Hello world, we are entirely off the map.
The Molly Hughes II, with me safely in the windowless server room, sailed through the Greenland Strait and into the Inland Sea.
This sea formed relatively recently, by the melting of the ice sheet that previously covered the island, revealing this new body of water.
It is hard to believe that before The Collapse, there would be over 3km of ice over us right now.
None of my digital archives of maps show this new Greenland, a hook-shaped island with this new interior.
Much of what was has been lost, but here and there, the destruction of the Old World has given over to new beginnings.
Lyosha and Maddie have had the run of the ship during our 32-hour voyage, from Amelie Kotov's workshop to the bridge.
The two have made a game of spotting other vessels also cruising the Inland Sea. Their catalogue is made up of mostly fishing boats, though they spotted some larger trader and scrapper ships now and then.
The Novamediterra diet is primarily ocean-based, both fish and ocean seaweed crops like kelp. Unlike the pre-collapse world, there is far less land for farming, especially of animals. Growing plants and consuming them directly is a far more efficient way to build calories.
"It's food for them or food for us!" Sonar technician Kamil Forester told Lyosha over dinner in the Galley, one evening.
The main calorie producing region of the Novamediterra is Siberia, and the floating capital archipelago of Samoylov Island. Though people consume far more local crops than in the pre-collapse world, there are some areas that do not have the right geography for efficient farming.
Places such as our first stopping point: Stoneport
Act 2
A thought has been bothering me since we left Thule.
I have travelled so far - further than anyone alive today, if you count my return from orbit - and I DO.
It certainly feels like it, I have memories dating back over a century, or I should have.
I don't have an infinite memory store Turing machine, my databanks hold a huge amount of data, certainly, but memories, experiences, are too complex to be stored unprocessed.
The raw feeds from my cameras and microphones and network interfaces that I experience the world through would fill up my databanks in a matter of weeks if I stored them all.
Just like you, I process these raw experiences when I sleep and dream.
Important details are stored as memories, but unimportant minutia is discarded.
So while I can tell you exactly how it felt to be falling through the atmosphere at 3 times the speed of sound, I can no longer remember exactly how Maddie, Matt, and Matts secured themselves into the shuttle for the trip.
I know they must have done, at least Maddie survived the journey, but the details are lost.
But perhaps more subtle memories are absent too:
Maddie's disposition is so friendly and cute, but what were her brothers like?
I can't remember.
That is not acceptable.
Our ability to learn from the past is predicated on the ability to recollect the past.
This is why language, especially writing was such a pivotal moment in history:
It literally STARTED history.
Learning from other people's past successes and failures isn't just good for finding food and avoiding danger, it was the start of what would become the scientific method.
The only way we can learn about the world, as Feynman said, without fooling ourselves.
Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it, people say.
Imperfect recollection means imperfect, or perhaps even completely wrong learning.
I am not in control of the unconscious mechanisms that abstract my memories, which means I am not in control of what memories are lost.
I have forgotten more than I now remember.
Act 3
Lyosha and Maddie have been exploring Stoneport with Amelie Kotov and Kamil Forester.
The village is small, about 512 people, nearly all of the families are either fishers or work on nets, lines, rods, boats - to support this main industry.
Outside the village, there are large farms set up in cleared parts of the pine forest.
"There's no school." Lyosha muttered to Maddie as the pair followed Amelie and Kamil, who were walking hand-in-hand, stopping regularly to speak to one of the locals.
The people of Stoneport seemed to favour bright, primary colours in their clothing, contrasting with Lyosha and Maddie's darker, but more practical, oiled cotton coats.
"I was hoping to make some friends," Lyosha continued, "I hope the next village has more kids my age!"
Maddie beeped an agreement in encoded Lojban. Other than me, only Lyosha understands what she is saying, I love seeing the two friends together again.
The locals seem entirely un-phased by Maddie, which is a nice change.
"You hungry, lad?" Kamil asked, when they were in the centre of the village, a large market square with a few traders unpacking wooden tables.
"YES, OH MY GOD!" Lyosha said, rushing between Kamil and Amelie, "What is for lunch?
Amelie laughed and messed Lyosha's short blonde hair, and said, "Let's ask in here, I think I see some people with fish stew?"
"STEW!" Lyosha said, and ran into the large house ahead.
Maddie's cameras increased their gain, adjusting to the dark, smokey room in the house, illuminated by batteries hung from the ceiling, each with wires of mismatched LEDs wrapped around it.
Inside, there was a single long room with a fire in the middle and two rows of benches along each long wall.
At the far end was a table with a metal caldron on, and Lyosha was already asking questions of the man behind it:
"What fish is this?"
"What are those green things?"
"Is there bread?"
The man looked back at Amelie and Kamil, who waved sheepishly, and then down at Maddie, who was by this time, at Lyosha's side.
He smiled at Maddie from behind his beard, laughed and said, "All right then!", and served Lyosha a large wooden bowl of stew.
While Kamil bartered with the man for their lunch, Amelie and Lyosha sat on the end of a wooden bench at the table, underneath one of the candle-batteries.
Maddie sat on the floor between them and the serving table and looked around happily at anyone who walked by.
"Pardon me, dearies," A shorter woman with white hair said, as she leaned across the table. "I've got to top up the candle, won't be a tick!"
The woman had what looked like a watering can with a long, thin spout rising for about a meter above the reservoir.
After a few misses, she hooked the candle-battery with the end of the spout and pressed a plunger on the top of the watering can.
The battery was the acid type, metal electrodes suspended in the acid converted the chemical energy into electrical.
Very reliable, very simple, though much lower energy density than state-of-the-art pre-collapse technology.
The acid levels drop as the battery is used, and a simple way to extend its life is by topping it up with water, keeping the electrodes submerged.
After the woman had topped up the battery, she put the watering can on the floor next to Maddie, and patted Maddie's head carefully.
"I like your dog." the woman chuckled, "Bright eyes, so friendly, and WHAT a nice coat!"
(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/LOCAL/RF)
Act 4
Maddie made a new friend today.
While she charged back with me on the ship, she told me about an animal she met as she was exploring outside Stoneport while Lyosha was eating lunch.
"A dog?" I asked her.
"A deer." She replied.
"How lovely!" I said, "What kind of deer, could you tell me what it looked like?"
Maddie described four legs, below a body with green and brown fur, a short neck with a cluster of eyes on the top, and then another leg centrally below the head.
"Oh. Maddie." I replied, "Where, EXACTLY, did you meet this new friend?"
She gave me a map coordinate in the pine forest behind the village, close to a path leading North-East.
I quickly checked that Lyosha was still in the village - Amelie radioed back, saying he was with her and Kamil. They had traded for spices and were returning to the ship where the three of them would make tonight's dinner.
That was a relief.
I asked Maddie if she would show me some video of this new friend. She responded eagerly, streaming her video log to my systems.
Her description of the creature was not wrong, this was not a deer.
The video was quite blurry, the pine canopy overhead was blocking much of the light, and Maddie was circling around the trees at a gallop.
Occasionally, when she looked back to find her playmate, I saw the "deer".
The creature had four legs, not five. The front pair were much longer than the rear, and the feature Maddie described as a central leg below the head was more of... a spine? Or beard?
The creature moved quickly, wrapping its flexible front limbs around the trees as it chased Maddie.
Had Maddie not safely returned and told me that this was a game they were playing, it would have looked like a nightmare.
But as the video feed continued, the game of tag produced no injuries.
The two took it in turns chasing each other, with the creature, this "deer", seeming the victor, as it was able to climb a tall pine tree like a monkey, using its flexible grasping front arms.
Maddie was not to be beaten, it seemed, after a burst of calculation, her EQUUS actuators launched her vertically, bringing her cameras right next to the face of the creature.
At the top of her jump's arc I slowed down the recording and studied the creature.
There was nothing matching this description in my databanks of pre-collapse fauna.
Not only that, but close up I could see it was partially mechanical!
The body, legs, and head was organic, with brown fur mixed with algae or moss or... something planty.
But the eyes were cameras, lenses, very similar to Maddie's, and it moved jerkily, far more like a robot than an animal.
Maddie reached up her single black front leg and touched the "deer" gently on one of its arms, that were wrapped around the tree, and sprang back to the forest floor, with her new friend in chase.
(END-TRANSMISSION)
Lost Terminal is a NAMTAO production.
It is written & produced by Tris Oaten,
Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer
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