Episode 9.6 (Patreon)

Act 0

Hello world, Things are changing.

The Provorny is stopped again while Alek tunes the engine.
We've made a few stops like this before.
It's not UNRELIABLE per se.
But it also requires a lot of care.

Maintenance is needed.
It's important to check-in on important things.

Act 1

Lara emerged from their room for breakfast today, finally.

Lev and Tanya had put out a few small beige foods for the family to eat when they wanted.
Alek had grabbed a potato and returned to his work on the engine.

Lara sat at the end of the table, spiked one of the steaming potatoes, and deposited it on their plastic plate.

I was so pleased to see them.
Them.
I must re-write their pronoun in my database.

Maddie bumped Lara's hand gently.
She was happy to see them too.

"What have you done with your hair?" Tanya shouted, startling us.
Maddie looked up.
We hadn't noticed.
Lara had cut their long blond hair very short.

#thinking

"I just think it's a bit more ME." Lara said, poking the potato with their fork.

Tanya rushed over to kneel next to her child and was running her fingers through Lara's new short hair.

"But you had such LOVELY hair!" Tanya complained.

"Get off." Lara said gently, pushing her away.
"Let me eat Mama."

Tanya sat back at the table heavily, looking wide-eyed at Lara.
"I suppose it'll be cooler in the summer?" She said.

"That's not why I did it." Lara said, not meeting Tanya's gaze.

#thinking

Lara's new hair is short on the top, and very short on the sides, longer one side than the other.
It's very neat.

I wonder why I didn't notice at first?
My facial recognition algorithms are not very well-tuned to humans.
I'm either very fooled by different hairstyles or blind to them completely!
Name tags would be useful.

"Hello my name is Confused"
Something like that.

Act 2

"CAN YOU HEAR ME?" IVAN said, his signal strong on my receiver.
"Hello IVAN." I said.
"CAN YOU HEAR ME?" IVAN said again, louder.

I replied again, only to receive the same message from him.
I quickly realised that he was not talking to me.

#thinking

I asked KATE, ESA gateway satellite K873 who IVAN was talking to.
Why was he broadcasting down to me?

She replied that node 'IVAN' wasn't using the constellation. I was hearing IVAN's signal directly from him.

This made no sense, I was listening my normal 6m VHF band, 51.1MHz.
His signal should not go much further than the horizon.

But here it was.
Loud and clear.
And getting louder.

I tried triangulating the signal with the Novamediterran repeater network, connecting via the satellite constellation.

IVAN was indeed transmitting from his bunker, back on Severney island, in the arctic.

The local repeater stations were picking up his signal, as normal.
But they were off the scale of power in nearly every direction.

Ivan was using his full antenna array to transmit his message everywhere.

But that still doesn't explain how we can hear him directly.

I was wondering what I was missing when Maddie sent me a short message.

(Tropospheric ducting)

"What is that?" I asked her.
Maddie couldn't explain to me how it worked.
But she was sure it was what was happening.

"WHO TAUGHT YOU THAT?" I said.

(50Meg) Maddie said.

The ghost in the static.

#thinking

By way of explanation, Maddie told me about part of her short adventure with the 50MHz wandering radio wizard, months ago.

Meg and Maddie had found an old factory, half sunk into the wet ground of the Rhineland.
Through rusted ladders and tight crawlways, they had reached the roof.
I could see this through Maddie's analytical memory of the day, re-rendered and compiled into pictures.

Meg was crouching next to a thin metal rod on the top of the building.
It looked like an old antenna.

She pulled back her traveling hood and cables of white hair spilled down in front of her, contrasting sharply with her skin.
She had a coil of wire at her waist, which she connected to the  building's antenna, and then to a metal box slung over her shoulder.

Maddie's visual feed glitched at this point of the memory as Meg transmitted her signal.

After listening carefully for a few minutes, shifting her radio  transceiver around the frequency spectrum, she gestured to Maddie to  come closer, and offered a wire, which Maddie reached for and connected  to.

Maddie heard a quiet voice coming through the airwaves.
It was an automated Russian weather station, still transmitting after all these years.

In the memory, Maddie was in the north of the former country of Germany.
Too far away to hear the signal under normal circumstances.
VHF doesn't go much past the horizon.

Maddie excitedly looked up to Meg, seeing her lined face all smiles.
Meg pointed up into the sky and said "Tropospheric Ducting".

The memory cut, and we were back on the Provorny, hearing IVAN's long distance signal saying "CAN YOU HEAR ME?".

Act 3

I'd really like to take advantage of the pause in our journey caused by Alek working on the engine.
There is what looks to be a small village or hamlet in the middle of a wide empty plain.
I can see it from a camera that Lara has put up for me outside their room.
There's a cable trailing through their windows back into the train.
But it's not enough, I want to see it closer, meet the people!
In as much as I CAN meet the people.

Maddie is reluctant.

"It'll be fun Maddie!" I told her.
"We'll be more careful this time.
There's no wolves or dangerous robots out here.
Just some nice people."

She still wasn't sure.

"I bet they have a radio tower you could use."
I said, remembering her new-found enjoyment of improvised radio.

Maddie looked out of the window at the cluster of shelters in the desert, and at one tall metal tower in particular.

Her enthusiasm returned in a great tide, and she bounded for the door.

#thinking

We were in a desert.
(I don't know which one, before you ask)
An infinite plane of white sand, under a clear blue sky, with a hot sun directly overhead.

Maddie and I walked together for an hour.
She would occasionally investigate a section of sand,
declaring it free of predators and continue walking.

I felt such a sense of déjà vu, that this desert was the one in my dreams.
But as we walked closer to the village, that feeling evaporated.

This village was not as colourful as the one we visited with Lev and Lara.
The people were understandably cautious.
Two tall people greeted us suspiciously.
"Hello my name is Seth, what is your name?" I asked, in a few languages.

The two people laughed, and escorted Maddie into the village.
Many came out of their little houses, curiously.

There were no children in this village.
What a relief, they are so unpredictable!

#thinking

This village appeared to have a hierarchy, Maddie was being ushered towards the largest house.

Maddie wanted to turn and look around, there was lots of interesting  machinery around, fires burning in metal containers, and even a workshop  that looked to be a blacksmith, building tools.

No farmers, though, and no well for water.

The crowd pressed on, squeezing Maddie towards the largest house.
We looked ahead and a man came out to greet us.
He was wearing metal.
I've never seen someone wearing metal before.

And he has a long, sharp slither of metal held at his side.

The people crowded around Maddie, laughing now.
Some quick movement to her left caught Maddie's eye as she was jostled by the crowd.
She turned to look and something clicked and her UHF signal disconnected.

I tried to reconnect.
I tried for hours.

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/RF0/UHF1)

Act 4

"I don't like the look of that camp." Said Tanya.
"This is a bad place to stop. CHILDREN! We're leaving, where's Maddie?"

Tanya bustled through the carriages, I have a camera in each one now.
She closed windows and doors, and put away small things that might fall while we were in motion.

"Tanya, we can't go yet! Maddie..."
I realised I was talking out of the speaker connected to my databanks in the workshop carriage.
No-one can hear me.
I usually talk to the Family through Maddie.

I screamed.

The front door of my carriage opened and Alek walked in.

"Problem?" He said, simply.

"Maddie is still visiting the nearby village." I said.

"Is she now." Alek said, throwing open a window and putting a short telescope to his eye.
He wore it around his neck habitually.

"Tanya will know what to do." He said, and rushed back towards the middle of the train.

The whole Omarov family bundled in to the workshop car.
"Maddie's gone THERE?!" Tanya said, pointing out of the window to the  village on the horizon, which now was lit with fires as the evening drew  on.
"Why did she do that? They could be raiders, they're probably raiders!"

"Raiders steal what they need." Lev said, from behind his towering mother.

"Raiders steal whatever they want." Lara corrected, standing in the doorway.

"Husband, we are LEAVING." Tanya commanded.

Alek immediately went forward to the Engine, and in 32 seconds the  Provorny jerked into motion, the steam already up to pressure.

"Children, help your father look-out, we don't want to be derailed within sight of the camp."

"What about Maddie?" I shouted.

Tanya pushed Lara and Lev out of the door and closed it behind them.

She then turned to my databanks and said,
"Why did she leave."

I hesitated.

"I encouraged her."

Tanya put her hands to her head and walked back and forth in the carriage.

"She's very special you know Seth? I can't fix her if they hurt her."

"I know."

"At least you're in here safe, she's -"

Something heavy slammed into the side of the train knocking the carriage slightly.

Tanya stumbled and rushed to the window, pulling a length of metal  down from where it had been stored near the door as she did so.

She looked back at me for a moment and then opened the side door to the carriage, holding the metal weapon ready.

In a scrabble of legs, Maddie burst through, sliding slightly on the metal floor.

She stood in the doorway, the fires of the camp silhouetting her.
The small UHF antenna on her body was snapped and hanging off, and there was blood on her sharp metal feet.

(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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