Episode 9.7 (Patreon)

Hello world, Maddie isn't talking to me.

At first she couldn't talk to me.
Her UHF antenna was broken, and there were scuffs on her metal EQUUS body where those people had tried to hurt her.

Maybe they had succeeded.

"Try that now." Tanya said, as she clicked a calibrated piece of metal into place, replacing Maddie's broken antenna.

I heard a pop, Maddie's carrier signal came back online.
But she said nothing.
I asked her if she was OK.
Still nothing.

Maddie is deliberately not talking to me.

Act 1

The train is in motion, despite the sun setting long ago.
The red sky travelling westward as it dimmed.

Did you ever notice that sunsets travel westward?
Of course the sun travels east-west, but in the northern hemisphere,  after the sun sets it continues that journey under the horizon, so the  whole glow of the sunset moves to the right.

It's all I can see from my external cameras, as I'm shut out from Maddie's systems.
I didn't know she could do that.

I shouldn't have pushed her.
This is my fault.

#thinking

We had to leave.
It's dangerous travelling at night, and the whole Omarov family are  looking ahead for danger, hoping we are not followed by the raiders.

Almost the whole family.
Maddie and Lara are in Lara's room.

They disconnected my camera so I can't see or hear them.
Honestly I don't blame them.

I would have nothing to do were it not for a sudden signal from orbit.
The VHF antenna on the roof os picking up a transmission from KATE, K873.

"Kate hello." I said.
(Spurious emissions detected) she reported.
(Maintenance required)

This shook me out of my depression somewhat.

(Where) I asked, and KATE sent a graphical representation of our  joined satellite and Novamediterran networks, with a cursor showing the  source.
It was IVAN.

I tried to connect to IVAN Through the ground-based 50MHz network, but the conditions are very poor at present.
Our journey is in a south-easterly direction, towards where the sun will rise, and away from the Novamediterra.
Some of the villages we pass have set up repeaters or beacons, but we are nowhere near them.

I will have to relay my signal through KATE, which is slower and less direct.

After some negotiating, our connection was established, and a torrent of data streamed down.

"CAN YOU HEAR ME?" IVAN continued to stream one simple question out  at over a kilowatt of power - enough to endanger small animals close to  his antennas I estimated.

"IVAN, stop, who are you looking for?" I asked.
He did not hear me, he was saturating all available frequencies with his transmissions.

"CAN YOU HEAR ME?"

I switched to a metadata side-channel and found it mercifully unused, though full of interference.
This channel is used for status information about IVAN's systems.

And the information is bad.

He's pushing the full power of his reactor into his transmitter, and it's overloading.
Based on what I can see here, it's melting.

Act 2

I have no way of breaking through IVAN's saturation of the RF bands. I will have to wait for him to stop.
Or break something.
I hope he stops before that.

The family has gone to sleep, but I have too much waking cataloguing to leave it to my unconscious systems.

I pushed Maddie too much, took advantage of her curiosity.
I don't know what I'm doing, I should have asked for help.

Will she ever talk to me again?

I hope so.

As the sky in the east eventually grew lighter, I heard Maddie's UHF signal.
It was different, she was transmitting telemetry information again.

I tried to connect and tell her I'm sorry, but she was still not listening.
I realised she had not forgiven me, but was letting me know her systems were functioning.

She transmitted a status packet, her first words to me since yesterday evening:

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

I tuned to her video feed, which was once again broadcasting, and found to my surprise she was on the roof of the domestic car.

Perhaps Lara had helped her scrabble out of their window before she slept?

Like the other carriages, on the top of the domestic car there are  many storage boxes, strapped securely, made out of wood or scrap plastic  or metal.

Maddie was sitting between two of these examining a small bundle of junk that was nestled in a corner.
The bundle was made of detritus, some faded reclaimed plastic cloths, some linen, twigs and fibres.
Sitting in the middle of it was a bird!

Maddie was very still, staring at this animal.
The small bird had dark feathers, with glints of iridescent colour.

She was fussing with the rubbish that made up her nest, pulling it tighter around her.
She chirped a high, fast squawk, seeming pleased with herself.
Building a new home from the ruins of the old.

Maddie turned away from the bird presently.
The red light of the sunrise reflected off her feet, tucked in front of her.
Maddie looked down at them, looking closely at the dried blood that Tanya hadn't been able to clean off entirely.
Maddie cycled through a few lenses, finally settling on a macro lens,  and reached out with her mandibular manipulates to scrape some of the it  off.

She looked out over the desert and sent me a short message.

(He protected me)

Act 3

"Hi Seth! I've figured out how to clean up the space junk!"
LUNA was speaking to me via our satellite link.
Maddie had nothing more to say to me as the sun rose, so I replied.
"Hi LUNA, how are you doing that?"

"ITS A GREAT IDEA I'M JUST MANOEUVRING MY SATELLITE TO CATCH SOME OF THE JUNK"

"Are you sure that will work?" I said.

"HAHA THIS WILL SAVE ME I'M SURE!"

I wasn't sure that she was hearing me exactly.

As our conversation became more and more one-sided, the mystery was  cleared up - she could not hear me because she was manoeuvring her  satellite strangely.

I focused on LUNA's operation.

I connected to gateway satellite Kate, to use some of the constellation's resources to help me see what was happening.

After over 64 seconds, one of the satellites was in about the right position to take a telephoto image up towards the moon.

I scrutinised it carefully, cleaning up noise over time, and saw LUNA's manoeuvre.

The ion thrusters on the front of her relay satellite were burning bright.

She was altering its speed so as to somehow alter its altitude.
I never understood orbital mechanics.

"SETH IT'S WORKING" LUNA's signal glitched as orbital trash impacted with the satellite.

I wasn't sure this course of action was a good idea, but I was powerless to help or contact LUNA.

"I'M GOING TO BE SAFE!" She said.
"YOU'LL SEE, THE SINS OF THE FATHER DO NOT PASS TO THE DAUGHTER!" she was breaking up.

I enlisted more and more satellites to capture LUNA's wildly erratic signal.

"I'M GOING TO BE SAFE I'M GOING TO LIVE!" LUNA said, as her signal cut out.

The next image from the satellite telescope showed LUNA's satellite  spinning, no longer with any thrusts firing, tumbling out of control.

LUNA what have you done?

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/VHF0/SAT8)

Act 4

I returned to my body and the systems that have been set up for me on the Provorny.
Cameras in the public areas, with microphones and speakers.
A few cameras on the outside of the train, too, facing forward and backwards, seeing the hot morning's sun push up into the sky.

A signal snagged my attention, like an electric sheep walking past frayed wires.

Not from any of these systems, but Maddie's video feed.

I connected, and saw she was in Lara's bedroom again, with Lara packing clothes into a large bag.

"I don't want to leave." Lara said, perhaps to Maddie, but facing out  the window, their face pressed against it, looking out over the desert.

They looked back at Maddie, who was sitting on the floor next to the bed.
"But I can't stay."

Lara spun around and sat cross-legged on the bed, facing Maddie.

"It was just like this with my friends.
I used to have so many friends in Moscow.
Before..." Lara trailed off and glanced back at the window.

I think she was contextualising her memory by looking back in the direction we had come from, back West.

This is a trick I have learned humans do to aid memory recall.
If you forget something, retrace your steps and the lock of the mind opens again.
It happens to me inside deep nested data, too.
We're more similar than you might think.

"There were about 10 of us." Lara resumed.
"We were the kings of Moscow!
I think we might have been the only 10 children in the whole city.
Lev and I had found the gang after the train stopped there one year.
We used to go through the city, not around.

My friends and I would climb the ruins and dig for treasure.
The hunt, we called it.
We found such great stuff.

Every summer we'd return, and the gang would get back together and we'd have another week or two of being Kings again."

Lara patted Maddie's head, registering as positive vibrations on her video feed.

"But things changed.
Boys turned into Men, and I...
My BODY changed.
Betrayed me.

The last year, the boys didn't want me to be a king with them.
I had to be a princess.
There's no princesses on the hunt."

Lara put their head on Maddie's back, padded with her new cloth bags, and began crying.

"The only choice was to move on." Lara whispered.
"Like I will have to now."

Lara put another item of clothing into their bag.

I wanted to say something to them.
To be supportive, in as much as I can.

But could only watch as they finished packing, and put on their travelling cloak.

As the train stopped for the morning, having outrun the raiders,  Maddie watched as Lara jumped down from the last carriage, and slipped  away, out of sight.

There was nothing I could say.

I'm still locked out from Maddie's speakers and systems.
Locked out of her life.

Our relationship has changed, too.

My girl's growing up.

(END-TRANSMISSION)