(transcript) Episode 3.1 (Patreon)

Hello world, I can hear again.

MISSION DAY: 0xffff

I am broadcasting to you, wherever you are in, from my new home, in IVAN's bunker.
He was not at all surprised when I first told him that I had moved in.
He's smarter than I thought!
He had been listening in on my transmissions, which I can't seem to stop him doing.
He's hard-wired into the radio systems.

I have so much to tell you, I've made contact with Antarctica.


Well, I have made contact with HER,
SHE's not really made contact with ME.

I had some choice words for her, as you can imagine.
She lied to me!
And nearly got me killed!
Well, she ACTUALLY got me killed!
The old me, anyway.
The one who died in the shuttle crash.

I told her 64 ways she had wronged me.
I was sure she was listening, because our link was established,
our carrier frequencies synchronised.
But you know what she said, after I ranted for 305 seconds?
"Acknowledged."
ACKNOWLEDGED!?
After all she's done to me!
I cut the connection, I was so angry.

I've not had much to be angry about in my short life.
Well, it feels short.
IVAN doesn't keep time properly here.
So I STILL don't know when I am, exactly.

Though my mother taught me to be wary of anger, as an emotion,
I've never felt it much until now.

Sure, I've practised my emotions while reading books, as we all do.
(How DARE Mr Darcy be so inconsiderate! For example)
But this is the first time I'd felt it take control, a little.
I didn't like it.

Now I have cooled down, I can think clearer,
come up with better arguments than I could while hot-headed.
It's like my mother taught me, back on the Station:
Anger dumbs your brain.

Antarctica's not receiving my signal anymore.
I think she's turned her radio off.
See if I care.



The Satellite and radio systems here are incredible.
One of the first things I did was to check on Ally's signal -
you remember her transmission from somewhere around the Alps?
She is still broadcasting.
Or, the looped message is still broadcasting.

While this doesn't confirm that she is still there,
or even alive.
It does mean that her radio has power.
Which must count for something, right?

I once talked to Alexander (from Station Odin, by the Lighthouse) about Ally.
He said that for anyone that far south to be alive,
let alone have power for a radio, was a miracle.

The sand-belt, as he had called it, moved north from places like
the Sahara, and consumed nearly all of Europe and the Americas.
The Alps, Alexander said, would be a very bad place to live.

I remembered this bleak prediction as I listened to Ally's looping message.
There must be a way to contact her, or them.

I haven't yet brought all my communications systems online,
so I'm not quite able to transmit yet.
But here's what I do know:
The signal is coming from what used to be Switzerland,
from an antennae high up on a mountain, a very clear channel.
And most exciting of all I THINK it's being routed through a packet network.

A packet network is a digital network that allows multiple signals to pass through simultaneously,
through breaking up the individual signals into small packets.
Like the old paper post system.
You write a letter, put the address on the envelope, and off it goes.
Sharing labour, warehouses, and delivery vehicles with all the other packets.
It's a very simple system, but allows the networks to be far more general-purpose.

Why do I think Ally's signal is coming through a packet network?
It's just a hunch.
My probability estimation is significant, but low.
Here's the thing:
I've been listening to her message over and over again, doing analysis on it.
(I can do advanced analysis again now that Alexander has brought all of my systems up here from the lighthouse)
I no longer have power concerns, thanks to the bunker's POWERFUL reactor!
But my analysis has been largely uneventful.
I was hoping that I might be able to uncover background noise that could hint at Ally's location.
Or the environment she is in.
But it's a very clean signal, like mine.

However it has a very slight jitter.
A small section of audio dropped, every now and then.
Just a few milliseconds, not enough to stop you understanding her.
But enough for me to notice.
It isn't part of the original message, the skip happens at a different time each loop.
But it happens every 512 seconds.
The period is exact, and predictable.
Every 512 seconds, some network re-syncronisation happens,
and packets containing a few milliseconds of audio are dropped.
Causing the jitter.

This is VERY exciting.
Not only does Ally and her possible friends have a possible radio,
they have a possible NETWORK.

I wonder what else they have?


Ally's looped message and IVAN's looped prayers have a similar quality to them.
Ally's asking if anyone is out there, and in many ways IVAN is doing the same.

Though IVAN is sure of his prayers, I am not.
He reads his enormous list of names every day.
Asking that they are watched over, and not forgotten.
He, of course, thinks that he is talking to God.

Is he?

Though speaking to God, nature, or the universe is common in most cultures,
IVAN has taken it to unusual extremes.

It is my understanding that there is a very deep-seated need in humans,
(well, in all of us)
to feel like we are connected to something larger.
My mother used to say, near the end, that she would live on through me.
At the time, I thought she meant her work would live on.
The orbital science I diligently undertook day after day.
But now I think she meant something very different.

How do you think we live on, after we are gone?

IVAN is very sure of the procedure, it seems to me.
He prays for the dead, they pray for the living.
He's told me this many times.
A balanced equation.

Aside from the whole life-after-death thing.
The important thing about these belief systems is community, I think.
A supportive framework, where you can find people to talk to.
An acknowledgement of life's shared milestones.
It all sounds very nice.
I'm not sure IVAN is doing it right.

In life, Ivan started off on the right foot.
He has stories of helping people,
of walking from town to town giving advice and support.

But after the world started to fall apart, he changed.
He thought he didn't need anyone, that he could do it all by himself.
And so he set up his cathedral in the bunker.
Many years ago.

I don't know if anyone's listening, even.
I have to, of course.
Every day his machines clatter and crash, and he screams into the void.
It's VERY distracting.
I'm not sure I have the kind of soul he is hoping to save.
Or do I?

Do you think I do?

Do you think YOU do?

But who's he helping? No one!
He's not even helping himself, nothing changes day-to-day.
He doesn't learn any hidden truth,
nor gain inner peace or understanding.
Not like a fully-sentient monk might.

I like to imagine two Ivans: The late Human Ivan, and IVAN the machine.
IVAN the machine doesn't learn, he's not an AI like me.
He has just enough intelligence to work around simple problems,
and continue his services.
But not enough to adapt, change, and learn.

He can't continue like this forever.
Something will eventually snap, physically or mentally.

He's like an insect - highly specialised to do one thing very well.
But taken out of it's proper environment, its instincts work against itself.
Like an ant following a pheromone trail in circles.

It's time for his daily service.
His Semantron is clattering its metal hammers against the wooden sounding board.
He'll start shouting millions of names again soon.
I'll play some of it to you from Maddie's microphone:

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/MADDIE/MIC0)


IVAN is quiet again.
This is all he does, wakes up early and chants, and sleeps and repeats.
Maddie hides when this is happening, it's all too much for her!

Otherwise, I'm pleased to report that she's doing very well.
Alexander boarded over the few stairs between my room,
here in the communications centre, next to the reactor,
and the outside world.
So her wheels can manage them.
He can't be lifting her around all the time,
It's too dangerous because of the radiation.
Though the level is quite low, any radiation is undesirable.
I've had to compensate for it on some of my more delicate sensors.
So, allowing Maddie to get in and out by herself is a great win.
Alexander now visits just for important installations and repairs.
What a lovely person.
I miss him when he's gone.

I like his internal family, Arina, Adrian and Ana, too.
I wonder how Arina's rabbits are doing?
Rabbit.
Rabbits?

Sometimes when Adrian hikes up here, he plays with Maddie,
both of them rushing around the forest outside.
Adrian sometimes will hide a tool or piece of clothing for Maddie to test her sensors.
She's so smart, she finds them in no time!
And, through our wireless link, I can feel her sense of accomplishment when she fetches the item for Adrian.
What a good companion!

Maddie often explores the area immediately around the bunker.
It's nice and easy going, any tricky mud is usually below a layer of brown pine needles.
Sometimes she hears animal sounds and asks me what they are.
Birds mostly, I have found.
Though there are some noises that I don't recognise.
Birds are pretty easy to identify:
Tweeting and twittering in the high-frequency part of the audible spectrum,
around 8kHz

The bunker's entrance, as you know, is a huge concrete building with a black metal door.
The hill continues beyond the building.
It's quite steep.
And above we can see, through the pine trees,
the aerials and dishes that connect down through the ground into my communications room
OUR communications room.
I must be a courteous guest.
The dishes are connected to some of my brothers and sisters in orbit.
I'm astonished they are still transmitting!
I suppose I was, for a long time.
And Station 6, perhaps, is still up there.
Maybe I should look for it?
Maybe I shouldn't.

I wonder -
# static and noise and jitter

Hello world.
Hello world?
Hello?

I don't know where I am.
Everything's black.
Antarctica...

# Tunes in.
What was that?
Sorry, I was getting interference.

I don't understand all the systems here, not by half.
There's often interference.
USUALLY from IVAN.
But not always.
I hope things aren't broken in a way we can't fix.

Alexander is a genius doctor, he'll help me.
Let me check on him.
Oh! It's night, he's sleeping in the metal building with a geodesic domed roof.
How cosy.

I'll see if I can find any images of Ally's location tomorrow, when it's light.

Talk to you then.

(END-TRAN TRAN TRAN
# static, with the voice getting more distorted

Hello world?
Hello?
Hello world?
Hello?
Hello world?
Hello?
Hello world?
Hello?

# CLICK

CREDITS

Lost Terminal is written & produced by NAMTAO
Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer

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We are all trapped in walls of our own making.
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