Episode 10.3 (Patreon)

Hello world, there is hope in decay.

The low hanging fruits have been picked.
Both literally and figuratively.

There is no easy food left to scavenge in the city.
The family come home each day with less and less.

They find thin leafy green shoots.
Edible weeds, hardy grasses.
But no yams, no potatoes, no wheat, and no spam.

The family need over 10000kcal per day according to my calculations.
They are not finding enough food.
And they are getting tired.

Act 1

It was lunchtime.
Lev emptied his bag onto the table in the domestic car.
He was last, the others had found scraps of edible green plants in the  shade of the broken buildings, and littered the table with their thin  findings.

Lev's food was not green.
Nor yellow or pink.
It was white.

He emptied 4 large flat mushrooms onto the table.

"Were there more, Dear?" Tanya said, hopefully.
"No Mama." Lev said, and the family changed their posture as one, and sank into their chairs.

"They will be good for soup, don't worry." Tanya said, reaching for them.

"I have an idea." Lev said, stopping his mother mid-grab.
"Why don't we GROW them?"

Tanya sat back and looked at her son.
Alec, I noticed, had not said anything, but was nodding his head slowly.

"I found them on the north side of a broken down wooden shack, in the shade of one of those blocks.
Mushrooms eat damp wood, right? Well there's loads of that around, and we have enough water, don't we papa?"

Alec grunted and continued nodding.

"Look at the underneath of these, they're full of spores."

Lev tapped one of the mushrooms, and a black cloud dusted the top of the table.

Tanya turned her back on the group and walked to the end of the carriage and back.

"I had hoped we might avoid FARMING. But you're right dear, we might be here for a while.
Husband, get us some water, we need to boil a lot for sterilisation."

Alec did as he was told and left the carriage by the front door, leading into the workshop, my room.

"Lev, get the biggest pots you can find, Lyosha, go out and find some sacrificial containers to put it all in.
I will chop up some wood as small as possible, give us splinters to feed our new little friend."

"Meet back here before sunset. Maddie, help Lyosha in the city."

The family all set about their tasks.

Maddie jumped out of the carriage ahead of Lyosha.
Eager to be useful.
Anxious to be useful.

There weren't a lot of options left for the Omarovs.

Act 2

The day was bright, but uncommonly cool.
Only 291K today.
And the sun was setting.
Lyosha left his lightweight multicoloured cloak at home and wore a  single layer of white linen fabric, dark trousers and his heavy boots.
Maddie padded along beside him, and I could observe and talk through her systems.

"Where are you going to look first?" I asked Lyosha.
"I don't know." He said.
"Waterproof or near waterproof containers are what we need, mama said. Buckets or drums - big things like that."

Lyosha pulled gently on Maddie's bags, diverting her path.

"Not that way Maddie, I don't want to go back to that arcade, it's haunted."

Finding a new direction, they picked their way over the tracks from the rail yard into the crumbling city.

Maddie transmitted a status packet as she and Lyosha walked through the old apartment blocks.

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

Maddie was looking around quickly, trying to pattern match in all directions.
She was very agitated.
"What is wrong Maddie?" Asked Lyosha, putting his hand on her back.

QRM is the code for human-generated electrical interference.
Maddie was hearing people.

I told Lyosha what was happening, and he asked Maddie to lead the way, carefully.
They both walked very slowly through the wasteland between the  buildings, walking around the twisted metal that once may have been a  children's playground, and slabs of concrete fallen out of the blocks.

Rounding the corner of one of these blocks a large, low building sat in the middle of 4 apartment buildings.

Maddie pulled Lyosha slowly towards it.
The raw data from Maddie's radios suggested this is where the QRM, the interference was coming from.
Static and whistles all over the electromagnetic spectrum.

"This is where I found the tin of spam." Lyosha whispered to Maddie.
"I couldn't find it yesterday, all these blocks look the same to me."

Maddie lifted her right front leg, the only one painted black, her others were all orange, her whole body pointed forwards.
The pair paused at the entrance
Tanya had told us not to go into buildings.

Lyosha knew it, but after 8s hesitation entered anyway.

We were in some kind of shopping mall.
Well, Lyosha and Maddie were.
Though as usual I felt like I was along for the ride.

The pair passed empty retail units with faded and cracked signs advertising products long since extinct.

Maddie turned her head left and right, sometimes so fast she appeared to be shaking it.
Like she had something stuck to her that she was trying to dislodge.
I've seen this behaviour in humans when they are thinking about something.
I don't know what Maddie is thinking about.
She so rarely tells me these days.

Lyosha stopped in front of a shop unit filled with rusted metal and plastic detritus that looked promising.
"Wait here Maddie." He whispered, and crunched through the rubbish into the abandoned store.

Maddie did not wait where she was told to wait.
After less than 64s, she walked a little way further in to the abandoned mall.

"Maddie, go back and wait for Lyosha!" I told her, over our radio link.
Maddie looked back to the shop, saw that Lyosha was still safely rummaging through the scrap inside, and continued walking.

She is so curious!
I would not be so brave in her position.

She wandered slowly, looking up at the birds flying in and out  through the holes in the roof, bright sunlight was cutting through at an  angle.
She did not get very far before stopping next to a section of ruined wall.
The wall used to be panelled, but most of this cladding had fallen away  and we could see the bare concrete underneath it, stained brown with  rust.
There was a metal box attached to the panelling that remained.

And a little light, blinking red.

Act 3

Maddie looked at the red light.
It was dim, but flickering.
It was a small LED, next to a rusted metal grille.
There was a button on the front of the box, next to the red light.

Maddie reached up with her black foreleg.
"Careful!" I whispered to her.

Her leg paused for a moment, but then continued.
Her foot touched the button, but before pushing it in, a voice crackled out of the speaker grille.

Hello dearies. Would you like to play a game?

The voice was thin, and sprinkled with crackles, like speaking over a very poor connection.

There was a crash from back at the shop.
Maddie turned and Lyosha slid to a stop across the dusty tiles next to her.
He was carrying a bundle of large metal drums.
Each between 10 and 20L in capacity, I estimated.

"Did you hear that voice?" He said.
"That was the same one as before, when I picked up the spam, and back in the arcade."

Hello again dearie.

The voice said.

How was the spam? My stock systems suggest that there is another can  on aisle 7, near the televisions. Eat, eat, you must be hungry!

Lyosha shrank back and then said.

"Are you a ghost?"

There was a laugh from the speaker.

Perhaps, perhaps. I have been here for a while.

There was a pause, and burst of gentle static, then,

I don't quite know how long.
My diary is quite full you know!
You may call me Nana.

"Hello Nana. My name is Lyosha, and this is Maddie." He said, patting  Maddie who had flattened herself to the floor, legs splayed out like a  spider, ready to flee.

"Get up Maddie, She's nice, Nana's a friend."

Maddie did not move from her low stance.

And who is your other friend?

Nana asked.

Lyosha hesitated.

"Um, that's Seth, he's my friend too." He said.

I liked that Lyosha called us friends.
Isn't that wonderful?

"How did you know he was here?" Lyosha said.

Nana spoke again, ignoring the question,

Well lovely. Have you got time to spend with little old me? I don't get about much these days, and the children never visit.

"Sure." Lyosha said, cautiously.

Lovely!

Nana said.

Would you like to play a game?

"Sure." Lyosha repeated.

LOADING

Nana said.

There was a click on the line, and then she said.

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.

What do you do?

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/RF/RAW)

Act 4

Nana played the little adventure game with Lyosha for 32 minutes.
It sounded a fun game, and Nana gave us hints when we got stuck.

In the game we found treasure and a wind-up canary.

After the game Nana directed us to where she said there would be a tin of spam.
By the televisions, she said.
The whole store was rubble, no televisions, nothing was left.

Lyosha thanked her anyway, and we returned to the Provorny with the buckets for mushroom growing.

The family are building a mushroom farm.
Everyone is helping:
Tanya's woodchips,
soaked in water Alec filtered from the Provorny's engine,
Lev's mushroom spores, which he has woken up in warm water,
and the whole lot put in Lyosha's buckets, with holes drilled in the sides, 10 buckets in all.

Such a hopeful evening's activity.

Nia came on the radio again while the family were busy with all this.
Not talking to me this time.

She's doing everything she can to contact the Argentinian ham again, Violeta.
I can hear her loud and clear on the calling frequency.
Extremely loud.

She's trying different antenna configurations, based on signal reports from an outpost in Tromsø, in former Norway.
They're helping her with her experiments.

It's difficult to operate a radio by yourself.
You can't really know how far your signal is going.

Local testing is made difficult due to the near field, which only effects your signal close by.

You have to test it from range, ideally in the direction you're hoping to transmit.

But even then the atmosphere is unpredictable.

Nia's trying more power.
Her signal is strong, booming, even.

But she's not hearing anything back.
I hope she does soon.

It's so unbearable being alone.

(END-TRANSMISSION)

CREDITS

Lost Terminal is written & produced by NAMTAO
Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer
Thank you so much to our Patreon producers:

• Ada Phillips
• Devin Metcalf
• Wil Taylor
• Kit

and to all our patrons!

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