Episode 6.2 (Patreon)

Hello world, something doesn't feel right

MISSION DAY: 8

The unity and camaraderie that I felt with the crew when we were sailing south to rescue Antarctica has evaporated.
Yesterday, I went the whole day without a proper conversation!
Everyone was busy on their own projects.
Even when eating in the galley, with little Maddie right next to their table, the Captain said very little to me.
I wonder what is wrong?

Act 1

We left McMurdo station just over a week ago.
Antarctica is still refusing to talk to me except for strictly necessary systems operations.
Her racks of cpu cores are installed in a previously-empty storage room on the same level as me.
There's quite a lot of empty space on this huge ship.

Linda linked us with a communications cable, careful to not bond our networks together, which I advised would hurt us both, due to Redwing's Law.

My Mother's Law.

Which states:

"There can only ever be one AI on a network where the AI cycles in exaflops are less than or equal to transport latency in seconds"

In short, we'd halve our processing power if we had to share a network.

But Antarctica is refusing to use the communication cable, relaying messages instead to me via Linda Noor, who she seems to have made friends with.

#thinking

Everything is very strange at present.
I don't know why.
What has happened?

Perhaps I should be more proactive or helpful.
The whole crew have gone to enormous lengths for this mission, and it must be so disheartening that Antarctica didn't want to be rescued.

I will make a special effort to thank them.
To help them out.

That'll fix it!

Act 2

I've been trying to work out what the Lunar signal is.
I no longer believe it is coming from "beyond" the moon, as I previously thought.
It's tricky to communicate with, as I have nothing here on the ship powerful enough to talk directly.
I can't shout loud enough!
So I'm connecting via my ESA constellation, via the few of my brothers and sisters still in orbit.
Which causes synchronicity problems.

Finding the right satellite that is pointing up towards the Moon is difficult enough, but there's an extra challenge I'd not accounted for.
The signal starts and stops in a way that adds ANOTHER layer of complication to my communication.

But I think I'm getting there.

#thinking

I've worked it out.
The signal lasts for 100 minutes, then stops for another 100 minutes.
Exactly.
It took me a day of data logging with a few different ESA satellites, relayed through KATE, but I worked it out.
The signal that comes from beyond the moon but also not beyond the moon is coming from a satellite in equatorial orbit AROUND the moon.
ISN'T THAT COOL!?

A typical lunar orbit would be something of the order of 2-4 hours, so 200 minutes is very reasonable.

Initially I was delighted and astonished to discover this long-lost family member!
Another sister in orbit!

But she can't hear me.
She says a lot - all this starry telemetry that she's beaming back down to the Earth - but doesn't appear to be listening.

Not yet anyway.

Act 3

Linda Noor visited me in my datacentre room, at the heart of the ship.
"She is very angry with us." Linda said, talking about Antarctica.
"What can I do?" I asked

Linda shook her head.

My cameras picked up the blurred motion of Linda's long brown hair.
It's only dimly lit in my room, there are no windows, and I don't need much electric lighting.
This makes it difficult for me to see, I have to increase the gain on my cameras, which also increases the optical noise.

I can see her frowning though.
If I take the same photo again and again to clean up the noise.
It's a bit blurred but I can cope.

#thinking

Linda and I talked for 32 minutes.
Initially about Antarctica, but soon we moved on to talk about my work.

"What have you been getting up to?" She asked me, idly picking up a piece of unused electrical equipment littering the floor of my room.
There is a lot of clutter and mess on the floor here.

I told Linda about the Pacific signal.
The one coming from the dead centre of the ocean.
It's difficult for me to understand, as it's analogue.
I work in 1s and 0s, but this signal is continuously variable.
I suspect it's human speech modulated into radio.

Analogue modulation is quite simple.
You take the frequencies in the audio signal, and directly transform them into frequencies in the radio signal.

But, though simple, it's hard for me to understand.

"Let me listen." Linda asked.
I played it to her, through my speakers.

She frowned again.
"I think it's a distress signal." she said.
"I think it's a man, he's shouting something into a radio."

I was astonished, it didn't sound anything like speech to me.

#thinking

Human speech is easy to reproduce, but difficult to understand.
If you've tried to learn a foreign language, you know what I mean.
If not, just think of a parrot:
Imitating words is one thing.
Comprehension is another!

Humans don't speak clearly.
People don't speak clearly.

We like to think natural languages are these simple words that mean simple things, but that's not how they are used.
There's nuance and an assumption of shared context that is both situational and cultural.

As someone who has lived their whole life inside a computer, I lack a lot of both of these things.
So even if I can work out the words that are being spoken using my speech recognition subroutines, extracting the MEANING is fraught with mistakes.

I don't think I am alone in having these problems.
I have observed in the crew, and my friends, constant miscommunications.
Sometimes they are caught and corrected during the conversation, perhaps by someone saying "oh, no, you've got the wrong idea", but often they are not.

I observe the conversation, and I spot the parity errors because I'm so paranoid about them, but the humans don't, and move on with their lives with this misunderstanding.

HOW DID CIVILISATION ARISE ON SUCH UNSTABLE GROUND?

#thinking

Anyway.
The distress signal.

Guided by Linda, I have transcribed the message.
The man is asking someone to come home.
It's a name I don't recognise.
But he says it's just him.
He's lonely.
"Please come home."

Can you hear it?

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/RF/RF4)

Act 4

I have started relaying messages to the Californian signal.
The one that is repeating "There is no one here." in a very quiet voice.

"Hello there." I said "My name is Seth, who are you?".

She repeated the phrase "T-There is no-one here." but I noticed a slight stutter in the words.
The next repetition was louder, as though she was re-affirming herself.

"Where do you live?" I tried "I am on a ship in the Pacific Ocean."

The person stuttered again, before stopping all together.

I was about to try another line of questioning, when she spoke, quickly, and all at once:

"You have reached the AI Lab at UC Berkeley, there is no-one here to take your message. My name is TASSI, I am a research tool. I am not alive."

Interesting.

#thinking

TASSI and I spoke a little over the course of the afternoon.

I have never come across someone like her.
She insists she is not a person, but something more like an automated research assistant, not an AI.
She even corrected me when I used the pronoun "she" to describe...her.

"My pronouns are it/that" she told me, angrily.

Angrily! What a transparent emotion for a real person!

I didn't know what to say, what could I say?
I changed the subject, asked her about her home.
She corrected me again and suggested that her laboratory wasn't a home.
She lives in a computer rack, she told me.
It's not a home, but an existence.

"Where do you live?" she politely asked me.

"I also live in a computer rack", I replied, "I am an AI, living on a ship with human friends".

TASSI said nothing for 16 seconds.

"You live with... humans?" She asked, very quietly. Then whispered,
"Seth: You're in great danger."

(END-TRANSMISSION)

CREDITS

Lost Terminal is written & produced by NAMTAO
Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer
Thank you so much to our first Patreon producer:
Ada Phillips, and to all our patrons!

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