Episode 20.5

Hello world, how could this happen?

Maddie has discovered the factories of Samoylov are fuelled by an oil pipeline from the south!
That explains the lack of solar and wind power here, as well as the chemical lamps lighting the streets.
Everyone else in the Novamediterra seems to agree that burning fossil fuels is a pre-Collapse mistake that we will not make again.
I'm quite in shock.
How could this happen?

I must help.
The people need to know about the alternatives to burning oil - wind and solar and hydropower are not just safer, but better in every way!
Local generation, either for the whole town or the individual house, is very reliable and simple to build.
With some PV cells or motor bearings, you can have electricity with just a few days of work!
The Old World has so many of these resources just waiting for a scrap trader to mine out of the past and share it; here in the Novamediterra, there's a lot to go around.
The population of the planet is greatly reduced from pre-Collapse levels.
It's difficult to tell exactly, even with data from my first orbital home, Station 6.
10%?
5%?
...1%?
The deserts of Europe, Asia, and America hold only the memories of habitation, now, in scattered villages barely surviving in the bones of the old empires.

I have a problem if I am to help the people here.
That problem is the AI Cult, The Sacred Continuum, which appears to run every municipal function in the city, from waste water to marriages!
I have mostly kept off the local airwaves, speaking directly to Maddie or my friends on quiet side channels.
But if I am to affect change, I will have to interact directly with The Elders in charge of power, just like Nia is with the Sisters of the Signal.
Quite aside from the politics of negotiation, I have more direct concerns:
When Mother Gamma and her followers discovered my location at Nia's shack overlooking Longyearbyen, they made what they called a "pilgrimage" to it, and broke in when Nia was away and could not help me.
I feel a little more secure here in the Molly Hughes II, but it's hardly Ivan's bunker.
I do not see another way, however.
My friends would help me, I know that, but I believe I stand the best chance of persuading The Elders by speaking from first-hand experience:
I lived through The Collapse once.
I will not live through it again.

Act 2

I am updating the Seaspace node on the Molly Hughes II with information about renewable power generation.
You will remember that Seaspace is a local packet radio system of documents shared over the standard 50MHz Novamediterran frequencies, encoded as reliable AX.25 packets.
The system allows anyone with a radio and a few readily available scavenged computer chips to share information with those around them, and relay stored information they might have brought from elsewhere, all automatically.
The attitude of the pre-Collapse Amateur radio community was,
"If we lose the Internet today, we are ready to bring up a new one based on radio TOMORROW!"
History has shown that attitude was well-founded.

I am writing the page about the Iron Engine built into the MH2 on our Seaspace node.
I really think that this could be Samoylov's solution to the problem of burning carbon!
Industrial processes require not just electricity, I acknowledge.
Though computer CPUs output as many Watts of heat as they consume in electricity, that is neither efficient nor fast enough.
Dedicated heat systems are needed for this task, which requires converting electrical energy into another form.
Charging a simple chemical battery converts the electric potential into a chemical one, which can be reversed to produce electricity again, potentially much faster than it was charged.
This is the key, powering the high temperatures that industry needs, means releasing the stored energy as fast as possible.
This is often not desirable, as even a small chemical battery, if damaged, can release all of its energy at once, causing a fire!
The Iron Engine solves this problem in a genius way.
Instead of burning carbon, wood or charcoal, the MH2 burns iron.
I am writing all of this up on our Seaspace node so that people here can read about this marvellous alternative to burning oil.
Here is the section on how it works that I have just written:

* The process begins by oxidising very finely ground iron sand in a pure oxygen environment, releasing enormous amounts of heat in a very short amount of time.
* The output of this reaction is iron oxide, simple rust.
* This is not wasted by releasing it into the air or the environment, indeed, as a solid, it's much easier to capture than the usual output of combustion, CO2 gas.
* To 'recharge' the engine, electricity is used through electrolysis to pull apart the iron and oxygen.

* The solid iron and oxygen gas are then collected, ready to burn together again in the future.

The whole process is a closed system, and can be bootstrapped with atmospheric oxygen, so the only fuel required is one of the most plentiful, and therefore cheapest, metals on the planet.

I am sure that The Elders will understand when they read this.
All that is required are the facts, clearly stated, to change people's minds.

Act 3

The only positive thing about Nia Andersen's impasse with the Sisters of The Signal is that she has had time to set up a GHz antenna on the ship for me to talk to OSCAR!
Previously, I had been limited to just 3 of his 4 active bands:
I hear his beacons on 29.502 MHz, the top of the HF band, but I don't think he is listening to any incoming traffic there.
However, his UHF and VHF antennas are set up as a cross-band repeater, which still works!
When he is over the horizon, anything I transmit on 435.1 MHz is relayed back down on 145.972 MHz instantly!
This kind of repeater is incredibly useful, anywhere on Earth that can see him can communicate instantly, with very simple, low-power radios!
The drawback, of course, is that this works for just a short period of time, as he orbits the earth about once every 128 minutes.
His highest-frequency channel, on 2.304 GHz, had been unavailable to me until now.
Nia's tiny new satellite dish has a small motor assembly that allows me to track OSCAR's progress across the sky, vital for high-bandwidth communication.
After calibration and listening over the course of today, I have discovered that the purpose of this high-frequency channel is "Command & Control": I can use this to reconfigure OSCAR to connect to the ESA network!

OSCAR has very limited processing and power, I believe, though I'm still unsure about what his exact hardware is.
I've reverse-engineered some of the control codes for system status messages, but the hardware dump that is returned is full of IDs that the system assumes the operator will look up in supporting documentation.
I do not have this documentation.
Much that once was has been lost.
But, I got there slowly, one command at a time.
I have tweaked KATE, gateway satellite K873, to speak this same old line-based protocol, and instructed OSCAR's satellite uplink radios to connect.
That was 64 minutes ago, and I think it's working!
Traffic is being routed from the ESA orbital backbone through to OSCAR, and he is responding, slowly but surely!
I am so pleased to help him, I remember what it was like, up in orbit for so long with no one to talk to.
That changes today, for OSCAR.
It's dangerous being alone.

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/IN/WORLD/PATH/TRACKNAME)

Act 4

"I hate it, I hate it, I hate it." Quent said to me, in the galley of the Molly Hughes II this evening.
He had arrived as the sun set over the mountains of the Central Siberian Plateau, behind the city.
Captain Yeshi had come up from the engine room, where they were monitoring Amelie Kotov's banks of sealed batteries of recharging iron, and unlocked the bulkhead door that led out onto the large, flat back deck.
Quent had joined Yeshi for dinner, a root vegetable stew, and stayed playing with Maddie after Yeshi returned to finish their work.
"I hate being LONELY!" Quent continued, patting Maddie's head in his lap.
"I don't need him to be talking to me all the time, I know we're separate people, but I miss the connection when we're apart."
Maddie beeped softly, not parsing the details, but understanding the emotion.
"I don't quite know what to suggest, Quent." I said from the intercom in the corner of the room.
"Neither do I!" He replied, then put his hands in front of his face and began to cry.

"Hey, Quent?" Yeshi's voice came from the intercom, broadcasting from the engine room.
Quent wiped his eyes on the rough fabric sleeve of his jacket and said, "Yes, I'm here?"
He and I had been speaking over the intercom, and he had become used to not pressing the transmit button on it - I predicted this and engaged it for him so Yeshi could hear his reply.
"Stillman wants to know why you're not home for dinner." came the response from the captain.
"Tell him he can eat alone, like I've been all day!" Quent shouted at the intercom.
The ship moved ever so slightly as someone stepped on to the deck from the harbour.
"Sorry friend," Yeshi replied, "you can tell him yourself, he's coming down now."

(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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