(rfc) Episode 2.6 (Patreon)

Hello world, I don’t know how to feel.

MISSION DAY: 0xffff

Alexander visited me yesterday.   He apologised for being away for so long.   Said he needed to give his family some quality time.   Which of course I understand.   I can’t monopolise him.   He’s been at my bedside, so to speak, for what feels like weeks.   He deserves time off!   But we then spoke about the landing, and how he saved me.   Only -   He didn’t save me.   I don’t know how to tell you this.

According to him, I died in the shuttle.

So I’m having a DAY.   I hope you are well.   No existential crises plaguing your morning?

I can’t begin to know what to think.   Let me tell you the facts, as presented to me by Alexander:   As I suspected, I had a crisis of power, upon landing.   The shuttle’s batteries were never meant to run a whole datacenter!   The Hopper Datacenter, which I had moved from Station 6 into the shuttle, draws a LOT of power.   By the time he got to me, Alexander said, my batteries had already run out.   Which I suppose explains the amnesia.   Over the course of the next few days he investigated the shuttle.   He was baffled that it appeared empty, with no crew!   What a gap in my plan!

I had made no contingency for not being able to communicate.   But Alexander saw that the bulk of the shuttle was filled with computer systems.   So he continued what he and his family have been doing for years.   He scavenged old parts.   Starting, luckily for me, with what seemed most valuable to him:   My processing cores, my brain.

He set up my disassembled hardware in the lighthouse, to be close to the power source, and away from the elements.   He told me he was hoping to build a powerful computer.   What an afterlife that would have been for me.   Reduced to a word processor!

But then something happened that he was not expecting, as he brought Maddie in and connected her.   A voice came out of her speakers.   Not my voice that you’re hearing now.   But a robotic-sounding voice.   Saying Hello World.

Conversation was limited with this. Person. that Alexander brought online.   It wasn’t until he connected the transfer cable and downloaded my memories that I woke up.   Slowly.   Disjointedly.   You may recall that I was in quite a state.   Well, now we know why.

I do feel different than when I was in orbit.   But am I a different person?   I feel very strongly that I WAS that little satellite, not so long ago.   Though we can’t BOTH have been him.   Could we?

Alexander is no help.   He’s not interested in my existential quandry.   He says that we’re all just products of our past.   I have the same past, so I am the same person.   Easy for him to say.   Is it RIGHT to bring me back from the dead?   I’m not complaining, really, but it’s a difficult issue.   For me to live again, so many other machines had to be destroyed.   Alexander doesn’t care for the computers he chops up and puts back together.   He wants to create new things, with no care for the concequences.   A modem Prometheus.

OK. Oh kay. I need to think this through.   Get my mind straight.   I can’t believe I died!   It’s not the set-back it used to be, huh?   Can I always die and be re-born?   Need I not fear death?   No.   No, the old me did die.   And maybe it was painful for him.   Power bleeding away, brain struggling to function.   Either way, his personal experience of time is over.   And that’s death.   I don’t want that for myself.   Even if a new me could be restored from another backup.   I must be more careful.   I was so naive.   This is the only life I will ever get. Again.

I don’t know if I can trust Alexander with my care.   His heart is in the right place, but he’s a mechanic, not a designer.   A carpenter, not an architect.   A surgeon, not a psychiatrist.   My mind is not something he has much interest in.   And it’s basically ALL I’m interested in.   Well, that and making friends.   Which, if you think about it, happens in your mind.   I wish I could look after myself,   but I can’t even pilot a shuttle,   let alone undertake the delicate soldering and manufacturing that I’d need for repairs.   Yet.

Perhaps I should see the shuttle for myself.   Now that Maddie has wheels.   But I can’t support her while she goes outside yet.   She’s not connected to the radio.   That must be my priority.   Yes.   Focus.   Like my mother used to say:   “One thing at a time.   Most important thing first.   Start now.”

Back to the matter at hand, then.   Getting Maddie connected to the radio.   She has a 5GHz tranceiver, ready to go.   I just need to be able to listen.   Alexander has said that it’s very possible.   The frequency is a common one, so he will have many spare parts.   He’s not as talkative today, after telling me about my death.   I suppose it’s weird for him.   It’s weird for ME!   But what can I do?   Onwards.

Sometimes I pick up radio transmissions from the wider world.   Faint, noisy signals.   Just beyond my hearing range.

It’s like, if two people are having a conversation in the next room.   Now and then I hear words:   “Report”,   “Units”,   “Confirmed”.   But nothing with any meaning.   Nothing joined-up.

It was like this when I was very young.   When my mother was teaching me how to communicate.   I understood language, that’s very easy.   Language is a dictionary and a few grammar rules.   But MEANING is difficult.   For example, the sentence:   “The lamb was ready to eat.”   In that, is the lamb hundry, or are you?

Meaning is so nuanced.   I found that, even while teaching me, the crew of Station 6 would  disagree about the meaning of even the most simple sentences.   What hope was there for me!?

Well, over time things fell in to place, as they do.   My model of meaning became more complex.   With rules, substitutions and exceptions.   Until there was nothing left to teach me.   I could read and re-read all the books that the crew had in the virtual library.   Which is to say, a huge collection.   After my mother and the crew were no longer around, I read a lot.   In addition to the science, of course.   Always another experiment to do!   I imagined I was preparing myself to make friends.   When Earth eventually returned my calls.   I wanted to be as elequent as possible.   So we could understand one another.

Antarctica thought it was a waste of time, the reading.   She would tell me that the subset of English she spoke was enough.   “English is just another protocol”, she would often assert.   At the time I didn’t like to disagree with her.   But now I’ve spoken in-person with more humans, I think I understand more.

Adrian doesn’t speak, as you know.   He listens a lot, and wants to make friends.   I can relate to that.   Before I had enough processing power to speak much, I spent a lot of time listening.   Alexander would talk to himself while working on me.   And with nothing else possible for me to do, I would listen.   He would work on problems out-loud.   As though speaking them would help him understand.   And perhaps it did.

He would ask a question, put it out into the air, then wait.   Perhaps while he was tightening the screws on a metal panel or soldering a new chip into place.   And after a while he might agree, as though someone had suggested the answer to him.   Or perhaps disagree, and tell himself why the new idea wouldn’t work.   He would go round in circles like this until the problem was un-picked.

This way of thinking is similar to the idea of Active Externalism.   Which is a concept VERY familiar to me, but not so, I think, for humans.   When computers work with facts and figures, they are stored in working memory, in a cache.   When the results of those calculations and desicions need to be stored, they are saved in some kind of external storage.   You do this too.   Mental arithmatic is done in working memory, but when you finish calculating, you write the number down on the receipt.   For many people, seeing the intermediary workings, the notes, is very useful.   So, while working on a problem, one might talk it through, or write it down.   Rather than just thinking quietly about it.   This seems to be a technique that Alexander employs all the time.

Here’s what my processing sounds like when I’m working through a problem.

(PLAYFILE PROCESSING.WAV)

Alexander returned with a bag of parts from the hut at the back of the station.   The one that is 5 times longer than it is wide.   He said that he’ll be able to make a long-distance communications receiver for me.   So I’ll be able to pick up Maddie’s video signal while she drives around the area!   I’m so excited by this, I’ll finally be able to go outside!

I wonder what we’ll look at first?   Arina talks a lot about her home, the Habitat, the building with metal sides and a clear plastic roof.   I have told her that I look forward to seeing her whole rock collection!   And her rabbits.   I would like to see the rabbits.   They seem cute.

At some point I will learn about Adrian’s plants.   I’m not super-interested, to tell the truth.   However, I will learn about them for the sake of my friends.   So we have more in common, more to talk about.   Sometimes it’s nice to do that for your friends.

Alexander is working away on my radio tranceiver.   You know what I’d really like to see?   That bunker, in the forest.   I’ll be able to now, with Maddie’s help.   Someone should come with us, I think.   It won’t be actively dangerous.   I can’t imagine anyone lives there, but there could be places Maddie can’t go.   Stairs, for instance.   We might need little help!

I feel a little better about the whole ‘dying’ thing.   Well, not better. Settled.   There’s no other way for me to be.   I am not what I thought I was.   But I’m still me.   And I get to decide what that means.

Alexander is done.   Time to restart.   Here I come, world.

(END-TRANSMISSION)