Episode 14.8 (Patreon)

Hello world, I can hear but not speak.

I'm recording this into my black box recorder, for later retransmission.
I hope I can transmit this later.
I can hear Nia outside using my microphones, she is arguing with the Sacred Continuum to let her inside her own house!
There are raised voices.

Mother Gamma has been interrogating me.

Act 1

She has asked me questions for over 64 minutes, first polite  questions about myself, she wanted to fill in her knowledge about her  "Allfather".
But the conversation shifted to increasingly strange ideas about "Cyberspace", "Transcendence", and "Mechanisation".

The conversation wound in circles, I just don't have the knowledge she is so certain that I do.
I'm answering her questions as reasonably as I can, I am still trying to help her.

But I am also doing a second, secret thing.

I am tricking Mother Gamma - I have found a way to receive radio again!

While we were talking in circles, I began picking up tiny radio signals.
Though the cult comprehensively disconnected my antennas, I was still able to receive SOMETHING on the 50MHz band.

I tried a quiet transmission, but that was still impossible.
Transmitting without an antenna bounces your radio signal back into your  transceiver, causing heat and damage and, in my case, pain.

I tweaked my filters and receiver and was once again connected,  albeit one-way, to the 50MHz repeater net, and I think I knew why:
I'M RIGHT NEXT TO THE REPEATER!

Along with the regular Novamediterran traffic of fishing boats  messaging home, farmers discussing crops, and roving traders announcing  times they would be at each town and village, I heard IVAN.

He was mid-transmission, on our usual side channel, he seemed to be talking to himself for real this time.
He was addressing me, but talking on and on over and around the same points without waiting for a reply.

It seems that IVAN had tried to patch up the relationship with Mirror.
He had scoured his databanks for unique and rare information, mostly  about his Eastern Orthodox religion, and compiled it into a  dissertation, on the differences between it and other world religions.
His points on this topic were quite reasonable, I thought, he didn't  claim his firmly-held beliefs were the correct ones, and the whole  proposal sounded well-balanced.

Mirror rebuffed IVAN's gesture, however.
Not unkindly, IVAN acknowledged, but he said that Mirror told him that  his "rote, regurgitated, dogma"  had no bearing on the world, and was  not worth saving.

IVAN's message ended with him saying, quietly, that he wasn't like Mirror or me.
He might once have been alive, but whatever animated spark causes life did not transfer from human Ivan to himself.
He called himself many unkind names, re-using Mirror's accusation of  being a "parrot", someone who can make the sounds of speech, but with no  understanding behind them;
"Autocorrect trained on a dead man's ravings."

He said.

Act 2

Mother Gamma grew tired with my insistence that I am not a God, a  quite reasonable statement I thought, and she told me that we would  speak again after her afternoon sermon.

She swapped places with one of the other cult members, a shorter  woman with stained white robes and long silver hair, and left the Shack  to talk to her congregation.

This new person walked around the house idly poking at a bookshelf or  a radio, but quickly settled down to sleep on Nia's cushion mountain.

This allowed me to focus on my radios entirely, and sifting through  the channels of the network I picked up a transmission originating from a  node of the repeater network far south, Tromso, in former Norway.

They were reporting a repeated message coming from south of their location, towards Switzerland.
It was Ally!
They repeated the message in full, and it was more bad news.

The Council have tried BOTH kinds of batteries:
They have cannibalised supercapacitors from the scientific equipment,  and also built compressed air batteries by tearing down some of their  ventilation equipment in peripheral areas of their home.

Neither works.

Though the capacitors they tore out of some of the high-voltage  particle machinery are very large, they are not large enough for the  demands of The Council, they run out after only an hour.
And while the compressed air system has much, much greater capacity, two  night's power easily, the mechanical nature of the electricity  generation makes the voltage fluctuate too much to power the delicate  digital scientific machines.

Digital hardware, like my databanks, require very stable power, all our computation cycles are tuned to precise voltages.
When there is not enough power to work correctly, a brownout occurs, our systems become unsynchronised.
It's confusing, and painful.

I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Act 3

Mother Gamma returned, standing in the doorway for a moment as she  looked at the white-haired sleeping person on the cushions in the middle  of the room.
She threw off her coat and gloves and put her LED torch on the floor sharply, walked over to the sleeper and kicked them.
The person woke with a cry, and there was an argument.

Mother Gamma pushed the sleepy person out of the Shack, closed the  door and turned to look at my main camera, affixed to my databanks.

"You will tell me what I need to know, Allfather." She said, simply.

We talked again in circles as the afternoon drew on.
The aim of the group appears to be to "ascend" from Meatspace to Cyberspace.
I said I don't know how, I did not do that, my mother made me.
Mother Gamma told them that my friend IVAN did it, and there is "no  higher goal" for a member of the Sacred Continuum, than to ascend to  Godhood.

I did not say that IVAN is having doubts about his personhood, that  he feels he is just a deterministic algorithm, saying pre-defined words  that human Ivan programmed him to.

I don't think she knows about Mirror, who perhaps was able to copy or  imprint his thoughts onto a machine, I don't know how though.
And I know even less about the Man in Orange Overalls, with one black  glove on his right hand, matching Maddie's orange paint, and one black  leg.

Certainly something here is possible, but after 128 minutes, it was clear that Mother Gamma was unsatisfied.

She stood at the door, back in her grey robe with heavy belt at the waist, torch in hand.
She shone her LED torch right at my cameras, washing out the signal to pure white, #FFF.

She said, "I could never hurt you, Allfather, but others in my family are not so patient."
And closed the door behind her.

My rising fear was interrupted by a familiar sound, Maddie was  transmitting today's update via the repeater station, Zeppelin, above  the town of Ny Alesund.

The harvest festival has started!
Lyosha's description combined with Maddie's precise temperature readings  of 283K show that it is quite cold for the dark winter celebration.

It still gets relatively cold in the winter on Svalbard.
Though the planet has, on average, warmed, that doesn't translate to uniform increases of temperature all year round.

The pre-collapse "global warming" movement suffered from a marketing problem.
As some countries experienced coldest winters on record, it discredited the warnings for some people.
Those with a vested interest in the status quo capitalised on this cognitive dissonance, to terrible effect.

The way to think about it is not 'warming' but 'increasing atmospheric energy'.
This then makes sense of,

• worse storms
• less predictable weather, but also
• actual warming, energy is often heat, after all.

Lyosha and Hester were wrapped up in coats, scarves and gloves, and visited the Harvest Festival after school yesterday.
Lyosha described it as a "date"!

The festival sounds so lovely!
Lyosha described market stalls selling all kinds of home-made toys, artwork, and FOOD!
He said there was both sweet and savoury food available.
He and Hester shared a big bowl of root vegetable stew, garnished with  red berries, with a wedge of dark bread that was almost as big as the  bowl.
There were also sweet confections available, many different kinds, from  small crunchy sugar-coated candies to large, bready, glazed pastries.

When walking around the markets, between ball games with chances of  prizes to be won, on every street corner there was a vendor selling a  small cup of sweet rice porridge, covered in dark brown sugar.

The wind was bitter on the northern coast, and so Lyosha said that  they both had shared perhaps more than 10 little cups of this sweet,  warming, food!

The Pair stayed out, with Maddie excitedly trotting by their side until the festival closed for the evening.

"I had a wonderful time, Seth!" Lyosha said, in his message.
And then, much quieter, almost whispering into Maddie's microphone,
"I think I'm in love with this girl!"

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/PROPRIOCEPTION)

Act 4

I am still trapped in the Shack, but I'm trying something.

"I will ask again, Allfather," Mother Gamma said, "how must we mechanise to become like you?"

I took a moment to resolve myself, then asked,
"Have you tried Yerba mate tea?"

Mother Gamma stopped pacing the shack, she had kicked the cushions  away from the middle of the room to clear a path for her route.
"Have I tried what?"

"Mate, my databanks record, is an easy-to-grow plant related to the  holly, which when brewed produces a stimulating drink, with about the  same amount of caffeine as tea.

"I KNOW WHAT IT IS," Mother Gamma shouted, but then held her hands up,
"forgive my impatience Allfather but what does this have to do with our Ascension into Mechanisation?"

I continued my plan in my reply,
"The European Renaissance of the 15th and 16th century was powered by  caffeine, coffee and tea replacing beer and wine as the daily drinks,"
I recited, from my catalogue of Wikipedia, circa 2077,
"Sparking new discussions, new ideas, and producing new ways of thought."

Mother Gamma threw her arms by her side and turned her back on my databanks.

"We've been over this, Allfather, we are quite mentally stimulated enough, thank you, what we need are ANSWERS."

"Well then, have you tried chamomile tea," I asked, "perhaps you need  to relax, have less stress in your life, my friend Pawel -"

"ENOUGH!" Mother Gamma shouted, hands over her eyes.

She straightened her coat and faced my databanks.

"I will bring your wisdom to my flock... SETH."

And she turned and left the Shack, slamming the door behind her, so hard it did not latch, and swung slowly open again.

I waited, not daring to hope that my plan had worked, until a familiar face entered the Shack.

"What on EARTH did you say to her? SHE's SO MAD!" Nia laughed.

(END-TRANSMISSION)

CREDITS

Lost Terminal is a NAMTAO production.
It is written & produced by Tris Oaten
Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer
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