Lost Terminal: 41 South - Episode 5 (Patreon)

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Despite this new robot peripheral, my primary concern is to scan the skies with my radar beam and redirect aircraft.

The Emergency Medical Assistance robot lies on a table. I can stare up at the ceiling through its excellent vision system, or I can look down on its form as though out of body, through my internal cameras with their smudgy low-resolution sensors. So soon after I had been connected, I became somewhat disassembled. Stack seems to know how to take things apart. The legs are detached and exposed. The upper torso spinal bus is unplugged from the waist assembly, whilst the left arm is on an entirely separate table.

Josh has made more soup. A rat was the primary ingredient. The children were very pleased. The secret he explained was to never wash the kettle, that way every great flavour is still in there. Building one on the other.

I have two files on human health: one is titled first aid at work; the other is the Ship Captain’s Medical Guide.

The problem with the actuators is that salt-water ingress has caused a build up of fine crystals which have abraded gears and bearings.

Josh explained that their batch down by Red Rocks was in the path of southerly storms. “Good fishing. Bad for robots,” he said as Stack carefully separated all the pieces of the joints into separate places assessing them as ‘ok’ or ‘not ok’.

“The old timers at the varsity teach you this stuff?” Ricky asked.

“Yeah, old Jack, and also Keith when he was alive,” Stack replied, then queried, “What about your pa? Teach you this stuff?”

“Yeah, some.”

I have come to see that Ricky is more determined than capable. He knows litanies by rote, but he does not know what they really mean. Stack is more knowledgeable. The old timers sent him to scavenge and they have shown him how to investigate and repair.

All agreed that the old timers would choke on their fritters if they knew that up on the hill there was an AI and a robot. This cheered Ricky. “We’ll show them,” he said.

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Today the temperature is 27 Celsius. Windspeed is 15 knots. There are scattered clouds.

The boys have agreed that today they will scavenge in the old hospital. They believe it is no longer home to the Newtown gang because they left for the south last summer and Tubs is fairly sure no one would have bothered to move in.

The Wellington iwi is small. Less than a thousand people. They live in houses on the hills and their families are the names of the hills. Ricky is the last of the Brooklyns. Stack, Zoz and Tubs are Karoris. They fight sometimes with the other Kelburn kids.

The Rangatira and the oldtimers at the varsity reckon Wellington is the capital and they make rules but most people just trade for food, clothes, shoes and help. Down south there is a proper capital in Queenstown, but Cook Strait is very dangerous for small boats, and so very few make the journey, and if they do, they don’t come back.

The children argued about whether it would be better down south.

Josh seemed very pleased that the Newtown gang had ‘buggered off down south’ as he put it. The children agreed. The conclusion was that if the Newtowns were in the south island it would be better to stay in the north.

“Maybe you could use this.” He withdrew the rifle from under the mattress.

“Oh man!” Stack seemed awe-struck. “You got bullets?”

“No.” replied Josh.

“Well it’s fucking useless eh!” Ricky threw the gun back at Josh. “If we find bullets, then that gun’s mine yeah! Until then its just a dumb stick for a dumb oldtimer.”

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Tubs asked: “Are we going to bush-bash down, cross over the Adelaide isthmus or do you wanna boat it up the basin?”

“Have we got a boat?” Ricky picked up his metal bar. “Tool up!”

This was Ricky in command and the others followed. Ricky’s anger was fearsome.

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“Does it hurt?” Josh asked me.

“No. It does not hurt to be disassembled.”

Nothing like the pain of an empty sky, and I tried to explain that I had been lonely and that was worse.

Josh told me he'd heard my alarm in the stillness of the night and wondered what it was. He’d thought if there’s a peep peep peep of an electric alarm, there must be electricity.

His explanation lifted my spirits. Someone had come at the sound of my alarm.

Oh yes, he’d known Ricky’s grandfather, and his father too. He thought it was just as sensible an idea to keep the radar station turning as it was to still do science at the observatory; to still try and keep old computers running, measure temperatures and all sorts of monitoring to see if life might one day return to the middle latitudes. But no one ever thought any aircraft would return.

Josh fell silent as Zoz spoke of a book with pictures of planes and things. Some were big and had wheels. Some were bigger and had rows of tiny windows. There were pointy sharp ones which looked as fast as diving seagulls, and there were fat, round aircraft that had turbines on their heads.

“Helicopters,” I added.

She said, “They also had a plane bird that was also a boat. It lands on water. There’s lots of water.”

What does one say to a child who believes? That seaplanes were never allowed at Wellington because the sea was too choppy. My external camera could see the waves streaming silver threads of spray; rollers breaking over the sunken buildings and crashing against the cliff-sides.

I reviewed landing operations for seaplanes and floatplanes.

I told her: “Under optimal conditions, a suitably equipped seaplane could find sheltered water on which to land.”

“There you go,” she was ecstatic. “I told you Emma. Just keep scanning and one day… One day they’ll be a plane and we’ll get holidays and go see the moon and get food and bubbly drinks on a tray.”

What does one say to a child who believes?

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“Why did you live so far out of the iwi?” Zoz asked Josh.

“Didn’t much like ‘em.”

I thought he looked sad for a moment before a gruff pensiveness returned.

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The boys returned jubilant as the day drew in. They had experienced a proper adventure and had returned with loot.

Apparently some of the younger Mount Vickers had given chase, but they lost them round the old jail. Some older guys had told them to clear off and do some work. Apparently, fathers would be told, but the boys knew that they wouldn’t go from Vickers to Karori to complain about a bit of trespassing.

They found a guy named Tony who had taken up living in the old hospital after the newtowners had cleared off. He was pretty helpful. He’d been scavenging a lot and was fairly pleased to show off the stuff he’d found. So they’d asked him about old robots and he’d winked all crafty like he knew something and led them to a collection the newtown gang had stored. He’d said they were mermaids but failed to properly explain what that meant.

Inside a dim, tatty room the boys found three dismantled sims. They were stupidly mangled, like someone had torn them apart.

“It was dumb,” Ricky said. “There were pieces of rubbery skin hanging on parts of them like they were supposed to be real but looked like they’d been skinned alive.”

“We got the parts.” Stack opened the heavy sacks and out spilled bits of leg, arm and many more pieces. “Tony was alright.”

“Till he went weird.” Ricky added.

Tubs agreed: “He gave us some food and said like he wanted us to stay but yeah, then he was all weird…”

“But it was getting on. So we told him we were fucking off. And we did.”

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Tubs, Zoz and Stack promised to return in the morning. I told them I expected the breeze to have picked up marginally, but it would still be a visual flight rules day.

I think Ricky stayed because something about the prospect of Emma standing, walking and being active was too exciting.

He and Josh talked a little about the folks of Wellington and I have come to the conclusion that mostly they’d stayed in the north because they were disenchanted with the rules and social community of down-south. Ricky seemed to believe that everyone there had to have at least 50 children. But it didn’t matter because he was staying with the radar station.

Ricky sat in the chair till he was too tired to stay awake. Josh lay in the bed. He said his leg pained him.

I swept the sky or I lay on the table or I watched the cats and rats in their eternal battle.

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Stack was early. He’d snuck out before his parents could punish him. Tubs and Zoz did not speak of any such problems. From what little I understood, their parents believe they have gone fishing again.

Stack worked hard. Zoz asked him endless questions but she found it hard to understand his answers. Josh contributed at times augmenting Stack’s knowledge as he progressed. One of the more interesting revelations was that Josh had also learnt much at the Victoria University on the Kelburn hill. He had looked through the old telescopes and walked the old cable car track to the water’s edge amidst the steel skeletons of the city. He too had scavenged in his time. On good days, diving for things that might be salvaged from the waves.

He’d been told, everything is useful, everything is made to standard measures, standard voltages, tolerant circuits and mature engineering.

“I think Tony said the mermaid bots were mature engineering,” said Ricky.

The comment hung unwelcome in the air because Zoz asked what that meant but Tubs wouldn’t tell her.

Her sulk lasted for barely a sweep of my radar. She was too excited about something she could barely contain as Stack reassembled the last of my housings.

I sat up on the table. Diagnostics were within acceptable tolerances.

Stack was congratulated by all.

“Can you walk?” Ricky asked me.

“Not yet.” Zoz interrupted. She drew from her bag a blue dress. “You need clothes.”

I do not: but I let her button me into the dress. I suppose it may provide marginal protection against dirt. Then she placed a wig on my head and smoothed it as though I was a doll.

“Thank you, Zoz.” I said.

As I walked about, being tested to balance on one leg, then the other; to catch a rock; to jump; to run a little outside; I remapped my world from all the different angles that the robot’s eyes could obtain. All the angles in vivid colours and with sharp audio. Keas squawked as they ripped into an unlucky cat. The wind rustled the gorse. Everything was brighter. Higher resolution.

I tested the robot’s speaker. “Hello World.”

The children began planning how they might choke the old-folks on fritters, but I sat next to Josh on the bed and reminded him. “Josh, it has been at least 82 hours that Evie has been left alone. Surely, you should take me down to check she has what she needs. She might be worried and lonely.”

“She’s dead,” he said.

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Resolving radio contact – 118.800MHz – Receiving?