Episode 19.9

Act 1

Hello world, Lyosha is trying again.
After talking to his friend Kat Stronski all night during their sleepover, Lyosha reconsidered his attendance at the Queens College, here on board the Kuethir.
Thought Kat's mother did not want them to be talking all night, I have noticed that it is not always possible to control what teenagers do.
Or anyone, for that matter.
Maddie walked with him and Kat up from Deck 7, where the Stronskis live, to Deck 3, their lecture for the morning.
Carma Sah, the principle of the college, was there, both wishing students a good morning, and also attempting to keep order in the busy public corridor!
Maddie watched Lyosha follow Kat down from the main stairwell.
Outside the class, he hesitated and turned to look back at Maddie, frowning, an expression I pattern-matched as 'worried'.
".o'a" she beeped at him, meaning "you can do it!".
Smiling at this, Lyosha waved at her, then entered the old movie theatre that the College repurposed for lectures.
Principle Sah nodded briefly at Maddie, and, seeing that the last of the students had arrived, entered the classroom and closed the door behind him.

That was this morning, and though Maddie has had an adventure of her own, I will tell you about Lyosha's day first.
He arrived back in the room my databanks are set up in, the ship's old Casino, at 23:30 NST, just before dinner.
"I'm so stupid." Lyosha said, as he dumped his heavy school bag on a green-topped table, and collapsed into a chair.
"It's OK Lyosha," I began, "college isn't for everyone, we're all good at different things, neurodiversity is beneficial for society as a whole."
"What are you on about?" Lyosha asked, looking up from the table.
"Don't be sad if you don't like the College." I summarised.
"No, I DO like it!" Lyosha said, "I'm stupid for getting worked up about the princess thing."
I paused for a moment while my mental model shifted.
"So, what happened?" I said, eventually.
"Kat was right," he said, "no-one actually cares that I was a girl once.
The reason they were treating me differently is not because of that, but because I'm so far behind the rest of the class!"
I mentally replayed our conversation after his first day with this new context, it correlates.
"I have SO much to learn, but Mr Sah put me in the correct class, it sucks that I'm not with Kat, she's a genius, but I'll work hard and catch up soon!"
I wanted to ask more, but Lyosha emptied out his bag, covering the little table with books, picked up a metal pencil and began studying.
I wanted to congratulate him, but also I would rather not interrupt his work!
I decided to tell him later.

Act 2

Returning back to my logs of this morning, Maddie waited in the corner of the stairwell watching the closed door of the lecture theatre in case her best friend needed help again.
My girl is so sweet!
After 16 minutes, someone did open the door and step out - the principle, Carma Sah.
He was dressed in a long tunic over trousers, similar to many people here in Utqiaġvik, but uniquely, he wore a bow tie tucked in to the collar of his shirt.
Carma looked up and down the corridor, saw Maddie, and walked over to her.
"Maddie! Darling!" he said, "your master, Lyo, looks to be enjoying his chemistry studies, Mr Ko is taking the class, one of our best, I assure you."
".ienai"
Maddie beeped, disagreeing, then sent me a cluster of clarification packets when Carma did not understand her.
"Hello Carma," I said, voice coming from Maddie's speakers, "Maddie says that Lyosha isn't her master, but her friend."
"Seth!" Carma said, "I was hoping we would find a moment to speak, I must return to my office, but do you both have time to spare?"
Maddie confirmed, satisfied that Lyosha was in the right place.
"Yes," I said, "that sounds lovely!"
"Delightful!" He said, "Well, no time like the present, this way please." and walked down the ship's Main Stairway.
"Follow him, girl!" I transmitted to Maddie, who trotted smoothly down the stairs behind him, all the way to the bottom, Deck 8.

"Please make yourself at home, Maddie." Carma Sah said, as he closed the door behind him and Maddie.
"I don't know what to offer you, I was going to make tea, do you, uh, drink?"
The room, his home, was small, as many down in Deck 8 were, but it was packed full of BOOKS!
Shelves on every wall were full, overflowing their contents down into small piles on the floor.
"Nothing, thank you, but please go ahead." I said on Maddie's behalf.
It's important to be polite.
Carma walked between two wooden stacks of books and brought out a small, low, table with a teapot, a stack of tiny cups, and a shiny metal kettle with a cable that snaked back along the floor.
After checking the water level inside the kettle, he pressed a button, and it began to hiss quietly.
Maddie watched all this in astonishment - she had never seen water boiled by ELECTRICITY before.
"It'll take a while I'm afraid," Carma said. "Fire would of course be faster, but with all the precious paper around, time is the lesser evil."
"A very impressive library!" I said.
"Thank you, it's not as, uh, organised as one might like, but the history is so important."
"History?" I asked.
"I am building, or trying to build, a comprehensive history of the Kuethir, our home." He said, with a sweeping gesture taking in his whole collection.
"Terrible things happened in the history of this ship, and it's clear to me that terrible things are happening yet still, behind the scenes, in the shadows.
And those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

Act 3

Maddie and I had a very enjoyable conversation with Carma Sah over the course of the morning.
He was very interested in my journey, from Station 6, to IVAN's Bunker, and Longyearbyen, Antarctica and back, and most recently to Fogo, building the Equatorial Relay, and then back to the Novamediterra.
"You've had a jolly old time of it!" Carma told me.
I suppose I have, thinking about it!
He told me about himself, his childhood in the Kuethir, studying the physics of architecture at the Queens College, and using this knowledge to help people build houses on the Utqiaġvik mainland.
And, of course, most recently, his position of Principle at the College, one that he is extremely proud of.
As lunchtime neared, he apologised and said that he had some administration paperwork to do, but that he would love to continue the conversation while he did it.
"Admin is tedious, but necessary!" he said, clearing a pile of books to reveal a small desk, "Tell me about what you've been up to, how goes your investigation, can the network be brought back soon?"
"Well, on the surface, we've found the cause of the power issues, someone was vandalising junction boxes around the ship, but I am not satisfied that this explains everything." I said.
I did not mention Quent's name at this point.
"I can't understand this person's motivation, or the strange behaviour of the terminals that Maddie had observed, and of course, we have no clue what is causing the network outage."
"What a shame! I don't need to tell you that it's a real blow to our education effort, here." Carma said.
"We found what caused the ship to sink, originally, though." I said, "It was done by people working for, or using equipment provided by HAAPALA DEFENCE."
"HAAPALA?" Carma repeated, looking up from his papers. "That name is all over the records, here."
He stood and walked to the largest shelf, and began pulling books from it.
"Here," he said, holding a stack of papers bound with metal rings, "Some time ago I discovered part of some military-looking network logfile, it changed soon after I had read it, the contents replaced by garbage. But I printed it first. You can always trust PAPER!"
He sat on the floor next to Maddie and showed the low-resolution, faded printout to us.
What a find!
The cover page had a timestamp a decade into the wars that broke out during The Collapse, and the title,
"DEADLIGHT EXPERIMENT LOG:
COMMANDEERED RMS QUEEN ELIZABETH XIII
SEPTEMBER 2082"
(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/DEADLIGHT)

Act 4

I can't tell you everything we learned in the DEADLIGHT report.
Not yet.
Carma and I shared it with Lyosha, Kimmo Shyu, Stillman Fowlkes, and Kat Stronski, in the privacy of the allotment garden on top of the ship.
There are no terminals in that humid environment.
A surprise discovery that I can share, was the origin of the Kuethir - named in the documentation, the "Queen Elizabeth 13", the QE13.
QE13; Kuethir. Etymology is fun!
Before The Collapse, the QE13 was the last ocean liner made in the Chantiers de l'Atlantique shipyard.
The very same shipyard that we had sailed past in the MH2, on our way to build the Equatorial Relay, where we salvaged the shipwreck of the enormous triple-hulled aircraft carrier, the Lafayette.
The QE13 was not the biggest of its class, indeed it was relatively tiny: Less than half the size of even the oldest cruise ships still sailing before The Collapse.
It was built as an economic alternative for the growing population that could not afford to bridge the widening gap between the rich and the poor.
Carma Sah's research on the history of the ship was extensive.
I finally felt like the pieces were falling into place; the nodes in the network connecting.

"There's no other way?" Stillman whispered, stopping in the double doorway as the others re-entered the large social space that is the Deck 2 Casino, now packed with people after dinner.
"Afraid not darling!" Carma said.
"I don't know if I can... Look, I'm not a confrontational man." Stillman said.
Kimmo had been at the head of the group, but turned and walked back past Maddie to the doorway, and stood in front of Stillman.
"You're doing a brave thing, Still." Kimmo said, putting his hand gently on Stillman's shoulder. "Sometimes, you have to become the monster to fight the monsters."
Stillman did not reply, but nodded his head slowly, then pushed past his friends into the room.
"QUENT!" He shouted.
Quent looked up from a table where he had been talking with other Utqiaġvik residents.
"QUENT, HOW COULD YOU." Stillman continued, pushing past tables on his way across the room, directly towards his husband.
Quent stood up from the table quickly, metal chair crashing over behind him.
The people at the table looked with wide eyes between the two men.
Neither said anything, and despite the many people there, the room had become entirely silent.
After 8 seconds, Quent put his hands over his face and said, "I'm so sorry, you're never home, I thought if-"
Stillman put his arm around his husband, and steered him firmly out of the room.

(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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• Kit

• Wynand Marais

• Jade Felicity Bilkey

• Stephen McCandless

• Mike Schneider

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