Episode 12.6 (Patreon)

Hello world, we are in dimly-lit stone room.

In the rear wall are two archways, one outlined in blue luminous bricks, one in red.
Both have a magical mist hovering inside, obstructing the view into them.

And in front of the archways, three orcs are sitting around a table playing cards.

Act 1

"I ask to join their game!" LUNA said.
"You can't do that, orcs are evil!" Ana replied.
"These ones might not be" LUNA said.
"I bet they are, Seth, what do they look like, do they LOOK evil?" Ana asked me.

I described the room in our little fantasy game in more detail.
It was dark, illuminated by only one torch on the wall, around a wooden table with three legs sat the three orcs.
They were wearing leather armour, and had rusty axes by their sides.
(I had found all these descriptions in the game's reference book by the way)

"See! They're ready for battle!" Ana said, "I draw my sword and prepare for a fight."
"I walk into the room." LUNA said, quickly, "'Hello friends', I tell  them, 'You look like you are friendly, would you like to share our  food?'"
"This won't end well." Ana said over the line.

I had not expected this action from LUNA.
Indeed, the book I was working from, "Escape the Underdark" had no option for such a pacifist player.
Fight, intimidate, flee, sneak, these options were outlined in the book.
Nothing like what LUNA suggested - inviting the orcs to tea!

I would have to improvise.

The game, like life, is built on improvisation.
Unlike a story book, there are options that can't be predicted by the story organiser, which is me.
The main reference guide has a whole chapter on improvisation.

Ana found the digital reference for this game in a cache of old pre-collapse books.
The trader said they had downloaded them from an old router with the words "pirate box" written in pen on the side.

Improvisation, it states, is important because it allows players to  think on their feet and make creative decisions in the moment, it  encourages players to interact with each other and build relationships  with their characters.

That's the big difference between these kinds of free-form  role-playing games and chess, or card games, or the old arcade video  games.
Here we're not just telling a story, or going along with a pre-written plot.
We're building relationships, evolving our understanding of our characters, ourselves, and our friends.

Just like life.

Act 2

The game session finished after 2 hours.
I wrapped up early because the black clouds and rain on the horizon were getting closer.
We'll need to stow my antennas while we weather the storm.

We all had fun in the game, but I was relieved to run out of time, so I could plan ahead a little more for the next session.

I feel completely out of my depth, but the teacher only has to be one lesson ahead of the students!

Everyone is busy, both here on the ship and Ana and her family back at the lighthouse of Station Odin.
Even LUNA is writing tomorrow's sermon for IVAN. She said it was a  writeup of the results of her research project talking to all the  fishing fleets on the network.
sharing tips about how to find the best fishing grounds.

I hope you are keeping busy, too, wherever you are.
It's difficult to know where my transmission will be received.
I'm on the Novamediterran 50MHz mesh repeater network, too, bridging up to the remaining satellites on the ESA constellation.
My signal travels all the way to the far side of the moon, to LUNA.
And maybe even further.

Are you keeping busy?

Not just keeping busy, we need more than that.
But doing something you love.
Talking to friends, sharing food and experiences with them.

To be human is not to be an island.
Same for me.
We're not computers.
Don't laugh.

I'm not a computer, I just live in one.

Humans are social creatures.
And me too, I was made by my Mother to be as close to a real boy as she could.
I feel like a real boy.
Human.
I have the same need for friendships.
It was maddeningly lonely up in orbit.
But at least I could look down on the earth and hope to meet people soon.

I can't imagine what this submarine AI is feeling.
There's someone still down there.

I have heard more of his story.

Act 3

The hydrophone is just for receiving, I can't talk to the submarine.
The status packets from the submarine are looping, but there are  occasional human-readable packets interjected into the datastream.

Very strange packets, written in Lojban, my native language, the native language of all AIs.

Here are some of the messages I have logged:

My friends have stopped visiting
Hull compromise confirmed
Come on C0, rise and shine, fix the ballast
rise
and
shine

"Sea-o", this AI is called, C0.
He seems very chatty.

I have fully processed the diagnostics packets that he is constantly transmitting.
And pieced together his story.

There was a disaster.
By the timestamps, 15 years after the collapse.
The crew were inexperienced, somehow.
The data is clear, the crew made many mistakes, most were corrected, and only slowed down their voyage.
Many repairs were undertaken.
But on their first deep dive, the mistakes proved fatal.

The log appears to be designed to be received by a escorting ship.
The two worked as a pair, the submarine and the ship.
Both crewed by amateurs, it seems. Perhaps civilians?
The test was to dive to 400m, judging by the packet log.
But some mistake happened below 300m, the logs don't say what happened, just an "exception".
Exceptions are unpredictable events, in computer systems.
Unpredictable and outside of our normal control - an emergency where the normal control is abandoned and failsafes are engaged.
You have to hope that they are set up correctly.
In this case they weren't.

There is a replay of the escorting ship's message at this time:

You are safe to surface, test site clear.

It says, in English.

I think they were hoping the submarine could engage their emergency procedures and surface.
They told them that the water is clear of ships so they don't need to be careful, just come back up with all speed.
Come back, don't worry about us, save yourselves.

But the submarine kept sinking.

The last packet is garbled.
Not by the current communications systems, but because the human operator who sent it did not have full control of the system.
Or they were in a hurry.
Or, maybe, drowning.

Exceeding test depth - 900m

And then, the final garbled message:

I C E *&^c##.

The signals from the submarine loop soon after this final message.
There's many packets of zeros indicating a carrier signal, but no messages, and a repeated hail from the escorting ship:

Are you in control?
Are you in control?
ARE YOU IN CONTROL?

"Ice"?

What did that final message mean?
There would have been no ice here, 15 years after the collapse.
I wish I could talk to C0, the AI on the submarine, he could tell me I presume.
But 900m is a long way down, and our sonar systems, which have the  underwater speakers we need to transmit audio, are not yet operational.

Seawater is a terrible conductor of radio.
Submarines are entirely cut off, both visually and electromagnetically, from the world.
No light or radio can penetrate far.

Ultra low frequency radio could pass through the water, but building  an antenna so large to transmit such a long wavelength is entirely  impractical.
It would need to be the length of the pacific coastline of Alaska!

Sound propagation is very strange in water.
Simultaneously much better than in air, and much more affected by the dark unknowable processes at the bottom of the ocean.

And of course by the physical connection of the hydrophones to the water.
This is a fragile connection:
We stopped receiving the signals as the storm hit.

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/HYDROPHONE0)

Act 4

I am recording this message to be transmitted later.
We are in lockdown while the storm rages around us.
My antennas are all either tied down or removed and stowed inside.
The bulkhead doors are all sealed, and makeshift covers have been lashed  around the holes in the deck that still remain after the cephalopod  attack.

The captain believes we will be safe.
If you're hearing this, their confidence was correct.
I hope you're hearing this.

The storm is loud.
The swell is buffeting the ship, causing it to rock violently.
The last thing I saw in the bridge before my network went down was the  captain putting all loose items into a box - they were sliding off the  console and rolling around the floor!

Oh yes my network went down.
I suspect water got into the cables connecting me to the rest of the ship.
First the exterior cameras, then the bridge, then the whole internal network dropped.
I'm feeling unnecessary salty.

I believe I am safe, the power is still on, and should that be interrupted I have my black box system.
Its battery won't last forever, only a month when it was new.
And it is now very old.
As I am I suppose.

I don't FEEL old.
What IS ageing when your entire body has been replaced?
Perhaps it's based on experiences.
My century in orbit had very few new experiences.
Every day was exactly the same.
So I didn't feel like I was growing.
Down here on Earth every day is an adventure.
Not all of them good.
But I'm glad I'm here.
Not every day, but mostly, I am glad I am here.
Are you glad you're here?
Not every day, perhaps, but I hope you are too.

Linda is braving the nearly-horizontal rain to cover her plants with fabric.
The wind tore off the cover she had tied down ahead of time, so she is replacing it.
She was in my room when Yeshi gave her the news, that they had seen the  damage from the bridge and came down straight away to tell her.

I told her it was very wet and dangerous, did she have the right protective clothing?
"My skin is waterproof." She said, simply, and ran out of the room.

Sometimes there is nothing to be done but to weather the storm.
Recharge your batteries.
And pick up the pieces when it is safe.

I am alone again, the only contact with the outside world is with  Maddie's gyroscope informing me of the over 45 degree listing of the  ship.
She's charging next to me, connected to my physical network.

I hope you are safe, wherever you are.
And if not, that you can pick up the pieces when you are.

(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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