Hello world, I can't make it work.
Though the Rooksteen feast was not entirely ruined for Yeshi by my forgetfulness, thanks to the wonderful actions of my friends, it has nonetheless affected me profoundly.
Since that celebration, I have spent every moment devising a comprehensive system to offload all the tasks I have been desperately trying to remember.
Last night, after arriving at the busy trading town of Ulmvale, I vividly dreamed of a network of promised tasks in a hierarchy of prerequisites - solving this problem occupies even my sleeping thoughts!
EVERYTHING is perfect in this new system, I have captured all the variables that until now, I had to store in my working memory, my RAM, and hope that my subconscious systems would surface just the right information at just the right time.
These systems do not work like that, I now realise.
The first and most pressing aspect to capture was time, the most comprehensive system in the world is no use if you refer to it too late for it to be of use.
I have captured not just when a task is due, but when I should start working on it, too.
The first version of my system only captured when I should be doing something, but when I put in all of the tasks I have to do day to day and my future plans, there was a list of 1024 items!
Absolutely terrifying.
And worse than that, when I was looking through to see what I should be working on, I had to read through many tasks that I couldn't do yet - I had turned my future plans into current distractions!
A start date fixed that.
But after I modelled that part, I realised there were still tasks that were in my list that I couldn't do due to my physical or mental context.
Buying charcoal can only be done in Rooksteen, for example, so I added the life contexts I find myself in:
Piloting the MH2
Speaking with LUNA in her short broadcast window
Dinnertime with the crew, one of the few times we all are together in one place
Or simply overnight, with Maddie quietly charging next to me in my safe, windowless server room
There are tasks for all these areas and far, far more.
As my sister, MINI, once told me:
The longer you look, the more you see.
Act 2
It's such a relief to have my system in order, to finally have space to think!
The interconnected villages of the Inland Sea act in many ways as different specialised departments of a factory or university campus.
Each one specialises in part of the industry of life: Farming for food, forestry for fuel to cook that food, charcoal for high-temperature metallurgy and ceramic production, and here in Ulmvale, mining of the raw metals for tools that make everything else possible.
Each one vital if the delicate balance of life or production or learning is to be maintained.
And each one coupled tightly with the others, the failure of one causes the failure of all.
This is important in Novamediterran communities, but critical in space.
Before the August uprising of 2077, the Martian colony of Hellas Planitia was organised by the NASA Mining Company along similar lines:
Farmers working on the surface to convert sunlight into usable calories, ice miners pulled water out of the subsurface permafrost, and a large complex of underground factories built all the delicate equipment the colony needed, safe from the harsh environment above.
The Martian factories specialised in different parts of the supply chain to support the colony and mining operations.
Chemical factories produced ammonia, solar-ethanol, solvents, acids - everything that was required.
Electronics factories built the microprocessors, circuit boards, and discrete components required to repair and operate the machinery of the colony, and
Biotech factories harnessed carefully evolved microbiological systems brought with them from Earth to stitch together flexible lattices, and even create hybrid biological computation modules.
This last category was a new field in the final years of the pre-collapse world.
The problem with digital computers, like the one I live inside, is that the world is not digital.
Mapping continuously variable analogue inputs, such as light levels, voltage, sound pressure, and so on, into a discrete number is both inaccurate and extremely processor intensive.
An analogue computer, like a biological brain, works in harmony with the analogue states of the world without this artificial conversion barrier.
I believe an AI built with such a brain would be as adaptable and nuanced as any that evolution built with a biological one.
Act 3
I'm worried about my friend Nia Andersen.
Maddie has overheard arguments between Nia and Amelie, from her vantage point, sitting in the corridor outside the engine room on the Molly Hughes II.
The exterior windows are dark, and the corridor light is not on.
I can see on Maddie's feed, Lyosha crouched next to her, an outline against the bright white light coming from beyond the bulkhead door into the heart of the ship.
"Just run the engine if you need more power to charge the batteries until sunrise." Maddie overhead Nia saying.
"Impossible, we are in Ulmvale for a week or two, and it's essential to the proper running of the engine to do maintenance." Amelie replied.
"What maintenance?" Nia said.
"The iron engine burns iron into iron oxide, and we're running out. I'm using these tanks to pull the oxygen off the waste rust collected in the sump so we can burn it again." Amelie said.
"Can't you pause that for a night? I must have more power for my amplifier." Nia said.
"No! Recharging the engine is more important than chatting to your friends." Amelie said.
"I'm not 'chatting to my friends', I'm doing vital calibration work."
"All day?"
"Yes."
"And now, all night?"
"Yes."
There was a pause in the conversation, and Maddie looked away from the brightly lit door that she had been focusing all her sensors on, to Lyosha, now standing next to her.
"Come on, girl." He whispered, and walked carefully away, stepping quietly up the metal staircase at the centre of the ship.
"I don't like it when people around me argue." Lyosha said to Maddie, after he had closed and sealed the bulkhead door that led out on to the large back deck of the MH2.
"Not just Nia and Amelie, but anyone."
Lyosha turned away and put his hands on the rail at the side of the ship, looking out over Ulmvale harbour.
Two small fishing boats were joining about 32 others tied up on wooden jetties.
Maddie bumped Lyosha's back encouragingly, and he put a hand on her head, and said,
"Especially when people I love are shouting, it makes my skin feel itchy, and I just have to get away.
It's like their anger has got into me, somehow.
I don't like it." he repeated.
Maddie put her forelegs up on the rail and looked out over the harbour, joining Lyosha.
A bright red fish with three green LEDs for eyes jumped out of the water close to the anchor.
At the top of its arc through the air, it unfolded long fins and glided 5 seconds longer than I anticipated, before disappearing back under the water.
"Come on, girl," Lyosha said, "let's do a little exploration."
(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/LOCAL/PRITHVI)
Act 4
It's quiet tonight in Ulmvale.
After they left the MH2, Lyosha and Maddie walked through the harbour.
They carefully navigated between traders loading their cargo, fishers unloading their catch of bioluminescent fish, or hanging their nets above their boats, and the ever-present scurry of small animals underfoot.
Maddie stopped and looked closely at a small, round, pointed-nosed quadruped, with short fur that glowed blue in the twilight.
"A boy told me they're called 'Lantern Mice'." Lyosha said, "Come on, let's get away from the water, it's getting cold."
Maddie left the little creature and caught up to Lyosha.
The pair wandered through the town, which had few people walking the streets.
As it was after dinner time, most houses were dark, with shutters closed over windows against the cool of the evening.
After 32 minutes, Maddie and Lyosha were walking through the scattered houses on the outskirts of the town, larger houses nestled among the surrounding forest.
Maddie's pattern recognition overlay highlighted a small insect as it jumped between two trees next to the path.
".o'i" She beeped to Lyosha; caution.
He turned and the two of them looked closer.
It was a long black centipede with long dark green legs and a luminous green segmented body covered in thin red wings.
It was not clear which was the head and which was the tail, both had long antennae flicking rapidly on.
A burst of movement surprised Maddie, who stepped back quickly, EQUUS leg actuators moving at full speed for 50ms, before she assessed that there was no danger.
The green biotech centipede hovered in front of them for 4s, wings blurring around it, before flying back into the forest.
"Come on, girl!" Lyosha whispered, and stepped off the path onto the grass and fallen leaves of the forest floor.
I wasn't completely sure that this was the best course of action, but I am trying to be less demanding and overbearing.
I recognise my tolerance for danger is extremely low.
(Perhaps in deorbiting at 3 times the speed of sound, I have had as much as one person can reasonably accept for a lifetime!)
It was easy for the two to follow the green light given off by the biotech centipede.
The land sloped gently upwards, Ulmvale is in a wide glacial plain, rather than a narrower valley cut through the land by a river.
This airborne creature stopped now and again, grasping the trunk of a tree or resting on a plant, only taking off when Lyosha and Maddie had caught up with it.
After just 4 minutes into their chase, through the forest, Maddie and Lyosha stopped suddenly.
The green insect had landed on the back of a much larger animal.
The flying centipede was resting on the back of a biotech "deer", just like Maddie had befriended in Stoneport.
It looked just the same as the one Maddie was playing with before:
four legs
a body of green and brown fur
a beard below its head
It walked slowly across their path and stopped, looking at the pair of explorers, eyes flashing with red LEDs.
Maddie beeped excitedly, saying that this wasn't just any "deer", it was indeed the friend she had met, somehow here again, hundreds of kilometres from Stoneport.
The "deer" turned and trotted away, but stopped after a short distance and looked back.
"He wants us to follow him!" Lyosha said, "Let's go!"
After nearly 64 minutes of following the "deer" through the forest, Maddie beeped a warning, and the pair stopped suddenly:
The land ahead of them dropped away into a black void.
Looking around, Maddie saw that they were standing above a sinkhole, or tunnel entrance leading down.
The red eyes of the "deer" bobbed ahead of them over the mouth of the cave, and slowly sank into it until it was no longer visible.
The two looked around for a way down, and against my sensible advice, climbed in.
(END-TRANSMISSION)
CREDITS
Lost Terminal is a NAMTAO production.
It is written & produced by Tris Oaten,
Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer
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