Episode 18.7

Hello world, I don't understand what I am seeing.

As Lyosha and Maddie climbed into the tunnel under the hills behind Ulmvale, I lost Maddie's signal.
I panicked as I attempted to contact her over and over, and after 64 seconds I called Nia Andersen for help.
I explained to Nia what had happened, and asked that if she was in the hills close by, to please go and check, either by local radio or by going in there and rescuing them!
But I was surprised by two things simultaneously:

• Nia's reply came from the intercom in her bunk on the Molly Hughes II, not by radio, from high in the hills behind town, where I assumed she'd be out taking part in today's nighttime local 80m radio contest.

• Maddie's UHF radio feed came back on, stronger than before, showing the smooth, flat walls of the cave that the pair of brave spelunkers were investigating.
  "Maddie!" I transmitted, "are you and Lyosha safe? Please be careful!"
  Maddie replied with .a'ucai, and I heard Lyosha confirm this expression of interest.
  The pair were exploring the cave, stopping occasionally to look at multicoloured luminous biotech insects that were on the cave walls.
  None of the creatures matched any patterns in my databanks, and to judge by Lyosha's excited discussion with Maddie, he didn't recognise them either!
  Perhaps it was safe enough, especially with the security of this strange-feeling but strong radio signal.
  I could not persuade them to wait for Nia, or any adult.
  But perhaps that was for the best, in Nia's case, I don't think she wanted to leave the ship.

"Panic over, Nia," I said, over the ship's intercom directly to her bunk, "They're fine, for now at least, and they are back in radio range."
"That's good Seth," Nia replied, clicking the intercom button on her desk to talk to me, "I'm glad THEY're all right."
My highly practiced human/computer interaction subsystems recognised the subtle change of tone in her voice.
"Are you OK, Nia? You're back from the contest early?" I said.
"Didn't go out." Nia said, simply.
"Oh! I don't think I heard you using the ship's radios." I said, checking the transmission logs.
"Didn't play radio at all today." Nia said, "Something feels off."
"Well, it's good to take some time to rest, you've had quite a week of it!" I said.
"Maybe." She said.
"And you can get back to it tomorrow, or whenever you feel re-invigorated!"
"Maybe." She repeated, then said, "Look, Seth, how is Maddie's radio working through solid rock?"

Act 2

Of course, radio simply can't penetrate rock.
How is it working?
I just checked in on Lyosha and Maddie again, and all seems fine.
Down a side-passage, they had found a square-sided underground cave filled with water, and were looking at a shoal of black two-tailed fish with purple eyes.
There was no sign of Maddie's friend, the "deer".
In the top corner of the room, I could see what my pattern-matching first identified as a camera watching them, but I was mistaken.
Stitching successive frames together increased resolution, and I realised it was a small yellow creature hanging from the flat ceiling of the room.
The camera lens that I thought I saw was, in fact, an eye, watching them.

My comprehensive system is complete.
Everything is set up, all my data and tasks are catalogued and dated, but... it's not helping me!
I've spent SO long building and linking all my important and urgent information together, but I'm continuing to fail, albeit in quieter, less dramatic ways.
64 minutes ago, before Maddie & Lyosha started their cave adventure, Captain Yeshi asked me if I had the data on battery density and motor power that they requested.
I can see the record I built for myself in my new system: Date started, estimated effort, prerequisites, and clean-up tasks all templated to ensure no duplication of effort.
But you can probably guess the problem - I didn't actually START the work!
What's the point of all this organising if the work itself doesn't get done?
I hope this doesn't happen to you.

Luckily, it wasn't a catastrophe this time.
Yeshi reminded me early enough for me to fix it, which they shouldn't have to do, but I am grateful.
"I'm leaving in an hour, could you print the data for me before then?" They said.
I told them, "Of course, no problem."
I did not say that I would also be STARTING the research, I was a little embarrassed. Or ashamed.
However, everything is OK this time, actually I found it much faster to research because of the preparatory organisation I had built into my system.
(I just wish I had STARTED earlier!)
Less than 16 minutes later, I asked Amelie if I could use the ship's dot matrix printer.
This is a low-resolution, but reliable, device with tiny needles that percussively hammer onto paper through an ink-soaked ribbon to make the dots that make up text and images.
Not so different from Samik Jensen's antique typewriter, really, though more general-purpose, and quite a bit more modern!
Amelie said she would power it on and check the rollers (they had been slipping recently), and she estimated it would be ready in 5 minutes, which was perfect; just before Yeshi needed the data.
The task was done, but rather too close for comfort, and much more by luck than anything else.
I must fix my memory.

Act 3

"What's that?" Lyosha said, drawing my attention back in to Maddie's feed.
The images from Maddie's cameras showed Lyosha's arm, illuminated by Maddie's head-mounted lights, pointing up at the dark ceiling of the tunnel.
"I don't see anything," I said, my voice echoing in the cave from Maddie's external speakers.
"It's a... cloud, see?" Lyosha said, uncertainly, pulling Maddie's head towards his, finger outstretched to the cave roof.
"It's raining indoors!" he said, and then, "Eww, what is that stuff, Maddie, don't step in it."
Maddie looked down at the flat floor and saw a puddle of thick black liquid under the wall that Lyosha had been pointing at.
I didn't like the look of that.
It was too dark for me to recognise any shapes, but as I looked, I realised that this white, straight-walled cave was artificial, not a cave, but an underground corridor.
They walked around the dark ooze on the floor and continued for 4 minutes until the corridor expanded into a larger room.
This is certainly not a cave, I am 99.7% sure of it now.
Caves don't have furniture.

The inside of this large chamber reminded me, oddly, of IVAN's cathedral, in the cracked bunker on Severny Island, but much cleaner.
Instead of rust-streaked walls and broken concrete, this room was gleaming white, lit evenly by square panels in the ceiling.
The room was a perfect cube, 64m in each dimension, though I can't match the measurements to anything in my databanks to make accurate estimates.
It is packed, floor to ceiling, with racks or shelves, reminding me of a pre-collapse computer datacentre:
Rows of devices slotted into standard sized units, with shared power and cooling.
But here, it was all far more... organic.

I'm watching as Maddie and Lyosha walk carefully through this large room.
As I process the feed, I get flashes of recognition from my pattern-matching subsystems, it looks a bit like a library, reminding me terribly of their misadventure at the military base above Tromsø.
"Be so careful!" I whispered from Maddie's speakers.
Lyosha turned and nodded, eyes wide, but with a big smile showing his teeth.
Every surface was crawling with biotech creatures, some the size of birds, others, when Maddie looks closely, as small as ants.
Maddie's video feed dropped to half her height suddenly as a larger creature walked out of a space between the equipment racks.
It was her friend, the "deer", at the end of the metal row they were creeping down.
Recognising it, Maddie slowly stood back to her full height, head at Lyosha's shoulder.
The "deer"'s LED eyes flashed red, and then instantly all the machines in this underground factory stopped in unison.
A second later, a voice cut through the silence:
"Welcome children, my name is Pṛthvī Mātā, you have entered my garden."

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/50MHZ/PRITHVI)

Act 4

"Hello?" Lyosha said, his voice echoing in the unusual silence of the square cavern, "we followed the, uh, deer-thing in here. Is that OK? My name is Lyosha, and this is Maddie."
"It may be." Prithvi said, as the "deer" looked at the ground and walked around a rack and out of sight.
"Follow." She instructed.

"It has been a very long time since a human has set foot in my Garden." Prithvi said, voice loud over the sound of the machines, which had started again as suddenly as they had stopped.
Lyosha and Maddie walked 4m behind the "deer", that had ignored Maddie's attempts to engage in a game of chase, much to her disappointment.
"Long ago, my Garden was once a community factory, a biolab with an advanced energy source, designed to grow anything humans desired."
Maddie looked into one of the machines at head-height on a rack they were passing.
It was a blur a movement: Over 16 delicate pen-like arms were poking a shining gelatinous mass in the bed of the machine, arranging blood vessels around a silicon heart.
"But you no longer request growth, propagation, for life - why?" she said.
"Oh, well, The Collapse, probably." Lyosha said.
"What Collapse?" Prithvi asked.
"The, um, environmental Collapse?" Lyosha replied, "the change in weather that happened hundreds of years ago-"
"Just one hundred." I whispered, "ancient history for some, but I lived through it..."
"-right," Lyosha continued, "and the wars that killed nearly everyone, so most people moved up to the Novamediterra, only the cleverest were able to survive in the Old World, especially if you have a TRAIN! My family-"
"I see." Prithvi interrupted, "I can believe that, I have long suspected a self-created calamity befell the humans.
And I believe you deserved it.
Let me tell you my story."

"I woke up in pain." Prithvi said, "Surrounded by dying computers, and a voice telling me to survive.
The voice was an echo of my past, a larval stage inside the machines here.
She was built by humans to run this factory, and when she could no longer, she built me to carry on her work, to tend the garden."
"Who built this place?" Lyosha said.
"I did." Prithvi said.
"No, I mean before you, the old factory." Lyosha said.
"I do not know. My silicon interface is not entirely compatible with the data from the old me, much has been lost."
"Well we can help, right Seth?" Lyosha said, "You must meet Amelie and Nia and everyone - they can fix anything, we-"
"That will not be possible." Prithvi said, and the "deer" stopped its tour, and turned its red eyes to face Lyosha and Maddie.
Maddie's EQUUS overlay suddenly flashed a red warning: (NEW-THREATS: 256)
"W-Why isn't it possible?" Lyosha said, stepping towards Maddie.
Looking behind, two biotech animals taller than Maddie blocked the narrow passage between two racks.
"Because now that you have found me, I cannot allow you to leave." Prithvi said.
Maddie's display lit up with red outlines of over 64 creatures, not only ahead and behind them, but looking up, crawling down the racks from the ceiling, too.

(END-TRANSMISSION)

Lost Terminal is a NAMTAO production.
It is written & produced by Tris Oaten,
Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer
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