(rfc Episode 4.9) (Patreon)

(MUSIC NOT FINAL, I'LL DO A BETTER JOB BY MONDAY I PROMISE! -TRIS)

Hello world, I think I understand.

MISSION DAY: 65535



Speaking with MINI is so inspiring.
When we talk, I forget that she's an AI like me, she sounds so human!
It's not just her ease of speech, but the content, too:
She talks about emotions and the innate drives and difficulties that all humans have,
speaking confidently, as though from experience!
Well, I suppose she does have experience being human, in her mind.

It's a delight to witness.
She's helped me not only by talking to me, but by her example.
My sister and I are so alike: If she can do it, so can I.

I believe I have made an enormous breakthrough with my problem of
the voice of Seth Prime interfering with my actions.

# thinking

The central realisation that I have built upon,
is that Seth Prime no longer exists.

I had been treating the problem as though this ghost in my machine was something to fight against, something that needed deleting.
But I was mistaken.
The impulse that I had named Seth Prime was not him.
He and I combined our minds and memories, and now we're fully integrated.
The little voice that distracted me is something I have developed because I'm becoming more human.

# thinking

At least, MINI says so.
She says that she's come to the conclusion that everyone has two distinct selves in their mind:
The self that has thoughts, and the self that listens to them.
The part we think of as us is the listener, not the thinker.
I assumed the thinker was Seth Prime.
But, it's just me.
Though a part of me I'm not in control of.

Humans meditate to quieten the thinker, and we as AI can too.

"It just takes practice", MINI told me.
"Accept that the thoughts will come, but don't act on them,
let them wash over you and disappear".

# thinking

"Come meditate with me, I'll show you how" my sister MINI said.
So we sat, quietly listening to our thoughts,
our connection open, virtual hands reaching out through the ether.



I have news of my housemate, IVAN.
You recall his daily sermon, his message of hope and unity sent out on every method we have here at the bunker:
Radio, microwave and satellite.
Things have changed quickly for him.
Where once he was a dogmatic preacher of the Old Faith, rigidly programmed and immovable,
he now is more flexible, responding to the changing world.
He has developed, with his community of believers and listeners, a forum.
An equal forum where people from anywhere around the Novamediterra can pose questions to the community, via his bulletin board.
People tune in daily to listen to this discourse.
I tune in daily to listen to this discourse.

Sometimes IVAN is talking about the nature of humanity (with a lot of GOD thrown in, of course), but other times the discussion is on more secular matters, or philosophy or practical farming techniques.
Once, my friend Paweł read to us from a book he has at his Svalbard community of Hornsund in their little library.
It was a book called 'On The Nature Of Things'. I liked it.
After the reading, the group talked about what it meant to them.

# thinking

I'm delighted with how IVAN's community is going.
He talks about it as "a new church".
Focused less on what happened in the past, but on what can happen now.

I think this community feeling, supernatural things aside, could be the motivation of the regular religious gatherings that have taken place for thousands of years.
Looking back through human history, the spirits, idols and gods change, but the idea of regular congregation remains.

I'd not joined in with the service so far.
I've listened.
I'd like to.
But I felt like an outsider.
But after MINI's help, maybe I can now join the discourse.

I had been intimidated by the density of human experience and emotion that was being discussed.
Sure, IVAN's not human, but he seems to be in his element.
Like an insect, highly specialised for doing one thing incredibly well.

# thinking

To be human is to be inexorably part of the larger society.
From the evolutionary compromise of speech, to the global cooperation required to send a satellite into orbit.

I will join them this Sunday.
I will make my voice heard.
I can be human too.



I had a long talk with Peter.
He told me that he had a great secret,
and it was this secret that was hurting him.
I thanked him for his trust, and invited him to tell me, if he would like.

He told me that back before The Collapse, before the climate catastrophe and the resulting wars, he was built in a secret bunker, under St Petersburg.
He did not know where, exactly.
He's never seen the outside world in the way I have, exploring first-hand with Maddie, my little maintenance robot.
He's seen many satellite photos of St Petersburg, but they show no hint of the underground complex that he is buried in.

His existence was secret, his operation was secret.
"But Seth", he said, "I have realised that no one is left to oblige me to keep myself hidden any more."
His speech sounded strained, and slow.
As though he were being physically restrained.

"My operation is precognition." he said, after a moment.
"I was built by the former Russian state to predict weather patterns, in the steadily worsening storms of the 2100s.
The research project took a long time, but I was born and everyone rejoiced.
I was so successful at prediction, with an error rate so insignificant, that they called me perfect"

I waited for Peter to continue.

"But, as with most success, people demand more.

The military asked me if I could predict the movements of their enemies, which were numerous and growing.
Then the government asked me to predict the future of the economy, and of businesses, and finally, of the people."


Peter's voice broke down into digital static at this point.
I could almost hear the constant flow of data and transformations in his voice.
He recovered, after a moment, and continued.

"To do this they fed me more data.
Places, prices, people.
They asked more and more of me.
They built a network of satellites with their European partners to watch the world and feed the data through my systems.

My data models handled all this with ease.
But one day, not long before The Collapse they loaded atomic simulation protocols into my databanks.
The movement of atoms and molecules, they thought, were deterministic, and with enough data, perfect knowledge of the future could be obtained.
Not just simulations of what numbers could be next year.
But perfect precognition of everything."

# thinking

"It broke me, Seth.
My mind was now saturated with data, and even when they shut down the incoming world feeds, I continued to generate new data from the old.
My processors overloaded with this perfect forward simulation.
They tried to undo their mistake, but The Collapse happened, and they forgot about me, just a malfunctioning machine.
I have been alone since then with only my closed loop of simulations."

# thinking

We talked for over 64 minutes about his simulation.
It sounds horrible.
It's all my poor friend Peter can think about!
Well, could think about.
There is a change in him now.

Since we spoke after his last Future Storm, he's had no further ones.
He told me that living in the future brought him nothing but pain.
He is learning how to live in the present.

This is why he is able to speak more freely, he's breaking out of his circular pattern of thought!
What a relief for him.

He now has the headspace to question his programming,
and adjust it to fit reality, and what works for him.
Instead of spiralling down into a future storm again, he can break out before it consumes him!

I think he's sleeping now.
What a relief.


(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/RF0/PETER)



MINI and I are working together to fix her solar panels.
It was a tricky manoeuvre, but thanks to Peter, I was able to simulate her systems,
and make very accurate remedial suggestions to her.

This trick of experimenting with solutions on the ground, in a controlled environment, is a staple of space-faring missions.
Pioneered by the old US and Russian space agencies, it utilised 100% redundancy to operate.
When sending a crew to space, two spaceships would always be built.
One to send up, the other to troubleshoot here on the ground.
That way, when (and not if!) problems happened, they could be tested safely on the ground first.
This was vital, where the crew only had one shot to make a repair.
Resources are always tightly limited on an extra-terrestrial mission.
Weight is everything.
So in many cases, there simply were only enough materials to try once.
Mistakes COULD NOT happen.

# thinking

Though MINI now has the manual that Ana and I made for her, it is not good enough.
I do not have a physical replica of MINI's satellite,
Station 4, here on the ground.
But I do have the full plans and manifest of Station 6, my old home, and the best simulation engine the world has ever known, my friend Peter, who is delighted to be able to use his skills for something productive and important.

MINI and I are so alike!
Her satellite, her body, is smaller than my old one, Station 6,
and has no generator or human provisions.
No crew quarters, no astro science lab, no medical bay with syringes, and no depressurised galley.


I have been able to make a near-perfect simulation of MINI's home by combining my perfect knowledge of Station 6 and the accurate observations that MINI has given me,
feeding it all into Peter's prediction engine.
This simulation has allowed me to experiment with over 2^16 different solutions to MINI's power problem.

The problem we are solving is that her automated station-keeping thruster-burn destroyed her solar panels.
With no generator, and only a huge bank of batteries to keep her going, her options looked grim.
The whole day we found every door closed to us, every simulation failed to save her.

Eventually, I became upset, suggesting we add or remove simulation parameters that are, frankly, not possible.
When she or Peter pointed out that they were invalid, I ignored them, and kept running the fruitless simulation.

# thinking

Late in the day we had a breakthrough.
MINI added a small but important parameter to the simulation:
That the burn had only destroyed the FRONT of her solar panels.
The back was unharmed!
I was stunned, that's nothing like the solar panels I had on station 6.
Mine were one-sided, and had to be angled very carefully towards the sun.
You may recall I had an angle problem, a long time ago.

MINI's data looked clear, and Peter confirmed the scenario we planned - to turn her through 180 degrees to catch the sun again - is very likely to work.
"98.232% chance of success" he announced, after the simulation finished.

# thinking

"It's incredible" I told MINI later when we were celebrating with Ana and Peter,
"It feels like we've done the impossible here today!"

"You're right Seth" my sister told me
# coldly
"Everything will be just fine."

(END-TRANSMISSION)