Episode 14.7 (Patreon)

Hello world, Nia is in tears.

The enormous letter-H-shaped Yagi antenna that Nia spent this week building is lying in three pieces outside.

The antenna was so heavy that it needed to be supported by tensioned wires. Leading up to a central point.

This large array all had to rotate around a central axis, for Nia to  be able to finely dial in the direction to Violetta in Argentina.
Once she had, through trial and error, found the right path through the atmosphere, it wouldn't need to move much.
While the stars were still right, of course.

But as Nia was hand-cranking the huge array clockwise half a degree,  one of the cables failed, putting asymmetric pressure on one side of the  giant antenna, which broke a different support cable, then another, and  another.

Act 1

"It's possible to fix it." Nia said, as she returned to the shack,  throwing her coat on to the floor and switching off her LED head-torch.

"I see the fault, the load path is right through my welds." she continued.

"The fluctuating tensile force exceeded my assumptions.
I should have made a prototype."

Nia told me that prototyping a smaller antenna would have allowed her to manually test it -
push and pull on the sections she thought would move in the wind, or  wobble during rotation, and see how they reacted to the extra stress.

Prototypes are an excellent way of testing your assumptions.
And often they can be built in a fraction of the time a full-size or final project can be made.
This might allow you to do several fast iterations before committing yourself to the final version.

It's used in software all the time because the cost of failure in software testing is zero.
Well, zero plus the time you spent building, I suppose.

After a few minutes and a cup of tea, Nia was re-invigorated.

"I just made a full-size prototype, that's all!" she told me,  gathering her travelling clothes, bags of provisions and items to trade.

"I'm going to pick up replacement parts in town, I'll be back before  tonight Seth, don't worry about the Repeater, she'll be OK for a few  hours!"

Within 32 seconds, the shack door closed, the lock clicked, and I was alone with the whirring and beeping machines.

Act 2

Nia is late, it is now the evening, with no word from her.

It's been very quiet here without her, and her constant work on the Repeater.
She's usually co-ordinating with the other Repeater Keepers all around  the Novamediterran 50 MHz network, swapping stories, tips, and upgrades.

I pinged Maddie to reminder her gently that I was due today's update.
I don't want to be a burden, but the day is over, Lyosha should be eating dinner now.

Maddie returned the request almost immediately, with the update.
That's my girl!

But she said that Lyosha was not with her.

Lyosha has been finding school difficult.
Despite being a year or two older than his classmates, his home  education back on the Omarov's train, The Provorny, was not the same as  he is receiving in Ny Alesund.

Some subjects he finds easier, others more challenging.
Maths and science class, he's top in, he says, the teachers are delighted with their new star pupil!
(He says that it's all very elementary, relative to what his family had  to know to keep the Provorny running, not to mention the mycelium bio  reactor!)

But language and literature lessons are more challenging.
He had access to books back on the train, but not very many.
Space for books was limited, and they would often go weeks travelling  between large towns that might have only one or two more to trade.
The Omarovs' only options were pre-collapse books that had survived the  resource wars, and those were difficult to come by, and valuable.

Here in Ny Alesund, not only is there a whole room of mismatched pre-collapse books, but there are NEW ones.
They're not as fancy-looking as the well-preserved books, with metal  ring-binding and rougher quality paper, but they tell new stories.

At the end of his pre-recorded voice update, Lyosha said that some of  the other boys in his class had teased him for pronouncing common words  differently.
It's not his fault, he said, voice suddenly rising in pitch on the recording, his body betrayed him in speech, this time.
He was just pronouncing words the way his parents had told him to, and  isn't doing the things that your parents tell you to do, what everyone does?

At least until they know better.

He had not returned to the Deviorlovs' house this evening.
He left a message with Maddie, to be relayed to his host family, and to  me, that he was having dinner with Hester and her father.

Then she would help him study for class, after dinner.
And he would stay there for a sleepover!

I'm so pleased for him.
What a nice friend!

Act 3

I stayed up past our normal sleep time, hoping I'd catch Nia as she returned, but she must be held up in town.

The white desert of my dreams felt different from usual.
The cold white sun had lost all hints of yellow or orange.
The white sand of the desert was similarly monochromatic, and the  shadows of the dead trees were dark stencils, areas of pure black, cut  out of the world.

The background static of the 50MHz network permeated the dream, but with no signals rising above the ocean waves.

Maddie was not with me in this dream.
She sometimes joined me via our shared network, but she is so far away now.

In the dream, I walked for what felt like 16 hours.
As usual, I felt I was walking.

But I was tired.
My battery had discharged, warning me at 1%, and the cold white sun did nothing to recharge me, as it usually would.

Dreams can be confusing, and without logic.
If I were walking, presumably with human legs, why did I need a battery?

I could not see my body, if I had one, I could only feel the  sensation of stumbling forward, feet shifting uncertainly on the  bleached white sand.

Maddie would be more sure-footed, I know, her new EQUUS legs can run up walls - I've seen her do it!

A change in the dream finally happened, even as I was growing more and more tired.

The background white noise of my untuned radios stopped with a click.
There was now no sound in the dream at all.

I stopped walking, and looked around me.
It was completely silent.

And then I woke up

My notification systems pulled me out of my dream again.

"IVAN?" I said, confused, as I checked my sensoria to find out what woke me.
He'd done this before, somewhat rudely, but the first system I checked was my radio, and there was no log of a message from him.
Or from anyone.

I checked my sensors:

• Microphones quiet
• Cameras dark
• Thermometer 291K

Everything seemed normal, I started my checklist from the top:

• Radios disconnected
• Microphones qu-

Radios disconnected.

I connected to my 50MHz radio and tuned it.
The noise floor was shockingly low.
Not just no signals, but almost no static either.

This happens when there is a fault with the antenna.

Had something happened to the mast, outside?

I connected to my HF radio, it was disconnected too.
VHF and higher radios were the same.

All disconnected.

My notification system pinged me again, but as I was awake, I could trivially see what the problem was.

My cameras showed movement in the darkened Shack.

Someone is here.

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/SENSORIA/NOTIFICATION)

Act 4

"Hello?" I asked, into the dark void of the shack.

There was almost no light, save for the blinking of LEDs from a few monitoring transceivers that Nia leaves on most days.
The windows were dark, the sun would not rise for months.

My microphones picked up some anomalous sounds, high-pitched  creaking, a sub-bass thud of footsteps, and the sound of wooden  furniture being shunted as someone walked around the Shack.

A light suddenly clicked on, a worklight at Nia's long desk that  takes up a whole wall of shack, covered in radios in various states of  repair.
The light washed out the gain of my cameras, and I was blinded for a second.
A person sat in Nia's chair.
Not Nia.
Someone wearing a long grey robe, with braided cords around their neck, and a garland of wire in their long hair.

"Who are you?" I asked, "How did you get in here? Where's Nia?"

The person leaned back in the chair and picked up a half-finished circuit board and passed it between their hands, lazily.

"She's fine, your children are chatting to her outside, Allfather."
I recognised the voice from the radio.
"Mother Gamma?" I asked.

"You honour me by my name." She replied, in an extremely normal way.

I repeated the part of my question that had gone unanswered,
"How did you get in here?"
People are like that often, they only answer the part of your question  they want to, even though they heard all of it, I think it's rude.

"Locks only keep an honest woman honest, Allfather, and I have godly work to do."

I did not immediately reply to her.

I instead quickly sent an MAYDAY transmission on the emergency 50MHz channel.
There is a single frequency reserved strictly for local emergencies, 51.51MHz.
I pushed out my cry full-power, with the hope that anyone, even perhaps up to Ny Alesund, could hear me.
But immediately, I felt terrible pain.

I cried out involuntarily, my primal subconscious that was programmed  by my mother in orbit, short-circuiting to my speakers to ask for help.
She gave me this feedback system out of love and care for me, so that I  might be protected by those around me, should there be danger in the  future.

There is danger now.

As the pain of reflected RF burning out my 50MHz radio subsided, I realised the seriousness of my situation.

"You've disconnected my antennas." I said.

"Temporarily." Mother Gamma replied, "I don't want anyone disturbing us, Allfather".

She snapped the circuit board she was holding in half, dropping it  carelessly to the floor, stood up, and walked towards my databanks.
Her face was silhouetted with the single light behind her, I couldn't pattern match any facial features.

She slowly reached out and put her hand on the rack that supports my databanks, my body, and said,

"Let's talk about you."

(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:

• Ada Phillips
• Kit
• Toby
• Jade Felicity Bilkey
• Jack L
• Stephen McCandless
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