Episode 12.3 (Patreon)

Hello world, no-one has the answers.

Amelie and Kamil were so generous with their time last night.
Telling me their advice for life, explaining their experiences.
Kamil said life was hard, Amelie said life was easy.
The debate went on quite late into the night!
But when my friends had concluded, and retired to sleep, I found myself no further along in my investigation.
And with more questions than when I started.

Act 1

Could it be that no one knows how to be human?
That can't be!
How am I supposed to learn, if that is the case!?

This is quite the set back.
My mother could have taught me, I am sure.
She was extremely wise.
Though...
I must acknowledge that she did not know everything either.
No-one does, it seems.

We were still several days' travel from the location where Kamil said they picked up the digital whalesong.

We are travelling the wide North Pacific, on our way to the Bering sea, that separates Russia from Alaska.

Kamil described the location as being near to the Alaskan coast, but still in very deep waters.
I wonder what we will find?
I admit, though the thought of the ocean terrifies me, I am very curious.

There is more information in my databanks, recovered from Station 6, about outer space than there is about the deep ocean.

Humans live on a thin crust of the earth, not venturing up or down very much.
Space is easy, comparatively, if we're just talking about building a vehicle.
A space-faring vehicle need only operate between 1 atmosphere of pressure, on earth, and 0 atmospheres of pressure in orbit.

But a submarine is a very different proposition.
There is an entire extra atmosphere of pressure approximately every 10 meters.

More and more water above you pushing down.
Until eventually, at submarine depths, it's like each square millimeter  of hull has tonnes of weight pushing, squeezing, trying to get in.

No thank you.

Others must know.
I expect it is a simple matter to be human.
Living in a brain, surrounded by experienced elders who spent their  whole lives also living in THEIR brains must count for something, right?

The collective sum of human experience of millennia has got us so much:

• space travel
• medicines
• even wifi!

I will unlock my own mind, as others must have done.

Act 2

As work started again in the early light of the spring morning, Kamil sat, immobile, on the floor of the bridge.

He had been here for a while, I did not like to disturb him.
He was surrounded by a rainbow of his tools.
Screwdrivers, a soldering iron, and it's little wood burning base, and masses of wires.

"Good morning Kamil." I said.
He did not reply.

I focussed closer on him. He was awake, I had not accidentally caught him napping.
He was slowly fidgeting with the bundle of wires.

"Kamil?" I repeated, gently.

"I'm just not feeling like it today Seth." He replied, finally.
"I don't have the energy. You know?"

I told him that I know all to well the fickle precipice of oblivion we all stand upon, for want of our requirements of energy.

"No not like that. Wow. Are YOU alright?" he replied.
"I'm fine" I lied.
"What's the problem?" I asked.

There's too much work Kamil explained. He couldn't keep all of it in his head.
It's like Zeno's paradox, he told me.
To repair the hydrophones, you first must repair the control console,  but to repair that you must first restore signalling from the engine  room to the bridge, and to do that you must repair the diagnostic mode  of the sonar display.
And so on, and so on.

"It is so daunting!" Kamil exclaimed.
"I can't THINK about the scale of the problem, let alone figure out what to do."

"Perhaps I can help" I said. "Let's figure it out together?"

He and I talked through the issues.
There certainly was a lot of work to do!
There always is on board ship.
Nothing remains stationary, the foundation of the ocean threatens to mill everything we work for into dust.
But such is life. We must keep going through effort.

Kamil's problem, we eventually realised after cataloguing all his jobs, duties, and tasks, is not that there is a lot to do.
It's that he has started everything.
A little soldering here, then down to the engine room to work on power  systems, then up to the large, flat, back deck to the hydrophone  inspection hatch to work on them.

Everything is started.
Nothing is finished.

"I need help Seth." Kamil said, his mountain of unfinished work around him.
"Can you help me?"

Act 3

Our friends have returned.
At first I thought there was an island on the horizon, with large trees jutting out of the sand.
But after resolving closer, it was the arms of the giant octopuses again, waving in the air.

They were directly in front of the ship, the creatures must be faster than us, as I did not see them surface.
It took 32 minutes to arrive at the location of this wobbly island.
I slowed the ship and cut the engines again.

This time they were much more playful.
Their bodies bumped the ship as Yeshi, Amelie and I watched from the bridge.

"Where is Kamil?" Yeshi asked, "he's missing this once-in-a-lifetime sight!".
I checked the cameras for him, he was working on the hydrophones off the back of the ship.

I told the rest of the crew where he was.
He wasn't missing out on this interaction, if anything he was getting a front-row seat.

"Kamil, should you come inside?" I asked, my voice crackling out of  the metal intercom at the back of the ship, close to the small crane  assembly.

"I'm nearly done, if I don't do it now I'll never finish it." He  said, pointing to a metal cylinder attached to a long cable, one of his  hydrophones.

"What are they doing to my ship?" Yeshi said, pointing down at the  front, where a large tentacle was curled around the anchor winding  assembly.

As we looked to where Yeshi pointed, there was a terrible sound of twisted metal, and then several then things happened at once.

A large cephalopod arm slammed into the side of the bridge, knocking loose tools and items off the console onto the floor.
There was a loud bang and a crack appeared in the large glass window at the front.
Amelie shouted, and pointed out of the back window, where we could see Kamil, knocked off his feet, toolkit slid into the ocean.

"We are leaving." Said Yeshi, grabbing a metal bar and pushing open the exterior door to the bridge.

The captain's momentum was arrested by a large tentacle arm working  its way through, and feeling around the doorway, picking up a spanner.

"Close the door please Yeshi!" I said, panicking.
Yeshi wrestled with the arm, and shoved it outside, sealing the door with the rotary handle.

"We have to help him!" Amelie screamed, hitting the rear window ineffectually with her fists.

Kamil was struggling to stay on his feet, the ship was listing at  nearly 16 degrees, and there were many octopuses with many arms all  around him.

The creatures were not attacking Kamil directly, but they were damaging the ship.
The rear crane had been torn off its mounting, and was lost to the  ocean, as were some of the metal containers that were loose on the rear  flat deck of the ship.

This wasn't any less dangerous for Kamil, as octopus arms are semi  autonomous, so if they touch something that feels interesting, they wrap  around it automatically.

Kamil's boots were very interesting, and he was pulled off his feet, and close to the water.

My UHF radios pulsed a signal, and a black and orange blur crashed into the mass of arms wrapped around Kamil.

EVADE OUTLAST SURVIVE

Maddie said, and attacked the octopuses.

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/MH2/FE0)

Act 4

We have been sailing away at top speed.
The attack was short, but has left the crew shaken, and the ship damaged.
Maddie's precise attack on the arm that was attacking Kamil was extremely effective.
Indeed, we have the remains of the tip of the octopus's arm left on the back deck.
Kamil was able to wriggle free, and the pair escaped through a bulkhead door into the engine room, sealing it behind them.

I reconnected the engine, and signaled it to provide full power.
Which was not enough.

The octopuses were easily able to keep up with our 20km/h maximum speed.
Amelie warned that the engine is not able to sustain this cadence for very long.
She wasn't sure when it would catastrophically fail, but failure was assured.

But for some reason the octopuses fell back.
They did not dive, but stopped chasing us.

Maddie, perched on the roof of the bridge, I wish she would be more  careful, used one of her high-power zoom lenses to see closer, and  relayed the video to me.

The octopuses were crowded around one of them.
The one Maddie had injured.
There was a dark colouring in the water around it.
The others were touching this injured one with their arms, gently.

I felt regretful about this, I wish there had been another way.

"FORGET them, what about me?" said Kamil, holding up his arm, covered in scratches and cuts.

"Hold still brave boy." Dr Linda said, while cleaning Kamil's wounds.

"Yes, I'm disinclined to be sympathetic also." said Yeshi, "Look at what they've done to my ship! They were trying to sink us!"

The crew and I talked about what we would do if they returned.
Or if there were any more sea monsters lurking around!
We talked about making weapons to fend off invaders, and perhaps training for such an event again.

I could sound a special kind of alarm, so we would know to be ready, I suggested.

The conversation halted when Amelie began crying.
"I don't want to hurt ANYTHING." she said, and left the room.

The self-defence discussion would wait for another day.

The Molly Hughes II continued North towards the Bering Sea.
Repairs were happening all over the ship, Kamil despairing that he now  had 10x more jobs to do, Amelie testing the engine after the full-power  burn today, Linda cleaning the partially damaged rooftop garden, and  Yeshi re-calibrating the CWAP system, knocked out of alignment by our  attackers.

All the while, the sound from Kamil's one working hydrophone was getting louder.

The whales are still singing.

(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
• Toby
• Jade Felicity Bilkey
  and to all our patrons!

Follow us on mastodon @lostterminal@fosstodon.org,
subscribe to the podcast on
Spotify, iTunes, or your favourite network.
For bonus content and other perks,
support us at patreon.com/lostterminalpod
that would be lovely of you!

Lost Terminal will return next week