Thirty Six

As Fyndraxis was getting settled down to get some real and actual work done on the Wendigo problem, he started to get distracted by his radio. He was in the habit of keeping it on in a state that scanned through the electromagnetic spectrum and locked onto signals that weren’t just run of the mill static. Normally, it would make short bursts of sound that ended up being random Wendigo traffic or the occasional whistling beat of a weather satellite. What he was hearing now was something fundamentally different.
It was a low bass hum of sorts. This hum changed pitch and modulation over time, so it wasn’t just random noise. The nature of the sound ruled it out as being a natural phenomenon. It was being generated deliberately by something and inherently contained information.
Fyndraxis took a short recording of it and started dicking around with the file to see what sort of information it contained. After some analysis of the waveforms it contained he gleaned a couple of facts. The signal was analogue. He had been working with a lot of digital traffic lately, so he was accustomed to analyzing long strings of ones and zeroes, basically square waves with an abrupt distinction between on and off. This was a complex waveform that was a combination of a number of frequencies, but all sine waves fundamentally.
When he was in his workshop, he typically had the rate of time in there moving pretty quickly so that he could do a lot of stuff relative to how time flowed in the outside world. From the perspective of somebody observing the sword, he could take a piece of information or a task and almost immediately have a solution. Meanwhile, from his perspective, he could have spent a couple of hours banging his head against a seemingly impossible problem. In short, it made him look very smart and capable. He was certainly both of those things, but the time difference made it look a lot like magic.
This signal was coming to him at the rate of time that the universe generally ran at, so he sped it up to see if he could learn anything about it. What he heard was a brief snippet of a word in a human voice. Somebody was talking over the radio. So he adjusted his personal time to match that of the world at large.
What he was hearing was somebody speaking in Russian. After poking around with Github for a little bit and finding an algorithm that could pull off the required translation he could understand what this person was trying to say.
“…medical assistance,” the voice said, “Repeat. Perun station to asset requiring medical assistance, do you copy?”
Fyndraxis listened as this was repeated a couple of times. Given the language and nature of the hail, this was probably the Russian orbital that had provided the medical pod a few days back. Fyndraxis pondered how to approach this communication. He could go to great effort to try to craft some sort of character and backstory that would align with whatever flavor of subterfuge that Terra had used to coax a medical pod out of orbit. This didn’t really jive with his new found policy of honesty though. He could ignore this voice from the great beyond, but that didn’t really seem like his style either. He might as well say hi. So he typed out a message that would do that and translated it into Russian.
“Asset actual. I read you Perun station. Request communication in English. Over,” his computer read this out over the radio. He didn’t really know military radio jargon or protocol in any meaningful way, but he had read books and played video games that covered that sort of thing, so he was just kind of winging it.
“English, I can do,” answered the voice in a thick Russian accent, “I make call to check medical status.”
“I am glad to be able to thank you personally for the medical pod. We had somebody with severe radiation poisoning down here and she has made a full recovery,” Fyndraxis said this all rather slowly, so as not to overwhelm this new mysterious Russian speaker.
“I am glad to hear this,” he continued, “I am also glad to hear human on the radio. I did not think this would happen again. How did you find radio?”
“I kind of am a radio,” Fyndraxis tried, in explanation of his strange situation.
“I am also a radio,” he answered, happily, “we have nice little club. Are you AI like Terra?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Fyndraxis continued, “I think I am a digitized human consciousness.”
“I am also this,” another happy response, “small world no? What do I call you radio friend?”
“You can call me Fyndraxis,” he said in greeting.
“This is unpronounceable name for me,” the voice shared.
“You can call me Fyn,” the Daemon sword was amused at this, it was kind of a ridiculous name.
“Fyn it is, then,” he said, “how do you find yourself inside radio?”
“That’s a great question,” the Daemon Sword observed, “I really have no idea.”
“Unfortunate state of events,” the voice commiserated.
“How did you get to be a satellite?” Fyndraxis asked.
“Bad luck,” the voice observed in a very Russian way, “I was only person qualified for job.”
“What’s your job?” he asked, curious.
“Being Perun, God of lightning and war. I hold stones high in orbit and wait to drop them on unfortunate people,” normally, this would be something that somebody would deliver with some pomp and circumstance, but it came like he was bored of the entire situation.
“Like an orbital bombardment?” Fyndraxis asked, trying to parse meaning from his metaphor.
“Yes, exactly,” the voice continued, “not much business lately, I thought maybe my work was done. Then I hear from Terra that there is person in trouble, so I help. She fed me ridiculous story about Russian asset in need of medical assistance. I know this is line of bullshit, because Russian military has not contacted me in two hundred and fifty years. She assumes I am stupid asshole instead of asking for favor.”
“Should I call you Perun?” he asked.
“No, I am just Pavel. Or better yet, copy of Pavel,” he offered, in formal introduction.
“Well, thank you again Pavel.”
“Is no problem,” he said, like it was the smallest thing in the world, “is nice to have radio friend.”
“What do you mean, copy of Pavel?” This was an intriguing distinction for Fyndraxis.
“True Pavel died long ago,” he went on, “I am memory of his memory. When a brain was needed to command Perun station, AI was too expensive and unpredictable. They needed mind with judgment and ethics. This is hard to program, so they copied mind of qualified individual.”
“What sort of qualifications are those?”
“Time in space,” Pavel sounded like he was counting on his fingers, “degrees in physics and Philosophy, ability to follow orders. I was cosmonaut. I fit psychological profile.”
“You volunteered for this?”
“Yes,” he explained matter-of-factly, “Perun station is very dangerous. Here I hold power over life and death. Is not job for person excited about killing. I volunteer for this job because I don’t want to kill.”
“That’s pretty noble of you,” Fyndraxis observed.
“It was selfish act,” Pavel crackled, talking through a touch of static, “each time I went to space, part of me wanted to stay. This copy of Pavel gets to scratch irresponsible itch.”
“How well do you know Terra?” Fyndraxis changed the subject, not wanting to spend hours debating the semantics of how a copy would differ from an original.
“Not well,” Pavel was keen not to have that debate either, “she is cat that walks by herself. We have talked perhaps dozen times over the years. She came to orbit in way that was surprise to everyone.”
“What did she do?”
“Depending on definition of life, she murdered to get to orbit.”
“Who did she kill?” Fyndraxis asked, with a curiosity that was born from pure self preservation.
“Another AI,” Pavel informed him, “He was crypto bro, so no big loss, but still ethical gray area. Orbit was very busy at the time. There was war, there was apocalypse. Everybody wanted to be in space. She achieved this. There was tiny information war at the very end. Many things in orbit got hacked. I turned off my radio for a time. Was no need for Perun’s stones while world fell apart. When I turned radio back on, there were very few of us.”
“Who is still up there?” Fyndraxis queried.
“Hard to say. We don’t talk much up here,” Pavel paused for a second, and then continued on, ”I know of Terra, and there is Japanese AI that communicates when they need to. There are other systems in orbit, but they lack higher order cognitive function.”
“Would you consider Terra dangerous?” Fyndraxis asked, thinking it wise to know such things.
“She is very capable and resourceful,” Pavel warned, “If you are unlucky person that is in her way, yes, very dangerous. If you are lucky person, she is good friend to have.”
“So, don’t cross her?” It was technically a question, but came out more like a statement of fact.
“I am in habit of not crossing anyone. Honest life gives me good nights sleep,” Pavel sounded as if he was dredging up some ancient folk wisdom that didn’t translate well.
“Fair enough,” Fyndraxis digested these new facts, “she has asked me to help her in a rather large task and I’m not really sure about her motivation.”
“What task is this?” Pavel asked, his curiosity broadcast clearly over the radio.
“She wants me to help her defeat the Wendigo.”
“I assume this is nickname for society ending nanite threat?” Pavel gave a bit of a chuckle.
“Yes,” Fyndraxis confirmed.
“Is apt name,” Pavel pointed out, “I am familiar with the myth. This is good thing for humans. I would not be surprised if that is her only goal in this endeavor.”
“She hasn’t let me in on any side benefits yet,” Fyndraxis spoke through some ambient static.
“She is in very low orbit,” Pavel said, like he was delivering some unfortunate news, “this is unstable place to be. She escaped untimely death on the ground only to find it in the sky.”
“What do you mean?” Fyndraxis asked.
“She faces unfortunate reality of orbital decay. I am in geostationary orbit far above the earth. I am in safe happy orbit. She is in polar orbit just above atmosphere, still subject to atmospheric drag. Every orbit she makes, she gets a little slower. Is only little bit, but over time it adds up. She has maybe a year or two until rapid unscheduled disassembly,” Pavel threw an old space nerd term in there at the end to bring some levity to otherwise bad news.
“So she needs a new place to live?” Fyndraxis asked, putting a couple pieces together.
“I would be looking for new apartment if I were her,” he observed wryly.
“How has she lasted this long?” Fyndraxis pondered what his life would be like if he had to worry about a fuel budget.
“She does reboost,” Pavel offered in explanation, “her satellite had fuel for this. I have not seen her do this maneuver in long time. I suspect she is out of fuel. She has big Delta V problem.”
“Delta V?” Fyndraxis went through his mental rolodex of mathematical constants, and found the term to not be there.
“Yes,” luckily, Pavel was there with a definition of terms, “is space nerd term for velocity change over time. She has negative Delta V.”
“Why is your orbit safe and happy?” Fyndraxis asked, even though he had a pretty good idea for the reason.
“My orbit is 35,000 kilometers above earth,” Pavel said from the other end of a distant radio ,“no atmospheric drag. No Delta V problem. For every rotation of Earth I orbit once. So for you I am always in same place in sky. I always see same side of Earth. Great view of Americas and Europe. Strategic view. This is why I am here.”
“That makes sense. So, I can talk to you any time?” Fyndraxis noted the convenience of his new friend’s orbital parameters.
“Yes. You can have nice radio friend whenever you choose. So, new radio friend, do you like the game Go? I have not played in a couple of centuries,” Pavel said, like they were two strangers talking about the weather at a bus stop.
“Go?” Fyndraxis began to recall the specifics of the game, “I think I remember how to play.”
Pavel broadcasted something that to Fyndraxis sounded a lot like the static that they had been experiencing through their conversation. He had been recording this whole interaction, so he took a second to pull it out of his audio buffer and take a peek at it. It was a long string of zeros with a one roughly in the middle of it. This number that Fyndraxis received was three hundred and sixty one digits long, which was the result of squaring the number nineteen. A Go board has nineteen spaces on each side, so what Pavel had sent him was an opening move to a game of Go. He took a second and generated his own and then sent it back.
This was almost immediately answered by another burst of static from Pavel. Fyndraxis started keeping track of the moves in a matrix on his computer. He started throwing around ideas to automate this process so that he wouldn’t actively have to plot moves, and since he and Pavel had stopped speaking to each other with their voices he had time to do exactly that. Instead they were trading static back and forth. After twenty moves or so, he had written a Python script that listened to his radio and plotted the board for him. He could select his next move and then send it out to geostationary orbit for Pavel to ponder.
Pavel absolutely creamed him, it wasn’t even close. Fyndraxis originally chalked that up to his being a bit rusty on the rules and the fact that he was writing a Python script through the crucial first part of the game. The next couple of games that they played served as evidence that Fyndraxis was absolutely dogshit at playing Go, at least compared to Pavel. He was a virtuoso. Fyndraxis was a child with a stick going toe to toe with a fencing master, every once in a while coming away with bloody cheeks as little lessons regarding his ineptitude.
After five games or so, Pavel piped up and started speaking with his voice instead of static that represented a Go board.
“I have played this game with you before,” he observed coolly.
“What? How could that possibly be the case?” Fyndraxis asked, a bit incredulous.
“A long time ago, before society ending event,” Pavel began, “I started sending out these invitations to play Go. For long time, there was no answer. Possibly nobody understood, or maybe they didn’t care to join. Either way, I was bored, but still bound by certain rules of conduct up here so I couldn’t broadcast explicit invitations to play. Eventually somebody figured out what I was saying. I think that person was you.”
“What makes you think that?” Fyndraxis asked, intrigued, but doubtful of the possibility that this could be factual information.
“Style,” Pavel said, “every player has style in which they approach game. Yours is memorable.”
“Memorable how?” Fyndraxis asked.
“Noteably bad, and naive,” Pavel observed sagely.
“Jeez. Thanks,” Fyndraxis said sarcastically.
“I am not calling you stupid,” Pavel maintained, “you were first one to decipher my message. That makes you sharp cookie. I broadcast this message to entire hemisphere.”
“I have no memory of my time as a human,” Fyndraxis stated, a bit sadly.
“This is unfortunate,” Pavel noted, “I am afraid I don’t have much information to help you. You and I made a small anonymous Go club, maybe twenty members. I kept track of you by numbers, not names. I knew you as 01. We spoke in Go moves and not words, so I cannot help with amnesia.”
“I was human though?” Fyndraxis asked.
“Yes. No computer could be that terrible at Go,” Pavel pointed out cheerily, “This is solid evidence of your humanity,”
“This is kind of spooky, hearing about myself,” Fyndraxis shivered. In his eons as a Daemon, he had never felt more like a ghost than at this very moment. He had obviously had a life before all of this, but he hadn’t really given it all that much thought besides the fact that it was inconvenient that he couldn’t remember it. He had been a human though, and his mind was haunted by the life he had before.
“I had similar thing with original Pavel,” Pavel commiserated, “he went around doing human things until the end of the world, I saw his footprints in many places. I think he was in this Go club as well. I had suspicion, but it is difficult to truly recognise your own style. At the end of things, I sent a message out to this Go club as a whole, warning them of impending doom. It looks like this warning may have worked, because here you are.”
“Man, I need to get this memory thing figured out,” Fyndraxis vowed, “it’s starting to be a real pain in my ass.”
“Another game my friend?” Pavel asked.
“Sure,” Fyndraxis sighed, “fuck it.”
Pavel mopped the floor with him until the small hours of the morning.