ask him how I got here.   I’ve not yet seen the shuttle wreckage with my own eyes.   Or, with Maddie’s eyes.   Which are indistinguishable from being my own eyes.   Alexander has said that the runway the shuttle used is actually just a  huge section of flat beach, km and km of featureless flat land.   With, I suppose, a mass of twisted metal at the end of it.

Poor Pascifica! She did such a good job.   even if we’d landed her perfectly, she’d never have flown again.   The rocket boosters and main fuel tank are long gone.   And the Argon ion engines exert such a small force as to be useless under gravity.   Still, it seems a shame.   “Everything not saved will be lost”, as my Mother used to say.   I won’t be lost.   You’ll see.

(END-TRANSMISSION)