Episode 12.5 (Patreon)

Hello world, the signals are getting stronger.

We are in the vicinity of St Matthew Island, in the North Bering Sea.
Kamil's single working hydrophone is picking up the whalesong very strongly, and also some unexplained mechanical sounds.

We are now hearing the source of the Morse code.

Act 1

The sounds are very strange.
Much more precise than the whalesong, and with more data.
Whereas the whales were singing their normal songs to each other, and  occasionally mimicking the SOS Morse code, this signal has a great deal  more entropy.
Entropy is complexity, and complexity means a message.

We had a shock as we passed St Matthew Island - a single giant octopus surfaced right next to the MH2.
We were terrified to be attacked again, but the octopus did not touch the ship.

Instead it spread its arms out along the surface of the water, looking like a large oil slick, and began changing colour.
We did not know what was happening at first.
But when the dark brown octopus suddenly flickered to nearly completely white, we realised.

It was attempting to communicate.

Geometric patterns flickered rapidly across its body.
Squares, stars, checkered patterns - anything symmetrical it seemed to be able to mimic.

This time, I could be of no use decoding the patterns.
It seemed to be entirely biological.
Though the patterns were geometric, they did not seem to be any I recognised.

Dr Linda, our biologist, had grabbed a notebook and was sketching some of the patterns as fast as she could.

The display went on for 900 seconds.
The octopus would occasionally pause, and watch our ship with its intelligent horizontal eyes.
And then it would be off again, shapes and colours swirling around its skin.

The skin of an octopus has millions of chromatophores, pigment that can be changed for camouflage or for social interaction.

Or, in this case, for communication.

Act 2

The octopus remained friendly, but I could be of no help interpreting it's mood or colours.
I left Linda attempting to communicate with the creature.

I could do more with the whalesong.
There's a loud signal here.
And it's certainly not a whale.

The sound is composed of pulses, similar to Morse code, but it doesn't pattern match as Morse.
And there are multiple frequencies in use, not just one.

I have no algorithms for decoding this.
I must figure it out myself

Humanise, Organise, Mechanise.
Is how I am approaching this problem.

First step: Humanise.
I'm writing down my guesses of the algorithm, and running it myself.
There's some likely solutions here - some of the methods I'm trying seem to yield a decoded message that reads like English.

On to the next step: Organise.
I've put the working algorithms together, discarding what didn't work.
I think I have a few ways to make it more efficient.

Now the last step: Mechanise.
You might think, as a machine, this is something I'll be naturally good at.
Firstly, excuse you, I am not a machine, I just live in one.
And secondly, I'm really bad at programming.
Shockingly bad!
But communications I can handle.
I have re-used my existing radio protocols, adapting them for audible sound.

OK.
(RECEIVING)

I have decoded the first packet:

(:depth 900 :power 100 :hull 78)

which is INTERESTING isn't it?
It IS a submarine!
It must be.
What has it been doing down there this whole time!?

I've re-calibrated the hydrophone, I am hearing a stream of data log packets, here are a few of them:

(:t 52 :depth 120 :status ok)
(:t 145 :depth 300 :status ok)
(:t 201 :depth 310 :status exception)
(:t 236 :depth 400 :status "ballast failure")
(:t 322 :depth 900 :status exception)

It then repeats the same log again.
What happened down there?
And how are they still transmitting?

Act 3

Kamil is moving with purpose.
Not working yet, but doing some organising, some admin.
He is walking around the ship with a clipboard, making notes.

Starting in the engine room, he's squatting next to the Iron Engine, peering at it.
The room we call 'the engine room' doesn't contain our running engine at all, but the floor hatch to access it.
The engine is access through the floor, in the lowest section of the ship.
There is an post-collapse steam engine in this room, but since the discovery of the Iron Engine, it remains unused, a backup.
The people of the Novamediterra have an aversion to burning carbon.
Wood is still burned for heating and cooking, but propulsion and  industry are almost exclusively scavenged solar electric. Or powered by  batteries charged by wind, or tide.

It's a long memory, almost a superstition now, from the idea that this burning caused the collapse.

The next room Kamil visited was his own bunk.
Every crew member on board the Molly Hughes II has their own little quarters, their own room called their bunk.
2m or 3m square, with a bed and a little desk.
There's plenty of space, the ship was built for a much larger crew.
It's very cluttered in Kamil's bunk, some of Amalie's stuff is here too  of course, though they still have their own rooms, they often share.
Though not exclusively, Amelie's room is closer to the engine room, and I  have noticed if she is working particularly late, she might nap in her  own room.

Kamil's taking notes while looking at the scrap parts littering his  floor, wires and small metal plates - parts of the un-repaired sonar  system.

Satisfied, he climbed the stairs to the bridge.

It is a grey overcast day.
Calm and clear, but without sun.
Kamil joined captain Yeshi on the bridge.

The two exchanged greetings and status updates, and after 300 seconds Yeshi continued their work elsewhere.

Kamil sat on a battered stool in front of the sonar console.
Here the state was largely as I had last noted:
Broken 160x144 screen, wires jutting out at every angle, and scattered parts on the floor, waiting to be repaired.

He took inventory of all the work that needed to be done on the bridge.
In the quiet, enclosed space, I could hear him muttering to himself:
"Solder, cable, ribbon, power (will need a regulator circuit), waterproofing, yes"

He is making three lists, judging by the three pieces of paper he is writing on in pencil.
Three lists for the tasks he is doing in each of the three areas on the ship.

This is a very good idea - contextual external memory is the technique he is using.
It's no good being reminded by tasks you can't do in your current context.
That's worse than a distraction!

I'm delighted for Kamil.
He is very well organised.

I am sure he will start work soon.

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/MIC0/EXCEPTION)

Act 4

The wind picked up during the evening, and now the boat is being rocked by large waves.

The crew have brought all loose items inside, covered holes with oiled cloth, and sealed all the doors.
I have told Maddie that she must be inside by 21:00, which is presumably why she is still out in the rain now, at 20:55.

She's looking at the approaching storm.
On the horizon there are flashes of light in the dark, low, clouds.
Too far away from us for the sound to be heard, but I can pick up each  lightning strike as broad-spectrum noise on my radio receivers.

Lightning is the original way humans worked out how to transmit radio pulses.
Spark-gap radios they were called.
Using high voltage to create a spark would splatter radio noise all  across the spectrum, which could then be picked up by a receiver.
It was very inefficient.
Because the spark created radio noise on a very wide band of the  spectrum, the power from the transmitter was spread out over this wide  band.
This meant that enormous amounts of power were needed to transmit very short distances, compared to today's technology.

The revolution was the creation of tuning circuits that allowed all that power to be converted to just one radio frequency.
A pure tone, controlled, focussed, and efficient.
10W of electricity in, 10W of radio out.
Or thereabouts.

It's like this for us, I think.
Both human and AI.
If we don't understand the mechanisms that work us, how our own internal  radios work, we end up putting in a huge amount of effort, for very  little gain.

We must learn to focus, as Kamil is doing, as I try to.
Someone has to write the manual, the instructions, the readme files.

I'm entirely unqualified, but so is everyone else.
We can't take ourselves apart and see how we work, because the parts that make us are not how we work.
Humans are more than bones and blood, and I'm more than circuits and cpus.
We must figure out what is inside the box through experimentation, not observation.

I'm writing down my notes into a file.
The first chapter is about focussing your effort in your mind, so as to not fight yourself.

I'm calling this document "How To Care For Your New AI", after the unfinished document my Mother started writing on Station 6.
Her first chapter will be a forward, an introduction.
And I'll take it from here.

Maddie, come inside.
The storm's nearly here.

(END-TRANSMISSION)

CREDITS

Lost Terminal is written & produced by NAMTAO
Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer
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• Wil Taylor
• Kit
• deeryeen
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• Jade Felicity Bilkey
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