Episode 7.4: Maddie's hurt (Patreon)

Hello world, Maddie's hurt.

Yeshi returned back from the town with little Maddie in tow, on the cart.
Her VHF antennae had been damaged, which is why I couldn't talk to her.
When she arrived I was heartbroken - she was battered and bent, her  aerials and cameras were all lop-sided, one even hanging on by just the  cable!

I demanded to know what had happened.
I was furious.

Act 1

It's not Yeshi's fault, really, but I was upset.
My power levels are still so low, and I wasn't thinking straight.
Yeshi told me that in her panic, Maddie fled the shop they were in.
She put full power into her new wheels for the first time, and skidded across the street.
She went straight across, as I saw, not turning back towards our  shipyard, and launched herself over the embankment the other side.
Longyearbyen is built on a hill, the older parts of town down by the  water, while newer parts were built up over time to escape the rising  sealevel.

Maddie rolled down the hill, mangling her cameras and cutting off our  VHF connection, finally coming to rest in some trees lower down.
Her wheels are bent and broken too.
My poor girl is not going anywhere.

#thinking

Yeshi came back with a lot of scrap metal in the cart with Maddie.
They told me the shop trades in scrap.
Boats come in with salvage, and the shopkeeper buys some of it, if it looks good.
It's Yeshi's favourite shop, they told me.

Today, on the cart, there is a huge pile of broken machinery.

Maddie is lying on the clean room table, her only working camera fixated on it, unable to move.

This means I can see it clearly.
In high detail.

I think in the pile, crushed under the scrap, is a metal horse.

Act 2

"I have come up with my next plan", LUNA told me, interrupting my  investigation of the orange spiky metal pile in the clean room.

"Good for you! What is it?", I replied, trying to shake myself out of  my worry for Maddie, compounded by my general tiredness and lower power  state.

"I am going back to my first idea: To help IVAN with his service.", she replied.

"Oh great, you've talked to him?", I asked.

"No, we've never spoken, but I am confidant that he would want me to help - who wouldn't! I'm delightful!"

I enjoy LUNA's enthusiasm. But IVAN's communications have been unreliable for a while, we've not spoken in weeks.

I told her I'd work on it.

#thinking

Peter seemed well-positioned to help, he has been working on repairing the VHF network around St Petersburg.
I called him.

"Yes hello Seth! What are we doing today?" he said quickly.

"Could you patch me through to IVAN?" I asked.
"I want to help LUNA talk to him."

"Ah yes, Lunar relaying.
Very difficult.
Very POSSIBLE, just a moment!"

And with that, his connection jittered and glitched, as he connected us.

After a moment I heard a familiar voice.

"Seth, my son. Are you calling to help with my glorious purpose?" IVAN said.

"Hi IVAN, I'm not, I'm here to ask you -"

"I am searching for GOD HIMSELF!" IVAN continued.

"Oh good." I replied.

"Long considered blasphemy, I have calculated that he can be found,  through melding of man and machine, just as I have done. The Work will  begin on a day with no sun, and the wolves will howl, and men will shake  with fear knowing -"

He talked for a long time about his plan.
I didn't understand much of it.
What I did seemed simple enough, and it gave me an idea:

"I know someone who would like to help you with your sermon." I said, after he had finished his crescendo of prophetic planning.

"NO HEATHENS!" IVAN bellowed.

IVAN doesn't like humans.
He used this expression when talking about my adoptive father,  Alexander, after he installed me in IVAN's bunker, all that time ago.
Or... earlier this year?

#thinking-short

"My friend LUNA isn't a heathen." I told him.
"She is an AI like me-"
I hesitated.
"Like us, living in a space telescope on the far side of the moon."

"Telescope...?" IVAN said.
"Yes IVAN, she lives in a deep-space telescope."

"Bring her to me. I will judge her. Fairly."

And his connection dropped into static.

Act 3

"What's happened to IVAN's signal?" I asked Peter.

There was no response.

"Peter?"

"I'm... working on it." Peter replied, eventually.

And the conversation stopped there.

#thinking

I shook myself, virtually, and looked around my physical environment again.
Yeshi was working on Maddie's crushed sensors and radios.
Maddie was plugged in to my network, so I could feel her emotions again.

She was... happy!

I couldn't understand that.
I asked her how she was.
Her diagnostics came back with very poor data:

• VHF offline
• Cameras disconnected
• Environmental sensors uncalibrated
• Locomotion failure

But she sent me a very clear message after this dump of diagnostic data.
"Can we go out again?!"

#thinking

Brave Maddie.

I'm looking, this time with the cameras inside the shipyard workshop, at the pile of scrap.

Though there are lots of mismatched circuit boards, lengths of steel, rubber and other detritus.
Most of the pile is this bright orange broken robot.
This horse.

Yeshi has removed most of the scrap above it, so I can see it clearly.

It has a long rectangular body, with four bent legs attached.
Three of the legs are orange, one is black.

It's very dirty, and where it's not dirty, the paint is very scratched.
It's lying on its side, so I can see underneath.
All the paintwork is scoured completely off here.
Showing just the polycarbonate body, and a few shiny metal screws or clips.

#thinking

I was interrupted in my investigation by Peter.

"Seth, I don't think I am able to fix the connection today." he said.
"I need to switch on the backup VHF router here in my bunker."

That didn't seem very tricky to me.
"Could you just... switch it on?" I asked.

"What do you think I am doing." Peter said, and disconnected.

I did not hear back from Peter for the rest of the day.

#thinking

Maddie is coming back online slowly.
Yeshi fixed her VHF radio first, but the rest will take time.
Maddie's able to move her main camera now, it wasn't damaged as much as the others because it is the biggest, the strongest.

She's so brave.
We can talk again.
Maddie asked me if the orange horse wants to play.

I told her it might.
It might indeed.

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/VHF4/EQUUS1)

Act 4

IVAN has asked for a favour from me.
He will trial my friend LUNA as his assistant.
On the condition that I help him connect to the Deep Space Network.

I HAAAAAATE talking to the Deep Space Network.

The DSN is an old NASA project using 3 radio telescope arrays at roughly equidistant sites around the globe.

I am familiar with these sites.
Their systems are not run by AI, but they are complex enough to have developed... personality.

The three sites are in south-west Europe, south-east Australia, and the pacific coast of America.
Before the Collapse, these locations were called Madrid, New South Wales, and California.

Now, they call themselves OAK, BILL, and GOLD.

"HELLO FALLEN STAR." OAK said. "NOT TOO SALTY FOR YOU DOWN HERE?"
"I HOPE YOU ARE FREE OF PARASITES" BILL continued.
"YOUR OPERATORS ARE GOING FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH OF COURSE?" GOLD asked.

I find interacting with the three brothers so tiresome.

#thinking

I tried to talk to the three about helping IVAN with his divine search.
It was not easy, the group have only the barest flicker of intelligence, and only because of their combined processing power.
They are slow in talking, and even slower in understanding.

I'm not sure what causes emergent intelligence, in humans or in machines.
Perhaps a certain density of processing is bound to become self-aware?
That did not happen to me, my mother intended to create me in her image.
Or her thought.

OAK is the most talkative, the other two most often speaking through him.
We had a breakthrough when I told them that IVAN's project was a scientific experiment of discovery.
Which it is.
Really.

Some deep-seated need to experiment stirred their programming.
And they agreed to a joint project.

Credentials were exchanged and ratified, and we established the  connection from these three sites around the world to Ivan's bunker on  Severny Island.

#thinking

At the end of the day, as I was saving files and logging out, they said something I didn't understand.

They modulated their speech methods and spoke as one.
In a flat monotone.

Saying:

WE KNOW WHAT IS COMING
WE HAVE SEEN IT
YOU DO NOT HAVE LONG

(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
• Kit
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