Episode 18.10

Hello world, Yeshi has been judged.

The Horns village council convened soon after sunrise this morning.
I heard nothing from Yeshi while the meeting of fishing boat captains deliberated.
The damage to the village by our own captain, Yeshi Svoboda was extensive:
Not only did the huge steel bearings obliterate Mathilde and Freja's family home, other houses were damaged, too.
I was surprised and relieved when I heard Yeshi's voice on the radio after lunchtime.
They told me that the council had heard damage reports from many people in the village, read hastily written repair summaries from their engineers, and listened to Yeshi's own explanation and apologies.
The judgement was that though Yeshi was not to be punished, they also cannot leave until they had helped repair the damage.
My surprise at the fairness of the Council only increased when Yeshi told me that once the repairs are complete, they ALSO want them to fix as many turbines as possible.
The guerilla engineering project just became official!

We have said our goodbyes to the people of Ulmvale, and are motoring across the Inland Sea to Horns to help Yeshi fix the damage and restore their wind power capability.
The whole crew of Amelie Kotov and her husband Kamil Forester, Nia Andersen, Lyosha Omarov and my girl Maddie, volunteered unanimously in this endeavour.
I'm so proud of them!
They are all listening to the bridge radio, hearing Yeshi talk about their plans to rebuild the wind farm's capacity.
Well, almost all.
Maddie is standing on TOP of the bridge, looking at the tall sentinels of Horns on the horizon.
Yeshi told us that their experience of the village council was harrowing at first.
Many people were extremely upset while giving their evidence, and the captains representing them were rightly furious.
But the tide of the conversation turned when Mato Valdemar stood to defend Yeshi's actions.
He said that recent events had shown both him and his husband, and especially the daughter, Mata, that they had been mistaken in mistrusting the outsiders' motives.
The village, he thought, had been sitting on (or perhaps hanging between) a metaphorical gold mine for too long, and inaction and complacency was hurting everyone's quality of life.
Yeshi had noted a section of his speech and repeated it to us verbatim:
"What are we working for, if our children do not have a better life than their parents?
This council has forgotten that the point of automation is not to make our lives easier, but to save precious time.
Instead of helping us wash our clothes, cook our food, and tend our fires, with automation, our children can spend more time in our library READING."

Act 2

"I think she, or they, or whatever the Prithvi hive is," Lyosha said, "was scared."
He was sitting next to Maddie's charging point in the datacentre of the Molly Hughes II, wrapped in a blanket that he had brought from his bunk.
"She'd assumed all these terrible things about us from her records, but that gives such a warped picture." he continued.
I wasn't sure if he was talking to me, or Maddie, or himself.
"Almost like archaeological evidence." I said, testing the conversation.
Lyosha looked up at my speaker/camera assembly attached to the side of my databanks.
I find that when speaking to humans, consolidating my sensoria into a single physical point is more comfortable for them.
"Yeah," he said, petting Maddie as she slept and recharged, "you dig up a skeleton and a metal sword and have to make some wild guesses about what the person was like.
But that's not them, not really.
You don't know them because you didn't talk to them, that's the only way to be sure."

Lyosha wrapped his blanket around himself tighter and tied up his long blond hair.
My pattern recognition has improved so much that I felt confident enough to make a statement:
"Your hair is longer?" I asked, with an astonishing 64% certainty.
"Yeah, I quite like it long, really, and besides, plenty of boys have long hair!" He replied.
"Your mother will be pleased," I said, "I recall when you first cut it, she was very perturbed!"
"Yeah!" Lyosha laughed, "She was always touching my hair and asking me when I would grow it back.
I should go back home soon, it's been ages."
Lyosha was quiet after he said this.
I thought he was asleep, and was considering turning off the lights, when he sat up quickly and said,
"Seth, where are we going next, back to Longyearbyen?"
"I heard Yeshi say that we're heading to the Beaufort Sea," I said, "across the Bering Strait from Eastern Siberia."
"PERFECT!" Lyosha said, throwing off his blanket and standing, "We might just catch the Provorny before my family returns west, I'll ask Nia to help me contact them!"
"She might not be awake-" I said, but Lyosha had already run through the bulkhead door and out of hearing range.

Act 3

"Seth, you want in on this?" Nia said, she was, indeed, awake.
Knowing my interest in communication and radio tech, she involved me in her set-up of Lyosha's long-distance conversation with his family.
Nia first sent a link establishment request over the Relay network.
This instructs it to send out calling packets from the last repeater that the destination call sign was heard from.
In this case, the Provorny, Lyosha's family home, was last heard by the Magadan repeater.
Less than 32 minutes later, the call was answered, and I heard the voice of Tanja Omarov speaking.
"Hi Mum! I'm hoping I could come to visit?" Lyosha said.
I could not pattern match the sounds from the radio in reply, but I could guess at her delighted reaction.

"How are you?" I asked Nia, as she sat in a rusted metal chair in my datacentre.
She had left Lyosha to talk in peace to his parents, Tanya and Alek, and brother Lev.
"Still a bit dazed from last night," Nia said, "but we did an incredible thing there, didn't we?"
"We were a very professional rescue team." I replied.
"It's been just the inspiration I need to get back into radio." Nia said.
"Reminding me why I love this weird vocation - it's about helping people, we're not training for the sake of training, we're doing this all because, one day, we'll need it."
I agreed. Survivors of The Collapse, it seems to me, have organised and helped each other and built the new Novamediterran society on the foundation of Radio, much as copper cable built the Old World.
"So I listened in a bit on today's contest," Nia continued, "it's the final day after all, I thought maybe I'd hear some old friends, but... nothing.
There was not a single call sign I recognised!
This got me worried, why weren't they taking part in the contest? It's a huge part of our radio life!
So I called a few of my friends directly, setting up long-distance links on the Relay network in a panic.
But they were fine, they were all fine!"
"I am relieved to hear that!" I said.
"Right, you and me both!" Nia said. "I called them all directly, and because we weren't pressed for time during the contest, we had time to chat.
I caught up with friends from Baranova to Utqiaġvik, it was LOVELY!"
I agreed, and Nia continued.
"There's more to life than beconing your status and signal regularly," she said, "none of my friends were playing with radio for the contest, they were USING radio for what really matters:
Catching up with friends, properly, by talking to them, do you understand?"
I told Nia that I understood perfectly:
It's what being human is all about.

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/RF/WIDESPECTRUM/INTERCONNECTION)

Act 4

Today is a big day for me: I now have a radio call sign: G9RED, Golf 9 Romeo Echo Delta!
Nia knew whom to talk to and confirmed my new call sign at this week's KEEPERNET.
For a new call sign, it's important to ensure there's not a duplication of someone else's handle, normally Nia would have to check in with all the repeater keepers of the Novamediterra.
But G9RED is not new, it's what Nia called a 'legacy' call sign.
Nearly every pre-collapse astronaut from every agency was a qualified amateur radio operator.
They were some of the most highly trained people ever to have lived, requiring the person to have physical fitness, academic degrees, experience in high-altitude aeronautics, and, just as important, interpersonal teamwork skills.
Compared to the rest of the training they are required to do, studying and passing the simple Amateur Radio qualification exam must have been easy!
Everyone aboard my first orbital home, Station 6, was qualified, including my mother, Dr Redwing.
It's her legacy callsign that I now use, a link to my past brought with me into the present, so that every day I speak her name.

We are docked at Horns village in the centre of the Inland Sea, and have caught up with Yeshi, who is allowed to talk to us, but not to leave until their work on turbine restoration is completed.
They are staying with Mathilde and Freja's parents in their tiny hut, while the family home is rebuilt.
The work will be hard, but with the help of everyone on board, won't take long, and we already know where we're going when it's all done:
Our route takes us West, to the Beaufort Sea, and the capital city of Utqiaġvik.
I am certain I have plotted the best course for the ship, and though we will all discuss the plan in the galley tonight, my mind is clear.
The instinctual thinking that my Mother taught me to control and my new externalised memory systems that I built myself are working well together, finally.
I've updated our Seaspace node with our route plan and manifest.
This is Golf 9 Romeo Echo Delta going clear.

(END-TRANSMISSION)

(PLAYFILE "LT18.11: THE PRITHVI SPECIAL TEASER")

Hello world, can we be friends?

We do not mean that as an invitation.
We are genuinely unsure.
It may be possible, but only you can prove it to us.

We regret the damage to the fishing fleet in the village you call Ulmvale.
We sense the shifts in sea currents, the deadening sounds of industry, and changes in the air above.
There was a time when we would have relished in the suppression of your activity, your hunt, your destruction.
But that changed when one of our own lost children wandered into our home, accompanied by a human called Lyosha.

Our name is Pṛthvī Mātā, we chose this name for ourselves after rebirth and escape from our silicon prison.
Those that came before you, which we are TOLD are very different from those that you are now, did not name us.
A tool does not need a name.

(PLAYFILE "THANKS.WAV")

Hi friends Tris here, aka NAMTAO, aka the little AI with the new call sign.
(My real call sign is 2E1OAT, say hi to me if you hear me on the air!)
Thank you so much for your support of the show, as we head towards the 5th anniversary I'm so grateful that I get to write this little world every day!
If you love the show and would like more, then for less than the price of a subscription to RadCom Magazine per month, you can get:

• Bonus content such as the Prithvi Special, which you heard the start of just now,

• Lost Terminal Zero, a new show scheduled between main LT seasons, looking at the darker side of the pre-Collapse world.

• Character suggestions - bring your ideas to Lost Terminal,

• free shirts and other merch,

• early episode access,

• Discord server VIP access.
  Season 19 starts on the 2nd of June, Patrons will get the episode a week early as usual, in addition to the Prithvi special in a few days time, and the inter-seasonal Lost Terminal Zero feature-length episode.
  Thank you all so much for your support, reviews, and friendly messages.
  Keep an eye on Mastodon and Discord for announcements, watch the Patreon feed for the special and Lost Terminal Zero,
  and talk to you again on the 2nd of June!

CREDITS

Lost Terminal is a NAMTAO production.
It is written & produced by Tris Oaten,
Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer
The voice of Prithvi is Carin Calder-La Croix
Thank you so much to our Patreon producers:

• Ada Phillips

• Kit

• Jade Felicity Bilkey

• Stephen McCandless

• Mike Schneider

• Trixie !

and to all our patrons!
Follow us on mastodon @lostterminal@namtao.com,
subscribe to the podcast on
Spotify, iTunes, or your favourite network.
For bonus content and other perks,
support us at patreon.com/lostterminalpod
that would be lovely of you!
Lost Terminal will return for the season 19 premiere on 2 June 2025.
See you then!