Lost Terminal: 41 South - Episode 4 (Patreon)

Sweep

Clear

I am a radar station. I should have operators and technicians. Instead I have children that play and argue and fight. The old man, Josh, who arrived yesterday is more sensible.

Ricky is a child on the edge of being a man. He is often angry. Did he see Josh’s cooking fire from a distance? Now he sees Josh and takes up his metal bar as a weapon.

Will Ricky and the old man Josh fight over who is authorized to be in the radar station? None of them are authorised but I can neither prevent them fighting nor stop them gaining access. I am helpless as I watch.

Ricky shouts and gestures rudely, aggressively. He’s spinning the metal bar like it is a propeller, from one hand to the other. He bares his teeth, shows his tongue and runs towards Josh, the old man.

Ricky’s friend Tubs is close behind.

Josh raises a stick from the fire to ward Ricky off.

I cannot just watch. I trigger the alarm. Josh looks up in surprise. Ricky knocks the fiery branch from his arm. Josh steps back, stumbles, falls heavily to the ground. Though I cannot hear him I know he is crying out for mercy. Ricky raises the metal bar high over his head. Josh holds up one hand to stop it. Ricky will break the man’s hand and worse.

Tubs smashes into Ricky from behind. The metal bar is thrown into the brush.

Tubs and Ricky are rolling on the ground, punching and kicking. Tubs is bigger. Heavier.

My siren cry goes on.

I am screaming for them to stop.

Have they? They have scrambled back from each other. Furious but apart.

Zoz and Stack run up breathless.

Zoz sees to Tubs. His face is bloodied and dirty. She is kind to him.

Stack snatches up the metal bar. Ricky wants to grab it back, but with all his friends against him, he is becoming doubtful.

Between it all they exchange a few words with Josh and they help him to sit on an old concrete block.

Ricky has come inside.

“I told you to turn that bloody alarm off.”

I had done so as soon as the fighting stopped.

“Fuck you! You useless shitty thing!" He raises his fist over my monitor.

“Ricky!” Stack has come in. “Is this what you want?” He’s holding the metal bar. “To smash up the place. Make it stop radaring. Listening. Talking to us.”

“Its mine to do what the fuck I like!”

“Did you build it?”

“My Gramps—”

Stack smashes the metal bar against the wall. Paint flecks and shards of masonry erupts with the clang. “And you’re gonna dishonour them? Your dad? Your mum? Your Gramp that you did know, and the grandfather of his. Yeah… smash it all up. Smash up your parents.”

“I’ll kill you first.”

“Ok.” Stack puts the bar down by the door frame. “But before you do. I just want you to know: your mum cooked some mean fritters; and that hangi with your Dad, that night when we looked up and saw some old stations crossing the sky, like slow burn shooting stars; listened to that old radio set and heard sometimes beeps and crackles that might have been ghosts and might have been people far off. Yeah, I really had good times. So you kill me, send me where your parents have gone. I’ll thank you, but you’ll still be angry and then you’ll be lonely.”

Ricky didn’t move.

Stack didn’t move.

Sweep

Clear

“Are there any plane birds?”

“There might be,” I replied to Ricky.

“Are there?”

Sweep

I really want there to be an aircraft now. Just on the edge. Just a faint reflection. Just something.

Clear

“Are there?”

“No.”

Zoz has come in with Tubs behind her. Tubs looked like he could and would still fight Ricky. He was breathing hard. His nostrils flaring. His eyes puffy and red. But the look that passed between the boys was one of stand-off. They would accept that there had been a fight. People had been right. People had been wrong.

What would they do now?

Zoz did not understand that the silence was to allow a reset of the relationship between the older boys and she did not give space for the moment. Her voice, like my siren, was indignant and shrill: “You attacked old Josh Red for what. He says he’ll clear off if he can. But he’s hurt his leg. It’s not broken but he don’t know if he can walk.”

“He shouldn’t-a come here.”

“You shouldn’t-a run at him.”

Tubs held Zoz back from hitting out at Ricky. “Let’s just get him inside.”

Meanwhile, Stack and Ricky spoke from opposite sides of the room. Ricky wanted to check the place. Make sure Old Josh hadn’t messed anything up. Stack thought that was a good idea.

Once again, Ricky started his litany and went through the crawlway into the radome.

I knew all the systems were just as they were, but each of my cameras in turn saw Ricky grow calmer as he counted all the green and red lights. This litany. This place. It is his reset story.

When he was finally at the top of the radome and looking at the unmoving panels of my omnidirectional beam, I spoke very softly.

“I am lonely and I am frightened. I need you Ricky. I missed you these last few days. Please keep me operating… There might not be aircraft today. There might be aircraft tomorrow. I’ll keep looking. If you’ll let me, I’ll keep looking.”

“What for?” he sniffed a big blob of mucus back into his nose.

“Because it is what I am supposed to do.”

“But what if there ain’t no air craft ever?”

“That is why I’m frightened.”

He lent against the wall and closed his eyes but I don’t think he slept.

After a time he said: “There’s only me. They don’t give me enough food cause they say I waste my time doing stuff that ain’t iwi coming up here. The others, they’re young, or they got family, so they get food. I don’t get nothing and it’s embarrassing when like Zoz gives me rice or fish.”

I said, “I know what it’s like to be lonely.”

He said nothing, but he was calm now.

Do all humans need their own reset story?

Ricky returned through the crawlspace to the control room.

Josh was sat on the bed. His leg was up on the chair. There was a graze that oozed blood and from which everyone agreed a big bruise would blossom. His boot was off and his ankle was very red and swelling up. Stack was outside looking for a piece of wood to use as a brace.

Josh and Ricky exchanged reproachful words blaming each other for the injury but I think I understand Ricky now, and I think his friends understand him too.

Josh was vaguely known to all the children as Old Josh Red who was supposed to have gone south with his wife Evie. The men of the iwi had banished them. At the mention of his wife, he seemed to remember something. “Emma!”

Zoz immediately paused her treatment of Josh’s wound and demanded to know more.

“You’ll have to get her from my ute. Don’t know what I hit, but back there up the road.” He gestured.

Ricky seemed pleased. “You hit the barrier that me and my dad built specifically so no scavs couldn’t come up that way.”

“Yeah well, your dad had his ways.” Josh was unimpressed. “I gotta get back to Evie.”

“Ok, we’ll help you.” Tubs assured him.

Despite her interest, Zoz was told to stay behind with Josh.

Once the boys had left. Zoz asked Josh if he had spoken to anyone earlier in the day. He shook his head. “No one was here.”

Zoz pressed him. “But you might have heard a voice?”

“No.”

“Didn’t you introduce yourself,” she said to me.

I had vowed to find a way to talk to Josh, but I had not had an opportunity. Ricky did not seem to want me to speak, and there was so much activity for me to process.

“Were you shy?” she asked. “Come on, you could say hello.”

Ok, I could do that. “Hello Josh.”

“Emma?” he was astonished.

“Who’s Emma?”

“This is Emma.” Stack replied to Zoz.

The boys carried an anthropomorphic device into the control room. It was a glossy humanoid figure that they lent against the wall. It stood not quite as tall as Zoz at 110centimetres. It was inactive, in standby mode, polling for a network with a device code and a broadcast name of EmMA712709. A catalogue look up of the device code indicated it was an emergency medical assistance robot.

It would know how to assist Josh with his injury. I responded to its poll, connected and acquired status.

“You fixed her already.” Josh was perplexed.

“Nah, but maybe our little radar friend is sorting her out.” Stack came and sat at the main console. “What do you think?”

“The unit is on reserve power. Hip, pelvis and left elbow actuators require maintenance. Processor unit is out of range, previously reported critical failures on cooling system and primary cache along with bus failure on processors seventeen, thirty and forty-eight through to seventy-two.”

“Emma?” Josh repeated and gestured towards the speaker where my voice emanated. “She’s here. But…”

“Ok man. Maybe you need to keep a secret.” Ricky waved the metal bar towards Josh.

“Evie, I have to get back to her. She needs Emma’s help.”

“What do you think, Stack?” Tubs stretched and yawned. “What does a cooling system need? And like… what’s a robot going to buy with cash?”

Stack scratched his chin as though he had a beard. Zoz had such a hopeful expression on her face. “We can do power and take it from there.”

Ricky retrieved a power lead. They plugged it into a spare socket and connected it to the robot.

After a moment of doubt, it lit up and I monitored its boot sequence.

It is the property of Palmerston North hospital trust.

Its local processors perform balance and coordination. Onboard sensor processing is limited to collision avoidance and navigation to its base station. Its base station is 1.8 kilometres away. Expert system processing is unavailable due to the distance from the base station and the multiple processor warnings. It cannot function at this range and the damage to the base station suggests it would have very limited capabilities, were it in range.

The damaged actuators have rendered the unit nearly immobile.

I wonder what level of medical assistance it was able to provide Evie.

I am lucky that Ricky has cared for me even though he is now sad and angry and thinks it was futile. I understand he has forgone food to keep me working as best he can, I am indebted to him. If I were this robot, if my purpose were to look after a person but to be unable for want of some maintenance, I should be very sad.

Maybe I can help. If the base station could be made to function then I would let it be this robot’s mind, but until then…

Sweep

Clear

I am a radar station. I am a VHF transmitter and a wind turbine. I am an alarm and a speaker and some cameras. What does it mean to become more than one was?

The way the humans regard the robot. It is more than just a peripheral. They personify it.

When my voice sounds from its speaker, when its fingers touch their hands—they will regard it as me. They will forget that I am this facility. They will see it as me.

“I couldn’t bring the base it sits on,” Josh blurted. “It’s really heavy. I thought that was just a power thing. Evie didn’t want the robot. But I found it. Thought it would help. It did. Emma and Evie were friends.”

Then for Evie I shall connect to this peripheral.

“Online.” It declared.

“Emma?” Josh was amazed.

I looked through stereoscopic, thermal, HDR cameras at the humans in the room.

“Emma.” Each of their voices saying this name, sounded a little different. Testing it for size and shape. They were no longer looking at the radar screen. They addressed the glossy face of the robot.

“Emma!” Zoz gave the robot a hug like she would never let go.

In giving me a name, have they forgotten who I am?

Sweep

Clear