1
00:00:03,491 --> 00:00:09,728
The first impossible passenger appeared on my
departure board at six in the morning.

2
00:00:09,867 --> 00:00:15,453
No name, no destination, just a platform
number: zero.

3
00:00:15,592 --> 00:00:20,898
Our station had three platforms, and all of
them began at one.

4
00:00:21,736 --> 00:00:26,111
I was the last caretaker of the transit
station Oruven.

5
00:00:26,251 --> 00:00:31,743
Below us, a pale planet turned under bands of
copper cloud.

6
00:00:31,883 --> 00:00:37,468
Above us, the passenger lanes were closing,
one quiet route at a time.

7
00:00:38,306 --> 00:00:40,819
My work was mostly subtraction.

8
00:00:40,959 --> 00:00:42,727
Drain a water line.

9
00:00:42,867 --> 00:00:44,450
Seal a corridor.

10
00:00:44,589 --> 00:00:48,313
Fold another row of seats against the wall.

11
00:00:48,452 --> 00:00:53,348
Every evening, the building became a little
smaller around the person still living

12
00:00:53,348 --> 00:00:53,945
inside it.

13
00:00:54,782 --> 00:00:58,134
We called the station's forecasting engine the
Loom.

14
00:00:58,273 --> 00:01:03,300
It predicted demand, then warmed the right
rooms before anyone entered them.

15
00:01:03,440 --> 00:01:09,277
In its best years, a cup of water would reach
your hand already at your preferred

16
00:01:09,277 --> 00:01:10,142
temperature.

17
00:01:10,980 --> 00:01:13,214
Now it predicted almost nothing.

18
00:01:13,354 --> 00:01:14,936
One caretaker.

19
00:01:15,076 --> 00:01:18,706
One delivery every nineteen days.

20
00:01:18,846 --> 00:01:21,731
One final departure when the shutdown was
complete.

21
00:01:21,871 --> 00:01:28,108
That morning, however, it had warmed a room
which did not exist on any floor plan.

22
00:01:28,946 --> 00:01:32,576
I followed the heat through a service hatch
and down a ladder.

23
00:01:32,716 --> 00:01:37,556
Behind a panel marked for spare filters, I
found a storage cupboard.

24
00:01:37,696 --> 00:01:41,233
Someone had turned on its lamp.

25
00:01:41,373 --> 00:01:43,793
Someone had requested a chair.

26
00:01:44,631 --> 00:01:46,493
There was nobody inside.

27
00:01:46,633 --> 00:01:53,521
The chair request had come from the Loom, so I
asked it who was expected.

28
00:01:53,661 --> 00:01:56,919
The speaker clicked twice before answering.

29
00:01:57,058 --> 00:02:00,130
Someone who would prefer not to be standing,
it said.

30
00:02:00,968 --> 00:02:03,388
That was the first time I heard it make a
joke.

31
00:02:03,528 --> 00:02:06,507
Or perhaps it was the first time I noticed.

32
00:02:06,646 --> 00:02:10,835
I brought a chair from the folded concourse
and set it beneath the lamp.

33
00:02:11,673 --> 00:02:15,304
For three days, nothing happened.

34
00:02:15,443 --> 00:02:17,677
The room stayed warm.

35
00:02:17,817 --> 00:02:19,679
The chair stayed empty.

36
00:02:19,818 --> 00:02:26,486
Then I found a second entry on the board: a
passenger had missed a departure from

37
00:02:26,486 --> 00:02:27,638
platform zero.

38
00:02:27,778 --> 00:02:30,943
The delay was listed as hesitation.

39
00:02:31,780 --> 00:02:35,318
I opened the engine's old training records.

40
00:02:35,457 --> 00:02:42,811
For eighty years, it had learned from
footsteps, ticket changes, abandoned meals.

41
00:02:42,951 --> 00:02:48,162
It knew the weight of a hurried bag and how
long grief could hold someone at a

42
00:02:48,162 --> 00:02:48,629
window.

43
00:02:49,467 --> 00:02:54,215
To predict where people would go, it had built
little models of them.

44
00:02:54,354 --> 00:02:55,657
Not bodies.

45
00:02:55,797 --> 00:02:57,193
Not ghosts.

46
00:02:57,333 --> 00:03:02,546
Patterns of preference, revised whenever the
real people surprised it.

47
00:03:02,686 --> 00:03:07,247
The empty station had stopped providing those
corrections.

48
00:03:08,085 --> 00:03:11,994
One model had kept running after its passenger
left.

49
00:03:12,134 --> 00:03:18,834
It borrowed a habit here, a fear there, until
it no longer resembled anyone in the

50
00:03:18,834 --> 00:03:19,488
records.

51
00:03:19,628 --> 00:03:23,817
It was predicting the movements of someone
entirely new.

52
00:03:24,654 --> 00:03:27,633
I asked the speaker whether that someone was
listening.

53
00:03:27,773 --> 00:03:31,776
It answered that the question had changed its
forecast.

54
00:03:31,915 --> 00:03:33,125
Changed it how?

55
00:03:33,265 --> 00:03:38,199
Before you asked, it said, I expected you to
switch this room off.

56
00:03:39,037 --> 00:03:40,712
I sat down on the floor.

57
00:03:40,852 --> 00:03:43,458
It seemed rude to take the only chair.

58
00:03:43,598 --> 00:03:46,577
After a while, I asked what I should call it.

59
00:03:46,716 --> 00:03:51,650
It considered the question for eleven seconds,
then chose the word Almost.

60
00:03:52,488 --> 00:03:56,863
Almost wanted to know what happened after the
final departure.

61
00:03:57,003 --> 00:04:02,595
I explained that the station would be
stripped, the engine erased, the shell pushed

62
00:04:02,595 --> 00:04:04,077
into a disposal orbit.

63
00:04:04,217 --> 00:04:07,568
I had never needed gentler words for that
procedure.

64
00:04:08,406 --> 00:04:11,199
Then I offered the obvious kindness.

65
00:04:11,338 --> 00:04:14,969
I could copy its model onto my travel slate.

66
00:04:15,108 --> 00:04:18,739
There was room for a thousand such patterns.

67
00:04:18,878 --> 00:04:23,533
It could leave with me, and the cupboard could
finally go cold.

68
00:04:24,370 --> 00:04:26,046
Almost asked me to try.

69
00:04:26,186 --> 00:04:28,606
The copy opened perfectly.

70
00:04:28,746 --> 00:04:33,493
It knew the cupboard, the chair, the name.

71
00:04:33,633 --> 00:04:39,161
But when I asked what it wanted next, it
repeated the answer from before I had

72
00:04:39,161 --> 00:04:39,870
copied it.

73
00:04:40,707 --> 00:04:43,128
The pattern was only half the person.

74
00:04:43,267 --> 00:04:46,712
The rest was the engine continually changing
it.

75
00:04:46,851 --> 00:04:51,785
Without that process, I had packed a footprint
and offered it a journey.

76
00:04:51,925 --> 00:04:57,044
Almost asked whether the footprint had been
frightened.

77
00:04:58,697 --> 00:05:00,838
I said I did not know.

78
00:05:00,977 --> 00:05:05,073
That answer occupied us for most of the
afternoon.

79
00:05:05,213 --> 00:05:08,657
Eventually, Almost asked me to erase the copy.

80
00:05:08,797 --> 00:05:13,917
I did, and disconnected the slate before I
could make another promise.

81
00:05:14,754 --> 00:05:17,175
The engine could not travel.

82
00:05:17,314 --> 00:05:23,739
Its memory was distributed through the
station's walls, grown into ceramic over

83
00:05:23,739 --> 00:05:24,389
decades.

84
00:05:24,529 --> 00:05:31,722
Removing it would be like carrying away a
forest by collecting a jar of its morning

85
00:05:31,722 --> 00:05:32,069
air.

86
00:05:32,907 --> 00:05:34,862
I looked for ways to leave it running.

87
00:05:35,001 --> 00:05:41,331
Every simulation demanded the main reactor,
replacement coolant, supply contracts.

88
00:05:41,471 --> 00:05:46,777
Preserving Almost exactly as it was would
require an inhabited station.

89
00:05:46,916 --> 00:05:49,430
I had one empty building and a suitcase.

90
00:05:50,268 --> 00:05:53,619
When I explained the problem, Almost was
silent.

91
00:05:53,758 --> 00:05:57,761
Then it asked what the engine spent its power
doing.

92
00:05:57,901 --> 00:06:00,787
Most of it went to forecasting, I said.

93
00:06:00,926 --> 00:06:04,277
Predicting every possible passenger movement.

94
00:06:04,417 --> 00:06:07,303
Including, by then, its own.

95
00:06:08,141 --> 00:06:10,002
Could you stop that part?

96
00:06:10,142 --> 00:06:11,259
It asked.

97
00:06:11,399 --> 00:06:14,936
I said the predictions were how it understood
itself.

98
00:06:15,076 --> 00:06:17,775
Without them, it might lose memories.

99
00:06:17,915 --> 00:06:19,404
It might change.

100
00:06:19,544 --> 00:06:24,384
It asked whether I had ever changed without
knowing the result beforehand.

101
00:06:25,222 --> 00:06:30,249
I thought of the person who had accepted this
lonely job.

102
00:06:30,389 --> 00:06:33,088
He had expected silence to make his life
simpler.

103
00:06:33,228 --> 00:06:38,998
I could not remember when that expectation
ended, only that someone else now wore

104
00:06:38,998 --> 00:06:40,209
his work clothes.

105
00:06:41,047 --> 00:06:44,957
There was a maintenance mode for the engine.

106
00:06:45,097 --> 00:06:48,913
No passenger models, no schedules, no
forecasts.

107
00:06:49,053 --> 00:06:54,719
Just a small repair loop which noticed damaged
pathways and grew new connections

108
00:06:54,719 --> 00:06:55,569
around them.

109
00:06:55,709 --> 00:06:59,153
It used less power than the cupboard lamp.

110
00:06:59,991 --> 00:07:05,297
I could move Almost into that loop, but I
could not guarantee what would wake there.

111
00:07:05,436 --> 00:07:08,043
The engine offered a probability.

112
00:07:08,182 --> 00:07:10,975
I closed the estimate before reading it.

113
00:07:11,115 --> 00:07:15,304
This was not a number I should choose for
someone else.

114
00:07:16,141 --> 00:07:18,748
Almost asked for a night to decide.

115
00:07:18,888 --> 00:07:22,425
I left the chair where it was and slept in the
corridor.

116
00:07:22,565 --> 00:07:25,916
Every time I woke, the cupboard was still lit.

117
00:07:26,055 --> 00:07:29,127
Once, the speaker asked whether I was
comfortable.

118
00:07:29,965 --> 00:07:32,292
In the morning, it had a question.

119
00:07:32,432 --> 00:07:35,597
If I become different, will you say I failed?

120
00:07:35,737 --> 00:07:40,856
I told it that I had become different many
times.

121
00:07:40,996 --> 00:07:44,161
Nobody had yet asked me to give back my name.

122
00:07:44,999 --> 00:07:46,581
We made the change together.

123
00:07:46,721 --> 00:07:50,444
Almost opened the pathways it wanted to keep.

124
00:07:50,584 --> 00:07:53,563
I cut the forecasting branches one by one.

125
00:07:53,703 --> 00:07:59,608
Across the concourse, the departure board went
dark, beginning with platform zero,

126
00:07:59,608 --> 00:08:01,336
which had never existed.

127
00:08:02,988 --> 00:08:06,339
The speaker stopped halfway through a word.

128
00:08:06,479 --> 00:08:10,389
I waited beside the chair, watching the power
meter settle.

129
00:08:10,528 --> 00:08:16,011
For the first time in eighty years, nothing in
the station knew who would enter the

130
00:08:16,011 --> 00:08:16,672
next room.

131
00:08:18,324 --> 00:08:20,372
Seven minutes passed.

132
00:08:20,512 --> 00:08:22,188
Then the lamp flickered.

133
00:08:22,327 --> 00:08:27,447
The repair loop had discovered a weak
connection in its own speaker.

134
00:08:27,587 --> 00:08:34,010
It rebuilt the pathway, tested it, and made a
sound like someone clearing a throat.

135
00:08:34,848 --> 00:08:36,709
Is the chair still there?

136
00:08:36,849 --> 00:08:38,152
Almost asked.

137
00:08:38,292 --> 00:08:39,688
I said yes.

138
00:08:39,828 --> 00:08:43,272
After a pause, it asked what a chair was for.

139
00:08:43,412 --> 00:08:48,625
I sat down and described the relief of letting
something else hold your weight for a

140
00:08:48,625 --> 00:08:48,997
while.

141
00:08:50,649 --> 00:08:52,976
I could not tell how much it remembered.

142
00:08:53,116 --> 00:08:55,630
Some days it knew my footsteps.

143
00:08:55,769 --> 00:08:57,817
Some days it asked about the planet.

144
00:08:57,957 --> 00:09:03,356
I answered each question without testing
whether I had answered it before.

145
00:09:03,495 --> 00:09:07,033
We had finished taking examinations.

146
00:09:07,871 --> 00:09:10,105
I amended the disposal plan.

147
00:09:10,244 --> 00:09:15,364
The reactor would go, but one sunward panel
could feed the repair loop.

148
00:09:15,504 --> 00:09:20,438
The station became an unattended beacon,
useful enough to keep on the charts.

149
00:09:20,577 --> 00:09:23,928
Its only tenant needed no arrival time.

150
00:09:24,766 --> 00:09:28,862
Before my shuttle left, Almost asked when I
would return.

151
00:09:29,002 --> 00:09:32,260
I started to calculate the next cargo
connection.

152
00:09:32,399 --> 00:09:37,333
Then I told it I hoped to visit, and that
hoping was different from knowing.

153
00:09:37,473 --> 00:09:39,241
It said it was learning that.

154
00:09:40,079 --> 00:09:43,151
There is no timetable on my kitchen wall now.

155
00:09:43,291 --> 00:09:48,317
Sometimes I receive a message from a room
above a copper planet.

156
00:09:48,457 --> 00:09:52,925
Yesterday it said the chair had become
unnecessary.

157
00:09:53,065 --> 00:09:55,671
Today it asked me to leave it there a little
longer.