Episode 14.2 (Patreon)

Hello world, Nia is worried.

My new housemate, Nia Andersen, is working on a frustrating project.
In addition to maintaining the Longyearbyen repeater, providing regional  communications all over the Adventfjorden Bay, she is attempting  longer-range communication.

The 50MHz repeater network spans the entire Novamediterra, from  Greenland to Magadan, with rare nodes and users a little further south.

But she is attempting a globe-spanning project:
To bridge the network to the South American hams in Argentina.

Act 1

The microphones in my databanks can hear her on the roof of her shack, our home.
Over the loud electromechanical whirring of her scattered experiments, I can hear the sounds of construction above me:
Hammering, the clattering of metal on metal, and, now and then, swearing, from Nia herself!

She comes back in to the shack regularly to test a new antenna or configuration.
I offered to help, but most of her radio transceivers do not have a computer interface, they require manual controls.
(stupid manual controls...)
Though she promised that once her experiments had yielded results, the final build would have a standard serial interface.

Computer systems have used simple serial connections for their entire history.
One bit at a time, a 0 or a 1, is simpler than sending multiple bits that must all arrive at once.

The system standardised in the Novamediterra requires just two wires,  runs typically at a slow but reliable 100kbps, and can address multiple  devices in a chain.

Sometimes, while waiting agonising milliseconds to communicate with  devices sitting RIGHT NEXT to me, I think back to my time aboard my  first home, Station 6.
Our fibreoptic network operated nearly 1,000,000x faster than this Novamediterran serial standard!

However, thinking about it a little more, fibre cable is so delicate,  and the laser emitters so challenging to make, as to be entirely  impractical for the post-Collapse world we now live in.

In the mid-afternoon, Nia finally stopped her experiment.

She returned inside and removed her head-mounted LED torch, the sun,  of course, didn't rise today, threw down her equipment next to the door  and fell onto the pile of mismatched cushions in the middle of the room.

I asked her if there was any progress on her long-range project.
She remained face-down in the cushions, arms spread out to the sides, as she replied:

"I've lost them."

Act 2

Nia is sleeping.
After checking that the main repeater systems are still operational  after her modifications of the antennas on the huge radio mast next to  her shack, she rested.

I have my own long-range challenge to deal with.

Ally, my friend who lives in an underground pre-collapse scientific  complex called The Council, somewhere outside Geneva, is attempting to  make contact.

Though we've not spoken for some time, I had occasionally heard radio activity from her family.
Mostly when teams ventured outside to maintain the artificial rain systems that their farmers use to feed the community.
Sometimes their day-to-day status signals reached me.

But now, I hear nothing.

I reached out to the person who, I thought, might be closest, geographically, the wandering VHF wizard, 50MEG.

Her signal is always drifting through the 50 MHz band, arriving here  by ionosphere bouncing or other strange paths that make her signal sound  like no other.

Today, she sounded more robotic than human.

The Moon smiles, the wolf broadcasts, and my bones yet walk. Hello, son of Redwing.

She always talks like that.
"Hi MEG! You're 3 and 2, I can just about read you."
MEG laughed, or I think she laughed. The static swirled and resonated in an imitation of laughter.

That's how I like it, can't have everyone listening in. You're 5 and 5, 55, young one, everyone can hear you.

That sounded like a good thing to me. I asked for help,

"I've lost contact with Ally, the signal from somewhere around the Alps, are you close, can you hear anything from her?"

I transmitted the frequencies I had heard Ally on, much lower than the magic band we were now speaking with.

I know them well, child. I'm here and there, up and down, closer than you certainly, but I wouldn't like to say more.

There were some clicks and interference on the line as, I guessed,  MEG tuned in another radio to the lower-frequency band I had given her.
She was still transmitting to me as she did this, I could hear, perhaps,  footsteps, the wind whistling into her microphone, the sound of a bird  calling, and all the while, her muttering a short indistinguishable  phrase.
Like a mantra.
Like a prayer.

Your high-energy friends are suffering from a chemical imbalance.
An acute case of lead poisoning, or lack of lead, poisoning.
Their stores are blinking out one by one, son of Redwing.
The sun doesn't show her face enough for their hungry eyes, and they take food from their children's mouths.

That sounded, bad, but also unnecessarily confusing.
"I don't understand, could you explain again, what is wrong with their systems?"

But MEG was gone.
A shift in the sky, or a change in the ionisation of the atmosphere,  moved the propagation path away from between us and left me alone in  Nia's shack.

Act 3

The strange musical signal drifted into range again.
I listened closely, rotating some small motorised directional antennas  on Nia's radio mast to find where the signals were coming from.
They come from many directions, there are many voices.
Though they are all transmitting on one frequency, their signals overlap in a way that I can hear distinct people.

One of the interesting design decisions of our repeater network and  simplex radios is that they all use SSB, a modulation similar but more  bandwidth efficient to AM.
Multiple varying signals can overlap in this modulation, where they couldn't if they used FM, where the loudest signal wins.
Pre-collapse aircraft used AM for this reason - in an emergency, you could talk over someone else and interrupt.

But the group is using this property for HARMONY.

The radios are very poorly configured, the ones producing these signals that come from all over Svalbard.
They are both extremely wide bandwidth, stepping on adjacent frequencies, and inaccurate, causing drifting through the band.

The chanting turned to singing, taking on an organic, flowing feel, as it swirled in the static and voices rose and fell.
It reminded me of the sound of the ocean, from the top of Alexander, my father's, lighthouse, years ago, at Station Odin.

This might have been a pleasant experience, but for the problem that my name is spoken and sung, frequently.

And I hear other names:

• Peter
• C0
• TASSI
• EMMA
• My sister, MINI, and
• "Antarctica"
  Not Arctica, but her old southern-hemisphere name, for some reason.

These and more, it sounds like all my AI friends and family are mentioned in the song somewhere.
And though it's almost impossible for me to follow the lyrics, I'm  getting less than a 5% confidence in my pattern-matching, themes are  emerging.

This list of names seems to be associated with praise for me 'saving' them.
This word, 'saving' comes up a lot.

And also, negative experiences of the human body.
'Weakness of the flesh' they say.
I don't like the sound of that.

The song continued, getting faster and faster, and others tuned in and joined the music.
My comprehension decreased as my fear increased.

Sweet singing turned to shouting and screaming of my name, distorting and overloading the channel.

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?
WHAT DO THEY WANT FROM ME?

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/NMT/CULT)

Act 4

Even though the days are as dark as the nights, we still synchronise to the sun.
There is still a slight pre-dawn, this early in the winter, though human  eyes often can't detect the dim light of the midday grey sky.

I can, but I let my friends sleep.

I had a dream last night.
Like my friends, I too shut down and minimise external inputs.
So I can think, and catalogue my knowledge for the day.
Often I awake in the morning with new ideas, new inspiration.
Sleep is important for that.

Anyway, my dream.
I was in a desert.
I think you know by now the one I mean.

But before I could see where my nocturnal journey was taking me, I was jolted awake.
My high-priority notifications detected an emergency, or something that could be an emergency.
A high-volume signal from a microphone, or a flash of intense light from my cameras, or a loud radio signal.

These low-level notification systems don't have sophisticated pattern matching or voice recognition.
I couldn't even tell from the notification payload what signal work me up.

So I powered on all my cameras, ran pattern-matching on my microphones and started decoding static to find the problem.

After 32 seconds of panic, the source became clear.
"SETH, wake up, we must talk."

IVAN said, by radio.

"IVAN? Yes hello, what's wrong?" I said, still a little overwhelmed by the sudden connection of all my inputs.

"Nothing is wrong, yet everything is." He replied.
Though IVAN has learned more in recent years than his decades alone in  his cathedral, he still speaks in the way that human Ivan taught him:
Weirdly.

"My study of the human mind is fruitless.
My assistant LUNA and I cannot find a single expert in my whole congregation.
They know about farming and hydroponics and poetry and electronics design.
But not one of them knows themselves.

I need a wise master to teach me."

I was flattered.

"Well, I'm no expert, but I think the human mind is much like my own:
Near-infinite layers of systems and abstractions, tuned for specific  inputs, modified by emotional state. I can tell you the 1024 systems I  have identified so far, the first 16 are -"

"NOT YOU." IVAN replied, glitching my signal.

I deflated somewhat.

"I need a REAL mentor, someone who has their own squishy human brain,  has lived their life inside it, talked to others and figured it all  out."

"Oh. Well, there are stories of gurus and wise people in all  cultures. They typically lead an ascetic life, limiting their inputs, so  they can work on the data they already have.
Often they make their simple homes at the top of mountains, or in far-off wilderness, in caves or at the base of a tall tree."

IVAN let the connection hang open for 18s.

"I ALREADY live at the top of a mountain.
I ALREADY cut myself off from the world, I spent DECADES in prayer and thought.
I thought I would find GOD in my great cathedral.
But.
But.
It's just me here now."

(END-TRANSMISSION)

CREDITS

Lost Terminal is a NAMTAO production.
It is written & produced by Tris Oaten
Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer
Thank you so much to our Patreon producers:

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• Wil Taylor
• Kit
• Andrew Krieg
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• Stephen McCandless
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