Episode 12.4 (Patreon)

Hello world, we have landed.

We have attained the most westerly point of the former United States, Attu island.
It's also the most easterly point of the United States, by virtue of being west of the international date line.

Maps are funny like that.

The crew has gone ashore to look for provisions.
With one exception.
Kamil remains on board with me.

Act 1

Captain Yeshi urged caution.
The island was occupied by a military in the past, and had a reputation of being dangerous.

The crew gathered wood for the kitchen fires and any likely looking plants or nuts.

Maddie enjoyed running between Yeshi, Linda, and Amelie.
Her EQUUS systems continuing to work perfectly, propelling her at enormous speed across the land.

As the afternoon drew on, we made a discovery.
There was a wide open field with thousands of decayed white stakes in the ground.

Maddie examined the nearest stake.
It had a rusted metal square at the top.
Whatever writing it had stamped into it once was now entirely illegible.

The crew stopped and looked across the field for a time.
Each wooden post had its own metal name tag.

We found a ruined military or scientific facility on the island.
Nothing of value remained, most of the concrete walls had fallen in over time.
A single bent antenna mast remained, which my records show could have been part of an ancient pre-gps navigational system.

There used to be hundreds of these navigation beacons set up around the world.
Each transmitting a tone, as regularly as a clock.

By analysing the delay between different stations, a rough estimate of your location could be made.
The system was designed for approximate ocean or air navigation, so inaccuracies of 10km were acceptable, at the time.

The network was decommissioned at the end of the 20th century, becoming immediately obsolete after GPS was developed.

Satellites are very useful.

The crew are piling up dry firewood on the beach by the ship, along with edible plants.

Kamil is supposed to be continuing work on the hydrophones, onboard the ship.
But he has not left his bunk.

Act 2

"Is everything all right?" I asked Kamil, my voice coming from the speaker on the intercom outside his bunk's door.
I waited, watching the rest of the crew carry raw materials from the island to the shore, like busy ants.

After 32 minutes, Kamil's door opened, but he did not leave his room.

"Hi Seth." he said, finally, his voice carrying through his door to the intercom, where I could hear him quietly.

"Is there anything I can do?" I asked.
I didn't know what was wrong, was he unwell or depressed in some way?
Again he did not reply immediately.
I think I heard the white noise of a sigh coming from him, but I was only 24% certain of my recognition.

"I'm getting ready." He said, eventually.
And told me his plans for the day:
Swapping the hydrophone that the octopuses had damaged, repairing the  holes in the deck, some of the simpler engine maintenance that Amelie  had taught him how to do, and the work on the sonar system up in the  bridge.

"Oh great!" I said, "What's first?"
I was 56% sure that I was hearing a sigh from inside his room this time.
"Don't -" he started saying, loudly, then stopped.

He continued quieter,
"Don't tell me what to do." he said.

"I'm TRYING to start Seth, isn't that obvious?"
I wasn't sure that it was, but I didn't say anything in reply.
"I KNOW I have a lot of work to do, I KNOW I'm holding up the rest of the crew, don't you think I KNOW THAT?".

His tone and emotion shocked me.

"I have too much to do. Every day there is more and more and more!
I watch my projects rust while I start other more urgent work.

I can't get ahead of my tasks, I can't even reply to my father.
Did I tell you Nia Andersen relayed a message from him a month ago?"

I told Kamil I did not know this.
I might have total control over the 50 MHz repeater net on the ship, but I make a point to forget private messages.
To do otherwise would be rude.

"It was a month ago and I've not even READ the printout of his message.
It's here on my table.
I'M TOO BUSY!
I HAVE LOST CONTROL OF MY LIFE"

Kamil apologised for his outburst.
I said there was nothing to apologise for, and I'd still like to help.

"Amelie is so good at her job." he continued, ignoring my offer.
"I don't know how she does it.
She can work on the engine for 10 hours, then play with Maddie before  dinner, then do ANOTHER 6 hours in the engine room after that!"

I agreed that was very productive.

"And not only that she has time for study, for drawing, for singing in the sun on the deck.
I love her for all these things.
But it hurts too, you know?

How does she do it?
Why is it so hard for me?"

I had no answers for Kamil.

Act 3

"Humans are naturally kind," Linda told me, after she and the rest of  the crew had loaded the firewood and other provisions on to the ship.
"but they can get stressed, or rushed, or fearful. Then they do hurtful things.
Things that hurt others and themselves."

I thought about my friend's past mistakes:
IVAN's reactor hurting Alexander, LUNA destroying her communications satellite, Antarctica's laboratory rats.

"The secret is time." Linda continued as she planted some of the seeds she had harvested from the island in her roof-top garden.
"My family believe that with enough thought and a little discussion, all problems can be teased apart.
It might take an hour, or a week, but everything has a solution if you only think."

Linda put down her small gardening hand tools and looked out over the ocean and the Near Islands on the horizon.
She did not speak for 64 seconds.

"Alva used to say 'Don't just do something, sit there!' when Kari and I would be suggesting new ideas for the Vault.
Perhaps an irrigation system, or a solution to damage or a fault.
We'd want to get stuck in with our first idea!
It would seem so obvious what we had to do, we were impatient to do good in our world."

Linda continued digging in the garden.
"But after Alva forced us to think about what we were doing, every time, without fail, we'd find a problem, or an improvement.
Sometimes we'd throw out the entire plan, that we were so sure of just an hour before!
She was so wise.

I'm sad Iris will never meet her."

"Iris is like that, full of youthful impatience.
Our date conversations were EXTREMELY one-sided.
She'd tell me all her plans, the things she's doing, and I'd just listen, for the most part.
She's so cute when she's excited, you don't even KNOW Seth!"
Linda laughed.

"You should have heard her when I told her how we make decisions in the Vault Coven, in my family.
'You don't vote?!' she said 'how do you get anything done?'
I told her we talk about whatever the issue is until we are of the same mind.
'The will of the room', we call it.
It's a very old tradition.

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/VHF4/LUNA)

Act 4

I have been monitoring the game of remote chess between Ana and LUNA.
I do not like the data I have logged.

The datastream is thin.
Low bandwidth.
But lower than it should be!

I know LUNA's connection is very slow, due to the compromised system she has to use.
But she's not using 1% of it.

Ana and LUNA's conversation over the public network is extremely restricted.
They communicate with a pair of bytes.
(source, destination)
Indicating the move on the chessboard.
Nothing else!

I had hoped they would be chatting while they played.
I asked Ana what went wrong.

"It was OK at first!" She said.
"I told her about how things are going here at the station, and the  lighthouse, she told me about a deep-space pulsar she was looking at.
She said the star was quite dead, but we were looking back into the past at how it was millions of years ago.

We never talk like that any more."

"There's a game we played before that I really liked.
Do you remember Seth?
We were heroes, fighting dragons."

I remembered.
I also remembered my sister running the game for us.
"I miss MINI" I told Ana.

"Me too Seth. I wish we could talk to her again.
And play together."

I didn't have a response.
I agreed of course.
But there was nothing else to add.

"Talk to you later Seth, Adrian wants to harvest some plants, I should let him get on."

"Bye Ana!" I said.

Games are a useful structure for learning and socialising.
They're a safe place, where failure is an option.
They're an excuse for the unplanned interactions that are the foundation of friendships.

Ana and LUNA are finding chess a problem.
Adversarial games like chess can cause animosity or hard feelings.
Not always conducive to sharing and story telling.

I think Ana is right.
Our fantasy game was really fun.
We stopped when we lost MINI, it didn't seem right to continue.

But perhaps enough time has passed now.
We could begin to heal, together.
Bring back the old patterns and habits.

Perhaps I could write this new chapter of our story?

(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
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