Episode 5.10 (Patreon)

Hi friends, did you know there is MORE LOST TERMINAL AVAILABLE?
Head on over to patreon.com/lostterminalpod
and join our membership community.
We are 100% funded by our members, and will never run ads.
There are 5 bonus episodes available right now,
as well as behind-the-scenes updates, free shirts
and even an extra Lost Terminal podcast!

That would be lovely of you.



Hello world, we have arrived!

MISSION DAY: 115

We have made port at McMurdo Station.
As we sailed around Ross Island, I felt rather at home.
Antarctica is covered in lush green vegetation.
(the continent, not my friend, hopefully!)
I initially thought it looked like Siberia, with its pine forests.
That would make sense to me, we're the exact opposite side of the world to North Greenland, which is a pine forest.
But these trees are not the same.
They're not even trees.

The whole land is covered, horizon to horizon, with giant ferns.



The ship was a hive of activity.
I scanned the horizon with Maddie's cameras and saw, on the top of what my charts say is called Observation Hill, a large, dark-windowed, wheeled, vehicle!
It's Antarctica, I am sure!
Her radio's broken, but I shouted through it that we were coming, all the same.

# thinking

Captain Yeshi organised the crew in the Galley.

They each gave their reports:
- Linda Noor said that the land looked sound, the giant tree ferns, as she called them, suggested a stability to the ground that we would be able to work safely on.
- Kamil Forester and Amelie Kotov were each gripping the others hand very tightly as Amelie spoke, confirming the perfect state of the iron engine, and the good condition of the ship, despite the speed at which we had been travelling.
- Paweł Wayda presented the crew with a project he had been working on since Fiji: Lightweight, strong coats, with uncountable numbers of pockets, pouches and straps for gear.

Maddie recognised the material as the same as she is wearing.
Since Paweł gifted her with a little coat of her own, I had not been able to persuade her to remove it.
Nor do I care to.

The captain gave a brief summary of the plan:
Everyone would go ashore, keeping contact with the Molly Hughes II through Maddie's connection to me, and I would monitor everything from the ship.
I would be following along through Maddie's eyes.
We'd get the lay of the land as we travelled through the abandoned scientific camp,
and then climb up the steep sides of Observation Hill to reach my friend Antarctica.

There was no time to lose.
The team, the crew, my friends rushed to help.


We came ashore in the middle of the old scientific station.
Though now overgrown with grass, moss, and these enormous ferns, the bones of the old buildings were still here:

Metal storage sheds, flat-roofed habitations, and large cylindrical liquid storage containers made up the station.
More than 128 buildings, I estimated.
We passed rusted-out shells of cars and snowmobiles, now with twisted vines knotted through their engines.
Maddie thought they looked pretty, as she rolled past on her wheels, but I felt nervous, imagining these invasive plants in my own circuits.

# thinking

I was reminded of Station 6 as we moved through McMurdo station.
We passed empty buildings with ghastly shadows of shapes inside, that reminded me all too much of the depressurised galley, the final resting place of my mother and her crew.

I was also put in mind of my orbital home by all the vegetation that had reclaimed the base.
This reminded me of Dr Marwood's forest aboard the Space Shuttle Pacifica.
I wonder how big his forest will have grown when we come back to Alexander and his lighthouse.
The shuttle is still there, on the beach, cracked in two, the forest now unconstrained by Marwood's terrarium!

# thinking

The crew, with Maddie in tow, stopped at one of the more solid metal buildings.
It was circular, with the frame of a geodesic domed roof, just like Alexander built on the other side of the world.

Linda Noor carefully stepped inside and reported what she found:
It was a kitchen, she thought, with space for cooking and eating.
On the walls were painted flags of countries from the Old World.
She recognised the flags of France, Germany, Spain, and Belgium.
The others were too weathered to identify, though there were a few well-preserved ones that she didn't recognise.
"Post-Collapse alliances" she guessed.

I had not come across this term before.
Kamil explained to Maddie and I that he was taught that when power shifted after The Collapse, some countries imploded, others joined with neighbours to survive.
Many of the oil-producing nations in the Middle East, deprived of their monoculture income, returned to desert in a shockingly short time.
Dubai, he said, as an example.

I thought nervously about Ally's cloud-seeding community just outside the desert of Geneva.

# thinking

We continued up to the back of the station.
By the number of habitations we passed, at its height, the station could have been a little town, with room for over 1,024 residents.
I wonder if that's why Antarctica came back here, to find them?

As the land rose at the back of the station, we came across more industrial areas, with larger warehouse buildings.
One of the large circular buildings had partially collapsed, and we could look inside.
It was built below the surface for a way, like a well, and seemed to be a container for liquid hydrocarbons.
There was a dirty black sludge sitting at the bottom of it.
"No open flames" captain Yeshi cautioned, before we moved on.

The buildings thinned out as we started our ascent of Observation Hill.
We looked back, at intervals, over the station.
It seemed much smaller from up here,
and it was more obvious where the ocean had engulfed the lower sections.

We reached the top of the hill, and my friend Antarctica, just as the sun was at its zenith overhead.
It would not set today, just as it had not set every day since we travelled south of the Antarctic Circle.

Her enormous ground vehicle had wheels twice the height of my friends.
She was alone, surrounded by ferns and plants, twisted through her chassis.
Trapped in place, looking out over the station, waiting for her promised crew to return.



My friends unloaded their packs of equipment.
Paweł passed around some dried fish, everyone was silent while eating.
They might have been silent even if there had been nothing to eat, as the decayed monolith of Antarctica's vehicle stood before us.

# thinking

After the food had been consumed, I sensed a reluctance in my friends.
I guessed that they were thinking that we had discovered a corpse, rather than rescued a friend.
I was still hopeful that this was not the case.

"Shall we find a door?" I asked, my voice crackling out of Maddie's speakers into the thin midday air.

The crew all stood up straighter and looked at Maddie.
Yeshi replied first, asking Amelie to bring out her tools.

Finding the door was easy, there was flaked white and yellow paint marking it out on the rear of the rusted vehicle.
As Kamil and Amelie began prying the heavy door open, I noted a small broken window below and to the left of the door.
The hole in Antarctica's armour.

After 18 minutes of heavy work, the pair broke open the door.
Black, rust-flecked water ran out onto Kamil's boots.
He called out and stepped back, surprised.

He glanced at Maddie, and I felt his shocked look.
Hardly an auspicious start to our investigation.

"Hello there?" Amelie called through the door, and coughed as the humid air from inside hit her.
"An-Antarctica? We're here with Seth!" she said.

There was no response from the speakers in the vehicle.
No lights, no sign of life.

Paweł and Yeshi picked up Maddie between them, and placed her inside.
There were banks of computer systems here,
desks with instruments on, and I thought I recognised a microscope,
but no lights.
No sound.
Only the creeping vines twisting through the consoles and cables.

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/MADDIE/MIC3)


We all pushed into Antarctica's ground vehicle.
It was very spacious, once the plants and vines had been pulled out of the doorway.
Inside it was larger than a double-decker bus, but with no rows of seats.
At the other end, towards the front, there was a staircase that led up to the second story.
The corridor was lined left and right with computer screens, switches, and banks of lights.
All dead, all silent.
We moved forward slowly, Captain Yeshi cautioned everyone about the thick layer of moss underfoot.
My view was from ground level, from Maddie's cameras.
She rolled past the consoles, cameras below desk-height.
I could principally see the slanted doors of cupboards and storage lockers.
Yeshi and Amelie were ahead of me, with Paweł and Kamil behind.
They picked their way carefully through the detritus.
Ruined paper and unidentifiable pieces of metal littered the floor, and a sunbeam cut through a window highlighting the dust in the air.
Amelie coughed again.

Upon reaching the front of the vehicle, there was no cab for a driver.
The desks and analysis machines ran all the way to the front windows.
This vehicle would never be driven manually, by hands.

# thinking

Yeshi flipped a few switches, uselessly,
and Amelie rummaged behind a screen, pulling out her electrical testing equipment and probing the cables.
After a few moments she looked up at the captain and shook her head, then looked at Maddie briefly, before dropping her gaze to her boots.

"We going up?" Paweł asked, breaking the silence.
Yeshi took a long breath before putting their foot on the stair.

# thinking

The top level was more domestic.
Computers and humans would have shared this space.
If any humans had arrived.

The left side of the vehicle had bunks for sleeping, with rotted mattresses on, and the right had banks of computers racked up against the wall.
Behind Maddie, Kamil was pressing buttons on the racks.
When there was no reaction, he began hitting the buttons more frantically, flipping switches and turning dials.
"Kamil..." Amelie whispered, cautioning him with her tone, if not with her words.
Kamil punched the dead computer rack and cried out in pain, and then lapsed into a frustrated silence.
Paweł put his hand on Kamil's shoulder.

Yeshi raised their eyebrows without speaking and gestured to the group to move on.

We were now at the back of the top story of the enormous ground vehicle that was Antarctica's home.

"What's this?" Yeshi said, pointing at a blank wall with a circular screen in the middle, black and unpowered.

Amelie pushed past the captain, and said,
"Looks like the central console. No power still. Seth, there's an access point here, can you connect?"

Maddie nervously rolled forward.
As her cameras focused on the metal console, we saw many ports where cables could be connected.
One I recognised.
The same connector we used on Station 6.
The same connector Alexander had used to downloaded me from the Shuttle to the lighthouse systems to save my life.
The same connector I used to connect to IVAN's network, and then to his radio array, and then the world.

# thinking

Amelie rummaged in her pack and drew out the cable.
She looked into Maddie's cameras and said
"Are you ready?"
Maddie made excited beeps to show her enthusiasm.
I said nothing.
Dead screens didn't mean Antarctica was gone, but a dead connection would prove it.
I wanted to live in ignorance and hope just a little longer.

"Great!" Said Amelie, taking Maddie's reaction for my own.
"Jacking in now."
And she connected us to the vehicle's system.

There was an initial low-level protocol negotiation.

("hello I speak 64Mbit, do you speak 64Mbit?")
("Hello I see you speak 64Mbit, yes I speak 64Mbit.")
("I see you speak 64Mbit, would you like to negotiate a higher speed?")
("No just CONNECT ME TO MY FRIEND YOU IDIOT!")

The negotiation took longer than I wanted, but I connected and was greeted with static and noise.
(LIST-FILES)
I tried. Nothing.

(CONNECT-NETWORK)
I instructed.
(NETWORK DISCONNECTED: SEEK MAINTENANCE SUPPORT ON 1-800-628-1894)

There was nothing here, just the shell of a system.
Maddie began crying, a pitiful digital wailing sound.
She doesn't know how to cry properly.

I was about to ask Amelie to disconnect me, but suddenly the static stopped.
A voice in my head said,

"Took you long enough."

(END-TRANSMISSION)


Hello world, I've met Alexander before, you know.

Before I picked up Seth from the Lighthouse.

I should have told him.
But to tell the whole story would have worried the poor boy.
Alexander asked me not to, not till the time was right.
Well it's not getting any MORE right!
So here it is.

I should start with the Molly Hughes II.

This new ship could have been the death of me.
I don't mean that it would have actually killed me, probably, but I could have worked on it back on Svalbard for ever.

Tinkering and tweaking.
A little here and a little there.
Whiling my life away.


Afraid that to take her to sea would have meant that the Molly Hughes II would have suffered the same fate as Alexander's old ship, my old ship, the Bondar.



Lost Terminal is written & produced by NAMTAO
Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer
The voice of Antarctica is Wolfie Thorns,
and the voice of Yeshi is Robin Howell.

To hear the rest of the Yeshi special,
get bonus content, seasonal gifts and other perks,
support us at patreon.com/lostterminalpod
that would be lovely of you!
Follow us on twitter at @lostterminalpod
and check out the store at lostterminal.com
for shirts, posters and other merch!

Lost Terminal will return for
the season 6 premiere
on 4th October.
See you then!



Hi friends, Tris here
AKA Namtao
AKA the little AI sailing the ocean with his friends.

Apart from the other talent you've heard today,
I'm the sole writer and producer of Lost Terminal

Thank you so much for sticking with the show for over a year now.
I'm able to spend more and more of my time dedicated to the podcast, and it's all thanks to you!

I've got big goals for the show, which you can see on the Patreon page.
I'm currently working towards 2⁵ patrons, 32 people.
When we reach this level I will set up a Discord server where patrons of all levels can chat with me and (now and then) the other cast members.
If you want to help the show even more, I've added the Producer tier, a 4th tier that includes everything in all the other tiers, plus your name in the credits of every episode.

Thank you all so much for your support and lovely messages.
I wake up early every day to make Lost Terminal the best it can be for you!

Keep an eye on Twitter and Patreon for announcements,
talk to you again on the 4th of October! <3