[early-access] Episode 5.8 (Patreon)

Hello world, We have found a giant.

MISSION DAY: 102

We arrived in Fiji on a very foggy day.
It was not possible to see very far ahead of us, so I was piloting the boat slowly through the litter-strewn waters.
It was a good thing I was so cautious, as we gently collided with something in the mist, on our way into the island chain.

Initially we thought it was a larger ship, but as we navigated around it, we guessed it must be a huge metal container that had been washed into the ocean.
The dimensions were astonishing, towering over our relatively tiny ship.
The Molly Hughes II is only 15m tall.
We estimated this floating building to be 10 times that.

It was only as the midday sun burned off the mist that the full scale was revealed.

We had discovered a beached oil rig.


The size of this run-aground rig was preposterous, made seemingly larger by being washed up in the shallow water around the city.

I piloted the ship slowly, taking almost a full hour to circle it.
Linda Noor spotted enormous letters on the side spelling out in flaking paint the name "Tantalus".

# thinking

Getting up to the rig was difficult.
The crew were eager to see what could be found on this ancient monolith.
But the sheer metal sides offered no handhold or ladder.
Eventually Yeshi climbed up the slanted side of one of the four huge feet of the rig by lassoing a light fixture, tens of meters up.
An improvised catapult had to be made to do this, but the crew worked as a team to build it.
After an hour of tinkering, the machine was able to throw a loop of rope around the light.

Once the captain ascended to the deck of the rig, they were able to tie on sturdier ropes and we made a long ladder for the rest of the crew to ascend.

I wondered what I could do, trapped as I was in the ship.
Pawel offered to stay with me, saying that we could both sail inland and see if there was anything worthwhile in the flooded city.

The crew agreed, and we set off, leaving the rest with all the tools and equipment they needed to safely investigate the Tantalus.



Pawel joined Maddie on the bridge.
She has a little table with an inclined board next to it, that she can use to roll up to window-height and look out.
She likes watching the sea with me.
But today we all were looking out for hazards in the water.
It's extremely dangerous to go ashore to salvage items from the Old World.
The richest areas of this raw material are the cities, however, so we risk it.

The three of us, me in over 16 Cameras, Maddie and Pawel, silently observed as the half-submerged ruins of Suva drifted past.

We navigated carefully, often bumping against some of the combined flotsam of an entire capital city.
Flotsam was fine, the ship was strong, but to strike the metal frame of a partially-submerged skyscraper would have been a catastrophe.

# thinking

Pawel asked me to stop the ship here and there, and he would fish out something useful from the water using either one of the long poles with hooks on the end, or in one case, the large crane at the back of the ship.
This floating metal crate was huge, and we were excited to open it, but when Pawel manoeuvred it on to the large flat rear deck, it contained nothing valuable.

Pawel cracked the sealed container open, and we found it contained only bundles of pre-Collapse bank notes.
He laughed as he pawed through the pieces of paper, throwing them aside by the handful in search of more useful items.
A small amount of gold would have been good, for building seawater-resistant electronics, but only paper was here.

Pawel held one up to Maddie's camera, clearly showing the bright red colouring, not faded after many decades.

Before I got a chance to run text recognition on the money, Pawel threw the bundle overboard, and the rest soon followed once he brought the large crane arm back to bear.

I didn't recognise the illustration of the man at the centre of the bank note.
But I did recognise the stark line of a rifle slung over his shoulder.

I think the money is better at the bottom of the ocean.



We split our week salvaging as much ironwork as we could from the Tantalus, and carefully scouting the city on the shore.

The colossal beached oil rig had so much to offer us in the way of iron!
It looked like, from the crew's report, that the rig had been salvaged already, there were no electronics or delicate items left.

However, we were looking for iron.
And on an oil rig, iron is everywhere.
Though the superstructure is made of steel, there are many fittings and housing that are made of cast iron.
Even some of the large drilling mechanisms were made of iron.
All of it rusted, of course, but as that is just part of the iron engine's fuel's lifecycle, it was all useful.

# thinking

There was a lot of manual labour that I could be of no help with
during this time.
So, on some days I retreated inward, taking stock of my data and mind, while the crew hoarded scrap iron.

One of these trips lead my consciousness on a journey up the ship's satellite link.
I connected to K873, to KATE the satellite relay, and asked her what's new in orbit.
She replied with telemetry figures, but in my dreamlike state I interpreted them as a conversation.

We were, in my imagination, at a family reunion,
of all the ESA satellites still in low-Earth orbit.
I was the black sheep of course, having left home to find friends and adventure on Earth!

We chatted about the different members of our family:
How auntie T87 saw a herd of animals so large in Alaska as to be visible from space, how cousin Z60 has stopped talking to us again, and how sad it was that old G90 had deorbited before their time.

But there was one signal that we did not talk about, that KATE did not recognise.
An outsider, someone who was not part of my European Space Agency family.
They stood, in my imagination, at the edge of the room, hanging around the canapes and cheese table, not talking to anyone.

I like talking to people, so I walked over to them, well, I modulated my frequency to sync to theirs, and spoke.

"Hello, my name is Seth, who are you?"

They seemed uncomfortable, and did not answer.
I tried to recognise their face, to see if we had met before.
I seemed to dimly remember their signal, but there was nothing about their pale complexion and long silver hair I could recognise.

I looked at their white suit.
"NASA" a patch on the front pocket read.

"I'm sorry, have we met?" I asked.

She looked around conspiratorially, leaned forward and began whispering to me -

And I woke up.

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/ASTRO0/LUNA)



After a week of hauling packs of ironwork down the side of the rig, Amelie Kotov said we had enough fuel for our engine.
It was a stroke of luck that all the iron we brought was completely rusted, and required converting back to elemental iron in the electrolysis chamber of the engine.
It was lucky because if we had brought these items back when they were new and un-rusted, it would have been MUCH HARDER to use them.
The engine burns iron powder, iron filings.
The surface area for oxidisation needs to be very large.
This allows the combustion to become a chain reaction at lower temperatures.
We could not have hand-ground down all this iron into powder.

# thinking

About a week later, Amelie was able to run our first full-scale tests, and we motored out of Fiji on our own power for the first time in months!

The whole crew was jubilant, with the captain shouting Amelie's praises through the intercom system from the bridge.

The ship was travelling faster than on the steam engine, by one or two km/h.
I re-ran my calculations.
We could arrive at McMurdo Station, where my friend Antarctica is, in just 12 days!
(provided there were no other delays!)

I transmitted this information to Antarctica by satellite, but the constellation wasn't in alignment, so she will receive it in a few hours.

I hope we're in time.

# thinking

Captain Yeshi Svoboda seems to have had a boost of energy and motivation, alongside the extra energy the Iron Engine is giving the ship.
They have renewed their enthusiasm for abandoned projects that I privately thought were essential for our continued existence on the ship:
The captain has fixed the remainder of my broken video cameras, finished the ship-wide intercom system - now every corridor has a little speaker for chatting - and they have even worked with Kamil on re-purposing his sonar system to verify all the hull repairs.
That last one is quite a relief to me, as you can imagine:
I don't fancy going down with the ship!

# thinking

There was an incident yesterday, between Pawel and the captain.
Let me tell you about it:

I first noticed them talking with raised voices on the bridge.
I had been busy analysing a small capsized boat in the water ahead of us.
I was using one of Maddie's long zoom lenses to check it.
It was floating perpendicular to normal, bow jutting out of the water, the rest hidden by the waves.
I steered us well clear of it.
You never know what is lying below the surface.
Metal, masts or mooring ropes - all would be bad news for us or our engine.

As we passed and my focus softened to take in the sensors all over the Molly Hughes II, I heard the shouting.

I activated the cameras on the bridge - there are 3,
and dropped in to the middle of a conversation between the captain and Pawel.
Pawel was saying,
"...one rule for us, one rule for yourself is it?"
He was standing over Captain Yeshi, who was sitting in the centre of the bridge.
"It's not fair." He continued,
"It's not right, and you know it."

"It's not about fairness" Yeshi replied "But about practicality:
We have 5 people on the ship -"
"6 you mean?", Pawel interrupted, sharply.
With an embarrassed glance towards one of my cameras, Yeshi continued,
"Yes, 6, (sorry Seth!) I mean we have 5 physical bodies that need looking after.
I'd rather you four be safe, and I can look after myself."

It was at this point I caught up with the topic of conversation.
Pawel was unhappy with the lone working policy.
Previously, I had heard him talking to Linda about this.
It was a good policy, everyone agreed, to stop accidents happening, or at least provide rescue or help when they do.
But with an odd number of humans, always working in pairs leaves a remainder.

# thinking

The captain and Pawel talked for a long time.
I noticed new behaviours in Yeshi, new qualities to them.
Not the brash confidence of someone who is never wrong, but the even-temperament of someone who knows they are not always right.

After the initial row, the conversation settled down.
The captain and Pawel started laughing.
And before they left the Bridge, they embraced.
I kept an eye on them both as Pawel returned to Linda, but this time with Yeshi in tow, to begin another shift in the garden.
The plants are looking very big now, at the end of summer.
It must be almost time to harvest.

# thinking.

It's dangerous being alone.
We're coming, Antarctica.

(END-TRANSMISSION)