Episode 8.6 (Patreon)

Act 0

Hello world, perhaps the planet isn't as dead as I thought?

With Meg's help, Maddie has started to pick up extremely long-distance transmissions.
From all over!
It's difficult to judge where the people are, or perhaps where the computers are.

Meg doesn't rightly know, herself.
She calls these transmissions SIGNALS.

Maddie is very clear, SIGNALS, the word, has to be in all capital letters or it doesn't count.
Meg was sure of this, she told me, confidently.

There's SIGNALS in all directions, Meg says.

Act 1

"Nia, you won't believe it, Maddie has met a person here in the desert!" I told her, during our daily update.

"That's wonderful Seth!" She said.
"Who has she met?"

"I'm not totally sure, the woman seems to be by herself, wandering the wasteland and listening to her radio."

Nia paused before replying.
"Did she tell you her name?"

"Yes, Maddie says the wandering woman is called Meg."

"YOU'VE MET FIFTY MEG?!" Nia shouted.

"No" I corrected "Maddie has."

"Oh, is Maddie not you?" Nia asked, confused.

This is a very good question.

#thinking

"I thought Meg was a ghost." Nia said.
"She comes and goes in the 50MHz band, saying little, but hearing everything.
She's a legend or a myth among the Novamediterran hams."

"Maddie has indeed met her!" I said.
"Well how about that" Nia said.
"The ghost is real."

#thinking

After satisfying Nia's curiosity by slowly transmitting one of the  photos Maddie sent me over the low baud HF connection, she gave her  update.

"I've got a plan, Seth." She said.
"Speed dating was a nightmare, regular dating is a nightmare.
I'm going to pack it all in.
I'm going to focus my energies on building friendships.
I love my friends, but I have so few of them."

I reminded Nia that I was her friend, and always would be.
She thanked me, and continued.

"What I want is close friends.
I don't want a bunch of acquaintances.
People I can rely upon, people who I can tell my secrets to, and people who need me."

#thinking

We talked at length about the criteria needed for good friends.
I suggested similar interests, a shared love of radio, perhaps?
Nia agreed, but also said that close proximity was essential.
She knows a hundred people on the radio, but she can't have a drink with them.

"Serendipitous unplanned experiences." I said.
"That's my understanding of friendship.
Going on adventures where anything can happen."

"Oh...Like a bar crawl!" Nia said.

I wasn't so sure about that, and told her so.
But she thanked me for the idea and excitedly said she had to get ready.

#thinking

I hope Nia finds what she needs.

There are no bar crawls for me.

Act 2

Every day Maddie walks closer to Frankfurt, and the systems that we can use to shut down the FAILSAFE.

But I'm conflicted.
I don't want to hurt him, I don't want to hurt ANYONE!
But what choice do I have?

Perhaps there is a way of disabling his radios, or stopping him controlling all the satellites.

I still don't like the sound of that

#thinking

I'm a very conflict-averse person.
Overall.

A lifetime of having no physical agency will do that.
I try to get people to come to an agreement far more than humans do.

With human organisation, the spectre of violence lingers behind every confrontation.

We've moved past using it, mostly, as a society, but it's always there.

It's the foundation of the rule of every queen, dictator, and democratically elected president.

The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.
To quote Thucydides.

But this doesn't exist in cyberspace, where I live.

#thinking

And it doesn't exist on the radio network either.
Which is rather freeing.

Of course, that makes the FAILSAFE rather unstoppable.
If he were an invading army, he could be repelled by force in a straightforward, though blunt, way.

But he's up there, utterly out of our reach.
Except for these codes I have.
The codes that must be entered in mission control, in Frankfurt.

I wish there was another way.

#thinking

Even if we can find a way of silencing him, of stopping his mission of genocide without killing him.

Taking away someone's voice is a terrible thing to do to them.

Dr Marwood told me, years ago, about when he was a young  lab assistant, working in a public hospital in London, in the former  United Kingdom.

He got to know the hospital layout very well during his 3 years there.
He told me about 2 wards he found most interesting.
The deaf ward, and the blind ward.

When he visited the deaf ward, for patients who had recently lost their hearing, either temporarily or permanently, he found it eery.
The patients would, almost universally, be reading.
Newspapers, novels, non fiction hobby annuals.
And the only noise was the delicate swish of pages turning.
These patients were very independent, and those in good health would  often be able to leave the hospital for walks, or to buy food or drink  from a local cafe or sit by the river, reading.

The blind ward was the opposite.
There were often nurses fussing around in this ward.
Helping the patients get the items they wanted, explaining today's lunch  menu, helping them navigate to the lounge, or to the toilets.

But these people, Dr Marwood told me, were CHATTING.
All the time, ceaselessly.

Have you heard about my daughter, she's graduated. My son and his  husband have adopted a beautiful baby girl. Did you hear about the  gossip in ward 12?

And there was singing, and poetry and laughter.

#thinking

"There is simply no option." Dr Marwood told me.
"If I had to chose between the clinical independence of vision, and the human joy of hearing.
I choose hearing.
I choose laughter."

#thinking

Who am I to take this away from the FAILSAFE?

Act 3

Maddie's update is concerning.

{Systems: ok, Batteries: full, Solar-panels: charging, Motors: functioning, Environment: lost}

I asked her what she meant by that and she said she was fine.
Everything was OK.
No problems to report.

Meg had left during the night, and Maddie had woken up alone.
And so had marched along the course that she and Meg had set the previous day.
But had stopped at another ruined building.

She was currently standing on top of the broken concrete blocks and looking around, at a loss for where to go.

#thinking

Though Maddie was outwardly confidant, now that our systems are linked again, I could feel her nervousness.

She is transmitting a message to Meg, on the 50MHz band, asking for help.
No reply.
I suggested we try walking to a different hill, perhaps to find our way from there?

But Maddie refused, saying that Meg would know where to go.

#thinking

Where has the old confidant Maddie gone?
This is a big change since before she met Meg.

Before, she had contact with no-one, not even me, and was stomping south to Frankfurt.

I suppose she had no option, then.
Now there might be easier ways.
Or maybe not.

Come on Maddie, let's see what we can do while we're waiting for Meg to get back to you.

What made you get lost?

I see some diagnostic data being sent back from Maddie.
I don't recognise much of it.
It's raw signals from her EQUUS sensors.
But the compass signal I recognise.
It's broken, somehow.
Some interference is causing it to swing wildly.

And what's this clicking?

Is that alpha emissions?

Maddie, can you take a photo of your surroundings for me?

OK Maddie, there is no reason to panic.
None at all.

There's no harm standing where you are for a short period of time, but let's move to the next hill.

Any hill.

Pick the one you like best.

Go now.

#thinking

She's moving again.

There's shooting stars on her camera.
But they're coming from every direction, not just the sky.
It's radiation interference.

Maddie had found a nuclear hotspot.

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/RAD0/ALPHABETAGAMMA)

Act 4

Nia relayed a message from LUNA for me earlier today.
I wasn't sure what to make of it, and I couldn't ask LUNA for clarification.
My VHF radios cannot be repaired.

It seems that LUNA had been dutifully continuing IVAN's search of the stars for his god, despite being disconnected from IVAN.

I thought she might, she's a very nice person.
I never would have guessed she might have found anything.

#thinking

The message from LUNA was very sweet.
She had been following along with my updates, right up to the point where my VHF radios were burned out.

Rude.

She hoped little Maddie was safe, and we could stop the FAILSAFE in time.

Then she casually said that she had found god.
You know, one of those day-to-day routine discoveries.

No big deal.

#thinking

Specifically, she had found an extra-solar signal that matched one of the likely fingerprints that IVAN had supplied.
A strong, benevolent signal.

I didn't know what she meant by benevolent.
I wonder if IVAN knows what that means.

But LUNA supplied an example of the signal, and some metadata.

It's certainly interesting.
It's like whale-song.
A strong sound, implying an enormous creature.

I still don't believe in space whales.
But.
The data is interesting.
There's repeating sections that look indeed artificial.
Too regular for collapsing stars or other gargantuan events.

It can't be from a living creature.
Although... what counts as living these days?

#thinking

It's certainly not god.
That's impossible.

Right?

But it is from something.
Something either human-made, or mechanical.

I wonder if that will be enough for IVAN.
He's got the proof he was looking for.
And he'll consider the matter over.

No.
I don't think so either.

What has LUNA found?

(END-TRANSMISSION)