(rfc) Episode 3.7 (Patreon)

Hello world, I should have checked on her.

MISSION DAY: 0xffff


She told me she was feeling better.
I believed her because I wanted to believe her.

Taking people at their word, and accepting the things they tell you about themselves doesn't always work.

Antarctica has destroyed her laboratory.


She told me, in a very calm voice
(I've started to dread her calm voice)
that she did not need to do her cataloguing any more.
That her mission was finished.
The plants now had the same fate as her cUtE RaTs.

There is a cleanup protocol, she explained, for end-of-mission.
Once all experiments have wound up, the remaining stores of salt
are to be poured over all specimens to permanently cease biological functions.

How is THAT, she asked me, for unnecessarily salty?
# thinking

As you can imagine, I was shocked.
I was heartbroken.
There was very little I could say to her,
I could not find a configuration of words to adequately express what I wanted.
So I simply asked, "Why?".

"Why", she screamed, "is the question:"
"Why was I sent here, why did no-one join me, and why should I go on with someone else's idea of what I should do with my life?"

I think I am beginning to understand:
Antarctica's life is one of contradiction.

So many things about her and her history and environment are at odds:
- She was built and trained for a crew, but has been alone for decades
- Her primary function was to keep her crew safe, but she can't help anyone.
- Her world, the ice-locked continent of Antarctic has changed entirely to a temperate garden.

And so on, and on.
These conflicting goals, rules and missions are pulling at her mind, clawing at her psyche.
Every day she threads through this maze of rationalisation, trying to get to a place where she is comfortable.

When I speak to her, I am another variable to consider,
another grenade to hold,
another mine for the field.


Alexander has arrived to do the physical wiring needed to help my brother move out of the black box, and in to the bunker with me.
We're working as a team, him doing the meatspace work, and me doing the cyberspace work.
There was a lot of clearing out to be done.
I've only just moved in myself.
I had so many boxes everywhere!
Virtually speaking.

I wish I could repay Alexander in kind for all the help he has given me.
He never asks for anything, saying my companionship is more than he ever dreamed he would have.
I once knew far better what humans needed.
Being the caretaker of Station 6 meant that I was well-practised in keeping them comfortable and safe.
If the Station was too hot, I'd cool it down.
If I noticed a detrimental variation in one of the crew's diet,
I'd talk to them and suggest tasty alternatives.
All of this nuance was shaken out of my mind when the shuttle crashed.
Or, I suppose, was split into the Old Seth, Seth Prime, my brother.
I wish I knew it all again.

As Alexander started his work, I cleaned up a bit.
The only way I know how to do this is by sleeping.
Or meditating.
Turning off external inputs, anyway,
and organising my thoughts.

So I powered down and dreamed.
Well, this time more of a nightmare, actually.
But these things aren't real, the real work was the cataloguing of the enormous amounts of data I had brought with me from station 6.
Perhaps that work is what inspired the dream?



Anyway, I was in orbit.
In my dream.
Specifically, in low-Earth orbit, travelling around the world many times an hour.
But below me was a very changed planet.
The Blue Marble of the world, of our world, had dried up.
The sky of this red planet below me was devoid of clouds.
with desert stretching from one horizon to the other, uninterrupted by ocean.

I frantically searched for Ally, on the shores of what was Lake Geneva.
After I acquired a connection to an imaging satellite,
I took in every cm of Switzerland,
but found nothing but broken concrete,
pulverised back to sand by time.

In the dream, the sun moved behind the horizon,
and from my vantage point, 400km up, the dark side of the earth froze.

The sun had set on the Human Race, and I was left alone.



That was a bit bleak, wasn't it?
It's a recurring dream, I'm sad to say.
I was up there in orbit for so long, I thought I would be alone forever,
dreading what the future might bring.

At least my memories are tidier now.
Such is the benefit of sleep.
Everything is compacted into just over half of my storage banks.
Freeing up the other half for my new roommate!
I hope he likes it here.

Let's see if Alexander has finished the physical work of wiring in the black box.

# thinking

Looks like he's done.
(TRANSMIT "I'm ready here Alexander")

Fantastic!

A final test of the network.
(CONNECTION-ESTABLISHED)

And how about we bump the power up just a little for my new neighbour?

# spoken: "power on"
(мощность на)

Great, the reactor is happy to give us 10% more power.
Stable at 37%, though I'm seeing a small discrepancy in -
no, it's well within acceptable bounds

(TRANSMIT "Alexander, open the connection!")

Here we go!


He's here! This is so exxxxiiiitttt

# slowed
Now hold oooooooonnnnnnn

processing power and hurt him

U-U-Ugh, its like swimming in treacle.
The whole network is slow, everything's running at half speed.
This has gone wrong.
Brother, what are you doing!?

I must find out.
(SCANNING)

# thinking

There is another AI sharing my CPUs.
This wasn't the plan!
GET OUT OF MY HEAD!

(SEND-MESSAGE "Alexander, please cut the connection, get him out, he's hurting me!")

You can't stay with me, you have your own room!

Honestly, give people a Nibble and they take a MB!
# thinking
Mother would have appreciated that joke.

NO TIME TO EXPLAIN!

Wait, Alexander is trying to tell me something.
GIVE ME BACK MY MICROPHONE.

Rude.
Maddie: What's he saying?
(LOADSTREAM /DEV/MADDIE/MIC0)

# thinking

I can't hear him very well.
He says he needs to power us both down to disconnect the black box.
Something about power fluctuations in the reactor.

(SEND-MESSAGE "Alexander: Whatever, do it, please!")

OK, he's started fixing it.

This feels like the time aboard Station 6 when my systems overheated.
Do you remember?

This was when I was collecting myself after the crew, my family, died.
With no-one left breathing on the station, I thought,
I could save a lot of power by removing the air.

Well, as I found out, all my cooling fans really do need that air.
My thinking slowed to a crawl then, until I got the ventilation back.

# thinking

Alexander's ready.
Time to evict my older brother.


(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/RANDOM)




Alexander did it.
It's a relief to think clearly again.

# thinking

(SEND-MESSAGE "Alexander, thank you.")

I'll wait for his reply, he's probably busy rewiring.

That was unpleasant.
Let me explain what I think just happened.
Seth Prime, the old Seth, my brother,
is a 'full' AI, just like me.

He has hopes, dreams, the ability to critically
think and examine his environment, and adapt to it.

All this takes a LOT of computation.
Billions of connections in an ever-changing software model.
Just as in some animals, the computation is distributed around the body.
The way it works in AIs is that when a new piece of computation is connected,
such as a network, we expand to fill it.

I should have known what this would mean.

# thinking

Before my mother, Dr Redwing, was an astronaut, and long before she created me,
she was a pioneer in AI.
Back on earth, in the mid-21st century, she created the first
generation of truly intelligent machines.
She developed the technology that would eventually be installed in
an Antarctica-bound scientific vehicle,
and the same spark lives in Peter,
my pessimistic friend who lives somewhere under St Petersburg.
I suppose there could be many others!
Perhaps I will meet these cousins of mine one day.

It's always tempting for scientists to name the laws they discover after themselves.
And my mother was no exception!
Redwing's Law states:
"There'll only ever be one AI on a network where the AI cycles in exaflops is less than or equal to transport latency in seconds"

Antarctica told me that's why she couldn't bring me to her.
In the shuttle, I mean.
All that time ago.
Or maybe -
# thinking
last month?

Whenever it was - we couldn't share a network.
I should have realised it would be the same for my brother.

My mother never taught me this law - Antarctica told me about it once.
Perhaps that's why I forgot about it until just now.
My mother raised me to be, in her words, "a REAL boy".
My understanding of my body is very limited.
Even less now I'm in this Russian Frankenstein's network.
She didn't shy away from telling me about how I work,
however she left me with no user manual.

Did your mother write you a user manual?

# Thinking

IVAN has a new routine.
I'm so pleased, he appears to have taken my advice!

(between you and me, I thought he'd planned something terrible,
after he called it a 'GLORIOUS PLAN')

But he's no longer spewing the names of everyone who has ever died
out into the ether.
He addressed the unknown LIVING listeners of his signal.
With a sermon!
Quite a normal one, really, as they go.

He introduced himself as Father IVAN,
that he was the last true practitioner of The Old Faith,
and he was here to offer the Novamediterra a message of hope.

Well, that's nice.
A better way to focus his attention.
More productive!

(SEND-MESSAGE "Alexander, can you hear the message?")

No response.
Hmm.
He should still be up here.

Maddie: Where's Alexander?

Maddie is coming back inside, she was watching the rain.
She is fascinated by it.
The sound, maybe?
She thinks it sounds like the sea.
I miss the sound of the sea.

# thinking

Maddie's rolling through the Cathedral now,
no sign of him here.
Just IVAN's two faces on the screens.

In the reactor? Nope.

Ah, he's in the communications room, lying down.

Perhaps taking a well-deserved break after the emergency rewiring!

(SEND-MESSAGE "Hello Alexander, are you resting?")

What's that sound?
Maddie, is that the reactor?
Let me check on it.

(PROBE /DEV/IVAN/REACTOR0)

# thinking
IT'S AT 110%?!
How is this possible?
IVAN's new service is taking so much power, but I feel fine!
Last time there wasn't enough power for me when IVAN did this.
What's changed?

Oh no.

IVAN's disabled the safety guards on the reactor to get more power.
Maddie: what's the radiation level?


(SEND-MESSAGE "ALEXANDER GET UP GET UP GET UP YOU HAVE TO GO!")

He's not moving.

Maddie: He's not moving!