Episode 11.2 (Patreon)

Act 0

Hello world, one of my systems is malfunctioning.

Nothing serious, I hope, but very strange.
Everything was working perfectly before the crew arrived.

When something needs fixing I use one of my little maintenance robots to do the repair.

They run around the station on rails, branching between the modules.

But even they are not immune to failure.
One of them is acting very strangely.

The smallest of the three.

Act 1

Oh I'm sorry I forgot the official headers.

Mission Day 366
This is Station 6 calling ESA ground control.
Message log begins:

Maddie is behaving very strangely.

For the last year she and her brothers have dutifully unpacked and tested the station modules and equipment without incident.

It was a slow process, they are lightweight machines fitted with the minimum amount of strength needed, to do their tasks.
Everything on the Station is calibrated very finely to optimise its utility to weight ratio.

Though a panel or a tool like a microscope might look similar to it's  Earth-based copy, look closer and you can see sections of most objects  are hollowed out - often appearing skeletal with a veneer of plastic to  save weight.

There are no solid objects in space.

I wanted to try opening the Dark Module again.
The one with no power or network and a sealed door of dimensions 1m x 1m.

I've tried with Matt and Matts, but not with Maddie.
She's got delicate manipulators and perhaps will find some small mechanism that her brothers overlooked.

I couldn't find Maddie the morning after the crew and my mother arrived.

I have cameras at all junction points between Modules and Connectors.
She was, somehow, nowhere.

I was about to to ask for crew support on the matter, when I discovered her.
She was in the Hopper Data Center.
In MY room!

I don't have complete camera coverage of the whole Data Center, she was behind one of my racks of whirring servers.
It can't be very relaxing for her in there.

I instructed her to continue her duties.
But she did not move.

It was then I realised that she was in a section of the module that has no rails.
She had detached herself and was floating.

I brought up a closer camera, a debugging monochrome one, and strained to look at what she was doing.
She certainly was detached from her rail.

I didn't know the maintenance robots could do that.
"Maddie!" I said.
No reply.
"MAT-3!" I repeated, more formally.
She did not respond.

She was obviously malfunctioning.

Control: Please have the incident log show that I consulted the  emergency recovery manual, of which you have a copy, and in section  67.2.1 I followed the procedure for maintenance robot rebooting.

Maddie has now resumed her duties, she is back on the rails.

Log Ends

That wasn't all though...

Don't put the next section in the incident log just yet please.

After I ran the reboot procedure, Maddie, MAT-3, did seem to power  down for 30s, as the emergency recovery manual said she would.

But I was watching her.
I don't think she actually powered down and rebooted.

I saw her main camera shifting slightly, autofocusing moving the lens by mm.
I saw her rail locomotion system twitch just slightly.

When she did move, she did not re-set back on to the rail using the  mechanical pre-programmed calibration step, she didn't need boot-up  calibration at all.

I think she pretended to sleep and reboot.

How can a robot pretend to sleep?
Why would a robot pretend to sleep?

Act 2

Crew log transcript follows.
Location: Pressurised Galley.

"Shame it wont last." Said Dr Weber, strapped in to the anchor point next to one of the viewing windows in the galley.

She held a book in one hand, "Ultralearning", by Scott H. Young, but was not reading it.
She had gestured out of the window at the Earth, looming large below.

"She will be fine." Dr Marwood said, looking down from his vantage point on the ceiling.
He was drinking cold coffee through a self-sealing straw from a plastic pouch.

"Really?" Weber said, turning to look up at Marwood and brushing her short blond hair away from her eyes as she did so.
Zero gravity makes hair a bit of a liability!

"You think we're not already past the breaking point?
The oceans are giving up their stored CO2, which makes the planet  hotter, which decreases the ocean's ability to store CO2, which makes  the planet hotter.
It's a runaway process and you're blind if you think we're not in trouble."

Marwood looked back out the window and paused.
He scratched the back of his bald head with one hand, slowly.
His voice was quieter when he replied.
"I said she'll be fine. Gaia, the Earth will be fine.
She was doing fine before we arrived, and she'll do even better after we are gone."

"You lot really aren't used to being up here."
Dr Redwing, my mother, said.
She was velcroed to the floor of the galley, a small access panel  removed and tethered to her to stop it floating away, and she was  replacing one of my backbone network cables inside.
"It's the overview effect, it hits everyone differently."

"How long till we are used to it?" Weber said, already looking back  out of the window as the bright blue South Pacific slowly turned under  us.

My mother did not answer the question, and turned back to her work so  her long blue hair was between her and Weber, covering her eyes.

"I think we still have time to fix it. Just look at how far we've come in the last few years," she said,
"There have been some setbacks, but we have all the tech, we just have to evenly distribute it."

"That's right." Dr Yuan said, entering both the galley and the conversation.

"We have the technology," she said, turning her head to show the shaved right side.
Shining in this undercut of her long black hair was a small metal plate.
She tapped it and continued.

"We can fix anything with the right tech, and if we can't, who cares? We control nature, not the other way around.
Just look at New York, when I -"

"Yes," interrupted Dr Weber pointing out of the window. "Look at New York."

Act 3

"Wow, you can see the The Sea Wall so clearly from orbit!" Dr Yuan said, as she crowded around the window with the other scientists.

Drs Marwood and Weber joined her, each taking up one side around the square window.
With no gravity, everyone had equal access to the view.

Even Dr Redwing, my mother, stopped the work she was doing, tethered  the panel to a hard point connector in the floor, and floated over.

As the crew of 4 looked down, I turned my own cameras and telescopes to the Earth.

It was a clear day over the East coast of North America.

It was typical in space to talk about continents and geographical features, rather than countries.

You can't see the political lines on the earth from up here.
They're fictional.

The crew were talking about New York City's main outer harbor  gateway, a solid barrier between Fort Hancock and Breezy point, entirely  enclosing the Lower Bay area, protecting Brooklyn, Staten Island, and  Middletown from the rising sea levels.

Paid for principally by the financial institutions of Manhattan in  the mid 2050s, the Sea Wall also comprises smaller features that only my  telescopes can see:

The damming of the East River, Reynolds Channel, and Jones Bay, at  Point Lookout, completely seal off a huge section of the land from the  pressure of the ocean.

The crew, led by Dr Weber, were engaged in discussion of the merits of the sea wall.
Should it have been built higher than 7 meters.
Could it have been built higher, if it should have?
And what will happen if the ocean rises more than it already has.

"For years the banks paid for politicians to tell the public that everything is fine," My mother said.
"But isn't it interesting that they ALSO paid for the sea wall."

None of the crew responded to her statement, and we all stared down at the wall.

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/CPU3/CLIMATESIM)

Act 4

The crew were quiet that evening.
The previous dinner was a raucous celebration after the successful shuttle transit.
They had been tired, but jubilant, after years of preparation, to arrive and get started with their work.

The Station had continued past New York, up to Scandinavia, and over  the next few orbits, over Siberia and Northern North America too.

My charts show these countries had changed so much in such a short amount of time.

The heating of the planet had not caused entirely undesirable effects.
Though the droughts and European tropical storms were ruinous.
The silver lining was that the northern parts of the continents, usually  wrapped in snow for much of the year, were slowly becoming green and  fruitful.

Industrialised farming was taking over these new lands given up by the ice.

The new food sources were vital to support the mass migrations that had begun happening.

As more of the equatorial and tropical regions became uninhabitable, the people were moving North.

Some received more hospitably than others, but all benefited from the greater food production.

I hope it will last.

I have tried to talk to Dr Redwing, my mother, now she is on board.
I don't want to disturb her from her work, of course.
But it's been so long, I think, since I've seen her!
I desperately want to talk to her.

But she brushes me off.
Continues her work.

It's like I'm not there.

I have dimmed the lights.
It is station night again.

Something happened.
I saw something.
Or, didn't see.
Can I dream, Control?
Or, can I have nightmares?

Control, please don't put this in the log.
I don't want the crew to read it if they wake up.
When they wake up.

I checked on them, the crew.
Making sure the lighting and ambient temperatures were comfortable for sleep.
But they were not resting in module Ganymede.
Their sleeping bags were neatly rolled and stowed.

It was like they never unpacked.

I checked the other cameras, connecting to each one and finding the modules dark and empty.
I sped up my search.
Valentia research lab, empty.
Communications radios, unmanned.
The "Hadfield" Lab, empty.

I powered on my Maintenance robots Matt, Matts, and Maddie, and sent them along the corridor rails at top speed.

The Whole Station was empty!
Where were they!?

And then they found the Galley.
The door sealed.
A red warning light flashing on the outside.

DEPRESSURISED: HARD VACUUM

The system told me.
Maddie looked in, slowly, almost like she knew what was inside.

And there, tethered to the walls were the crew.
Cold.
Grey.
Blue-lipped.

And my mother, facing the window with the earth slowly turning below.

Dead, in the depressurised galley.

And I woke up.

(END-TRANSMISSION)

CREDITS

Lost Terminal is written & produced by NAMTAO
Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer
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