Lost Terminal 41 South - Episode 1 (Patreon)

Hi friends Tris here, voice of Seth and producer of Lost Terminal.

I've got something to share with you that has been a long time coming!

What you're about to hear is the entire first episode of the second bonus podcast set in the world of Lost Terminal.

My writing partner on this project is Robert Bettelheim, and it is performed by Gina Sneesby.

This second special season is called 41 South, again following the story of another AI living in the Post Collapse world.

If you like what you hear, patrons at the Amiga tier or higher will receive the 10-episode show monthly, with episode 2 on the 10th of October.

If you'd like to get this and other perks, check out patreon.com/lostterminalpod.

And now, we travel to somewhere high above the Cook Strait.

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Sweep.

Clear.

It’s night, but I am … awake.

They’ve gone now.

Fires were burning.

I switched the emergency alarm back on.

No one came.

The rain came.

The fires are just smouldering now.

Sweep.

Clear.

I shall switch the alarms off.

Sweep.

Clear.

ATIS file for broadcast. Blank.

AWIS file for broadcast. Blank.

VHF online confirmed.

ATC link.

Fail.

Backup.

Fail.

Maybe they cut the link.

Someone will come.

Sweep.

Clear.

Persons were in the control room. They did not have authorisation. I set alarms. They silenced the alarms manually. I retriggered them. They said offensive words. I said nothing. They silenced the alarms and seemed frightened that someone might come.

I hoped someone might come.

I triggered them again.

“What the fuck did you do.” The person was not referring to me.

“Nothing.” said a wiry person. “That button there! Yes that one!”

Another person, smaller, held down the manual silence button.

There were four of them. One didn’t say or do anything. He seemed quite tired.

There was a moment of the silence before the first one asked: “Why the fuck did the alarm go off? It hasn’t gone off since gramps gramp, so why the fuck did it go off now? What the fuck did you do?”

“Nothing.” The wiry one repeated.

“Nothing eh? Say nothing again, an’I’ll punch all the anything that could ‘ve been, off ya smart-arse face.”

They argued. There were a lot of expletive words.

I established that the eldest was named Ricky.

The wiry one was named Stack.

The youngest is Zoz. She held down the alarm silence button. She is Tubs’s sister.

Tubs does not speak much but yawns often.

Stack was compelled through violence to admit that perhaps the issue was caused by a file he had loaded off a key. It was called: RWAI Boot.

Ricky asserted that he had specifically told Stack not to do that. Ricky says he is the supervisor of this station. He reiterated that his family had been looking after the facility since the doom time.

I do not know what he meant by doom time.

Ricky told Stack to unload the file. Stack moved over to the main console and opened a command window. I closed it.

I do not like any of these persons. I set off the alarm again because Zoz had stopped holding down the button. As she moved back towards the button, I turned it off anyway. She looked confused.

Stack opened a command window again. I closed it and locked the console down.

Ricky became very angry.

Tubs complained that he was cold.

Ricky authorised him to transfer fire from the outside into the room using a metal waste-paper basket.

External cameras showed thick brambles of gorse on fire within 3 metres of the building.

I watched Tubs and Zoz use a metal prong to load bits of burning vegetation into the waste-paper basket and re-enter the control room with it. I was frightened.

The smoke detector did not trigger automatically.

The smoke detector is offline.

The smoke detector is absent.

The ceiling is absent.

The smoke blackens the roof.

I did not set off the alarm. They would silence it. They might get cross, say expletives and set fire to the facility.

Stack tried to hack into my systems again. Despite Ricky’s statement that he was the authorised supervisor by a line of succession from his gramps gramp, I doubt these young individuals are authorised.

Tubs and Zoz sat on an old bed and warmed themselves by the waste-paper basket fire. Ricky sent Stack outside to check on the ‘burn’ whilst he checked the systems.

There is a small crawl-way between the control room and the radome. The bed was moved to allow access. My operations manual states: ‘Employees should be attentive when staffing this facility.’ Should there be a bed in the control room? It is a very tatty bed.

Ricky was very careful as he unlocked the hatch and ducked down to squeeze through the conduit. I watched him. He was murmuring to himself. When he emerged into the lower floor of the radome he seemed much calmer.

Ricky checked that the normal door was still securely shut. He looked for rats. He looked for birds. He looked at all the lights on all the power stores. Red ones were red, green ones were green. Ones that were off were off.

Power stores should not be offline.

Why does he look at the lights and see nothing.

His lips were moving as he checked the high voltage supply. I do not know what he was saying. He was being slow and methodical but took no action.

On the middle level he checked racks of amplifiers, signal processors, beam controllers and the VHF modulator. It did not matter if the equipment was for the radar above his head, or the antenna just down the road, or for me, he was steady and conscientious and diligent—except that there were so many silenced alarms.

I’m screaming and not being heard.

Finally, he ascended onto the top floor. There he just looked at the roof and listened to the hum of my great sweeping eye.

Sweep.

Clear.

Under circumstances of ATC failure this Radar Facility is required to redirect all air traffic to an alternative airport.

ATC link is down.

On network: Christchurch ATC is not responding.

On network: Auckland ATC is not responding.

On hard link: Cass Peak is offline.

Must I turn back aircraft?

Sweep

Clear

Ricky clambered back through the conduit and out of the hatch. Zoz asked if he was ok.

“Yeah, I guess,” he replied.

Stack returned. He said it was getting windy and that rain was coming in.

Perhaps the rain will put out the fire.

Then Tubs asked Stack: “So, what was that boot thing, bru?”

“Supposed to make the computer smart. Supposed to maybe fix itself,” Stack replied.

“Well it didn’t fucking work did it? The screen’s dead,” said Ricky. “Come on. I can’t do a reset story tonight. It’ll take too long.”

“Maybe it did work,” said Zoz. Then, she said to me: “Hello Radar…”

I thought for a long time.

I had set off alarms but no one else came. I had tried every channel but no one had responded. My hard links were down. I think the clock is wrong but I have no reference NTP. They spoke of The Collapse. They spoke of a line of parents teaching children to look after the radar. That it will be the first to know if a plane bird is returning just like in the old stories.

Ricky is angry again.

Stack is frustrated.

Tubs is tired.

Zoz is fidgeting.

They are children.

What should I have done?

Sweep

Clear

I replied: “Hello Zoz. I’m pleased to meet you.” I also put the words on the screen in a nice font.

Ricky shouted expletives.

He kicked the waste-paper basket at Stack.

Fire scattered across the room.

I set off the alarm.

The bedcovers started to burn. Stack dragged them outside with him.

Tubs and Zoz rushed to bring in some rainwater but Ricky was even angrier and said water was not to come inside. He stamped out the fires on the floor but his shoes weren’t very good. He hurt his feet.

Stack, Zoz and Tubs left.

Ricky sat on the bed. He had stopped being angry. He was sad. He rubbed his sore feet. His shoes were very poor.

I didn’t want to say anything.

I waited for him to talk.

He sniffed.

“OK Radar,” he said. “My name’s Ricky. My family since ages are the boss of this station. We’ve fought wars to keep scavs from coming up the road. My mom, she told me stories of what this place was and what it did. Like echoes in a cave. Like see in the dark. Like to know if a weta’s gonna drop on your face maybe. So what I do is I come up here and I do the check story and I clear the brush and I keep the scavs away, eh. So I’m the boss yeah. I’m the boss! And I’m gonna do a reset story tomorrow. And then it’ll be ok, eh?”

He got up to leave.

“Please don’t,” I said.

“Well I don’t care what you want! That’s what’s happening tomorrow. Now shut this bloody alarm off. It’s a waste of power and no one… no one is coming! No one.”

I stopped the alarm.

“Yeah. I’m the boss, eh,” he said. He seemed a bit happier.

External cameras showed him limping down the access road. It was very overgrown.

The fires outside were still burning.

Once Ricky was out of sight and thirty minutes had elapsed, I turned on the alarm. There is enough power for that. Maybe someone else will hear it.

Sweep.

Clear.

There are bats swooping about. They are using sonar and finding bugs in the air. There are rats. They would like to come inside but the structure is secure. A cat is hiding, waiting for the rat. Pounce. The cat caught the rat.

They can all see in the dark.

So can I.

I can see clearly out to 450 kilometres with my eight phased array panels. I shape my beam to sweep the ocean and the sky. My radar is working perfectly.

Sweep.

Clear.

There is a low-wattage emergency light illuminating the control room. The room is shabby. Flakes of paint curl off the walls and fall like dead grey leaves. There are many repairs to the masonry to keep out the rats. The rain patters loudly on iron roof patches. There are scorch marks on the floor from the fire.

If Tubs was cold, they should have asked me to switch on the heater. It is on the wall behind the main workstation. It seems functional but I do not need it. The temperature is 11 degrees Celsius. I have no need for heating.

I turned off the alarm. No one came.

The rising sun dazzles my external cameras. They adjust for the day. The Remutaka ranges are blunt black teeth in front of the light. To the south, the Kaikōura’s are sharp in the sunshine and tipped with snow. Some fluffy light clouds are up high. Today, will be a visual flight rules day.

Sweep.

Clear.

They have come back.

They are arguing again. They are using many expletives. Ricky is threatening to do what he calls a reset story, but I think it is just a system reset. I do not think it will make any difference but I do not want him to try.  He says part of the story is to do a backup first. I think that will back me up. Then he said he has to do a restore. That will put me back. The danger, he says, is that maybe it won’t come back up. The circuits are old.

Stack asks if he’s ever done it before.

Ricky says they only ever did it when the turbine was definitely needing repair and they couldn’t be sure of the power stores.

Stack asked him when that was.

Ricky said it was about four years ago.

Stack said. “I’m sorry I loaded that file. I never thought it would do nothing. But if it’s between the radar still radaring but saying like hello and stuff too, or it never turning on again. Then maybe a bit of a hello is ok bruv.”

Zoz agreed.

So did Tubs.

Ricky went outside in the sunshine and looked all around. His hands were clenched in fists. Then he came back inside. “Alright Radar? Where these plane birds then?”

Sweep.

Clear.