Episode 15.1 (Patreon)

"Nia's Shack Map" Giveaway Announcement

Hi friends, Tris here, it's time for another Patreon giveaway!

Before we get into the episode, I've got a special offer for everyone  who is signed up to the Patreon by the start of season 16.

It's a poster from Nia Andersen's radio shack, featuring a large Azimuthal map of the Novamediterra, as seen from her shack, high above Longyearbyen.
There are LOTS of little bonus details, check out the links in the shownotes[1] of this episode for preview images.

To support me and get this poster, go to patreon.com/lostterminalpod and select any tier.

Every single patron, whatever level they are, you will receive a physical, A4-sized print in your postbox, wherever you live in the world.

The Lost Terminal Patreon is my sole funding for the show, I don't run ads as you know, so it's vital to keep the show running.

That address again is patreon.com/lostterminalpod

This free gift is a thank you to patrons old and new for allowing me to continue writing this wonderful story.

[1] Artwork preview not yet final, it will be by the public release of this episode, but here's a teaser:

Thank you all so much, let's start the show:

Act 0

Hello world, Maddie is home!

We were surprised yesterday by scraping and tapping on Nia Andersen's shack door.
Nia muttered something about "The cult better not have come back" but to our joy it was my girl!

The door opened into the polar night (the sun won't rise until  mid-February!) with Maddie's pony-sized body blocking most of the  doorway, supported by three orange legs and one black.

She was as excited to see us as we were her, she galloped around the  shack with Nia running after her, begging her to be careful!
She dodged all the cushions in the middle of the room, and didn't touch  any of the delicate radio equipment scattered on the workbenches.

My girl is always careful!

Act 1

Though Maddie had not confirmed by radio her journey from Ny 'NEE' Alesund, she had been listening to Nia's plans.

She told me that she wanted to help.

I said she would be invaluable in the first part of our journey -  returning my databanks to the Molly Hughes II, in preparation for our  equatorial voyage.

Nia had been planning for a month, talking to whole teams of Hams  around the Novamediterra who were keen to help, and today is loading  day.
All provisions and cargo, I joked with her that I count as cargo, are  ready to load on to the ship, ready for our month-long journey through  Europe down to the West coast of Africa.

My recently married friends Kamil & Amelie will arrive today,  with transport carts to bring both me, and all of the equipment that  Nia's new system requires.

It's going to be a long job, re-connecting the post-Collapse world back together.

But this is the first step.

Act 2

Nia has a grand plan.
As my friends installed my databanks into the MH2, Nia told anyone who would listen about her "Relay".

Yeshi, Amelie, and Kamil listened politely, though much of the  complex radio explanation was more of a challenge to understand, even  for me!

The inspiration, she said, was the old long-distance telephone lines, now destroyed by a century of neglect.
They acted as trunk lines, multiplexing many conversations into one resilient, high-bandwidth connection, for the long journey.

There is a point, just off the coast of Africa, that is directly  between Longyearbyen and Ushuaia, the town farthest south in Argentina.

The voyage is to the island of Fogo, off the coast of west Africa,  which according to Nia and Violetta's Azimuth charts has no intervening  land blocking the direct line over the ocean to both their locations.

Nia's plan is to build a relay on the island to bridge the two sites,  connecting the Southern Hemisphere network, which we know very little  about, and the Novamediterran 50Mhz repeater network.

Though there is no land between the proposed location of the Relay  and Nia and Violetta's sites, the curvature of the earth is an extreme  challenge.

Radio signals travel in straight lines, just like light, and just like light, they can bend and reflect.
Bending the signal around the Earth would be possible, Nia says, with  something like ground-wave propagation, as would some kinds of  atmospheric reflection.

She won't know for sure until she arrives and begins testing, which she is SO excited to do!
She wants to get going as quickly as possible, and is bombarding Captain Yeshi with questions:

• Have we finished loading cargo?
• Can she help with preparing any of the ship systems?
• Everyone is here, what are we waiting for?

Yeshi, wearing their ankle-length waterproof coat and overalls with  tools poking out of every pocket, clicked off the power to the ship's  small loading crane and looked at Nia with their hands on their hips.

After a moment's thought, Yeshi said, "We'll be off as soon as we're  at a full crew complement: We're still waiting for one more passenger."

Act 3

My connection to the shipboard network was unstable as I was being carefully installed by Amelie and Yeshi, helped by Maddie.
The cameras, especially, were not reliably connected for 128 minutes.
By the time my network was stable, we had sailed out of port, Yeshi's  new autopilot system keeping the ship on the right heading.

Though I had not seen us leaving, our progress did not surprise me.

Despite being disconnected from the cameras, my radios were operational the whole time.
I could tell we were leaving the island far behind, in the same way you  might if the sun was up, and you could see it drifting below the  horizon.
Vision is only one of the senses I possess, radio is more important to me, and they work very much the same.
Radio is mostly line-of-sight, just like light, and to me, the whole island of Spitsburg is lit up with radio transmissions.
The repeaters above the towns of Ny 'NEE' Alesund, Barentsburg, Pyramiden, and of course Nia's own, above Longyearbyen, were shining bright like lighthouses in my radio vision.

But they, too, slipped below the horizon.

The direct person-to-person chatter from across the whole island stopped first:

• The schools transmitting to parents that the class would finish 15 minutes late today,
• The construction site crew building new houses on the outskirts of town coordinating their work with small, handheld radios, and
• The wife telling her partner she was on her way home from work, and to please put the kettle on.

These low-power simplex transmissions blinked out of my vision at about the same time as the island itself would have.

Only the shining beacons of the repeaters remained, transmitting  their multiple channels of conversations from across the Novamediterra  with kilowatts of power across most of the Svalbard archipelago.

But even these familiar beacons of radio fell silent as the Molly  Hughes II powered further south, the Iron Engine gently vibrating the  whole ship.

I worried for Nia's equatorial repeater plans.

Due to the curve of the earth, the horizon appears 80 mm lower for every km someone travels away from you.
Soon you can't see them at all.

The rules for light are broadly the same as for radio, no matter what the band.

There are clever tricks available with the atmosphere, of course, and  I've heard 50 Meg from places I never thought I would hear her from!

But photons are photons, no matter what their frequency.

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/RF/HF2)

Act 4

As my cameras came back online, I took in the whole ship:

• The large, flat back deck, with a giant H in flaking paint still visible, and a repaired crane assembly towards the back.
• The bridge, the top of the ship. This is where captain Yeshi  consults navigation and Kamil's acoustic sounding instruments to  calculate our course, and check the wind and weather, to see if the  small sails will be a useful supplement to the engine,
• Linda Noor's garden, covered with blankets and winterised,  provisions would be brought or gathered, not grown, at least until the  lower latitudes.
• The engine room itself, where Amelie spends much time maintaining  the Iron Engine and the pumps for the water systems on board, including  the CWAP system, Combined Water and Power, which of course can't work  until we are south of the Arctic,
• Many small corridors linking the crew's bedrooms, which are called "bunks",
• the dining hall, called the "mess". The reason for this is obvious.

It's such a mess! The whole crew is gathered there now in a  celebratory feast, with lots of food, plants and some fish I think, as  well as drinks.

The last passenger has been introduced, and is surprisingly taking  the attention away from Maddie, who is otherwise still the crew's  favourite!

Daphne Pike stands at the table, talking to the room containing the nearly-full crew of:

• Amelie Kotov,
• Her husband Kamil with his arm around her, matching silver rings on their left hands,
• Captain Yeshi at the head of the table, patting Maddie's head, as she sits on their right.

Nia is not with them, the door of her room is closed, perhaps she is tired.

Daphne has poured small drinks from a dark-coloured glass bottle for  everyone, and is holding hers up in front of her in a toast.

She wears dark blue overalls with an asymmetrical tool harness over  her left shoulder, with her long blond hair tied tightly behind her  head.

"Thank you all for making us so welcome!" she said,
"I traded for this bottle of rum a few years ago, it's pre-collapse, don't ask me how much I paid for it, drink up!"

Everyone laughed and acquiesced to the social ritual, drinking their  small glasses in one go, and agreeing the old alcohol was indeed very  special.
While Daphne re-filled the glasses, Maddie put her mismatched forelegs  up on the table and looked closely at Yeshi's drained glass with her  macro lens.
The golden-brown liquid did not yield its secrets to her.

"I'm sorry I missed Nia, her work with the Repeater is so important to so many, I'd like to meet her!"

"You will soon," Amelie said with a smile, "She's just shy I think."

Daphne sat and other, less fancy, drinks were served.
The crew talked and bonded over dinner, Maddie visiting each in turn,  not quite understanding the discussions of waves, wind, and water, or  engines and maintenance, but just happy to be the centre of attention  again!

She stayed a little distance from Daphne, however.

Though she told me over our local UHF link she wanted to meet her,  and felt like they would be friends, she wasn't sure about her  companion.

On Daphne's left shoulder sat a small monkey-like companion robot, gripping on to her harness with its 4 hands.

Throughout dinner, it had looked around the room at the crew and the  food and the surroundings, head darting quickly between them, and though  one of its eyes was broken, the other was bright, wide, and staring.

(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
• Wynand Marais
• Jade Felicity Bilkey
• Jack L
• Stephen McCandless
  and to all our patrons!

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that would be lovely of you!

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