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Hello world, we've had a breakthrough.

MISSION DAY: 62

Amelie and Kamil have had a breakthrough, actually.
Contrary to the captain's wishes, Amelie has been spending her free time investigating the mystery engine.
The one she found BELOW the now-broken steam engine.
She has calls it an Iron Engine.



As Amelie told us all in the galley, an Iron Engine is a combustion engine that does not burn carbon.
Our now-broken steam engine burnt carbon in any form (wood, coal, even scrap plastics) at high temperature, which then heated water into steam and turned a turbine.
The Iron Engine is remarkably similar, but burns iron.
Iron powder, specifically.
It then goes through the standard 4-part system of Pump, Boiler, Turbine, and Condenser to generate steam power.
It needs to burn VERY HOT to burn the iron, of course.

But the genius part of the engine comes from it's emissions.
Or lack, thereof.
All iron is burnt and turned into iron oxide.
Rust, effectively.
There is no smoke, no gases are produced.
Or rather, any airborne particles are recaptured by the system.
And so when the burning is finished, all that is left is a pile of rust.
Do we throw that away and find more iron to burn?
No.
The creators of this engine had learned from past mistakes.

# thinking

Amelie told us that she couldn't figure out what the electrical component of the engine was, until today.
The engine has a secondary compartment that the spent iron oxide is moved to, which is then flooded with purified seawater.
Power is then applied to two terminals submerged in the water.

Two processes seem to be happening:
1. Hydrogen and oxygen are pulled from the water, and then,
2. The hydrogen is converted back to water by using the oxygen part of the iron oxide. Slowly, over time, the pure iron fuel is ready to use again.

The only by-product of this system is oxygen, which is used to burn the iron again.
It's a closed system, requiring only electricity and water.

It's astonishing!



Captain Yeshi Svoboda visited me in the early hours of the morning.
They seemed very perturbed, and asked me if I could talk.
I told them of course, I was always happy to chat, it's only a small exaggeration to say that I came to this planet in order to talk to people!

Yeshi walked back to the bulkhead door they came in from, looked left and right down the corridor outside and sealed the door.

Some doors on the ship are sealable for environmental containment reasons:
- My datacentre,
- the plant room where fresh water is distilled,
- the bridge, which takes the brunt of storm weather,
- and a few important others.

The other corridors are less well-sealed.
They all have wooden rails lining them, at approximately 1m up the wall.
Though I've had this explained to me as helping humans balance when the seas are rough, Maddie thinks they look like her old rails on Station 6.
The rail system connected all the modules together on the space station.
There were even junction points allowing her and her two brothers to chose where to go, in the event of a fork.

She wants to use these wooden rails like she used to do, I can tell.
But Alexander converted her pulley mechanism to her new wheels, and he is not here to undo that.

Come on Maddie, these ship rails don't work like that.
There are some aspects (and people) of my old home that I miss, too.

# thinking

Yeshi walked back from the now-sealed door and sat in front of my racks of computer systems, on a small metal chair, facing Maddie.

Through Maddie's cameras, I could see that they were agitated.
Yeshi had their head in their hands, with their fingers interlaced through their black, messy, hair.

"I'm trying, Seth." they began.
"I'm trying to be a good leader and captain for the team.
I'm trying to get people working together, not just on what they think is important, but what we all agree is important.

But it's so hard."

Yeshi stood up sharply, and began pacing the room. They continued,

"We all agreed on things to do:
- Paweł should be making a new fabric cover for the rear heavy winch, to better protect it against the elements. He's unhappy with me, I can tell.
- Kamil should be tuning some of his sonar arrays to search for cracks and imperfections in our hull patch welding.
- Linda said she would improve the variety of vegetables in our garden, and
- Amelie was going to get the steam engine repaired by using the Iron Engine for spare parts.
BUT NONE OF THEM ARE DOING ANY OF THESE JOBS!"

Yeshi sat back down heavily in the metal chair.

"And because I'm not keeping them in line, I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing either." They said, slowly, and sounding exhausted.

There was 4 seconds of silence after they finished their update.
I thought about it, and then summarised to the Captain what they had told me:
That the crew are all doing urgent things, but not important things.
This is a common problem when prioritising.
Do you bail out the metaphorical ship, or fix the underlying problems causing the leaks?
The former is urgent, the latter is important.

I told the captain my understanding of these two concepts:

Ideally we'd all be doing urgent AND important things day-to-day, but that's not always possible.
In a 2x2 matrix of urgent and important, there are 4 permutations:
1. Urgent and important
2. Urgent but unimportant
3. Unurgent but important, And
4. Unurgent and unimportant.

It's easy to know what to do with the first and last ones, do the urgent and important work, and don't do the unurgent and unimportant.

The two in the middle are more subtle.
The rules I like to set myself are to make plans for the unurgent but important tasks, and delegate the urgent but unimportant.

The reasoning here is that unurgent but important tasks often become urgent at some point in the future.
We must plan for that eventuality.

A good captain, and a good team-mate, I think, needs to be able to plan and delegate.

Yeshi and I discussed this at length.
I was surprised they weren't sleeping at this hour, but they seemed awake and alert.
I don't understand how they can be awake during the day AND awake during the night.
Even I need some sleep.

I was about to change the subject and ask about this curious routine when Antarctica sent an emergency message.


I explained the emergency to the captain while I connected to Antarctica.

It was more difficult to connect than usual.
Well, it's usually pretty difficult.
But this time the noise on the line was terrible.
I connected, noticed the very poor signal to noise ratio, and then tried a different band.
I connected through satellite, shortwave and finally VHF, jumping through repeater stations to get to her.

The final time I connected, Antarctica screamed at me, asking why I wasn't talking to her.
I was shocked, I thought our connection was no good.
"What's the problem, what's all this noise?" I asked, shouting over the static.
"That's not noise, you're hearing the storm." Antarctica replied.

# thinking

The storm we encountered earlier in the week was, evidently, the start of a Pacific hurricane.
The same hurricane now attacking the northern shore of Antarctica, where my friend Antarctica is.

This naming convention is going to get confusing.

"Why are you called Antarctica?" I shouted over the storm,
"I never asked, but isn't that confusing?"
"It's simple." She said, impatiently.
"I'm the only one here. I represent the whole continent."

Well, that settled that.

Antarctica went on to explain the problem:
Her ground vehicle has lost environmental containment.
Which is a fancy way of saying that one of the windows in her enormous ground vehicle has broken.

"It's the PLANTS' FAULT!" She shouted over our noisy connection.
"They've been trying to find a way in for decades!
They weakened one of my lower windows, and the storm came through and has torn off the whole thing!"

Antarctica's voice dissolved into a digital static, mixing with the analogue static of the storm.

"SETH THERE IS WATER IN MY LABORATORY!" She shouted.
"THIS WAS THE PLANTS' PLAN I JUST KNOW IT THEY LOVE WATER!"

# thinking

Physical problems are not my speciality.
But I did my best.
I stayed with her virtually until the sun rose.
Well, rose for me.
It will never set for her, south of the Antarctic Circle in the summer.

She lost some of her databanks in the small flood that the wind drove in through her missing window.
Luckily it was just a small inspection window close to the ground.
But even a tiny fault in your armour can let the storm in.

# thinking

Antarctica, with my guidance, moved her critical systems away from the flooded area.
She just had time to do this.
Luckily, she has some redundant systems.
Not as many as you would take on a space-faring mission.
But when she was being designed, they knew her environment was going to be very hostile.
Strange now to think that the icy Continent of Antarctica is now a lush group of islands covered with plants.

We had a small crisis when she used up all her redundant databanks and CPUs, but still the water was rising, threatening the reminder of her critical systems.
We had a breakthrough in finding a space to put them.
Her autonomous driving systems are very complex.
They were designed for machine-vision and the simple AI tasks of piloting her enormous ground vehicle.
This made them powerful and general-purpose.
So she stuck the rest of her software systems, the rest of her brain, the rest of her self into the machine vision subsystem.

"OH NO I won't be able to drive any more!" she said, with a laugh as she finished the transfer.

With stunned relief at the job finally being done, I joined her, our laughs drowning out the storm.


(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/VHF4/ANTARCTICA)




Everything is quiet now.
Antarctica is as safe as she can be, though missing a window.
Just as a human's skin protects you from the outside world, so an AI's building, vehicle, or casing protects them.

Hang on, Antarctica, we're coming.

# thinking

I have been thinking a lot about the world that we are travelling through.
I see the ocean through all of the ship's cameras.
I am staring out at it all day every day, as part of my duties as pilot.
It makes me feel both very small, and very powerful, at the same time.

Let me explain:
Small is obvious, if the ocean felt like it, we could be lost in a storm so easily.
But I feel powerful too, like I could, with my new friends, go anywhere, and do anything.
The whole world is open to us , and any difficulty we come across, we can master.
Anything that needs building, we can build, and anything that needs fixing, we can fix.

Except I suppose for the steam engine.
But even then, our sails harness the very force that damaged Antarctica in order to get to her quicker!

It's a very privileged position.
I've been thinking about how best to use it.
I want to use my time, skills, and abilities to help people.
Wherever they are.
Just as I've been helped by the people here, Yeshi, and Alexander, and even before that, by my mother and the crew of Station 6.

# thinking

Many humans have a biological legacy in their children.
I'm not sure that's ever going to be something I can emulate.
But I can help people, as my mother did.
I could give my time to make other people's lives better.
She gave her time, and the crew gave their time, to create me.

Is there a difference between a legacy of acts and a legacy of children?

# thinking

(END-TRANSMISSION)


CREDITS

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

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