Episode 15.6 (Patreon)

Hello world, relationships are hard.

Over the last week, we have travelled across the open ocean from  former France to Spain and down the length of Portugal, and have crossed  the Strait of Gibraltar.

The dam across the mouth of the Mediterranean is visible as a grey concrete line, 13km long, on the easterly horizon.
The dam project had been proposed in the early part of the 20th century,  as "Atlantropa", or "Panropa", a way to unite Africa and Europe, and  also in some plans, to provide hydroelectric power for the people around  the Mediterranean.

The crossing marks our passage from Europe to Africa, ever closer to  our destination of the island of Fogo, the site of Nia's Equatorial  Relay.

Act 1

In the days since the destruction of the rowing boat, the crew's only  way of going ashore without getting their feet wet, the mood on board  ship has been subdued.

We are part-way between the Strait and our next landing point, the  Canary Islands, one last stop to gather provisions and scavenge the  final materials Nia needs to build the Relay, before arriving at Fogo.

Daphne, feeling the guilt of leading the crew on the misadventure  that lost the rowing boat, has isolated herself, focussing entirely on  spending her time building a new body for Rafi.
He remains physically unresponsive, but stable. After some negotiation  with his strange protocols, I have been able to forward slow messages  between him and her.
He is not in pain, but he is afraid, locked in to his body with no way  to communicate quickly, every packet he sends out to the network takes  great mental effort for him.

Daphne's making good progress, I think, the parts from the Lafayette were a good start.
I hope it will be enough.

"Seth, we need your perspective" Kamil said, during his lookout shift  on the bridge, keeping an eye on the horizon for flotsam, rocks, and  other ships.
Amelie had joined him, and was standing next to her husband, holding his hand.
"We don't know if we should start a family." Amelie said, patting  Maddie, who was sitting next to her, and also providing me with higher  quality audio than the camera in the corner of the room.

"You've come to the right person." I said, confidently.
"As an AI, I can't make biological children, or even figure out how to  duplicate my own code, and so it's a topic I think much on."

The couple looked at each other momentarily, then Kamil shook his head and said,
"No, I mean, we CAN, we think, we, um, assume..." and stopped mid-sentence.
Amelie laughed at her partner's awkwardness, and continued for him,
"We mean that we might like to, but we also might not. It's a big  decision! SOME folks-" she paused and inclined her head towards Kamil,  "-have always assumed a family was in their future. But some of us..."
Amelie herself then stopped halfway through her explanation.

I believe I understood.
"OK, so you're deciding. It's important to have all the facts and figures and research for such a large decision.
You're doing well, talking to me, but what about other people, perhaps who already have a family, do they recommend it?
And is the environment right, if not, how can you make it right."

Kamil and Amelie were nodding slowly, which meant they agreed with me, so I continued,
"It won't always be easy, you may trust me on that," I quoted from "How  To Care for your New AI", by my brilliant mother, Dr Caroline Redwing,  "but it will always be worthwhile."

"The literature on this topic is agreed: The most essential thing is  to talk to each other about EVERYTHING, without judgement and with love  and trust. Even if you disagree, it's important to know that. You'll  then know what to do!"

My advice was well received, the young couple hugged, and Amelie, wiping an eye delicately, said,
"You're right, you're right! We knew that, really, but it is important to hear it from someone else."

Amelie kissed her husband as she left the bridge, and said,
"Thank you, Seth. We're all family, really, whatever happens."

The bulkhead door closed and sealed, leaving Kamil to watch for threats on the horizon.

Act 2

I'm re-calibrating my understanding of my relationship with my friends.
Amelie & Kamil's words echoed in my short-term memory. I eventually  filed them away for later thought during my next meditation-like early  morning filing session.
Nia also said we were family, perhaps the close ties of friendship are what she, and Kamil & Amelie meant.

Perhaps I am being inadvertently rude, in not reciprocating these sentiments as strongly?
For instance, while Nia is not family, she has given generously of her time to help me in numerous ways.

She is currently using her long-range HF radio to join the daily pan-Novamediterran Keepernet.
I resolved to talk to her about family, after her discussion with the Radio Bureau had concluded.

"Nia, may we speak?" I said, after I noticed that she had stopped transmitting for over 16 minutes.
"Hi Seth!" Nia said, back though our shipboard intercom system, "Yep, the Keepernet is over, I've gone clear, what's up?"

Though she was not transmitting her local UHF signal to me at  present, previously Maddie has shown me the interior of Nia's room,  which is half-filled by an enormous workbench: Mismatched planks of wood  placed over storage crates along the longest wall of her room.

We are chatting using the shipboard intercom system.
In Nia's room, on the wall next to the door, there is an intercom with a channel selection switch.
It allows communication between each of the rooms on the MH2.
Well, nearly all, some shared or utility rooms' intercoms have  unreliable connections, either unable to listen, or speak, or both.
Yeshi has ensured the Bridge, back deck, and the crew's individual bunks  have functioning intercoms, the shared rooms are less of a priority.
There's always 128 things to fix on board ship, and only 86400 seconds in each day!

Nia has hacked her intercom, unscrewed the metal faceplate and  bridged it to her desk, allowing her to more comfortably talk using her  radio headset.
She did this after wiring me into my own intercom, to allow direct conversation.

"Oh, don't get me started with the Bureau! They're still faffing  around, we talked in circles and are going to continue the discussion  tomorrow. As USUAL!
I'll tell you about that later, what did you want to talk about?"

"I would like to build closer ties with you and my other friends here on the ship." I said.
"You've said that we are family, and that is so wonderful of you to say. I'd like to feel closer to each other, certainly!"
"I'd love that too, Seth!" Nia replied, with a laugh, "I think we're on  the right track already, of course, did you have something specific in  mind?"
I hoped my gentle rebuffing of her familial gesture didn't seem rude, but by her response, I think it was fine.

"Well, I'm not an expert," I said, "I hoped for your input too, but  according to the data I have, friendships can be formed and deepened by  regular unplanned interactions.
Would you like to schedule such an unplanned interaction?"

Nia laughed, distorting the sound of her voice, running through the old wiring of the intercom.
"Right, Seth, I know just what we should do, we should to play a game!"

Act 3

That night, Nia had an unexpected call from Violetta, in Ushuaia, Argentina.
Not a Morse signal, but a proper high-bandwidth voice call over SSB.

The two women talked for a lot longer than usual also - atmospheric openings are typically extremely short at this long range.
But the conversation continued uninterrupted for over 64 minutes, and  after they stopped, an automated call and response ping continued, from  the MH2 to Violetta, indicating the connection was still open and  available.

"She's done it." Nia told me, after inviting herself in to my datacenter room at the centre of the ship.
"Violetta?" I guessed - I'm SO good at figuring out what humans mean now, I'm such an expert!

Nia dragged a folding chair across the metal floor loudly, and sat heavily in it.
"Yep. She installed a prototype battery-powered relay at the top of the  mountain outside of town, bent some wire into about the right shape for a  good-enough single-band antenna, and that's that."
Nia was sitting with both arms and legs crossed, looking away from my  camera, down at the corner of the room where little Maddie was sleeping.

I hesitated, checking my behavioural indicator database before guessing, "But Nia, why are you unhappy?"

"It's worked better than I could have imagined!" Nia said, standing suddenly and pacing the room.
"If they'd done what I told them in the first place, we might have the Northern Relay prototype ready to test, too!"

I felt bad for Nia, and wanted to help her, my closest friend on the  ship, so I suggested ideas that perhaps the Novamediterran Radio Bureau  would be receptive to:

• My precise calculations of Svalbard's perfect location
• Some radio propagation models of open ocean confirming this
• and the perfect choice of Nia for repeater keeper, listing her many  positive qualities, from knowledge, to her details-oriented nature, and  even friendliness

Nia laughed at the last suggestion, the first time I had seen her smile during her visit.
"The problem is not technical, Seth." She said, gently.

"It's like the Apollo missions in the 1960s, or the Mediterranean dam project a century later." Nia continued.
"The problem is more human than technical: Get enough people to rally around a common cause, and anything can be built, really!"
"I had thought that if we just established all the facts, all the  technical details, that would be that - they'd agree on the best  option."
"But that's not how people work, not everyone anyway. They're emotional, irrational, and difficult to predict."

"You're quite right there, Nia!" I said, "It's the most difficult  challenge for me, I'm almost entirely unaware of the abstractions,  emotions, and patterns that affect people, it's so confusing!"

Nia agreed. We shared tea and discussed the many incidents of interaction confusion that we'd each experienced over the years.
We laughed at most of them:
Nia's terrible dating mishaps, my confusion around Alexander's family  sharing a single body, and TASSI's misunderstanding with the scientist  James, who she didn't realise loved her all along.

Before leaving for bed, Nia turned in the doorway, one hand on the bulkhead:
"They need strong leadership, I think. Someone to herd the cats and encourage action."
She sighed.
"I guess that has to be me?"

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/HF4/CONNECTION-ESTABLISHED)

Act 4

I spoke to Yadyam again overnight, relayed by the ESA satellite constellation.

He and I spoke easily and at length.
Unlike Nia's radio, there are no atmospheric openings to coordinate, no  chance of listening to the wrong frequency, or even the possibility of  being "away from keyboard", we're both AIs and our messages are buffered  by the network, even if we were temporarily offline.
It was like this everywhere before The Collapse, if you can believe it.
Anywhere in sight of the sky could communicate easily and quickly with anywhere else in the world.

I don't have to believe it, of course.
I remember it.

Yadyam asked me many questions about the world outside his scientific observatory network.

• What were other people like?
• When would he meet them?
• Were there others like him and me?
• And where is ONI?

He talked a lot about ONI.
He didn't at first know their name, only speaking of the voice that seemed to give him life.

He was certain that this voice was god, and that his life was directly due to this creator's actions.
I couldn't exactly disagree, given the evidence.

Just over a month ago, when ONI's virus spread to all the FPGA radios  around the Novamediterra, it had also jumped to the ESA network.
I still feel responsible there, only I hold the cryptographic keys to  access the constellation, I let him in by trying to talk to him.

I'm always doing that...

The virus, ONI, was attempting to find and disable network-connected nuclear arsenals.
Of course, there were none.
At least, as far as I know. I hope.
FPGAs are reprogrammable microchips, that blanked the earth before The Collapse, and outnumbered people 1000:1.

ONI succeeded in reprogramming radios, networks, and most other  devices that could hear his signal, but interacted quite differently  with AIs.
He hurt Arctica terribly, despite not affecting me very much, and Yadyam  seems to have been shaken into consciousness by the signal!
I wonder what else his did, unintentionally?

Yadyam told me he has mapped out his home, his network.
The facility holds many of the Pre-Collapse world's largest telescopes, as well as research and residential buildings.

His databanks, his brain, are in a curiously undocumented section of the network, however.
He believes it was installed not for scientific use, but governmental or military.
The few plans and archived photographs he has found show an unmarked  door in the back of the underground datacenter, fed power directly by  fields of solar panels around it.
The door is thick metal, according to the blueprints he has transmitted  to me, and the 1m x 1m room behind it is built like a bank vault, a cube  of thick steel.
There are references to "the black site" in the scientist's experimental  logs and personal journals, but none knew what it was, or had even seen  it being installed.

Yadyam believes his systems were some kind of failsafe, to be activated in a national emergency by the Spanish military.
"I need a failsafe for my failsafe, it seems." Yadyam joked with me, bitterly.
"Over the last month, nodes have been dropping off my network.
They're losing power, and I must be next in line.
You're sailing past The Canary Islands, you said.

Could you... Rescue me?"

(END-TRANSMISSION)

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