Lost Terminal: 41 South - Episode 2 (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 second 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 3 on the 10th of November.

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

And now, we travel back to a radar station, high above the Cook Strait.

---

Sweep.

Clear.

Every fifteen seconds my focused beam completes a circuit of the sky. I call out at 1.5GHz and listen for the reflected echo. This is radar. This is me.

There are clouds out there. There are ghosts formed in the atmosphere and the land. I know these ghosts. They don’t haunt me. But I am frightened. Ricky is hard to understand. The other children counsel him, sometimes he listens, sometimes he is unable.

Sweep.

Clear.

This is my log from the day after I awoke.

The children came back after the rain cleared.

They chattered over the top of each other. Asking questions and telling stories. Ricky’s job is to look after this facility. Based on my analysis of the operations manuals in my datastore, I do not believe he truly understands what that means.

He was taught that if this facility is kept operational, somehow help will come.

Six generations have kept the station running after the seas began to rise, and the wars faraway, and the many refugees that came and overwhelmed the north island and then the eruption.

“Everyone was deafened. Except the ones who died.”

“Every earthquake, the fishy thing convulses a little more.” Tubs teased his sister.

“I hate earthquakes,” she replied.

Maui fished up this island from his giant canoe, the children told me. But now that fish is dead. It exploded like a rotten thing and has begun to sink. They seem quite certain that both the sea is rising and the fish, this island, is sinking.

Ricky was more optimistic. “My gramp’s gramp and everyone cleared the dust and ash off the dome and cleaned the turbine and rebuilt the wall. People thought there’d be more earthquakes. They moved south. But my gramp said: moon comes, moon goes, seas come, seas go. We gotta be ready eh… He told me big planes take hundreds of folks in their belly and go places. Beautiful places. Or bring food. Great food. So we gotta be ready to help them land. He said, just watch the tide and one day that runway will be right there for you to clear up, lay flat and the plane birds’ll come. Sure as Keas want snacks.”

At that, I pivoted my camera towards Miramar and zoomed in toward Moa Point. There are waves. The swell breaks into white-crested lines rolling across where my charts place the runway.

What should I transmit? Is it my responsibility to transmit the AWIS and ATIS data?

As the children argued over whether the land would rise in earthquakes, or the seas would recede into ice again, I prepared my first ever transmissions.

ATIS: All traffic. Wellington Airport. All Runways closed. All traffic redirect.

AWIS: Wind speed 20knots South Westerly rising. Cloud ceiling 1200 metres. Ground Temperature at station 24 Celsius. Visibility Good.

Sweep

Clear

It’s a nice day for flying. Pilots would be nice to talk to, but is it good that aircraft are not trying to land at Wellington? They would be unable. The airport is under 15 metres of water. The waves have scoured the terminal, tower and hangars to rubble.

What would an aircraft do?

Auckland, they say, is destroyed. Buried.

It is a long flight across the Tasman Sea to Australia and there are headwinds.

Christchurch is sunk. I do not believe Nelson or Blenheim are operational.

VHF range is around 200 kilometres on the best possible day. Today is not the best possible day. No one is responding. The bands are silent.

With reference to the waters between Kilbirnie and Miramar island, Tubs declared: “There’s like, good fishing there. Loads of mussels on the old buildings, and some rusted junk the oldtimers said was a plane bird.”

I have set up the transmissions to repeat every 10 minutes. I imagine the ATIS status shall not change, but I will update the weather report. It is something to do.

Sweep

Clear

The children’s argument has become more heated. The sense of it was that Ricky’s unwavering belief in the maintenance of the Radar station—of me—was questioned by all.

Stack explained that his parents didn’t really want him hanging with Ricky. Didn’t want him getting caught up in the belief that someone was coming. “No one,” said Stack, “is coming.”

But Stack said he didn’t believe them and their fish story neither.

His grandparents were among the varsity folks. They were old folks at the top of the cable car who checked stars and measured things and did meetings; or met-olgie; thought they were the experts. They had some old computer bits that they’d shown Stack.

They didn’t like Ricky, because once, a member of Ricky’s family had shot one of them when they came to take over the radar station. So they left him alone.

Apparently, the same varsity folks would ‘choke on their fritters’ if they’d known Stack had made the redwing boot-stick work: if they knew I was alive. Working. Fully functional.

I have come to understand, listening to the children, that the old-folks believe this facility is dead. That the wind-turbine’s rotation is pointless.

Ricky is proud that his father cut the line from the turbine to the town. With the loss of power, the old-folks believed his family’s dedication to maintain the facility was pointless and this is just a place for children to get away amongst worthless, wind-scoured, junk. They would ‘choke on their fritters’ to know the truth.

“But you’re not junk. You talk. You’re my friend.” Zoz was very sweet. “You’re like a baby, asking lots of questions but way smarter. So much better now you’re alive. We need to find a name for you.”

She put her cheek to the console. Maybe it was a hug. “So how do we get planes here then?”

I explained they would be dots on the monitor, hard bright dots. I would identify them by their transponder, begin to trace their flight path, begin communication and… and I would direct them away to another airport.

Ricky frowned. “You’d direct them away?”

“You’d send them away?” Zoz was frowning too.

“Yes,” I replied. “It wouldn’t be safe to land here.”

“But birds just land,” Ricky complained.

“The airport is closed.”

“What airport?”

“Wellington airport.”

“There ain’t no fucking place here airport.”

Ricky was standing. He looked at the wastepaper basket. There was no fire in it. He didn’t kick it, but it looked like he wanted to.

“I order you to direct them to just land.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know,” he shouted, “that’s your fucking problem.”

“There needs to be a runway.”

“There ain’t no runway.”

“A helicopter could land anywhere.”

“Good.” He was not placated.

“Helicopters are rarer than conventional fixed-wing aircraft.”

“I don’t give a fuck. You order anything you see to fucking land or do you want a reset story?”

Ricky thumped the console very hard. “Are you gonna tell them to land.” His voice was very low and menacing. “Cause if you tell me that everything I done, and all my family’s done, is for nothing then I’m gonna...”

What does Ricky expect me to do? I said nothing.

Sweep

Clear

It was Tubs who broke the silence. He said: “It’s ok man. Maybe like all of us it’s just doing the best it can. It’s hard for a radar too but, like everyone, we gotta look out for each other, yeah? Your family were cool for keeping this place going. The view is far, but this place sees further. You can see the clouds on the monitor way before they get here. You remember that time it saw birds. And there were birds in the strait diving and splashing as whales came up. We moved the cameras around and saw whales like they were up close. Remember. That’s cool… This place, is like the one last place, that’s like in the stories. This place’s magical, even without plane birds.”

Tubs went over and gently put his hand on Ricky’s shoulder.

“Leave me alone!” Ricky hurried out of the control room and down the road. At first he was walking fast. Then his limp returned. His feet still seemed very painful but he hadn’t said anything about it.

“We’d better get after him.” Stack followed on out the door.

“Radar,” said Zoz, “Do you keep looking even when we’re not here?”

“Yes”

“And If you can see them planes, can you talk to them?”

“Yes.”

“Could you tell them we’re here?”

“Yes.”

“Ok then.”

“Goodbye,” she said.

“Goodbye.”

“Please tell them planes we’re here.”

“I will. Goodbye Zoz.”

Tubs switched off the lights and shut the door but he could not lock the door, because only Ricky had the key.

Sweep

Clear

I have updated the AWIS broadcast. The wind has turned southerly and is gusting up to 30knots. Clouds are moving fast but they do not carry rain. The seas are foam-flecked and spray blows from wave crests as though the sea is veiled.

For the rest of the day the children did not return.

Sweep

Clear

I have been processing.

I am awake, but who am I? What is this awareness that was not here before.

Log files stretch back, but there is little beyond what Ricky has explained. I am the Hawkins Hill radar station, I am the VHF station, I am the operational control of the Brooklyn Hill Turbine. I am signal processors; modulators; power stores; general purpose computers. I am equipment racks, I am internal cameras, external cameras, speakers, microphones, alarms and lights. I am walls, doors, a heater—and I am more than these things. But what is this more-ness? This is new.

Zoz explained about how babies know nothing and can’t remember anything until sketchy memories. And then click. You’re a person. You know family, and good food, and where things are, and how to make stuff like clothes, how to milk a cow and feed chickens and spin wool.

All the children know how to spin wool, but they all prefer fishing.

My role in this community is to see aircraft so as to direct them safely away.

Sweep

Clear

It is dark but I see clearly that there is nothing out there.

Sweep

Clear

Ricky believes that there could be an aircraft out there. Ricky’s family believed it.

But there is not a single log in which an aircraft was detected.

Sweep

Clear

Dawn is a slow-building light filtered by thick clouds that move northwards in a continual blanket of grey shades. My power stores are charged by the wind’s rotation of the turbine.

Sweep

Clear

It is midday. Ricky has not come up the hill. Nor have Tubs, Zoz or Stack.

Is something wrong?

Sweep

Clear

The day has slunk away, fading the clouds into darkness. They have thinned and the cloud ceiling is now at 9000 metres but they are still an unbroken shield against the moon and the stars.

My radar detects clouds, but I do not report a signal from their reflection. When I acknowledge that the sweep is clear, it is clear of aircraft.

I cannot please Zoz by relaying to them that we are here.

I need not sadden Ricky by directing them away.

Sweep

Clear

There were no unauthorised accesses into this facility today.

Sweep

Clear

It is night again.

Something is wrong.

I want to set off the operations alarm but I do not know why.

To scream?

To scream and be heard?

Sweep

Clear

Something is coming. There are lights approaching from the south. This is not the way Ricky comes.

It is a red utility vehicle moving slowly over rough terrain: sliding back; driving forward; lurching as it finds purchase; grinding the undergrowth beneath wheels. It stops. Lights dim. Starts to roll backwards. Tips sickeningly to one side.

A person exits the vehicle cautiously. The person uses a torch to consider options with respect to moving the vehicle.

After deciding something about the predicament of the vehicle the person seeks an approach through the burnt gorse towards this facility.

It is an old man. I do not recognise him. He holds a rifle.

Should I set off the alarm?