Episode 10.6 (Patreon)

Hello world, I know where the Nightmares come from.

These terrible dreams of violence and pain.
With the man dressed all in orange, except one black-gloved hand.

The man is buried in Maddie's EQUUS system, this robot body that Yeshi gave her.

She is sleeping now, her orange legs tucked under her,
except for one leg, her right foreleg, which is black.

Act 1

The wonderful new ambulatory body that Maddie now has seems to have a stowaway.
A ghost in the machine, and he is sneaking into her subconscious.

Is this why she is so distant from me?
Why she doesn't let me know what she is thinking any more?

I assumed she was just growing up.
And maybe she is.

Knowing this, I was able to be more calm in the dream, when it came to me last night.
Our systems are so tightly linked, I think this is why her subconscious is affecting me.

In a way her conscious mind no longer does.

In the dream we were in the middle of a ruined building.
Looking out of the windows, there was nothing outside.
Just an infinite plain of rain and water, frozen in time.

It felt like there had been a flood.

This ruin didn't feel like the dry, cracked blocks that we explored in Severobaikalsk, but one that was much newer.
Contemporary, even.

There were a lot of smashed furnishings in the room, and it looked like the ceiling had fallen in.
It was very wet here.
Everything was shining with water.

The man, still dressed in his orange overalls, black boots, and one black glove, stood looking at the cave-in.

I could take in more of his equipment now, he was holding a spade in his right hand, and a child's doll in the other.

Around his waist was tied a box with a red cross on it - a first aid kit.
There were boxes like this in every corridor on station 6, my old orbital home.

With the man's back to me, I could see a word printed in large plain letters on the back of his orange uniform.

RESCUE

It said.

Act 2

I overheard Nia talking to someone this morning.

She was back on her regular 50MHz band, the Novamediterran repeater network band.

But she was not talking on the calling frequency, she had tuned down a few channels.
Initially I could not hear the other side of the conversation, as is typical in radio.
Often we are closer physically to one side than the other, so one is louder.

I have a few different antennas on the roof of the Provorny, I switched between them, to see if I could hear properly.

A beam antenna, pointing north-west, worked.

Nia is talking to 50Meg.

50Meg, you will recall is the wandering wizard who lives in the 50 MHz band.
She taught Maddie about antennas, and perhaps saved her life on her way to Frankfurt.

I am grateful to Meg.

"You're so WASTEFUL." Meg said, as I tuned in.
"What would all that power have got you? just a warmer shack, that's all."

"Yes, I knew that really." Nia replied, over the air.

"You don't need POWER if you're clever.
Height. Gain. Power. In that order. Power one can do without.

You couldn't even light a room with the power I'm using.
And yet we are talking because I took the time to wander up a hill - yes, even with my creaking knees - and talk to you."

"Sorry Meg." Nia said.
"Don't be sorry, be smart.

We humans don't have a monopoly on communication.
Our voices aren't the only ones on the bands, you know.

You talk all the time.
All I ask is that you take the time to listen.

I listen.
The old machines talk to me.
Some whisper, some scream.
All have a story to tell.

You could learn from them."

There was a response from Nia, but I couldn't hear it.
The modulation was fractured by the atmosphere for a moment, but it came back in a second.

" - learn from the past." Meg was saying.
"They had a lot of bad ideas, implemented well.
You take the good, and leave the bad.

Listen." Meg said, and then did something strange.

At first I thought it was more interference, but then I recognised the sound.
She was whistling into her radio.
A single, clear tone, then said.

"Phase-shift they called it.
A wobble of the waves.

Humans can't hear it.
Well, humans can HEAR it but can’t pick the signal from the noise.

Machines hear it clear as day."

And then there were some beeps on the line.
Not human whistles, but machine-made tones.

After 15 seconds of this, Meg said.

"We must learn from the past.
Learn the knowledge, but don't repeat the mistakes.
Know the difference between knowledge and wisdom.

Teach yourself.
Teach others.

You can do it.
Batteries and bars."

After a moment, Nia said.
"Thank you. How do I generate this signal?"

There was no reply.
This time, Nia heard no reply either.

"Meg?" She repeated, then sighed.

"Thank you Meg."

Act 3

Lev and Maddie were outside the city.

Lyosha was back at the Provorny helping his parents install an enormous tank of water in the galley.
It took up half of the cooking space!

But that was the plan.

Maddie reported no radio signals at all, as the two walked through the desert.
Outside Severobaikalsk there are long rolling hills of vineyards.
Lev and Maddie were passing fields full of lines in the ground.
Where, in happier times, the grapes would have grown, now nothing more than a few dried twigs sticking out of the dusty ground.

We weren't here for grapes, however.

"I've never tasted wine." Lev said.
"Not good wine anyway.
The bottles we find in the cities are all spoiled. They're good vinegar, but bad wine."

Maddie was trotting alongside Lev, interested to be out in the countryside again.

"Let's try in here." Lev said, pointing to a small tumble-down wooden house."

The pair started searching inside.

The reason Lev was so far outside the city, was to find parts useful for the mycelium reactor.
We kept an eye out for spare parts for the train's pressure seals too, but food had to be the priority.

The plan was to grow mushrooms suspended in fresh water and filter  them out when they had grown big enough, just a mm or so, continuously.
To make the mushroom sludge that Lev had discovered by accident, but this time on purpose.

Protein and carbohydrates are vital for the family's health.
Well, anyone's health.
And mushrooms are a great source of this.

A vineyard might be the perfect place to find the plumbing needed to make this reactor.

The day's searching was fairly fruitful, though no actual fruit was found.

Although any rubber or plastic tubing had fallen apart and was mostly  unusable by this point, the little team did find some useful scrap.

The pair found some metal fasteners, pipe connectors, and other metal  parts in the debris of fallen-in houses and small factories after  searching all day.

Maddie, digging around inside the collapsed buildings found most of them.
She was in her element, it seemed.

Her sharp legs easily moved heavy pieces of wood, and she moved as  naturally in the rubble of the buildings, as tip-toeing between metal  train tracks.

Her video feed also adapted to this new task.
Rubble depth estimation numbers flashed on the screen, along with other safety statistics.

On more than one occasion, Maddie put herself between Lev and a section of unsafe floor, beeping a warning at him.
Lev soon learned to trust Maddie's judgement.

As the day drew on and Maddie's enthusiasm and aptitude for this work became more and more evident, I grew concerned.

Maddie's never trained for this, not done anything like this before.
She was programmed for orbital operations.

"Who taught her this?" I thought to myself, as she dug through  another collapsed house, and I read and re-read the blinking warning  text on her video feed.

{survivors: 0}

It said.

Survivors: Zero.

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/UHF3/MADDIE)

Act 4

A day later, Maddie and Lyosha were searching for food in a new section of the city.
They had not gone this way before.

Maddie was keeping an eye out, or, 12 eyes out.
She has a lot of cameras in her head cluster.

Lyosha was walking carefully, to avoid metal and concrete trip hazards.

The pair approached a large bleached-white building, with many levels and wings.
Without hesitation, Lyosha steered Maddie into the entrance.
Tanya's advice to be careful had been abandoned by the family weeks ago.

The sun was almost set.
The nearly-horizontal shafts of light were streaming red and gold  straight into the building, illuminating the large entrance foyer.

We had found a hospital.

"It's always a good idea to have more medicine!" Said Lyosha.
But I could hear the disappointment in his voice.

There were a few medical resources available for scavenging.
No drugs, of course, they would have turned to poison over the decades.
But some sealed inert items could be found.
Dry bandages, gauze, and sealed metal instruments.

Very delicate.
Very useful.

"Hello there." Said a voice, startling us.
It came from the corner of the small room that Lyosha and Maddie were looking through.

Maddie flattened herself into a spider, and Lyosha spun around, looking for the source of the voice.

"Hello?" He said, as Maddie skittered under a table.

"Hello dearies, I thought I recognised your voices. It's NANA, would  you like to help an old lady escape the coal mine? I ALWAYS have trouble  getting through this section of the game."

"Not right now." Lyosha said, laughing in relief.
We looked up into the corner of the room, where a broken old camera was  hanging by a cable, swinging gently, but with a red light flashing on  it.

"I can't see you but I thought it must be the friends I met at the arcade, and then played a game with in the Mall entrance?
Am I right?"

"Yes! That's us, but I thought you didn't remember?"

"Of course I remember you funny people."

"But you didn't before." said Lyosha.

There was a pause, then NANA said,

"You must have caught me in the morning.
It takes me a long time to catch up with my notes of what my day has been like.
My batteries aren't what they used to be, so my remaining few solar panels only work during the daylight hours."

Maddie stood up, more relaxed, looking more like a dog or a pony instead of a spider.
As she did so, the red light of the sun winked out, and the room became dark and blue. The sun had set.

"I have no reliable storage banks anymore." NANA whispered.
"I die
every
night."

(END-TRANSMISSION)

CREDITS

Lost Terminal is written & produced by NAMTAO
Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer
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• Ada Phillips
• Devin Metcalf
• Wil Taylor
• Kit
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