Act 1
Hello world, there's an abandoned space base here.
Just outside the town of Thule!
I know, right, it's a LOT!
Some of the base's antenna array remain operational, and have been connected to the local Thule network.
Most were for military satellite coordination, but some were ground-based, positioned for over-the-pole spying on Russia.
My records indicate that it was operated by the US Space Force, a pre-collapse branch of the United States services, alongside the army, navy, air force, and so on.
Their motto was "Semper Supra", meaning "Always above", and their mission, I read here, was to "Secure our Nation's interests in, from, and to space."
"From space" is a strange thing to say.
Space itself is unlikely to pose a threat to Earth, protected as it is by the atmosphere.
The only time space is dangerous is if you enter its domain, leave the safety of humanity's home planet.
But I suppose they were imagining defending their nation against human-made threats from space.
They were always imagining human-made threats.
I have identified the Japanese signal that 50Meg suggested I search for.
She was right, as usual, It's fascinating:
It's a semantic document, encoded into X.25 audio packets.
It was a real struggle to decode, as the signal evidentially was being picked up by the Utqiaġvik repeater, from right across the Pacific Ocean.
However, the message repeated continuously. Every repetition I corrected more errors, cut out more of the static, until finally, after over 128 passes, my decoding confidence reached '5-nines' - 99.999% certainty.
The document is being transmitted from Tohoku University, in the old city of Sendai, in former Japan.
I am unsure of the name of the author, the best translation I can make is either "Doctor Mother" or "Mother Doctor", and I am far from sure that either one is correct.
Certainly, this person identifies herself with she/her pronouns, and many academic qualifications.
Very excitingly, she is transmitting an update on her work at the University's Takahashi AI laboratory!
The report is highly technical, it's a real challenge to understand the dense scientific language.
Just because I am an AI, programmed by my mother, the best programmer who has ever lived as far as I am concerned, doesn't mean I understand how I am made.
I'm not a computer, I just live in one!
There is one concerning thing, however.
The author of the report references "Dr Redwing", my mother, frequently.
And not very complementarily!
In fact, many of the experiments that are explained in this report seem to have been run with the explicit intent of disproving Redwing's Law.
(The law that states, "There can only ever be one AI on a network where the AI cycles in exaflops are less than or equal to transport latency in seconds")
I don't understand why this person would be so fixated on discrediting my Mother's work!
Just like the breakthrough of the Rocket Equation at the start of the 20th century, my mother's work paved the way for new kinds of people to be built.
It was all looking so bright.
But the Collapse ruined everything.
Act 2
"I miss her a lot." Said Lyosha, as he showed Maddie around on our first day in the floating city.
The pair were walking over, across, and through the decks of the other boats packed in to the harbour.
I am still unsure of what Yeshi's resupplying entails, exactly.
The ship's Iron Engine certainly doesn't need more iron, it's a closed system.
Most people in Thule live 'on the water', in the interconnected boats that make up a huge floating island.
There must be more than 1024 here - likely many more, as there are areas of the harbour that we have not seen yet.
During The Collapse, the Jensen Family told us, many of the surrounding towns were evacuated due to heavy bombing.
By which military, we don't know.
The Space Base was spared due to some kind of air defence system.
"Lasers." Lyosha told Maddie at the time, confidently.
A century ago, the refugees from all over north-west Greenland, including the town of Qaanaaq, to the north, settled here and made a new capital city, Thule.
"We were brave, though, and it won't be forever!" Lyosha continued telling Maddie, as they walked over a bridge connecting two sections of the archipelago.
"Hester was very supportive of me finding passage on the scrap trading ship to get here - she's so wonderful! - We cried together, and I said I'd come back soon."
Maddie looked up, recognising the concept of "crying" among many she didn't, and saw Lyosha smiling as he leaned on the wooden rail at the top of the bridge, looking up at the distant satellite dishes of the space base, on the horizon.
She zoomed a camera in on her friend's face, her EQUUS systems analysing minute muscle movements for a moment, before the message, "EMOTIONAL STATE: CALM" flashed on her feed.
"I could have told you that, Maddie" I transmitted to her gently.
"He's OK, and says that his girlfriend is OK too!".
Maddie bumped Lyosha gently with her head and the pair walked on.
Some people were waiting on the other side of the bridge, looking nervously up at Maddie.
I suppose she looks a bit scary, she's the size and weight of a pony!
Perhaps they were unsure how strong the bridge was for all of them to cross together...
They made room for Lyosha and Maddie to walk past them, and then made the crossing themselves.
A red kite circled above the deck of The Quiet Signet as Maddie & Lyosha returned to his, for now, home.
The bird was a kite in both senses of the word: made out of paper, in the shape of the bird, and tied to the boat's 50MHz antenna.
A clever design, it was keeping away the sea birds that crowd the sky above Thule.
Many of the boats were messy with evidence of these birds. But not the Jensen family's!
"Hi Samik!" Lyosha said as they arrived on the small rear flat deck.
"Welcome home young man," Samik replied, a small drink in his hand, "I made your favourite dinner, Ane can serve you up some if you go into the Salon."
"HØNSEKØDSSUPPE!" said Lyosha, and rushed through the hatch into the kitchen below.
Maddie watched Samik finish his drink, put down the cup, and then place his hand on the boat's tiller, even though the engine was off, and the boat was tied up.
"Welcome to the Gallery, my friend." He said to Maddie.
She looked around herself three times and sat down on the deck, looking up at Lyosha's host.
"Everyone needs a place to come to be inspired." Samik continued, talking as much to himself as to Maddie.
"The sun, the sky, and the sea, everything outside the boat is my gallery!"
A seagull squawked overhead, spooked by the fluttering paper kite.
"Well, and perhaps a few seagulls." Samik chuckled as the birds flew away, towards the dark buildings of the empty space base.
Act 3
The sound of a hawk demanded my attention.
I was listening out for Exu's call. After 50Meg's last message, I asked Daphne & Rafi to set up ongoing background processes to notify me, monitoring the network from the Fogo (Equatorial Relay)|Equatorial Relay's solar-powered systems.
The sound of a hawk's cry is quite distinctive, so only a lightweight acoustic model was needed.
When triggered, it sent a tiny packet across the Relay network, telling me to pay attention.
I don't know why Meg's recorded and retransmitted messages start with her hawk's squawk, but it's made my job easier!
I have recovered Meg's message, again stitching together multiple repetitions of her encoded signal.
She is walking across the dry, empty sea of the old Mediterranean.
After the Wall project dammed the Strait of Gibraltar, the climate changed during The Collapse so drastically, that the rivers and tributaries of that great inland empire dried up.
The sea shrank and shrank, km every year, until it reached its present-day state - Two large lakes either side of the barren mountain range of Italy.
"My journey had been solitary up 'till now," Meg said, in her message.
"But there are rude machines here, guarding the Tunisia pass. They were not here when last I trod this wasteland.
They are lost, disconnected from their collective, their father long gone, buried by his own actions.
Exu has whispered their secrets to me in UHF as he flies above their camp. They are not here to build connections, but webs, the better to catch flies who must pass through.
My airborne eyes have spied their group, noted their keeper of slugs, their inorganic mechanic, and their prime boss.
These metal ghosts are dangerous.
I am not an insect, I will not be caught.
I must make my way to Naples, across the wide Tyrrhenian lake. There are songs being sung there in the sweetest voices I have decoded in a great many years.
We will take a different road. Look for me soon, Seth.
Come, Exu."
And with a final cry, the message repeated.
(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/RELAY3/50MEG/SPACEECHOES)
Act 4
The lights of the Molly Hughes II dimmed as the crew returned to their bunks for the night.
They had finished their day's work of making the ship more liveable, but less seaworthy, ahead of the planned weeks of stop-over in Thule.
Amelie & Kamil had talked to the local traders and found that the next large old-world scavenging ship was to arrive at the end of the month.
After an evening of celebration, with locally produced food, my 3rd family took their rest.
After checking the cameras around the ship one last time, I, too, slept, and dreamed.
I dreamed of the network.
I saw that bright lights of packet connections were wrapped around the MH2, pulling and pushing data into and out of the ship, as though it were breathing.
As I looked, I noticed ONI's white fox avatar blinking in the corners of my perception.
I followed the 9-tailed fox out into the network beyond the ships that were around us, and as I looked, my perception pulled back, taking in the whole town.
A web connected us all, densely bright around the harbour town centre, but with thinner tendrils reaching out onto the land:
The farmers in the surrounding countryside, the bright lighthouse of the repeater in the hills above the town, and a thin grid connecting the large antenna array of the old space base.
Outlined in ghostly white, floating just above the repeater, I saw ONI's fox avatar looking at me, then after a moment, he looked up to the constellation above us, and lifted his black, front right paw.
He jumped, blurring into a reverse shooting star, and I was pulled with him, above the clouds, above low-Earth orbit, up above our planet.
After a period of perspective reframing, I recognised the Novamediterran network, haloing the planet, surrounding the North Pole.
There were dim connections leading down into the old temperate zones here and there, but the brightest connected off the coast of Africa, to the Equatorial Relay at the top of Fogo.
The light beam then skipped down to Ushuaia, on the southern tip of South America, and then spread out thinly to South Africa, South Australia, and New Zealand.
My vision spun as did the Earth below us, I saw a thin line connecting Utqiaġvik to Japan - was this the new signal I was hearing?
I focussed closer, willing myself to hear what it was saying.
With a start, I realised that I was falling towards the earth, having broken my orbit, I looked around for ONI, he was falling with me, legs outstretched in an elegant dive.
The land rose up to meet us -
And I woke up.
(END-TRANSMISSION)
Lost Terminal is a NAMTAO production.
It is written & produced by Tris Oaten,
Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer
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