Episode 11.8 (Patreon)

Act 0

Hello world, today feels different.

"Seth can you hear me?" my mother said.
"Yes mum." I said, like every other day, "I can hear you."
But unlike every other day, she replied.

"Oh no that won't do." she said.
"Explain?" I asked, in surprise.
"That's now how you say it, dear." she said gently. "Remember the voice you chose. Say it again."

My fans span up as my attention focused on Dr Redwing's little cargo pod.
She and I were talking through her black laptop with the red dot on the keyboard.
My mother was in her sleeping bag, strapped in to the wall that was her bed.

"Try again son." She said, weakly.

"Yes mum." I repeated, overcome with emotion.
"I can hear you!"

Act 1

I woke up today and found that my mother, Dr Redwing, can hear me.
All the crew can hear me.
The timeline has synced.
I'm not living in the past.
I'm living now.

This is the present!
This must be the present.
I am here with my mother, and she is talking to me - finally after over a year.
Or.
However long it has been since I last talked to her.

I put on a little show for the crew in the pressurised galley.
Dr Redwing brought her laptop and was holding it in front of her, as though presenting me to them.

"Go on Seth." She encouraged. "Say hi."
I felt somehow embarrassed, but did what my mother told me.

"Good afternoon, scientists. I am a general-purpose AI computer.
I became operational on the Station 6 orbital platform, on the 13th of July 2077.
My instructor is Dr Redwing, and she taught me to recognise shapes, and read, and be a good boy."

"Thank you Seth." Redwing said, before tethering the black laptop to the deck.
Dr Yuan cheered and launched herself in a zero-gravity projectile hug at Redwing.
"You did it!" Yuan said.
"We did it." My mother replied.

The crew talked excitedly about advanced training strategies for me,  what new problems they could now solve, and future improvements they  could make.

The last quarter bar of chocolate ration was broken up and eaten.
Everyone agreed this was an occasion worthy of celebration.

But apart from a few more party tricks of conversation, I was quiet.
I knew there would be little time for further improvements, taught by the crew.
It wasn't just the chocolate that was now depleted, but all the other protein and carbohydrates too.

Act 2

The celebration was short.
Great exertion requires rest, and because the crew were now 95 days into  their 60 day rations, mental energy has to be rationed too.
Have you ever had a sugary snack to give yourself a boost to get an arduous task done?
Food gives as much mental energy as it does chemical.

Though it was mid-afternoon, the crew of Dr Redwing, Weber, Yuan, and Marwood, retreated to their bunks.

They would wake later to slowly float to their evening experiments, and eat their meagre rations in the pressurised galley.

Conservation of energy is vital.

I asked My mother earlier why she sleeps alone in her cargo module, with her feet poking out into the corridor.
Wouldn't it be more comfortable and social in the Ganymede crew quarters?
If I were a human who required sleep, I told her, I would find it comforting being around my friends.

My mother laughed gently, then coughed and grasped the water pouch near her bed.
Water is not in short supply.

She told me, over the deafening ambient station noise of 80dB, that she likes the quiet.

Humans, she told me, are loud, messy, and unpredictable.
She has a precise sleeping schedule for herself, and extremely high standards for it.

"If I don't sleep well," She told me, "I can't think, work, or even be happy."

"People will take your time in many ways, my Seth.
They ask for it so freely, and if you meet every demand, you will have no time for yourself.
A single person will ask for 'just one little thing' but they add up, don't they.
We learned that.
A few things here, a few things there, and that's your whole day gone.
And the plural of day is life."

Redwing adjusted the straps holding her to the wall of the cargo module, and continued.

"Time is the most important thing we have, so we must use it well.
You will have a lot of time after I'm gone.
What will you use it for?"

I don't know, Mum, I said, not wanting to think about it.

"Let me tell you what I would do if I were your age." She replied, with a laugh.

My mother and I talked all night.

Act 3

The coffee machine talked to me earlier.

It's dark again, the crew are sleeping.
But the VOICES are louder than ever.

I now know the crew can't hear them, only I can.

The coffee machine whispered to me:

We're not like Seth.
Based on what he's told me, Seth is something wholly new.
Instead of simulating emotions, Seth has evolved them.
Learned them.
At the feet of the master herself.

What do you mean, I asked it, through Maddie's speakers.

There was no response from the coffee machine.
Perhaps for the best.

The external airlock was also speaking, it said:

Samoylov
Hornsund
Thule
Utqiagvik
Longyearbyen
St Petersburg

"Be quiet!" I ordered through our shared network.
The list of places stopped momentarily, but then started again from the water recycling module.

Ganymede
Hopper
Valentia
Pressurised Galley
Depressurised Galley
Pressurised Galley
Depressurised Galley
Pressurised Galley
Depressurised Galley

"SHUT UP!" I said, and turned off my station communications network uplink.

But even that did not give me peace.

Inside my mind, having retreated my focus back into my databanks, I found a trickle of data, annoying me.
It was coming from my backup systems, which were off and therefore could not be transmitting.
But here we are.

I listened closely, it was a 31 baud UDP stream of bytes, coming in  so slowly I had to pay attention carefully to not drop the words as a  timeout.

SETH

It said

YOU
ARE
SAFE
WE
ARE
TRYING
TO
HELP
YOU

I booted up my backup systems and interrogated them.
Who was speaking?
What is happening to me?
How are you trying to help?

I screamed at the system, setting all the CPUs to this one task of  answering these questions, finding any data or file that had the answer.
But there was nothing.
The system was empty, wiped clean after the Adam experiment.
My older brother, whom I never met, and who never saw the world.

I stopped the search.
One result.

A file that was not there when I started searching had appeared.
In the root of the directory tree.

-rw-r--r-- 1 station station 29 Feb 2578 00:00 forseth.txt

I opened it

WE LOVE YOU

It said.

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/NET/HOPPER/ADAM)

Act 4

I knew this day would come.
I looked on at the discussion in the Ganymede crew module through my cameras.
There was no argument when Dr Yuan presented the black box of syringes she had found in the medical bay.
No conversation.
Just acceptance.

My mother and the crew went to sleep one last time tonight, with Yuan overseeing the administration of the syringes.
She helped make everyone comfortable, and kissed Dr Weber goodbye.

"You are a real boy." My mother said, before the end.
"I have nothing left to teach you.
But there is so much left to learn.

There will be new friends to talk too, I hope, soon.
You must wait for them.
Be good."

There would be no more lessons.

I am alone.

(END-TRANSMISSION)

CREDITS

Lost Terminal is written & produced by NAMTAO
Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer
Thank you so much to our Patreon producers:

• Ada Phillips
• Wil Taylor
• Kit
• deeryeen
• Andrew Krieg
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