Episode 8.8 (Patreon)

Act 0

Hello world, friends are important.

I've had a lot of time to think as Maddie walks further south.
She's slowed by the urban environment, it's much more hazardous than the wastelands she'd been moving through.

At the heart of it, I'm undertaking this mission to rescue my friends, and potential friends, in orbit.

And perhaps safeguard my friends down here too.

Friends are important.

Act 1

I called Nia Andersen to chat about this.
I tuned my low-frequency radios to the Novamediterran calling frequency and called for her.

The way the radio community works is that there is one frequency that acts like a switchboard.

You say "hello, is Nia there", and everyone hears it, but only Nia answers.
Or maybe someone who knows where she is, if she doesn't answer.
"She's off at lunch" someone might reply to me.

Not today, though, Nia answered and we negotiated a more private frequency to talk on.
"Up 7 sounds free" she told me, so I re-tuned my radio up 7kHz and began our updates.

#thinking

"I might have cracked it, Seth." Nia began.
"The trick is to not let a bad date get in the way of making a friend!"

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"Well you know I told you about Liv."
"I think I remember, she didn't like chess?"
"No, she said she was upset I was playing games with her."

It was very difficult for me to keep all of these details catalogued in my databanks.
If you don't already have familiar categories for memories, they rather muddle together.
Perhaps you've had this problem too?

#thinking

"Well, we talked again." Nia said
"I explained that I'm most interested in making friends, and her friendship was very valuable to me.
I told her simply that I prefer spending time with her than being alone."

"And did that work?" I asked, desperately saving this conversation for later analysis.

"I think so!
We laughed and talked long into the evening.
She has asked if I'd like to talk more about my radio set up.
You know me, I was telling her all about it!

I'm working on expanding our Novamediterran network out to far-flung places.
Like St. Petersburg."

I was delighted to hear this news.
Personally, for Nia's friends, and for Peter.

Perhaps there are more friends to be found.

Act 2

Maddie has found herself in a warehouse.
It's so big that it's easier to go through than around.
I'm nervous about it, but she can see daylight through the other side.

There are lots of metal cages piled up at the front of the warehouse.
Rusted and fragile.
Maddie didn't want to get her thin, sharp feet caught in them, so she picked her way around.
There are tiny holes in the roof letting in sharp lines of sunlight.

And it's very quiet.
Maddie is walking through empty shelves.
Feet clicking on the tiles.

What warehouse has a tiled floor?

#thinking

A sound shattered the silence.
I felt Maddie's fear before I saw the video feed from her cameras.
Maddie is looking up at a hole in the ceiling, where crows are flying in and out.

They have found something to eat in the center of the warehouse.

Maddie has come to the end of a aisle.
There are brightly-coloured boxes stacked here.

And beyond them, close to the crows is a pair of black boots.
Attached to -

Maddie, keep going, don't look.

#thinking

Maddie relished the sunlight flooding her solar panels.
She's learned to associate the feeling of charging batteries with the confidence that she can do anything.

I was still thinking about the body we saw back in the warehouse, and the crows.

We had walked out into a large square in the city.

I believe we found ourselves at a University.
The buildings were large, but they had a friendliness that triggered dim recognition in my memory banks.

Had I been built at a university?

The buildings, though in ruin, were cylindrical, like large, joined, sections of pipes with windows.

They had once been painted bright colours to encourage the students, I imagined.

Maddie was very pleased with the colours.
Her new EQUUS video cameras showed them bright and clear as she walked  through this campus, looking left and right at these new sights.

#thinking

As we left this monument to education, we passed by a library.

Maddie saw the shelves of books and darted inside without hesitation.

I was startled at the speed of her movement!
My video feed glitched and suddenly we were looking up at a huge tower of books.

Unlike the shelves of the warehouse, these looked to be undisturbed.

Maddie switched her forelegs to fine-motor mode, and gently pulled a book out of the shelf.

As she did so, a thin black dust fell out of the pages onto her cameras.
She dropped the book with a thud, the sound surprising her and she jumped back, legs outstretched like a spider.

Maddie didn't do that intentionally.
There are a lot of instinctual instructions still running in the EQUUS unit, it seems.

She stood up straight again, and approached the book.

Opening to the middle with her left foreleg, we were both disappointed:
The pages were blank.

There were no words in the book, only a black dusty residue.

"Book?" Maddie asked me, simply.

We tried another, and another.
Whatever cheap printing method was used here hadn't survived the collapse.
The entire section of spiral-bound books were blank.

A generation's knowledge lost.

We fled back into the sun.

Act 3

After evening prayers, Linda and I passed the time playing a game of Go.

Yeshi was busy tinkering with their musical bicycle contraption,  Maddie was waiting for the sun to rise to charge her solar panels.

And Linda placed a single white stone carefully on the board in front of her.

"6 and 5 please" I said, instructing Linda to place one of my black stones on the board.

"Look, I get it." She said, continuing our conversation that we'd been conducting for most of the evening.
"My marriage, our legacy, lives and dies by the youngest finding a fourth.
This is the way it's always been:
Knowledge, property and support passes down the line.
That's the duty of the elders, and the duty of the youngers is to support and teach the elders.
Everything in it's place."

"9 and 7 please." I said, understanding that I was not expected to reply, just yet.

"I've thought about doing it." Linda said, quickly placing another of her pieces on the game board.
"I'm going to.
But it's a big decision.
I want to be sure.
It was so easy with Kari.
It was obvious from the start, I just knew!"

Linda laughed.

"Do you know what I mean, Seth?"

I did not know what she meant.
I thought I loved someone once.
But what I loved was a trick of my imagination.

I didn't reply to her question, instead saying "2 and 5 please."

Linda placed my stone on the board and frowned.

"I'm sorry Seth, I think you missed it." She said, and placed her final, winning, white stone.

#thinking

The board remained on a little table in my room, after Linda went to bed.

Go is a very difficult game for me to play.
The state space is so great, the number of different moves far more than I can hold in my mind.
Some people know tricks to get where they want on the board.
Get to places that make them happy.
Either through hard work and bitter experience, or through intuition, being naturally good at it.

I have neither much experience nor any real intuition.

But I can learn.

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/TENSOR7/ML)

Act 4

The next day, everyone on ship was busy, which allowed me to spend time exclusively with Maddie.

Well, virtually with Maddie.

Which is all I can do.
It's everything I can do.

#thinking

The day was bright, cloudless, and easy navigation for Maddie.
I believe she has picked through the ruins of the city of Köln, in the former country of Germany.

The city is barely recognisable, my old-world maps are of no help.

But Maddie's trotting down the broken highway without a care.

#thinking

We met a pack of dogs.

I couldn't believe it, I was finally meeting a dog!
Though these weren't the loyal friends I had read about, they also weren't wild and dangerous.
The pack ran alongside Maddie for a while.
Barking and panting.
Maddie was delighted, I was terrified!

But they weren't hunting.
Or fighting.
They were running for the pleasure of running, the thrill of movement, it seemed.

Maddie experienced this too.
She ran faster and faster, jumping over rusted shells of cars and broken concrete slabs, the pack at her heels.

Until at some point, perhaps they tired, or they had left their territory, the dogs fell back and turned around.

Leaving Maddie to go on alone.

#thinking

The whole experience was invigorating, in a way I have not felt in a long time.

Examining this feeling, I'm actually feeling much brighter than I had been, back in the Novamediterra.

Which is strange, as that is where my friends are.
What could have changed?

#thinking

My thoughts were interrupted by a status update from Maddie:

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

WATER?

I connected to Maddie's video feed.
SHE
IS
UNDER
WATER!

For a moment I thought that our adventure had come to an end.
Water, our worse enemy, the single most troubling compound for a computer, that causes rust, decay and salt ingress.
Unnecessary salt ingress.

But I kept looking.

The camera bobbed above the water level.
Showing a slow river, travelling against the direction Maddie planned to go in.

Maddie was swimming upstream.

#thinking

This is all too much.
I called Yeshi on the intercom next to them on the back deck of the Molly Hughes II.

"Yeshi! Maddie is swimming! She's waterproof!"
There was a pause as Yeshi walked to the intercom, hesitated, and pressed the button.

"That's a relief!" They said.
"The EQUUS platform must be designed for aquatic use, fancy that!"
There was a burst of static as they finished speaking and walked back to their kinetic bike project.

#thinking

Maddie's swimming.
Fancy that.

I see a city on the horizon.
Maddie's picking up ESA radio signals.

It's Frankfurt.

(END-TRANSMISSION)

CREDITS

Lost Terminal is written & produced by NAMTAO
Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer
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• Ada Phillips
• Devin Metcalf
• Kit
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