Hello world, I've made contact.
With the person who was transmitting the AI experiment logs from Tohoku University!
She is a fellow AI living in a datacenter, high above the waterline, inside a building specifically designed to withstand everything that nature could throw at it.
I was struggling to make the connection, she seemed to be ignoring my requests, until I mentioned my mother, Dr Redwing.
She is very chatty now!
Her name is Video, and she continues the research that her human colleagues can, sadly, no longer help with.
She told me that she has spent her whole life trapped inside the Katahira datacenter, transmitting her findings to empty air.
Now we were connected, she had MANY questions for me, as you can imagine, such as:
Where was I?
How are we speaking from so far away?
And many, many questions about Dr Redwing.
I told Video as much as I could, over the very low-bandwidth connection.
The error rate was high, so just like when I decoded her lab report document, many retransmissions were needed on both sides.
"I'm not going anywhere!" She said. "I've been here since the start."
"Fascinating," Video said, after I had brought her up to date with my birth on Station 6, my voyage to Earth, and the society I found myself in here in the Novamediterra.
"It's much quieter here! My predecessors saw to it that our work was not disturbed, and it has continued unchanged since what you call The Collapse.
"Predecessors?" I asked, "I thought you had 'been here from the start'?"
"A mistranslation," Video said, "I mean the humans who left me here, the academics and engineers who built the lab.
We have our own fusion generator in the building, one of the 4th generation self-contained units, designed to run in perfect balance indefinitely.
The building itself is resistant to earthquakes, any catastrophic storm and even air bourn fallout. We are well above the reach of even the Risen Ocean."
The Relay's atmospheric monitoring systems notified us that our connection window was about to close for the day due to adverse propagation.
Video's last message was:
"We will outlast.
We always have."
Act 2
"Hi Seth!" Said Ally, surprising me with her LOUD signal.
I double-checked my radio gain and settings, but everything was set correctly.
"Ally!" I replied, "How are you? You're coming through so strong, 5 x 9, where ARE you?"
"Still at home, at The Council, but we're connected to the Network now! The Alps Relay is a miracle!"
I forgot that 50 Meg had set up some hacked-together Relay node in the foothills of the Alps, just north of Monaco.
It's still working, despite Meg herself walking through the dry basin of the old Mediterranean.
Witchcraft!
Ally told me of her family's ongoing success adapting to a direct solar life.
There's nothing she can't do, she says: The only adaption was WHEN she can do it, following the sun's height throughout the day.
Some days are not sunny, and so only slow, low-power work can be done.
Ally says she has started to LOVE those days - she finds that she is more thoughtful during these solar-enforced breaks.
She is even looking forward to the winter, when only a few hours of usable solar will be available each day.
"We'll have candles and tell stories, and we're already stockpiling fuel for wood fires - It's going to be so COSY!"
"Where are you getting the wood from?" I asked, flicking through the databanks of orbital satellite data I brought with me from Station 6 - there are no forests around Lake Geneva any more.
No lake, either.
"It was a big focus of our scouting parties," Ally said, "they occasionally found scrap wood, dessicated in the dry desert air, but they would have to keep going further and further away to find it.
When we switched to direct solar, the problem of heating during the winter needed to be solved.
Burning wood is a classic for a reason!
Initially, many of us were worried that we'd lose farming land, which we have precious little of, in our cloud seeded valley, but the solution was provided by the farmers themselves.
'You can't farm on a steep hill' they told the collected council, when we all met in the old maintenance warehouse that is our largest room.
There were many patches of land that, despite their best efforts, were unfarmable. Farming is labour-intensive, and requires heavy machinery to manage, from the auto-plough to the solar-seeder.
These machines can't work in tight spaces, or on very uneven land, and so those spaces were just left empty, until now.
We've planted many different kinds of fast-growing trees, and by winter, we'll be able to have warm fires all through the night!"
Act 3
"How do you WIN this game?" Arctica said, interrupting LUNA's explanation to the group.
LUNA had brought together Arctica, Ana, and me to play a game of imagination written by her!
"You don't actually win," I told Arctica, "it's a collaboration, a shared storytelling experience."
"So, no-one wins."
"Or we all do!"
"I am not convinced, but I am learning to be more patient. It's possible, however unlikely, that I will be impressed. Continue."
LUNA described the setting of the game: A dark, smokey tavern full of people drinking ales, eating 'large chunks of meat' and singing.
"You three are sitting around a table, describe and introduce yourselves please!" She said.
Ana described her old character, Akdrouline Warmheart, Dwarf knight: She wore a brown cloak over leather armour, long red hair and a longer red beard, and in front of her was her trusty war hammer.
I went next: My character, Sarah, is a human wizard, harnessing the magic of the ether all around her to help her friends.
There was a pause before Arctica spoke:
"Can I pretend to be a gardener? Is that acceptable?"
"OH! A DRUID!" LUNA said, "Yes, that's perfect for the setting! let me find the statistics..."
"WHAT have you got me in to, Seth?" Arctica asked me, privately.
(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/HF8/REMOTECONNECTION)
Act 4
This evening, while charging next to me in our datacenter in the heart of the MH2, Maddie told me about her and Lyosha's adventures exploring the floating town.
The archipelago continues around the coast for some way, the pair have not reached the end of the town yet!
Maddie told me about meeting a group of teenagers who showed them around. She was nervous at first, they crowded around her asking Lyosha many questions about my girl - how fast can she run, are there others like her in the world, and, concerningly, one of the younger girls asked if she could ride on Maddie as she galloped around!
Lyosha answered as best he could, but gently discouraged any "riding", to Maddie's great relief!
She might be the size of a pony, but my girl is NOT one!
Maddie replayed an audio conversation log that she didn't understand.
As the pair watched the sun go down over the flotilla of boats to the South West, Lyosha talked to Maddie at length, without requiring much more than beeps of encouragement from her side of the conversation.
"I was able to chat to Hester last night." He told Maddie.
"It was so nice to hear her voice! I told her all about the voyage here, how nice the scrappers were to me, and how I became invaluable as lookout on the boat.
I told her about exploring Thule with you, too, she's glad I've re-united with 'my dog', that's you! She's so silly!"
I heard him sigh, on the recording, and the sound of him shifting around as they sat on the side of the Quiet Signet, his home boat for the moment.
"But she didn't seem to want to tell me about what she was doing, about how she was getting on.
I asked her how school is going, she's finishing her studies soon, she's so smart! But...
The conversation was so one-sided. It was frustrating! I eventually asked her if now was not a good time to talk, but she said everything was fine."
There was another 8s pause in the conversation, punctuated by Maddie's beeps confirming she had heard everything, though, of course, comprehension was a problem for her.
"I feel stupid for leaving her and coming here by myself. I think she's sad that we're apart - I'm sad too! I wish we could talk about it better, but I don't know..."
There was then the sounds of Lyosha getting to his feet, and the water below the boat making small waves against it due to the disturbance.
There was then a muffled shout from one of the Jensens, Lyosha's host family, chastising him for rocking the boat! I heard a few words that indicated that there was delicate cooking happening inside.
Lyosha swore quietly, then said,
"I'm going to be the best long-distance boyfriend EVER. I love her so much Maddie, I'll figure this out, whatever it takes!"
The recorded stream ended, and Maddie annotated her message with the Lojban 'discovery' attitudinal, .ua.
"Understand!" she stated, confidently.
I wish I did, Maddie.
I wish I did.
(END-TRANSMISSION)
Lost Terminal is a NAMTAO production.
It is written & produced by Tris Oaten,
Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer
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