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"Nor much opportunity for someone with ego management problems to invent a new calendar and impose it on a subset of the population."
"Some towns have their own calendar but they never seem to catch on in the wider world. I guess there's both benefits and drawbacks to the isolation. No conquering hordes, just the occasional pirate band."
"There's lots of varying slang, and past the storm bands to the north and south have their own dialects but are mostly still intelligible. I think everyone here spoke the same language, more or less, when the gate blew up."
"I wonder how much longer it would have taken it to dialectize past mutual intelligibility."
The entanglement comms thing beeps. I am a non-sapient expert system. I use the term 'I' but I am not a person. The last communication from this entanglement indicated that its supporting systems were destroyed or inoperable. Predictions indicated a very small chance the damage would be repairable. Diagnostics indicate that the station still does not have active life support systems. I am confused. Please confirm that there is a human presence at the opposite node by answering the following question: How many more sides does a square have than a triangle?
"In any case," Nick continues, "I've been thinking about how to get stuff to people as fast and efficiently as possible. If you send out a swarm of little bird-size ships with computers to explain things to everyone you can find, they can call you or me or someone with what they want and you can send another ship with the stuff."
"Yeah, I'll probably do that once I'm talking to a person and not an automated system on the far end and I know what to have the computers say."
"I don't suppose I can help some more?"
"Not really, just thought I'd update you. I stopped at a town but they couldn't really add anything to what you knew, so you should feel well-informed, at least."
"I'm so glad."
"Apparently this connection's been dead so long that they don't have a way for it to reach a person anymore. I had to prove I was a person, so it could be forwarded up, by answering a question of a sort some machines have a hard time with."
He's a little uncertain, not being sure how orbits work.
"I think they probably could have designed things better but didn't see a reason to bother."
"No point feeding a dead chicken. Eh, the metaphor breaks. But if there's almost no chance the gate would be fixed and we're keeping it just in case why put much effort into it?"
"They wouldn't have to, they'd just need some sensible push notification arrangement."
The Expert System tells Cam, I can attempt to answer questions if you like. Please allow me to ask some as well. Who are you and what group or entity do you represent? What is the status of planet G-721 (informally known as Cloudbank)?
My name is Cam and I'm acting alone but in loose consultation with a Cloudbank inhabitant. The planet has a healthy but low-tech population mostly clustered around the equator. Surface uninhabitable.
Nick: "Uh, I should get back to my chores. Goodbye."
I might need some help with that. I've replaced what was missing but I don't actually know how it works. Can I send you pictures and get a consult on that?
That is outside of my capabilities, but I'm sure a human will be able to assist you.
Please be patient. Recovery of a dead link is not a common occurrence. The person designated to handle these events should be online within a few minutes.