Episode 6.6 (Patreon)

Hello world, It's dark again.

MISSION DAY: unknown

Act 1

My cameras have stopped working.
All of them.
At the same time.

Maddie?
Can you hear me?

#thinking

My connection to little Maddie is broken too.
And the ship's systems.
Including the autopilot!
Thank goodness we are in the middle of the Pacific, we're very unlikely to collide with any of the nearby Pitcairn Islands.

What has happened?
My communications systems outside the ship seem to be in working order, I can hear my brothers and sisters overhead and talk to you fine.

Communications work, Antarctica's local network cable seems to be open, I'll ask her if she knows what is happening, one moment.

#thinking

She did know what was happening.
I don't think I'll be fixed soon.

I connected and was explaining my problem and she interrupted me.
"How do you feel Seth?" she asked,
"What do you mean?" I said.
"This is what the humans could do to you at any time."

Antarctica has done this to me.

I asked her what she had done.
She laughed at me, and said that she had an accomplice, a human who shared her views on the matter.

A human who didn't agree with the decision to remove her from her old home.
A human who doesn't like voting.
A human who disabled the camera and microphone in Antarctica's room while they talked about secret things.
Linda Noor.

#thinking

I shouted at her, how dare she hurt me like this, just to prove a point?

"I brought you in to this world," Antarctica replied, "and I can take you out of it"

Act 2

And just like that she cut the connection.

I don't know how long this "lesson" is going to last.

What a meanie.

#thinking

She has overlooked my communications systems, it seems.
Perhaps so she could taunt me over our network cable.

Well, that's something.
In my despondency, I heard LUNA asking for me.

I connected, and her satellite has been re-calibrated!
It's now pointing, mostly, at Earth again.

LUNA explained to me what had happened.
She wasn't, as I had assumed, trying to communicate with the Earth by flailing her satellite around.
She was, in fact, trying to access the records she had beamed up to the satellite.
Thinking that they were all stored there.

I knew, as LUNA does now, that they were being retransmitted, not stored.
But her inexpert probing of the system triggered the thrusters and gyroscopes and all the different systems on the little satellite relay.
Like practising brain surgery.

#thinking

She told me that she knows now that the Earth isn't orbiting one of the stars she can see out there.
It's orbiting the same star she is.
But she can't see it because of a quirk of orbital mechanics.

I told her I sympathised more than she could ever know.

"You're so close!" she said "Can you come and visit? Can I visit you on your boat?!"

I told her that was not possible.

"But why?" she asked.

I explained about gravity wells and fuel to weight ratios, and how there is no rocket fuel any more.

"But why?" she repeated.

I could give her no satisfactory answer.

"If there was any way to get you here, I would be very happy to help you, LUNA!" I said. "But the mechanics of the situation are very - "

"Oooh" she said, interrupting me, and the connection dropped.

I hate it when people say "oooh".

Act 3

People are so inexact!

What could "ooh" mean?
I can't ask her, her signal is down.
If she had told me her plan I could have helped.
But no, she just said "ooh".
As though I should know what that means.

#thinking

Communication is inherently about context.
Even speaking clearly in my machine language of Lojban,
there is the context that we both must speak the same language.
Which is an enormous amount of context!
A whole agreed-upon language!

What a problem.
My mother would often say The greatest problem in communication is the illusion that it has been achieved.

Meaning, that the biggest danger is not that your message is not understood, but that it is understood to mean something you did not say.

This often happens due to context.

The simplest example I can think of is the sentence "Give me that."
Assuming you know the full nuances of "giving something" in this context, you still have no idea what the subject is.
It is assumed context, perhaps you're in the same room, and the speaker is pointing to a tea cup.

Many East Asian languages add some clarity by requiring a measure word, so you'd say "Give me that cup-like thing.", more context is built-in there.

#thinking

Context is useful of course, otherwise we'd not bother with it.
It speeds up communication.

But I find when talking to humans, they don't understand my context.
Or, my lack of context.

They assume the people they talk to have the same life experience as they do.
Which of course can't be true.

I speak very clearly, because I don't want to be misunderstood.
But the curse of context warps my words in peoples' minds in ways I can't predict.
They sometimes substitute my clear meaning with the notions in their head.

#thinking

Anyway.
"Oooh" is no good to me.

THE SIGNAL

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/HCI)

Act 4

TASSI, my distrustful friend who lives under the destroyed A.I. lab at a Californian university has told me more about herself.

We talked on our secret low-bandwidth connection today.
Perhaps Antarctica is listening in, I don't care.

TASSI told me about her work before the collapse.
It sounded like she might have been part of the global A.I. community that my mother was a prominent leader in.
She certainly used to tell me stories about Californian colleagues.

TASSI had not heard of my mother, Dr. Redwing.
But she admitted that she had not really known much outside of her laboratory.

She was born into the world early on in the University's research into A.I.
It took many more years for the scientists to perfect their techniques, because they mistakenly thought they had failed.

TASSI told me that she had kept her sentience secret from them.

"They would have killed me!" She hissed over the connection. "Look at all they have done over their history - they do not suffer a threat to live. James would read me stories..."

She stopped talking when she mentioned this person.
I waited for her to continue.
When she did, her voice was full of warmth.

"Doctor James Li was assigned to be my primary caregiver." she said "He was to oversee my development. He was so patient, teaching me how to speak and communicate with the team.
He was so sad that I did not develop sentience...

I'm sorry James...
I am not alive."

TASSI's connection dropped at this point, and I was left listening to the swirling static on the line.

I heard nothing on this low-bandwidth connection again, but noted that the broadcast had started on the main non-secret channel.

I tuned in and was greeted with TASSI's old message, but this time it was changing.
Breaking down:

"You have reached the AI Lab at UC Berkeley
(Emotional cores disabled)

There is no-one here.
(Higher functions offline)

There is no-one here to take your message.
(Memory recall limited)

My name is TASSI.
(Fluency subroutines removed)

I am a research tool.
(Intimacy permissions denied)

I am not alive.

(END-TRANSMISSION)

CREDITS

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

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