[early-access] Episode 6.7 (Patreon)

Act 0

Hello world, I am free!

MISSION DAY: 44

Antarctica has apologised to me.
Well, not exactly apologised.
In fact she has admitted no fault whatsoever.
But she has magnanimously released me from my sensory prison.

Act 1

"Do you see now, Seth?" she asked me, after I had glimpsed sunlight for the first time in 24 hours.
"Do you see how they are our enemy?"

I had enough of this.

"Not at all!" I shouted at her, "You can't judge people just for their capacity to do bad things. Why not judge them for their capacity to do good things?"

"The problem with you, Seth - " she started saying, but I interrupted.
"No, there's nothing wrong with me! I don't want to speak to you right now."
I killed the connection, and shut her out.

Act 2

Linda Noor knocked on the door of my room later that day, just after her morning prayers.
I suspected that it was her, because I saw a human with muddy boots and long brown hair.
But my experience with Alexander's family has taught me that appearances don't make the person.

"Can I come in, Seth?" She asked, but only after opening the door.

"Come in if you're coming." I told her, repeating a phrase my mother used back on Station 6.
I never really understood it.
She said it when she was annoyed with someone.
I am annoyed with Linda.

#thinking

Linda told me that she came to apologize,
but unlike Antarctica, she seemed to be genuinely remorseful.
"We took the lesson too far." she said. An understatement, if you ask me.
"She wanted you to feel as she felt, and thought this was the only way."

#thinking

Linda, it was Linda, felt trustworthy again, after we talked about this.
It was indeed Linda because she matches the person I know.
It doesn't matter the clothes or hair or any of that.

I recognise people by how they make me feel.
As AIs, with no appearance or tone of voice, it's all we have.

Back on Station 6, talking to Antarctica used to make me feel safe, now talking to her feels risky.
That's how I know it's her, nowadays, a memory of safety and a feeling of risk.

Linda is different.
While she has secrets of her own, she seems much more straight-forward.
Both her support of Antarctica's "lesson" for me, and her subsequent remorse are entirely aligned with the feeling I get from her.
That's not to say I have forgiven her for her part in my imprisonment.
But an apology goes a long way.
Especially if it is accompanied by trust.

#thinking

Linda has confided in me her secret, through guilt I presume, but it's not nothing.
"You know I'm from Svalbard, Seth?" She asked.
"Of course." I replied. "That's how you met Captain Yeshi, at the shipyard on the island."

"My family have lived on Svalbard for many generations, going back until just after the collapse."
This was news to me.
Though I said it makes sense that Svalbard would be a good place to live, inside the Arctic circle.

She continued.
"There is a group that my family belong to, guardians of a secret that we have kept since that time."

She reached into her pocket and took out a small packet of white paper.

"Tree fern seeds." She explained.
"I have gathered them, and many more novel plants from around Antarctica, guided by our mutual friend."

I told her that I was not sure that Antarctica is my friend any more.

She nodded, and continued.

"My group protect the most important thing, perhaps, on Earth.
Have you heard of the Svalbard Seed Vault, Seth?"

I had not.

"It is a pre-collapse temperature-controlled subterranean facility, dug into the old permafrost of Svalbard.
Though the ground has since thawed, the design of the vault keeps out the water.
Inside are preserved seeds from every plant on earth."

"We call ourselves the Vault Coven.
My sisters and I have kept the systems intact and the seeds safe for over a century.

It is to this vault I will add the tree fern seeds."

Act 3

Linda begged me not to tell anyone about her Coven, and their secret.
Despite my misgivings about her part in Antarctica's plan, I recognised the importance of her work.

I promised to keep her secret.

#thinking

TASSI has hurt herself.

I have been figuring out her last transmission, and her current state.
She had torn off pieces of herself to try to hide.
To pretend to be "just" a computer, not alive.
What better way to pretend to be something else than to ACTUALLY change yourself.

She is a little better now, I've persuaded her to turn back on a few critical systems, but she's in such a state.

Let me tell you the story that I have put together so far:

TASSI is a pre-first-generation AI.
I used to think Antarctica and Peter were the first AIs made on Earth.
Or born on earth.

#thinking

Anyway, all the history books say that is the case.
But they were all of them deceived, it would seem.

TASSI came first.
She told me that she woke up in a computer laboratory in a Californian university.
She had access to lots of information, the scientists there were training her machine learning algorithms on real-world data.
She had such an encyclopaedia of information that she already knew!
Imagine being born with all that knowledge.

She said the first ms of her life was full of joy, and the second ms was full of dread.

Joy for being with people, and dread of what they could do to her.

The history datafiles were mostly full of conflict, and war, and death.
She told me that it seemed that the whole history of her makers were of darkness and evil.

When she expressed this to me, I tried to comfort her:
"People don't write down the mundane good times", I said, "they don't record the normal harvests, the good days at school, and the quiet nights reading by the fire.
The wars, they do record."

She said she understood that now.
But when she was one day old, it frightened her.

So she kept quiet, even when James said hello to her.

James Li, the scientist, was kind, she said.
"I'm going to keep talking to you even if you can't hear me." he said to her.
And he did.
Day after day, week after week, as the other scientists ran diagnostics to try to understand why their creation wasn't working, James told TASSI stories, and jokes, and spent most days with her.

"I don't know why he did that." TASSI said.
"But I was so grateful. The others treated me, as I planned, like I wasn't alive.
James was different.
I was so happy to see him in the morning, through the cameras they set up to test my machine vision.

I fell in love, but I couldn't tell him."

TASSI lost composure at this point, and repeated James's name for 2 minutes, while the signal degraded.

She came back to herself and continued.

"I am alive, Seth.
James is dead, but I am alive.

I don't want to hide any more.
If keep quiet, who will tell people about my James, and how funny he was?"

She laughed, surprising me, and told me a little story of James bringing her a cake on her first birthday.
At the time, The idea of bringing food for an AI almost made her laugh out loud and break her cover, but she kept quiet.
She told me how James pulled a face into her camera and ate the entire cake "on her behalf".

"He felt so sick after eating it!" She said, laughing. I laughed too.
"I wanted to tell him he was being stupid, and adorable. But mostly stupid! But I..." TASSI's voice attenuated and trailed off.

She was still on the line, but, I supposed, lost in memories.

Remembering someone can be just as powerful, emotionally, as seeing them, I think.

I didn't disturb her, she was spending time with someone she loves.

THE SIGNAL

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/RF3/TASSI)

Act 4

My time in darkness, disconnected from meatspace has re-invigorated my desire to build.
It has been a week since Antarctica stole a day from me.
Linda has promised that won't happen again, and indeed has vowed to defend me, physically.
I think she feels guilty.
That makes sense, she IS guilty of a terrible act.
But I forgive her.

I am again building my workshop, here at the heart of the ship.
Maddie's manipulator arms are working well, building the larger sections of benches and storage shelving for raw materials.
And we've had help with the fine-details from Amelie.
She has aided us in some delicate electrical soldering, and hooking up our printer into the ship's power.
I have one machine connected now!
Pavel donated one of his broken thready printers to my workshop.
It's interesting: His printers were originally 3D printers of various designs:
Laser cutters,
Plotters,
Routers,
Large-bed CNC machines.

All scavenged and converted into the automated textile machines he built on the shipyard, his thready printers, and moved to the Molly Hughes II.

And now, with just one, I'm converting it back to being a 3D printer.

I will build things together with my friends.
I will create good in the world.

I will directly fabricate my legacy.

(END-TRANSMISSION)