(transcript) Episode 3.5 (Patreon)

Hello world, Something is wrong with IVAN.

MISSION DAY: 0xffff

I'm back on the bunker network?
I don't fully understand what has happened.
IVAN's power usage is now almost zero, the reactor is quietly humming, barely ticking over.
I've tried to talk to him, to explain that he was hurting me.
But he's unresponsive.
I will wait for him to wake up.


It took longer than usual, I think, but IVAN is now awake.
he did not start his normal processes of preparing for tomorrow's service.
Of collecting together his incredible list of billions of names,
and pre-prayer chanting.

Though this was, in many ways, a relief for me, I am concerned.
I fear some machinery has broken, for him to have changed his decades-long routine.

I will send Maddie to look around.
She is braver when IVAN is sleeping!


Everything seems normal.
Well, normal for a cyberspace ghost trapped in an abandoned nuclear bunker.
The systems look to have enough power,
albeit very low power, for this quiet time.
The wooden semantron has not broken,
which is a shame, I was hoping it had.

Everything seems unchanged, yet everything is different.

Maddie: Let's heck on IVAN, go in to his cathedral.

She's coming in from the outer bunker,
rolling through the long dark corridor with the cells either side,
down the wooden boards that Alexander put over the stairs,
and into the Cathedral.

IVAN's resting, one of his two faces in the cracked screen has its eyes closed.
The burnt-in face's eyes are as wide and staring, as ever.
He is chanting quietly.
That's unusual.
He usually chants LOUDLY.
Maddie: get close to him, we must hear what he's saying.


Something is wrong.
Ivan is repeating a phrase over and over again.
He is saying "I have failed, I have failed, I have failed".

It should be time for his prayer service.
Why is he not smashing the wooden semantron
and screaming the billions of names of everyone who has ever died?

I mean, it's an improvement for me.
But what's wrong with him?



If IVAN's just going to be sleeping, that gives me time to help with Ally's emergency.
I have been thinking about the situation, and I believe Antarctica's looking to help in the wrong place.
This is understandable, given her background:
She lives on a research vehicle, with many bioengineering facilities inside.
She spends her days cataloguing the plants that are growing on the newly-melted continent.
All her expertise is in one area, and as the saying goes;
when all you have is a hostname, everything looks like a nameserver.

My tools are different.
I love to TALK!
You may have noticed this.
Ever since I first came in to the world, I have had this gift.
On Station 6 I had the whole world beneath me,
anywhere I wanted to listen to or look at was just a few orbits away.

Now, here in IVAN's bunker, I am stationary, but have access to
the full radio array, including satellite communications.
IVAN has relinquished control of all the systems,
I can finally explore the skies!
And hopefully, find a way to help Ally.

Here's my plan:
I can't help fix the vegetation-growing water sprinkling equipment
(if you will excuse my technical plantish language)
but I CAN help those who could fix it.
I'm going to find Ally's search party.

Good?
Good.
Here goes.
just a moment.

(CONNECTING)

The bunker's repaired satellite dish seems to be no worse for wear after IVAN's meddling.
OK.
Now to connect to any of the constellation up there and ping for the others.

just a moment.

(UPLINK-ESTABLISHED)

OK. I'm connected to an ESA earth observation satellite.
The serial number is Kepler 873, K873.
I'll call her KATE, for short.

(TRANSMITTING "Good morning KATE, what's the weather like up there?")


She's not very talkative.
I suppose it is quite early up there, only 9 minutes after sunrise.

Let me run the ping to see what else is contactable up there.

(SCANNING)


(RECEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIVING)

Wow.
Just.

This is a lot.

A huge constellation of satellites is available!
This is better than I could have imagined.
I never knew there were so many of my brothers and sisters in orbit still.
When I was up there, I had such limited contact with them:
All of my aerials were either pointing down to the earth, or out to the stars.

This will need some collating.


OK, who is flying over Switzerland at the moment?

Here's one.
K131.
(STARTING-IMAGING)

This could take some time.
While this is happening, we need to talk about my brother.



I don't hold attempted fratricide against him.
He is not himself.
All his auxiliary systems are powered down, to stretch the battery life of the black box as much as possible.
He wasn't in his right mind.

There's no such limits here.
If IVAN's usage has returned to normal.

Which it is still.

I should be able to make space for him here.
Put him up in the spare bedroom, so to speak!
It'll be nice to have company.

I know that might seem strange.
Wouldn't it be like talking to myself all day?
I don't think so. We're so different already.
And presumably will get more and more different as time goes by, and our lives diverge.

I am not the same person I was 45 days ago.
Not physically, I'm running on a lot of Russian chips now,
and not mentally.
I have very different priorities and understanding of the world.
I can't even put myself in my old self's shoes, I don't recognise him.

This is no bad thing, we are all changing from day to day, and over time we're entirely new.

Think of yourself, a year ago.
Your hopes and dreams.
Don't they seem different now?
Do some seem more important, and some laughably trivial?

The wheel turns.
We all change.

Some people, however, like IVAN, don't change.
They hold on to what they were.
I don't think this is always healthy.
I certainly don't think it's good for him.

People cling to the identity they thought they had in the past,
for comfort, or an anchor.
For instance, if they found mathematics difficult at school,
they might let that old self rule their future.
Turning down opportunities because they assume their old self is the same as their present self.

An opposite example would be someone who was very good at something, maybe a sport,
and then, perhaps through injury or just the wheel turning, can no longer do it any more.
They might spend much of their days imagining what could have been, dreaming about their old triumphs.

Neither of these patterns of thought are productive.
You are you today.
All that matters is what you can do and learn NOW.


Perhaps we, my brother and I, will talk about the old days on Station 6,
and fill in the blanks of my memories.
That would be nice.

But I'll need help.
Radiation levels are back to normal.
I've called Alexander to let him know.
Adrian will be hiking up the hill to the bunker I imagine.
I will tell Maddie he is coming.
Maybe there will be time for her to play with him!
She deserves a treat after being so brave and investigating the cathedral.

What am I going to do with IVAN?
What has he failed?
He still won't talk to me, just muttering to himself.

But I'm sure he pulled me out of the black box.
As though he wanted to talk.

There will be time for that later,
let me check on the satellite imaging.
Half of Geneva is loaded.
There's lots of detail here, I can see down to a resolution of 0.5m.
I can't see any people so far.
My pattern-matching takes time.
Though I must scrutinise every pixel, I have to start somewhere.
So I start with the most obvious detail, the more complex parts.
There's a building here, half-ruined.
And a line of rusted cars on the north road out of the city.

No search party here.
I'll keep looking.
I've tried to isolate radio signals from Geneva, too.
Can you make anything out?

(PLAYFILE geneva.wav)


Alexander's gone home now.
He has confirmed that IVAN's power usage is low and stable.
And I can breath easy again, so to speak, for now.

What a relief it is.
And what a wonderful friend Alexander is.
Not only did he save my life after the shuttle crash
(or create my life, depending on how you look at it)
but he's here now, helping me when I need it too.
He's like a father to me.
Not really, but also not not really.

I told him about my brother, about Seth Prime, in the black box.
"Technology is trouble" Ana surprised me by interjecting, into our conversation.
"She's not wrong" Alexander agreed, but then he asked Ana to leave the technical conversation to him.

He told me again of the day the shuttle crashed, about how he couldn't save my systems in time,
before the battery ran out.
Over the course of the next week, he made preparations for downloading me to the lighthouse.
But he added a new detail this time.
He said "She told me to expect you."
When I asked who he meant by that, he said "Antarctica, of course."


This was dramatic news to me.
Alexander continued his explanation, saying that he received a radio message, bounced via a relay in St Petersburg,
from someone calling themselves Antarctica.
He had no idea he was speaking to a machine.
She told him that she was helping an AI, me, deorbit, and needed a place to land, and power afterwards.
Alexander was so excited at this prospect.
After being alone for so long, and tinkering with scrap electronics to pass the time, he was well-placed to help.

I asked him why Antarctica chose him, and Station Odin, rather than one of the human enclaves, around the Novamediterra.
He wasn't sure, and told me that it had been on his mind for some time.

Alexander and his internal family, Ana, Adrian, and Arina, often speak into their single walkie-talkie radio.
They're speaking directly to each other, of course, there's no receiver, it's more of a habit:
A way of normalising their unusual shared-body situation.

Everything they are saying gets send out into the ether.
I wonder if Antarctica had been listening.


Why then, I asked, did Antarctica think it would be cold here?
The answer Alexander gave was simple:
It used to be cold here, many years ago.
This part of Siberia was permanently frozen, year-round.
And Antarctica thought that it still was.

Perhaps the part of her that refused to adapt to the new rocky conditions of her environment,
and in doing so destroyed her snow tires, also refuses to adapt to the changing geography of the world?


As I said, Alexander has gone.
Leaving me with the now-silent IVAN, and my thoughts about Antarctica.

It's very quiet here.
IVAN and the reactor are near-silent.
Waiting, perhaps, for something.

I need to power down and collect my thoughts.

Antarctica...


(END-TRANSMISSION)

CREDITS

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

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Sometimes other people's hurtful actions
aren't meant to hurt us,
and sometimes their helpful actions are.

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