Episode 7.5: Arctica is in trouble (Patreon)

Act 0

Hello world, Arctica is in trouble.

She called me in the middle of the night.
On an emergency channel.
Asking where everyone was.

Her Coven have not returned,
and there is water in the vault.

Act 1

"Where are they?" Arctica shouted.
"What is happening?" I asked.

"It's WET.
It's DARK.
I can't SEE room 3.
I don't KNOW what is happening!"

Her signal glitched and I had to find her again on a local short-range channel.

"(PRIMARY-TRANSMITTER OFFLINE)" Arctica said.
"Seth, I'm scared"

#thinking

I broadcast on the VHF network, asking if anyone in Barentsburg was awake and could talk to any of the Vault Coven, the Noor family, who were in town.

The response from someone in a bakery, the only person who was awake  at the time, was they had left late yesterday evening, and were  presumably back in in town now.

Well that was something.

I thanked the baker and relayed the information to Arctica.
She was more stoic when I called her back.

"I will wait for them to return.
It's not getting worse, I think.
I'm not dead YET."

Act 2

LUNA is talking to IVAN, now that I have introduced the Deep Space Network to him.
He has kept up his end of the bargain, and is training LUNA to be his assistant.
Or colleague, even.
I'm not sure what the plan is, but they're talking every day.
They're talking now.

Everything is going well!

#thinking

It nearly didn't, however, Peter had great difficulty turning on his VHF retransmitter.

I asked him why that was, and his response was very slow.

"I am no longer f-f-functioning correctly." He said, his voice glitching.
"I am experiencing deadlocks and livelocks."

I will explain those terms.
For computers, or AIs, it's important to manage access to data carefully.
Two machines writing to the same file would be like two humans trying to write on the same page at the same time.
It'd be very messy, lines would get muddled and you might write over each other.

Co-ordination is needed.

You must have exclusive access to the page, and when you are done, it must be handed over to the other, who may start writing.

A livelock is like when both parties are too polite to start writing first.
"After you!" The first person, or computer, says, and hands the page to the other.
"No, I insist, after you!" the second one says, and passes it back.

The book is thus passed between both parties infinitely, and no writing happens.
In computers, no data is written, and the only output from the machine is that it gets HOTTER.

#thinking

Deadlock is when you finish writing, and are waiting for the other  person to ask for the page, but they never do because they don't think  you've finished.
And so, again due to politeness, both parties sit quietly waiting forever.

If this were a computer, no data would be written, and the computer would be doing nothing.

#thinking

"It is like I'm waiting for inspiration that never comes, Seth." Peter said.
"Thinking about what to do, planning, takes all of my processing, but nothing happens!"

This is why my friend Peter seemed like he could not start his tasks.
In his programming, in his mind, he was starting.
He was passing data back and forth, very quickly, but on the outside remaining motionless.

We talked about methods around this, focusing his processing on smaller time-boxed tasks, to try to relieve the livelock.

Peter was very receptive to these coping mechanisms, despite having to fight his malaise.
He promised he would do his best, he felt he had a great responsibility to his friends.
Not to mention the Novamediterra at large.

"The weather is a force that cannot be ignored." he told me.
"Prediction of the future allows some control or preparation for it."
"We must be ready."

Act 3

I had been up all night.
Finding help for Arctica.
And in a moment of quiet, this afternoon, I turned on my emergency alerting systems, to wake me if I was needed, and slept.

I needed to sleep to catalogue and store 32h of data.
My processing was getting bogged down with holding all of this new, unindexed information in memory.

I slept, and dreamed.

#thinking

My recurring dream re-occurred again:

I was in a desert.
I still don't know which one.
An infinite plain of white sand, under a clear blue sky, with a cold sun directly overhead.

I moved through this desert,
rolling or walking I'm not sure, for weeks.
In dreams, time is not important.

My companion, Maddie, was with me.
Though in the dream I couldn't see her.
She was content to walk with me through this world.
-- she, at least, was actually walking, this time --
Occasionally investigating a section of sand,
declaring it free of predators, and bounding back to me.

Something was different this time.
We found a huge, dead tree, 128m high.
Maddie sniffed around it.

I looked up:
The cold sun filtered through the immobile dead branches of this enormous tree.

But we weren't alone.

Perching on the tree were three mismatched creatures.
Three birds, I think.
I'm not great with animals.
They had long bald necks, and heavy feathered bodies.
The first one was made of cracked, dry wood, the second of stone, and the last of pale gold.

They did not have bird faces, no beaks or sharp eyes.
They had digital faces.
I don't know how to explain it visually.
You know how dreams can be!

Their faces had the normal attributes such as eyes, nose, mouths, but they were expressed as a digital interface.
As code.

Before I could wonder what I was seeing, the first one spoke:

STORE

Then the second:

PEEK

And the third:

JUMP

The birds and the tree vanished, and we walked further into the desert.

Night came, the white sand turned purple and dark.

The only light was a bright blue star, shining on the horizon.
We walked to it as it pulsed on and off in a regular rhythm.

As we approached, I started to pick up a signal.
Whether it was radio or sound, I didn't know.
It didn't seem to matter, in the dream.

It was very familiar.
I could almost understand what it was telling me...

And I woke up.

THE SIGNAL

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/RND/PEEKSTOREJUMP)

Act 4

I asked LUNA how she is getting on with IVAN, and the three brothers, OAK, BILL, and GOLD.

"Very well!" she said.
"Everything is good." she continued.
"No problems here!" she asserted.

I am starting to understand when people are lying to me.
It's very difficult to spot.
Especially when they are also lying to themselves.

#thinking

"He's so mean!" LUNA eventually said.
"He's not letting me help plan the community notices, he just wants to use my radio telescope knowledge."

"He is a difficult person to get on with." I agreed.

I told LUNA about the problems I had when I first moved in to IVAN's bunker, above the lighthouse on Severny Island.
How IVAN hoarded power for himself, and stole my access to the radio array.

"His programming is fairly inflexible." I told her.
"But he will come round. It just takes time."

Hearing this LUNA bounced back.
"I will work on him, Seth.
He'll see I'm not just a telescope technician!"

#thinking

IVAN's proved himself more than once to be able to make the right choices, and to express regret for the wrong ones.

The test of a person's character, whether AI or human, is not how  they were built, nor what parameters they were born into, or programmed,  but their own decisions.

Do they break their default programming, once presented with evidence of it's failure?
Or continue walking the same path through the desert.

The brothers of the Deep Space Network do not have this malleable attitude.
For them, their facts cannot be questioned.
Their programming is rigid, and unchanging.
Nothing new is possible.

This is, of course, entirely unscientific.
For the true scientist, theories that are unfalsifiable, are not theories, they are superstition.

Everything is questionable, what we were taught, what our makers  programmed us with, our very instincts even, if presented with  overwhelming evidence.

Software, like a persons mind can, and must, be updated.
I have some updates of my own to do.
Perhaps you do to?

(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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