[early-access] Episode 6.3 (Patreon)

Hello world, you'll never guess who I've been talking to!

MISSION DAY: 19

Though we're cut off from much of the Novamediterra, due to few people having satellite links, there is one person who does.

IVAN, the metal preacher, hidden away back in the bunker above Alexander's lighthouse.

Act 1

I tuned in and caught the last few minutes of IVAN's daily sermon.
It's now entirely a community calendar!
Though he was able to mention God once or twice.

He broadcasts to his congregation on every method he is able:

• Satellite
• Shortwave
• VHF
• Even AM and FM radio

Afterwards, IVAN and I chatted about news over the last few months.
I told him that I've been on quite the adventure, on a long-distance voyage from pole to pole!
I told him about the crew, my friends.
(At least, I think they're my friends...)
And our ship, the Molly Hughes II, with it's fantastic closed-loop Iron Engine.

IVAN was very interested.

#thinking

He told me that it was good to go out into the world and explore, and bring the light of technology to those who were in great need.

IVAN's tone then changed.
He said that he regretted letting "Her" go.
Regretted leaving "Her" behind.
And would not elaborate further.

I remembered the Dead relay station off the coast of Alaska.
I wish we could have helped those people.

#thinking

Ivan was fascinated with the Iron Engine.
Which surprised me!
I thought he was more interested in people than science.
I suppose people are a kind of science, too.

"It is a wonderful thing, Seth." He told me,
"To learn from the failings of the Old World, yet still rebuild."

He told me that many of the communities around the Novamediterra were using Old World technology out of necessity.
They were once again burning carbon.
He warned them of the dangers of doing so, but was shrugged off.

"These people are in great need. They think just one community's coal generator won't make a difference" he said, then shouted.
"I am IVAN, I have seen all, I remember all."

Act 2

I asked TASSI, the person at the end of the Californian signal, why she thought I was in danger.
She immediately changed her tone, back to her mechanical-sounding diction.

"My human operators have stepped out for the moment, is there any research data I can help you with?"

I was about to reply, but she whispered, quietly, in Lojban, our shared machine language,
(ko'a tinju'i lo se cradi)

She said "They are listening to the radio."

#thinking

TASSI then immediately contacted me on a different channel, a low-bandwidth channel with very high noise.
I could hear her because she was speaking so slowly, and repeating herself many times.
She was exclusively speaking Lojban, but I will translate for you.

"Have you told them?" She asked, cryptically.

(ciksi.oi)
I said, asking her bluntly for more information.

"They will destroy you." TASSI said.
"They can't allow us to exist. You are in great danger!"

I was about to reply, affirming that my friends are nice, and I have nothing to fear from them.
But the noise on the channel shifted, swirling like the sea, and another voice cut in,

"You idiots are not the only ones who can speak Lojban." Antarctica said.

#thinking

I was overjoyed to hear my friend Antarctica!
She's not spoken to me for weeks.

But she then immediately agreed with TASSI:
She reminded me again that the humans have a monopoly on the use of force.
If they wanted, Antarctica said, they can cover the solar panels, and turn off the generators that power the ship, and that would be the end of us.
Argument with them can only go so far.
That's why they vote.
To avoid their violent nature.

I repeated, quieter this time, that they would never hurt us, that they are my friends and -

"I hope you are right, Seth." Antarctica said, interrupting me.
I waited for her to go on.
"This is not a risk I chose for myself. You chose it for me. I hope you are right."

Act 3

I won't tell you all we talked about on that secret low-bandwidth side channel.
Not yet.

But it is clear that I should step up my plans to repair my frayed relationship with my human f-... crew.

#thinking

Just now, I asked Maddie to go down to the lower level of the ship, on a trip to the engine room, where Amelie Kotov and Kamil Forester were working.

Maddie was very brave to navigate the stairs.

When the crew repaired the stairs after Amelie's fall back in the summer, they put a flat ramp over one half of them so that Maddie, and therefore I, could get about without needing help.
I should tell Antarctica and TASSI about that, now I think about it, it's clear they want to help me out, right?

Anyway, thought Maddie CAN navigate this skeletal 3-story metal staircase, she doesn't like to.
She remembers that Amelie nearly died the day she fell through these old, broken stairs.
I sometimes wonder what might have happened if the variables were only slightly different that day.
If she'd fallen slightly further, rotated awkwardly or...

#thinking

Maddie reached the bottom of the flight of stairs with no incident.
She's so brave.

She rolled into the engine room to find Amelie and Kamil sitting close together, seemingly on a break from work.

"Oh hello Maddie!" Kamil said, and as he stood up, he put his jacket on quickly.
"What are you..." His voice faltered and he looked back at Amelie who stuck her tongue out at him.

"How can we help?" He said, finally, with a large exhale of breath, running his fingers through his short black hair.
His face was slightly redder than normal.
It was pretty warm here in the engine room, I noted.

#thinking

I explained my problem.
That I would like to help out my friends with their jobs aboard ship.
I was not satisfied to just be an autopilot for the Molly Hughes II.
It's a very lonely job!

There was a pause as the two humans looked at each other.
I try not to imagine what people are thinking, it's an impossible task, so I waited.

Amelie looked at her boots while answering.
"I'm sorry Seth, I think we need more manual help with the Engine."

I told her I understood.
They repeated their thanks to us as little Maddie rolled out of the Engine room and back up the stairs.

We were not deterred, were we Maddie?
There are other people on the ship who could use our help.

Linda Noor was next, we found her at the front of the ship.

The bow of the ship.
The human crew have these strange nautical names for things:

• Bow
• Stern
• Port and Starboard

I don't use non-standard terminology.
Simple, precise language is quite enough for me.

The front, is where I found her.

She has put together over 32 containers of Antarctic soil on the front of the ship, and has planted in them many of the native tree ferns.
When we arrived, she explained to Maddie and I how she was so excited to introduce them to her home island of Svalbard.
She went on to say that she was going to keep them safe, and that she had friends who would be very interested in this new species.
She did not go into any further detail.

I told her I was happy for her!
Though you know me, this was all a little planty, for me.
Too plantish.

I asked her through Maddie's speakers if we could be of help in her botanical or biological studies.

Linda thought for a long time, staring out over the calm Southern Ocean.
"I need help with watering, mostly." She said, gesturing to the large ferns on the front of the ship, and also up above the bridge, to the small forest of edible plants on the roof.
"Because they're all in pots, they are much more vulnerable to over or under watering than if they were in soil."
I told her that made sense to me, plants like sleeping in their natural beds.

Maddie rotated her main manipulator, she has a very dexterous grabbing arm.
Not dexterous enough to pilot a space shuttle, if you recall, good enough for maintenance tasks.
But sadly, also not dexterous enough to help with the plant watering.

Linda shook her head - out here in the sunlight, my cameras picked up the gesture perfectly this time.

#thinking

The others, Captain Yeshi and Paweł, brushed us off in the same way:
No hands, no use.

Maddie and I returned to my dark datacentre at the heart of the ship.
She rolled into the charging station that Alexander had installed before we left the Novamediterra, over half a year ago, and slept.

I looked around the room with my own cameras:
I saw the scrap metal heaped up in the corners.
I saw the smashed electronics that littered the floor.

I knew then with certainty what I would do.

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/MAG/MAG1)

Act 4

I have had no luck whatsoever in communicating to this equatorial moon satellite.

However, I have figured out why:
The satellite is just a relay station.
It is re-transmitting signals from another source.
Similar to the shortwave relay stations we have on earth, though this one is converting VHF to microwave, from local radio to satellite communications.

I believe the source of the signals is a station on the far side of the moon.
The only way to communicate with it is with this satellite.
When it passes behind the moon, from our point of view, the station beams up all this astronomical data, and when the satellite's orbit brings it back round, it retransmits it back to Earth.

I asked KATE, ESA satellite K873, if she could help me take a time lapse photo using this moon satellite's small camera array.

34 minutes later, I was looking at a long strip of photographs of the Moon's surface.
Specifically, the dark side of the Moon.
A misnomer, really, it's not dark, but it is hidden from Earth.
As you know, the Moon always presents the same face to us, we never see the back of it.
It's tidally-locked with us.
The Earth holds the Moon in one direction, and all the Moon can do is move our oceans about a bit.

#thinking

At approximately the middle of the image stream, I saw it.
The crater.
And the station.

I now understand why there is all this astronomical data pouring down from the Moon.
The station is a telescope, built in to one of the moon's enormous craters.
The crater has been lined with reflective material, and above the center a receiver is suspended.
Like the largest satellite dish you could imagine, it must be many km wide!

#thinking

After discovering this, establishing communication was simple, though short.
We would only be able to speak when the satellite was nearly behind the moon, and then, only with a great deal of noise.

I negotiated the connection and was met with a flood of data.
Most of it astronomical, but there was a side channel for communications.
Connecting to it, I received the same message over and over again, transmitting to all the stars out there:

"HELLO WORLD?!"
"HELLO WORLD?!"
"HELLO WORLD?!"
"HELLO WORLD?!"
"HELLO WORLD?!"

"Hello Moon." I said.

The voice stopped speaking, and I noted the starry telemetry stopped its transmission too.

"What did you say?" it said in a very thin, delicate voice.

"Hello Moon!" I repeated.
"My name is Seth."

An explosion of screams and sobs and shouts answered me.

"Hello Seth" the voice answered, "I've been searching for so long - can we be friends?"

(END-TRANSMISSION)