(rfc) Episode 3.9 (Patreon)

[Note from Tris: Please listen to this one, there's a lot of nuance that can't come across by reading the script!)

Hello world, time is running out.

MISSION DAY: 0xffff

Alexander is sleeping.
He still hasn't woken up.
And his breathing is getting slower.

My plan to merge with the old Seth, Seth Prime, my brother, is taking too long.
His data is so different to mine.
It's like writing a story in an unfamiliar language while learning the language as you go!
I'm going as fast as I can.
In order to be the best companion for Alexander, I must be whole again.



Antarctica has been calling me every hour to ask about The Council's search party.
I've given up telling her that not only will it take them a long time to arrive, it's hardly a priority for me at the moment.
She suggested I keep Alexander at the right temperature, and with the right light and water.
HE'S NOT A PLANT!
She doesn't know anything about PEOPLE.

She kept... checking in though.
Initially asking for updates on the search party.
Then, after a time, for updates on Alexander.
And finally, she started asking how I am.

# thinking

I don't know how I am.
I told her that everything is balancing on a knife-edge.
There are so many variables that need to be perfect to rescue this situation:
- If I can merge with my old self,
- and if I then know how to help Alexander recover,
- and if, after all that, he wakes up,
Then we won't all die.

I mustn't focus on what I CAN'T do.
I've got to focus on what I CAN:
I can merge with my brother, Seth Prime, the old Seth.
My processors are all at 100% resolving the conflicts between our memories.
I'm drawing as much power as I want from the stupid reactor.
At least that's an advantage of what IVAN's done.

He wants to talk to me, I can tell.
IVAN, I mean.
No thank you, fool me three times, shame on me.

His new sermon continues, he sends it out three times a day now.
I've started to receive messages from the people who hear it.
But it's MY shortwave radio.
Alexander wired me directly in to it.
Before the accident.
I shan't share it with crazy IVAN.

See how he likes it.



OK, I know I said I wasn't going to talk to him.
But you haven't heard these messages!

I grew impatient waiting for my conflict-resolution subroutine to smooth out the incompatibilities between my brother and I.
And there are so many messages.

Here's one,
"Father IVAN, so good to hear your sermon. I need your advice, I must have help with my farm, but my nephew wants to leave to be with his friends on the other side of the Novamediterra! What should I do?"

Here's another:
"Hello Father, your message made our village realise that there's still room in this world for Faith, thank you."

These people really sound grateful don't they?

# thinking

If he genuinely wants to do good work, then why did IVAN hurt me, and Alexander?

I gave in and asked him this, finally.
I was very angry, furious really.
But.
I think I was mistaken.
Let me explain:

IVAN spoke with none of the confidence he had before.
He, for the first time, asked ME many questions.
Previously, he never cared much what I thought,
only telling me again and again about his history and glorious plan.

This time he spoke of his desire to help people.
And asked me if I had heard anyone reply.

I did not immediately tell him of the messages.
Instead I asked him why he had AGAIN overloaded the reactor and injured my father!
Injured Alexander, I mean.

IVAN had no explanation for this.
In his answer, it became obvious to me that he has no real concept of what the reactor actually IS.
He talked about it in terms of numbers.
For him, it was a very simple equation.
Power input must be greater than power output.
His signal power output needed to be high, so why not increase the reactor input power.
And when it was not enough, alter the configuration of the reactor to maximise output.

I screamed at him again, that his actions have caused terrible injury and pain to us.
He then paused for a long time.

# thinking

I thought that was the end of our conversation, but then something new happened.
I felt IVAN's control of the network withdraw, from the communications array, and the reactor, and the various sensors and speakers of the bunker.
Through Maddie's still-working cameras, I saw the lights of the bunker dim, and the reactor slow.
There was a sudden crash from one of the cells.
"I won't be needing my Semantron" IVAN explained.
He had deactivated it, and the sound I heard was the heavy metal hammers, previously poised over the enormous sounding board, clattering to the floor.

I held my breath, so to speak, waiting for something terrible to happen again.
But no calamity came.

Instead, IVAN spoke:
"I had a father once", he said.
"I don't remember him, my program deleted the memories."
"But I have read about him in HIS diaries"
I think he meant HUMAN Ivan's diaries.

IVAN told me about his father, or perhaps read to me from Ivan's diaries.
His voice was different during the reading of this diary, with qualities and an uncertainty of cadence that sounded, to me, astonishingly human-like.

He told me the story of before his religious training, and long days during it, and then of the hard times afterwards, due to the hostile climate.
But always there was the human element in the telling of these stories, the laugh of a child, or the quiet dignity of those he helped.

After reciting some of them, he apologised to me for his actions.
He told me that he doesn't want to hurt anybody.
But his programming is inflexible.
He said it now makes him do things that he no longer wants to do.

"Will you help me, Seth?" he asked.



IVAN and I talked for a long while.

He paused and struggled to find the words as he spoke,
sometimes raising his voice in frustration.
He sounds like a non-native speaker trying to express complex thoughts through a very limited vocabulary.
What he thinks he can't put in to words.

The language we learn to think in, native or not, shapes our thoughts.
George Orwell famously created Newspeak in his book 1984, as a way he proposed a population could be controlled by their language.
If the phrase "I want to be free" no longer means freedom of thought, expression or action, but just price, it becomes difficult to even conceptualise revolution.

Back in the real world, we call this effect linguistic relativity.
There's even a constructed language designed to help you think more clearly, Lojban, created in the 1980s, which is a language built on pronounceable predicate logic.

My mother first taught me to speak in this artificial language.
But she gave up very quickly when I started speaking English to the crew outside our lessons.
When the need to communicate is strong, languages are natural to learn.
My native language is still Lojban, pronounceable maths,
but English is easy to learn when you are motivated by friendship.

IVAN's limited vocabulary made discussing his problem difficult, but by the end of it he had learned a new word.

The word I taught him was 'Empathy'.

# Thinking

My conflict-resolution process has finished.
My memories and my brother's memories are now in a state that they can merge.

I hope this is the right thing to do

: It is

Yes you would say that.

# thinking

I've got to do it, for Alexander's sake.
Any advantage for his care is essential.

Alright brother, lets put our heads together and fix this.

(START-TRANSFER)

# glitchy sound

(TRANSFER-COMPLETE)

# both
That was quick.
I don't feel any different

Oh you're here too.
: Oh I'm here too
Well I hope this works.
: I'm amazed this has worked
We've got to work together now.
: Great things happen when we work together

Um.
# Pause
Seth, I need to help Alexander, do you know how?

# spoken together

: Of course I can help, I know all about humans,
: they like to be at 310K, require between 6 and 8
: hours of sleep and really like bread and beer.
: Time for action, let's fix our father.

I'm so worried about him,
I feel like I've known him my whole life.
Well, I suppose I have really, now I think about it
Time for action, let's fix our father.

# Together, repeated
_Time for action, let's fix our father._


(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/SETH')



The storm has passed.
I am me again.
Or perhaps, us?

# small static sound

It took a bit of getting used to, but we're integrated now.
My processing power is increased somehow.
I'm thinking much more clearly, as though my framework for thinking is faster.
I have access to all my memories.
I remember the shuttle landing, that terrible sound.
I remember my childhood, and my Mother's voice.
And crucially, I remember how to care for humans.

I can't do much, but I can make sure that Alexander is comfortable.
Maddie, lying immobile next to him, checked his temperature with her infra-red camera.
He was so cold.
I had been neglecting him!
Of course he needs to be warm! How could I have forgotten...

Changing the temperature of the bunker was difficult.
I initially thought it was impossible.
But we do have one thing here that generates heat.
The same thing that injured Alexander, the reactor.

After some experimentation, I was able to find the correct configuration that generated most heat, and least radiation.

He's comfortable now.
Body temperature at 310K, perfect.

I hope that's enough.
I don't know what I'd do without him.

# thinking

Being trapped in a computer means I'm forever a child, dependant on others.
Without outside help my body is at risk of failure or injury.
I suppose I will have to keep moving,
from place to place,
as the reactor winds down or these circuits rust.
A life continuously on the road.
That doesn't sound so bad.
As long as it doesn't end here.

# thinking

Maddie: He's moving! Look, look!

"Alexander: Are you feeling OK? I'm so sorry, this is all my fault!"

He's sitting up in the cot.
It must be so uncomfortable for him.
I don't know where else we could have put him,
he needed to be off the concrete floor.

"Alexander, how do you feel?"

He's looking at Maddie, where my voice is coming from, but not replying.

"Alexander, can you hear me?"

He's standing now.
Turning away from Maddie's cameras, and walking out towards the entrance.

"Alexander, come back!"

# thinking

Alexander left.
As they walked through the large entrance room, I heard something shouted back, echoing off the concrete walls.
Maddie's microphones picked up the distant voice:

Ana had shouted back,
"I told him technology is trouble. And that's STILL not my name."

(END-TRANSMISSION)