Lost Terminal: 41 South - Episode 9 (Patreon)

Sweep

Clear

ATIS: All traffic. Wellington Airport. All Runways closed. All traffic redirect.

AWIS: Wind speed 4knots Northerly rising. Cloud ceiling unlimited. Ground temperature at station 13 Celsius. Visibility Good.

Little creatures are scurrying in the undergrowth. Keas hop about looking for food. The sun is a focused C.R.T. beam in the pure blue sky.

Sweep

Clear

Ricky sits away from the console. He has been crying. “Emma?”

“Hello Ricky.”

He says nothing but pushes his grubby hands hard into his eyes. He doesn’t speak for a long time.

The robot is still locked to the gantry holding Ricky’s trouser belt. The blades turn slowly.

I am on very low power.

The robot is charging. It will take time. From its vantage I can see changes in the landscape. The island of Miramar’s shoreline skirt is now risen a few metres above the waves. Its hillsides are deep-gouged with landslips. Wellington’s harbour is fringed with broken trees: overwhelmed by the tsunami, then battered by the storm. One of the city’s final skeletal buildings has fallen into the water. Perhaps coral will grow on its rusty framework.

“Mr. Red?” I speak softly.

Ricky looked up to the ceiling. “He died.”

How can Ricky be speaking truthfully?

Mr. Red was alright. I told him he was alright. He had the heater. He was sheltered in the footwell of the console. The electronics were warm. Why did he die?

“You should have conserved power. He didn’t need that heater, but I needed you online.” Ricky tried to be angry. “Fuck. Emma. You listen to me. You need to do what I say.”

“I’m sorry Ricky.”

“Yeah.” His feeble anger dissipated. He sounded tired. “When the brakes unlocked, the fucking turbine swung round and I got blown off the gantry. You held onto me. You didn’t let go. I needed you to pull me up. You weren’t there. Just a stupid robot and I was hanging there in the wind and rain and, fuck Emma, I nearly died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“We gotta be smarter than that. You're supposed to be smarter than that,” he said softly.

“I’m glad you’re ok. I’m bringing the robot down off the tower.”

Then I told him about the ship. The Molly Hughes the Second.

“So the radar did see something,” he said.

“Yes.”

He went outside. He stood in the sunshine looking south. The Kaikouras rose like snow-covered diamonds out of a deep-blue velvet. An artefact of flocking gulls was on my radar. I zoomed in and saw the breach of a huge whale. Then another.

The robot came up the hill. Ricky rushed to it and hugged it. Hugged me. He leant on the robot so hard its actuators strained to hold him up. He was concerned for its systems. He wanted diagnostics and was impatient for the answer. He was barely satisfied when it reported full function and 94% power remaining. To mollify him, I confessed I would need a new dress. He saw the joke and coughed back a laugh. “Fuck you Emma. I’ll get you a dress. Oh, you will look the part eh.”

Sweep

Clear

After a storm the clouds are all used up. They have dumped their rain. They have blasted and done their damage. They are destroyed in their own tempest and all we have is the brightest clearest visual flight rules day.

“You really did hang on.” Ricky addressed everything to the glossy white robot in a tattered dress. “Then suddenly when I thought I’d be dead and I felt so sick hanging on the end of your arm swinging dead-weight in the hail. Bullets hitting me… The storm died. It was blue like this. I saw this wall of cloud sweep over the harbour. It was incredible. It was so cold. The turbine began to turn and you pulled me up. You pulled me up but you never let go. You didn’t say anything, but you never let go.” He saw the funny side of it. “I had to drop me daks to free myself and climb down.”

I reached out with the robot’s hand. My hand. I took his red raw fingers in mine. “I won’t let you go.”

Sweep

Clear

“Is there really a big ship out there? Will it come back here after it does its Antarctica thing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is it there now?”

Sweep

Clear

“No.”

Ricky went into the radome and checked the systems. He got a bag of powder and mixed it with water and mixed and mixed and mixed it until it was a thick paste. Then with his fingers and a thin stick he began poking and pressing the mortar into the crack in the wall.

I picked up his metal bar and began to hack at the ground at a spot that over looked the strait. Ricky asked what I was doing. I said I was digging a grave for Mr. Red. He fetched me a shovel and went back to fixing the wall.

I worked until I was low on power. As I recharged Ricky continued the grave digging. He agreed this was a good spot. It was on the windward side of the hill and not too near the radome.

Later as it got dark, we dragged the body to the hole. Ricky apologised to him and we covered the body over with soil and pressed it down hard.

“I’ll go down some day, down to red rocks and bring one back to mark the spot. Do you think he’ll like that?” Ricky asked.

“Yes.”

Sweep

Clear

We sat outside and looked at the arc of the milky way. I pointed out satellites in their orbit but that seemed to annoy Ricky.

“The marae just slipped away behind us.” Ricky sounded as far away as the stars. “Why didn’t Tubs run after you? Everyone else did. We all fell down outside. The shaking went on and on. There were noises I can’t explain. And then it stopped. Nothing moved. No one said nothing but I realised there was crying. All around me crying. Rangatira started counting. Grant started saying I was to blame. Stack told him to shut up. Rangatira told him to shut up. Has anyone seen Tubs? What about Anna? Where’s Daisy? … Tubs, I shouted. The marae was like far down the cliff – there hadn’t even been a cliff. The marae was kindling. It was twisted up. I shouted for him. You just started away. Back up here I guess.”

“It returns on automatic to its last charging point.” I explained.

“Did you see the storm?”

I explained it was going to pass to the west, then it changed direction. I was trying to measure its course when the earthquake hit.

“Rangatira says the gods were angry. Says ‘cause we looked after Mr. Red. He agreed with Grant. Reckons, I’m to blame for Tubs too.” Ricky paced about. A wild cat watched warily. “He’ll banish me too. Or go for me. But I reckon he won’t cause I’ll fight back hard.”

He whacked the metal bar into his hand. If violence was to come to him, then what else could he do by this community’s rules.

It was Ricky’s habit to speak to himself, or to a particularly interested kea. He murmured: “Old man Jack might calm him down. Talk some facts into him. I mean, I did kill Josh. I hit him. He fell. He didn’t really ever get up again. So I did do the iwi justice… I wish I’d never hit him.” He said. “I wish I hadn’t. I feel so sick.” Ricky then asked, “What do you think of me?”

The robot has a manner of empathy: a tilt to its head; a lightness in its eyes. It can blink.

Without answering, I listened to him. He sounded exhausted but in it he was proud. He had done his gramps’ gramp proud. But he didn’t understand what it was for.

We sweep the sky, but it’s clear. We listen on the radio but when we detect a signal they just pass by like whales.

I think I understand why he didn’t seem to care much for satellites in orbit.

The summer night was warm, but Ricky lit a fire anyway. I would have done it for him but he wanted to keep Emma away from fire. Instead, I wandered a short distance away and crouched down with my hands cupped. A rat became too inquisitive for its own good and I zapped it with the defibrillator in my palms. Ricky was astounded as I used the ship captain’s medical guide survival data correlated with anatomy, to skin, gut and fillet the creature. There was little meat, but it was better than nothing in Mr. Red’s soup kettle.

“Oh Emma, that’s a trick worth everything.”

“I learnt it from Mr. Red,” I replied. “He talked a lot.”

“They call it the lonespeak.” Ricky explained it was a thing lonely people do. They talk as though someone else is there because humans can’t stand the silence.

Sweep

Clear

He ate. I liked to watch the embers zig-zag up into the sky. Could a satellite see them and know we were here? We need more friends.

I wish I had lied to Seth and Molly Hughes the Second. Then maybe they would have come here. Maybe they could have given proper medical assistance to Mr. Red. Perhaps they would have been able to save more people. If only I’d had proper medical files.

We have to fetch the E.M.m.A. base-station then I would know how to be a midwife. I would know how to save lives.

Ricky talked more about Tubs. How Tubs had given him food sometimes. How he had never thought the radar work his family did was foolness. How he’d said that they were couzzie and bro.

The Karori community was all about farming, the streams running off the Makara hill irrigated their fields. They grew lots of stuff and bargained fair for fish. Tubs’ parents believed the only way to appease the gods was to turn away from science and machines. They’d warned Tubs not to be Ricky’s friend, but they also saw Ricky was outcast from everyone so they didn’t mind that he was friendly. “They were nice,” he said. He poked the fire and embers danced upwards. “’suppose they blame me too.”

I put my arm round him and he fell asleep against my torso.

What do I think of Ricky? He is lost in a world that does not care for loners. He has learnt to be angry because it keeps him alive day by day, but it will kill him because loneliness is deadly.

Sweep

Clear

Seth understood. We can’t be islands. It’s dangerous to be alone.

Sweep

Clear