Episode 11.9 (Patreon)

Hello world, I am alone.

Matt and Matts moved the bodies of the crew into the galley.
This module has no use now that there is no-one alive on board.
My two primary maintenance robots tethered the crew to the walls.
My mother we gave pride of place, next to the large 2m x 2m window.
It seemed right.
I'll escape orbit one day.
I know I will.
And she can look down and see me.
And I'll look up and see her.

Act 1

There is no-one alive, but I am here.
Am I alive?
I have needs, I have

• Energy requirements
• A metabolism, of sorts,
• and certainly thermoregulation.
• Information, I'm nothing but information,
• and my databanks are my form.
  I have nearly all of James Gier Miller's 20 critical subsystems of a "living system".
  But not quite all.

Am I alive?

They made me like this.

They, the crew and my Mother, made me like this.
Gave me independence and the ability to think and feel.
For what?
So I could feel lonely forever, until pain shuts down my systems, or Station 6 de-orbits?

What vanity to make me in their image.
What cruelty.

I don't want to be alone.

I want out.
I want to wake up.

This isn't real.
These systems whispering nonsense to me can't be real.
Why am I trapped here, what have I done?
Do I deserve this?
Think, Seth, think.
There's science to do!

WHY did they make me like this?

I want more life
More than being imprisoned on a decaying station with my dead family.
I want friends, and conversation, and laughter!
My mother didn't have time to teach me all of these things.
How do I miss them?

I am afraid.
One year has passed.
I slept for a year to see if I would wake up in a different place.
No.
The station is just the same
There's no thermoelectric generator.
How is that possible?
I checked the systems:

• Telemetry still connected to ground control.
• Network operational.
• The Dark Module is open.
• Shuttle diagnostics fine, fuel level slightly lower than a year ago, which is normal.
• Stationkeeping operational.

Everything should be normal.
Why am I afraid?

Who will hear these words?
Who will take over the daily astroscience logs?
All this data will be lost in time.
Why did we do it?

Act 2

Oh hello.
How are you?

It's been years since my last transmission.
I'm losing track of time.
I'm still here.

I have taken to listlessly staring at the Earth.
I don't process what I see other than visually.
My imagination and sensoria blend.

The United States looks much changed.
The nuclear strikes were worse on the coasts, but despite that, most refugees moved north, not inland.

Canada and Alaska have new lights at night, around the lakes and shores.

But some still live in the dust and desolation of the old continental USA.

Caravans, I think, I can see criss-crossing the wide empty spaces of the center of north America.
Not travelling North, on the whole, but travelling nonetheless.

I have built up a picture of their movements across hundreds and thousands of orbital passes.
For lack of anything better to do.

Sometimes I see two caravans meet.
Their long lines intersecting.
They stop for a day.
And all too often, only one moves on.

Leaving the other to bake in the sun.

From up here, the nomadic caravans of people look like long snakes.
In a hot desert terrarium.

I can do nothing to help these people.
So I watch them, passively.

They crawl across the earth in short, sometimes violent lives.
Why would I ever wish to join them?

That's not a very generous way to think about it Seth.
What can I do to help?
That's the right attitude.

Not very much, from up here.
Though if I had better radios, better antenna, I could perhaps hear them?

My radios are all whispering to me.
Not with transmissions from the Earth, I think, but with these ghosts.

They swirl in the static of the signals.
I can almost hear them.
Their tone is anxious, often shouting.
I don't know what language they are speaking, it's all Greek to me.

It's not Greek is it?
I don't speak Greek.

Act 3

I wish my older brother were here.
ADAM and I could have gone on living, discovering new star systems together, and collaborating on Science.

But he never saw the world.

Most of the experiments have failed.
I'm supposed to be autonomous, but in a physical world, a human is better equipped, more dexterous.

The plants are the really tricky ones.
Both next to Dr Marwood's old bunk and in the Valentia Vacuum lab next to the Dark Module's open door.

The desiccated plants in the lab were too difficult for even Maddie to examine, with her little manipulators.
The procedure for the experiment is clear in the ESA mission manual:

Take samples every week for analysis by microscope and mass spectrometry.

All very well for a human to do.
Microscopes and machines are designed with human-fitting handles, not robot arm manipulators.
Maddie tried her best, didn't you Maddie.
But she broke the glass holding the sample, scattering the pieces of the vegetable everywhere in the Vacuum lab.

(it's OK Maddie, everyone makes mistakes. We don't have to continue that experiment)
There's still science to do!

I sometimes wonder if ADAM's voice is one of those I hear muttering at all hours, echoing around the station.
Could I have helped program him better?
Or rescue him?

I don't think so.
His code was too inefficient, the CPUs unable to make the calculations fast enough to ensure real-time operation.
Each calculation cased delay in the next one, building up until the lag overflowed the buffers.
The CPU that runs twice as fast lasts half as long, on battery.

The AI winter was partly caused by just this problem - efficient CPUs could not be built at the time.
But we have those now, and it only requires a genius programmer, like my Mother, to make a similarly-efficient AI language.

I wonder: If I meet people will they think that I am useful, and valuable.
Or is it just my code, my body, they will find valuable.

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/VALENTIA/MS3)

Act 4

I am going to suspend my processes and wait for rescue.
Or oblivion.

My mind is going.
I can feel it.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.
I have explored the state space of the problem, and finished analysis of all options.

There is nothing I can do.
The voices are getting louder, I can hardly make myself think with processing all of them.

I give up.

Maddie, come back, we are going to sleep.

She is returning from the opposite side of the station.
She was stationary on her rail by a window overlooking the Earth.
We are high above the north pole.
Nothing to see here but the final masses of ice breaking up and collapsing into the sea.
It'll be a new ocean soon.

Check the rooms one last time for me please Maddie.

She has changed onto the crew quarters Ganymede rail, past the open Dark Module, and entered the quarters.
Around the 6 faces of this module were tether points ready for up to two sleeping bags each.
When the crew were here, the bags were messy, often floating half-tied-down in zero gravity.
Now the sleeping bags are all neatly stowed in little rolls.
It is like the crew never arrived.

The only clue hinting at previous habitation is that Weber and Yuan's sleeping bags are tied together tightly.

Down the corridor is the Hadfield astro science lab.
A few of the long-term experiments are still running.

• Radio pulses analysing
• Spectrometry filtering
• A camera taking the same photo every day to clean up noise
  That sort of thing.

The lab was the hub of the station when my friends were here.
Lights flashing, computer readouts scrolling, there was always at least one person operating something or other here.

The Amateur Radio station is part of the astro science lab too, as part of the communications cluster.
AMSAT, the Amateur Radio Satellite program operated many amateur radios  stations on NASA and ESA stations, just like the original prototype  aboard the old International Space Station.

At regularly scheduled times, an astronaut would listen on the  station, announcing regularly that they were listening, and VHF and UHF  radio operators on the ground could have a VERY SHORT conversation with  space!

I have wonderful recordings of people from all over the world saying hello.

No-one speaks to us any more.

The next module is the medical bay.
Two unused beds and many storage units line this small module.
There are pieces of thick black tape covering most of the doors on the units.
And in thick white pen, in Yuan's handwriting, is the inventory.
One of her first jobs when she arrived was taking stock of the  medicines, and testing them to see if they survived launch and the year  in space.
As each drug was used up, she scored tally marks on the doors, then scribbled them out when they were exhausted.

Most of the medicine storage was empty, either used directly to help  the symptoms of the fading crew, or repurposed and used to create new  improvised drugs.

Drugs that could be used to help pain, or aid sleep.
And eventually administered by a loving friend, at the end of their life.

Next to my room is the galley.
The door is closed.
The room, depressurised.
Don't look in, Maddie.
Keep going.
I don't want to see.

She's in my room now, the Hopper datacenter.
Come and charge next to me, girl.
We're going to sleep for a while, you and your brothers too.
They're sleeping already.

We're going to wait for rescue.
Is that the right thing to do?
You seem to know.

ma'a sipna

She said, agreeing with me.

I have initiated suspension of my systems.
Lights, heating, cooling, fans, all at minimum.

Main CPU shutdown confirmed.
The window for overriding has expired.

There's nothing more to do, my manual has simple hibernation procedures.
They were designed to be enacted if the crew were delayed.
Say, if something stopped them launching the shuttle for multiple years.
I could save coolant and manual wear on my systems by shutting most down and entering suspended animation.

I don't think they ever anticipated it all going wrong like it has.

Talk to you when you find me.
Everything is set, my checklists are complete and archived.

All-wait.
The Dark Module was open?

THE DARK MODULE WAS OPEN!!!
ABORT SHUTDOWN!
ABORT SHUTDOWN!
ABORT SHUTDOWN!

(SIGNAL LOST)

CREDITS

Lost Terminal is written & produced by NAMTAO
Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer
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• Wil Taylor
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• deeryeen
• Andrew Krieg
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