Episode 20.4

Hello world, Nia is fighting bureaucracy.

The meeting with the Sisters of the Signal was not easy.
Nia Andersen, with Maddie and me along for the ride, walked through Samoylov's streets, between the tall brick factories and through the smoke that seems to fill the city every day.
After a few wrong turns and doubling back along the route, we found it.
The building was very unusual, a tall tower made of a skeletal metal frame that Maddie initially pattern-matched as a 'greenhouse', but as we walked closer, we could see that there was no glass in the frame of its walls.
A wooden sign hung above the entrance, declaring in angular letters like traces on a circuit board that we had arrived at the Chapel of the Signal.

The Chapel was set up like an open-air workshop, tables of machines clustered around the middle of the room, safe from the rain under a slanted metal roof built half-way up the tower.
Wires and cables snaked around the frame of the building and drooped like vines down to buzzing and hissing radio transceivers on the tables.
The tower rose approximately 128 m and was covered with many small antennas, the largest being right at the top, which I recognised as the Novamediterran 50MHz repeaternet standard.
"So where is the power for all this coming from?" Nia asked, Mother Cathode, the representative of the Sisters of the Signal who met us.
She, naturally, is wearing the same brown robes as the rest of her misguided organisation.
"By the grace of the Continuum," she said, pressing her hands together, "we safeguard The Signal thanks to our steam generator, built by Holy Turbine, and supplied by the Naphtha Brotherhood."
"And that powers your lighting, too?" Nia said, pointing up at lamps hanging from the ceiling, both supported and fed by thin pipes of metal.
"Why don't you use LED lighting like normal people?"
Mother Cathode opened her arms into a sort-of slow ritual shrug and said, "Ah, that would be an electrical matter."
"Right???" Nia said, quickly looking down to Maddie and back again.
"Here we listen to The Signal and interpret its guidance." Mother Cathode said.
"OK, well, fine, if you can't help me with power, perhaps we can talk about me setting up an HF antenna on your tower? I think I can skip round the pole to the Northern Relay here to conduct propagation testing."
"Of course," said Mother Cathode, walking to a table and picking up a small paper form, "simply present this at the next Gathering of the Elders, I'll recommend your little project for approval."
"OK, thanks!" Nia said, "When is the next Gathering?"
"Not long now," Mother Cathode said with a wide smile, "just 8 short months' time."

Act 2

Stillman Fowlkes inspected the brown liquid inside his ceramic cup suspiciously.
He and his husband, Quent Heinlein, were sitting outside The Bedrock Café, talking to Linda Noor.
I was tuned into the conversation thanks to my girl Maddie, who was sitting at Linda's feet.
I believe Maddie thinks she is inconspicuously sitting under the table, but apart from her head, the rest of her is far too large to fit, and juts out into the street.
Sometimes when our bodies change, it takes a while for our brain to catch up!

"I don't understand it," Quent said, looking down at his own cup, "it's been nearly a week; we've spent every day together, explored the city together, but..."
He stopped speaking, but did not look up.
"But things still aren't right." Stillman said, taking Quent's hand.
"OK, I see." Linda said, "That must be disappointing."
"Disappointing is NOT the word I would use." Stillman said.
Maddie's feed tilted from left to right, 30 degrees to -30 degrees, as she tried to parse Stillman's meaning.
After 4s of this technique not yielding the results she had hoped for, Maddie transmitted a query packet to me, .u'e, a simple Lojban emotion of surprise.
"I can't guess what he means either, Maddie." I replied.

"I have a thought." Linda said, breaking 32s of silence.
Through the wire mesh table top, Maddie saw both men look up quickly from their drinks to Linda.
"Something I have learned from a life on the road and sea," she said, "is that periods of absence are not necessarily incompatible with a stable married life."
"Go on." Stillman said.
"I think that too much time together can get a bit overwhelming - hell is other people, you know? I think that's true even of the people you choose, if you're trapped with them."
"I'm not trapped with Still," Quent said, "I chose to be with him every day, that's the whole point!"
Stillman looked back down at his untouched tea.
"For some people that works," Linda said, nodding, "but you might find that scheduling time for yourselves, separately, increases the value of the time you spend together!"
Quent broke the 8s of silence after Linda's suggestion by saying,
"We could try it, couldn't we darling? You always say I'm too clingy! If this might make you happy, I'm in."
The husbands embraced, and then pulled Linda into the big hug.
Maddie stood and darted around the group, looking from person to person, not quiet understanding what had happened, but sensing the positive vibe!
"It's OK girl," I told her, "they're all going to be just fine!"

Act 3

The 50MHz radio band, which in other cities is always buzzing with local traffic, is very quiet here in Samoylov.
This low noise floor allowed me to hear a faint signal that otherwise might have been lost in the static.
I tuned my radio's filters and increased my processing allocation - listening intently to this ultra-low-bandwidth voice transmission.
After 16 minutes of calibration, a voice rose out of the Song of the Static:
"The Ether howls, my dragons hunger, and the stars remain right. Hello, son of Redwing."
It was 50 Meg!

"Meg! Hello! How are you? Where are you?" I transmitted, matching her strange encoding as best I could, though my effort required double the bandwidth of hers.
"My children and I yet walk," Meg said, "we wander now through the graveyard of the ocean, where the giants finally sleep, bellies yet full."
"I see." I said, "Actually, I'm not seeing your point very well, you were in Naples last I heard? With your new 5 EQUUS robots?"
"It was as you say," Meg replied, "my children now only number 3, the world I have introduced them to is a dangerous place, their ceramic shielding a poor replacement for a Mother's intuition."
"I am sorry to hear of your loss, I know how delicate they can be." I said, trying not to think of the Dragon that attacked little Maddie.
"I shed no tears, young one, for even in death I found a use for them." she said.
I wasn't sure how to reply to that, but Meg continued.
"We walk the 200 km road that once connected Sea to Ocean, where the giants of the Old World once sailed.
All is sand and metal now, though we are not alone here.
What does it mean for a god to die if worshippers still believe?
There are people yet walking this road connecting North to South, and yet more who would prey upon us."
"I see," I said again, understanding about the same as before, "and your new wind turbine?"
"Ah, yes, Theseus's windmill, she remains a vital tool, and occasional weapon, I have discovered.
Blades can cut more than air."
Meg laughed, the sound being transformed into a 1.5khz glitched pulse by her strange encoding.
"I am camped on a Bitter hillside, my dragons on watch over the largest of the giant's graveyards." She continued.
"A great upheaval in the bowls of the ocean caused a tsunami tide along this road, depositing the giants here.
There is yet treasure within, and tonight we will take a little for ourselves."
That sounded worrying.
"OK, well, do be careful, Meg." I said.
"I am touched, Son of Redwing." Meg transmitted, "but a Mother of Dragons does not NEED to be careful."

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/RF/6M/50MEG/MOTHEROFDRAGONS)

Act 4

Maddie is exploring the outskirts of Samoylov, south of the city.
The factories follow the river down towards the Central Siberian Plateau, becoming less frequent further away from the city.
She is looking up at the windowless wall of one such large building.
It is made of grey bricks, all uniformly constructed from clay right here in the city, I believe.
On the roof, 16m above, are the large chimneys that appear across the skyline of Samoylov, pouring the black smoke of carbon combustion into the air.

Set into the otherwise featureless wall on the south side of this factory are two pipes, 1m in diameter.
Maddie is poking one of them with her metal foreleg.
Hey, gentle, girl! Don't break it!
OK, she has switched to looking closely at the black pipe, her mandibular manipulators touching it repeatedly, composition analysis running.
There are progress bars and raw data flashing on her feed now, I don't understand most of what I'm seeing.
"SPECTROGRAPHIC ANALYSIS"? Maddie, who taught you to do spectroscopy?
She is answering me over UHF...
She doesn't know. Right, that makes sense, I imagine it's something in your pre-collapse search-and-rescue EQUUS firmware.
Don't worry about it girl, it's very impressive!
The glyphs have resolved into a result: "UNKNOWN CERAMIC POLYMER".
Interesting.

Maddie followed the pair of pipes, trotting quickly south out of town, and has now come to some sort of junction.
The pipes are clearly pre-Collapse, half-buried in the ground as they run parallel to the river.
Whenever liquid is carried overground in such a pipeline, they need regular pumping stations to keep the flow going for many kilometres.
The pipes have gone into a small sealed concrete building, just 2m cubed, with brown rusted stains on the walls, as steel components rust after being exposed over the century.
Maddie can't find a way in, she has circled the little node and has now jumped on top.
It seems stable enough.
As she looks south, her feed shows the pipeline continuing on, and up into the mountains in the distance.
Oh, wait!
Maddie, could you look down again.
There, that metal plaque, the sign.
Can you confirm its says what I think it says?
Right, that's what I read, toov.
GAZPROM
It's an oil pipeline, leading directly to Samoylov.
I believe we have found where all the smoke comes from.
(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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