Month: April 2020

Categories
Narrative

Ripples from a Thrown Stone

By the time Spruance Del Curtin arrived at the Shepardsport dining commons, the place was already crowded and filled with a hubbub of people all talking at once. At least it wasn’t so bad that a line had formed just to get in and find a seat, unlike the days right after the cyberattack on Slayton Field. Of course it helped that the pilots’ table was relatively empty tonight.

Hardly surprising, if pilots from other settlements were no longer permitted to come up here to eat and socialize. Having to stay in BOQ down at the port facilities and have your meal brought by delivery robot would not be fun, but at least there was a decent lounge in that module, so they could hang out. It wasn’t like having to order your lunch to your desk three days a week because it was the only time you could squeeze in your office hours, like he’d had to do with his previous teaching responsibility.

On the other hand, would the pilots’ table be reduced to make room for more regular seating? It would make sense, but he could also imagine the Shepardsport pilots perceiving it as having something taken away from them.

As Sprue worked his way between the tables, he scanned for familiar faces as well as empty seats. Although regular seating was first-come first-served, people really didn’t appreciate having a complete stranger just drop in. Not to mention that the conversation might not necessarily be the sort you could jump straight into, since a lot of people tended to sit with other people who shared a specialty. The Medlab table was almost a formal assignment, although more because medstaff tended to have rather odd ideas of what constituted appropriate mealtime conversation. But dropping in on a table full of scientists or engineers all talking shop was a good way to spend a meal in confusion.

The station crew had never really developed a table of their own, although they did often sit with one another when they could. However, both Qunn Merton and Spencer Dawes were sitting at full tables, or at least tables where Sprue could tell he would not be overly welcome.

And then Sprue heard someone calling his name. Surprised, he turned to face one of his own clone-brothers. For an awkward moment Sprue fumbled before recognizing him: Chandler Armitage, adopted son of the former governor of New Hampshire.

“How about coming over and sitting with me? A bunch of the guys really want to hear your take on things.”

Unspoken because you’re with Shepardsport Pirate Radio, so you know things. Sprue cast a glance up at the head table, at the empty seat in the middle where Captain Waite usually sat. No, Sprue had not forgotten the awkward interview in the commandant’s office — had it only been a couple of days ago?

But to turn down a chance to sit at the pilots’ table? Not just the opportunity — appearing to slight a pilot’s invitation, and especially someone like Chandler, whose mother had been disappeared by the Administration, was not exactly the way to advance yourself around here.

Better to join Commander Armitage, and just watch his step. But how to sound like he was answering their questions while giving them no real information?

Categories
Narrative

The Moment Everything Changed

Spruance Del Curtin had just signed off, getting everything ready for the Tea Time crew to come in, when the door opened and in walked Autumn Belfontaine, a very strange look on her face. He recalled having seen her in her office earlier, hunched over her laptop with that same fixed expression.

No, better not even bother with normal polite greetings. Just hand her the headphones and get out of the way.

The “On Air” light was already illuminated by the time he got out the door. He could only hope that the mic hadn’t picked up the click of the latch.

From the front office he could already hear Autumn’s voice over the stereo behind the receptionist’s desk. Cindy had already taken off for the evening, so Sprue decided to sit down and listen. He had plenty of time to get to the dining commons for supper and still get some studying done before he needed to be to bed. Especially with Dr. Doorne annoyed with him, he’d better be able to put in a good showing next session.

But now he was listening to Autumn reading off the URLs of one after another television station’s local news website, detailing reports of illnesses and deaths that should’ve been making the national news, even world news — but weren’t. Then she told everyone how to get to the Shepardsport Pirate Radio website to post their own accounts of what was going on in their communities.

It was a risk — if someone in the Flannigan Administration was determined to silence this outbreak, they could flood their comments page with so much spam there wouldn’t be time for the whole news team to wade through it. Maybe Lou’s sister-in-law over at Grissom City who was such a hotshot programmer might be able to write an intelligent agent to sift through it, but Sprue wasn’t going to count on it.

And then Autumn was reading a set of announcements. Not just the usual things about washing hands and covering coughs that they’d been doing for the last several days. This stuff was serious, particularly the restrictions on the pilots. All deliveries to outlying settlements were to be dropped off at the pad, and the inhabitants were to retrieve everything by loaderbot. No one was to visit the shirtsleeve habitats, and no one was to stay overnight, not at the outlying habitats, and not at any of the big settlements or Luna Station.

And he knew several women around this place who were not going to be happy about the next restriction: all pilots flying in from other settlements were to remain in the port facilities, and as much as possible should avoid interacting with local staff. And here Drew Reinholt had just managed to snag assignments flying here again. Working with Brenda was not going to be fun a-tall.

Categories
Narrative

Of Abandoned Vehicles and Empty Tents

Reggie arrived at the newsroom to find Autumn Belfontaine hunched over her laptop, watching a video. Although he couldn’t get a good view from his angle, it looked like it was playing on a local news station website. A female reporter in a windbreaker was talking to the camera in front of a tow truck hooking up to what looked like an old RV. Too bad Autumn was keeping the volume low enough that he couldn’t make out what the woman was saying.

However, it also meant that it was low enough that Autumn could hear his approach. She paused the video and stood up to face him. “Hi, Reggie. Is there something I need to go live with?”

“Not at the moment, but I think we’d better have a talk.” He glanced over to his wife, who’d paused to talk to one of the engineering staff. “Steffi, could you tell Autumn what you found out today?”

As Steffi explained about the e-mail, Autumn’s eyes widened. “So it’s not just the homeless population.” She gestured toward the frozen video on her laptop. “I’ve been visiting local TV and radio station websites from all over the country, and about half of them are reporting a sudden spike of illness in homeless camps. This one’s a human-interest story about a homeless vet, I think they said he fought in the Energy Wars, who’d been living in an old RV under an Interstate overpass in the Chicago area. They’re trying to locate next of kin to claim his remains and the possessions inside his vehicle, including his medals and citations.”

Reggie had his own memories of the Energy Wars, although he’d been a fighter pilot flying off aircraft carriers, not a ground-pounder. “Damn. Make it definite, someone is suppressing this news. I can still remember when I was fifteen and we had the big flu outbreak, the one they always blamed on the chaos after the fall of the Soviet Union. That was back when it was just the three networks, but they started running reports when the first big groups of cases showed up, and it wasn’t even all that deadly.”

“Then you want me to run this?”

“Write up a report and run it past me first. We may need to tweak the emphasis a little, but we definitely have to get it out that we’re looking at a very big picture. Big enough that I need to talk with Dr. Thuc about what precautions we need to start taking now.”

Autumn looked back to her laptop. “Then you think it could get up here?”

“We can’t discount the possibility. The Martian settlements should be safe, but it’s a three-day journey from Earth to the Moon. All it would take would be one person breaking the pre-flight quarantine.”

Yes, Autumn realized just what it would mean. Because pressurized volume was such a valuable commodity, people in lunar settlements lived in the sort of close quarters that were usually associated with extreme poverty on Earth, outside seagoing vessels and offshore drilling platforms. Worse, the life support systems would circulate a virus through the entire settlement, infecting everyone.

“I’ll get right on it.”

Categories
Document

Recollections of a Turning Point

Looking back, it seems obvious that something very bad was going on. Map the incidents and it looks like the footprints of an invisible giant making his way across the face of the Earth.

But at the time, most of us were far more concerned with our ongoing conflict with the Flannigan Administration over the policies that had enabled the Expulsions and the horrors they had created. We still had not been able to secure any form of accountability from NASA for the Kitty Hawk Massacre, and the cyber-attack on Slayton Field was still fresh in everybody’s minds.

And it didn’t help that someone at pretty high levels must’ve been keeping a lot of significant information from reaching the national news. Sure, the local news stations were covering the sudden outbreaks of sickness at various institutions, the illnesses sweeping through homeless encampments and the over-crowded housing of the working poor. It wasn’t like the government was censoring it — more like they were just keeping people from putting the pieces of the puzzle together and being able to see the elephant in the middle of the living room.

Once the Shepardsport Pirate Radio newsroom realized how bad things were getting, it was rather embarrassing. We’d prided ourselves on getting the news out when the Flannigan Administration wanted to soft-pedal it or outright descend a cone of silence over it — and we’d completely fumbled the ball. Worse, it was our own decision to exercise caution and not break the news until we were confident of what we were seeing — and we’d made it because we wanted to make sure we weren’t repeating groundless rumors and diminishing the reputation we depended upon.

By that point, everyone both here and on Earth were scrambling to catch up.

Autumn Belfontaine, “Shepardsport Pirate Radio’s Coverage of the Diablovirus Outbreak.” from The Lunar Resistance; An Oral History. Kennedy University Press: Carpenter Point, Tycho Crater, 2059

Categories
Narrative

The Widening Shadow

Reggie Waite didn’t usually go down to IT to talk with his wife. As commandant of the settlement, he needed to avoid any appearances of favoritism. However, given the tenor of Steffi’s text, he’d decided that it wasn’t worth the stress to have her come up to his office.

Shepardsport’s IT department was located in the lowest levels of the settlement’s habitats, where they could use the Moon itself as a heatsink for cooling their fastest and most powerful number-crunchers. Here and then he passed doors opening onto rooms filled with racks of servers — but even these were run of the mill machines, busy with routine data applications, ranging from render farms to e-mail store and forward for the local Internet nodes. The real heavy iron was kept in secure rooms, well past the help-desk offices and data-center equipment.

Reggie found Steffi in her office, her face a mask of calm he knew at once to be false. When she greeted him at the door, her professional face stayed firmly in place, division head to commandant. Only when she closed the door did she let it slip.

“Thanks for coming down here, Reggie.” Her voice had that breathless sound of someone under severe emotional strain.

“What’s wrong, Steffi?”

“I just got an e-mail from an old friend at JPL. Things are getting really bad down in the LA Basin. Apparently that sickness that’s going around showed up in several different nursing homes all at once. They think it was a doctor who’d just flown back from some kind of professional conference and visited patients at all of them. But there are two nursing homes that he never visited, so there’s some speculation that some part-time workers carried it back and forth.”

Reggie recalled a recent e-mail from his father, mentioning having to reschedule an appointment because of illness at the client’s facility. “That’s not good.”

“No, it’s not.” Steffi moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Right now they’re especially worried because a couple people at the Lab have family that work at those nursing homes. Siblings for the most part, a couple of parents who were looking for part-time work after they retired. Not someone they see every day, but close enough to visit on the weekends. Although one of the senior scientists had a daughter in high school who’d been volunteering at the one that got hit worst.”

Reggie considered what to say. It had been over two decades since he was working with JPL on the Dis Pater project, and he had no idea who some of these people were. However, it was possible that Steffi knew them, so he didn’t want to come across as overly clinical and insensitive. “Do they think she’s caught whatever this thing is?”

“Not yet, although with JPL’s flexibility about telecommuting, they’re apparently telling him he’s free to work from home if there’s any question of putting the girl under quarantine. And they’ve told all the janitors and support staff that they are not to try to be heroes and drag themselves in if they feel sick. They’re to call in sick, and the Lab will make sure that they’re covered if they run out of sick days.”

She looked Reggie straight in the eyes. “This thing is serious. Which makes me wonder why we’re not hearing a lot more of it from the Earthside news media. Some blogs here and there, but none of the major networks, not in the US, and not abroad.”

“I think the two of us need to have a serious talk with Autumn Belfontaine. I’d been counseling caution, but I’m starting to wonder if we’re looking at a coverup.”

Categories
Narrative

Whispers and Rumors

Cindy Margrave knew she shouldn’t listen in on other people’s conversations. However, Sprue and Quinn weren’t exactly making it easy to avoid doing so. They might be keeping their voices low, but they had managed to be just loud enough to be right there at the threshold of her awareness, neither so soft she couldn’t hear, nor so loud that she could hear clearly enough to put their conversation in the background. No, it was right at that volume where it drew attention no matter how hard you tried to ignore it.

Something about trouble back on Earth, and not just President Flannigan beating the drum of moral panic. She was far too familiar with that, ever since she and her sister Kitty had gotten swept up in the Expulsions just because Aunt Betty took them in.

No, this sounded like some kind of slow-motion disaster. People sick and dying in widely separated places, the authorities struggling to trace the connections between them.

Had it been only a few days ago when Autumn Belfontaine had hurried into the DJ booth to announce the breaking news about a cruise ship that had been stricken with illness and rescued by the US Navy? If there was a lot more things like it happening, why wasn’t she reporting on them?

It would’ve been so much easier if Cindy could just ask someone. But that would require admitting that she’d been guilty of listening in on a conversation to which she was not a party, even if she hadn’t meant to.

What was the saying? Keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut.

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Advertising

Paying the Bills

Stranger by Sherwood Smith and Rachel Manija Brown

Many generations ago, a mysterious cataclysm struck the world. Governments collapsed and people scattered, to rebuild where they could. A mutation, “the Change,” arose, granting some people unique powers. Though the area once called Los Angeles retains its cultural diversity, its technological marvels have faded into legend. “Las Anclas” now resembles a Wild West frontier town… where the Sheriff possesses superhuman strength, the doctor can warp time to heal his patients, and the distant ruins of an ancient city bristle with deadly crystalline trees that take their jewel-like colors from the clothes of the people they killed.

Teenage prospector Ross Juarez’s best find ever – an ancient book he doesn’t know how to read – nearly costs him his life when a bounty hunter is set on him to kill him and steal the book. Ross barely makes it to Las Anclas, bringing with him a precious artifact, a power no one has ever had before, and a whole lot of trouble.

On the final list for the YASLA Best Fiction for Young Adults 2014, named on the Rainbow List for 2016, and also nominated for the Young Hoosier List.

The small amount of money Amazon.com pays me for purchases through these links helps me keep going with this Experiment in Storytelling. Thanks in advance!

Categories
Narrative

Of Linear and Geometric Growth

Even after all this time up here on the Moon, Spruance Del Curtin still found it difficult to get used to the idea that most of his instructors were not teachers in the way the ones back in Houston had been. Instead, they were people who happened to have sufficient background in a subject to teach it at the relevant level, whether or not they had any formal training in teaching.

Which was how he had a radio astronomer teaching his statistics class. Not that Dr. Doorne was a bad teacher — she certainly knew her stats, and was introducing the to professional-grade stats packages and real data — but it was sure clear that astronomy was the woman’s real interest. All it took to get the class off on a tangent was to have someone bring up one of her particular interests, especially the ones that had to do with signal processing.

He’d done it himself, a couple of times when the station was having weird difficulties that neither Engineering nor IT could hash out. As soon as he’d laid out the problem, that woman just ran with it, and damn if she wasn’t cute when she had a problem that captivated her. People talked about someone’s eyes lighting up when they got an idea, but her whole face took on this glow of excitement.

Today wasn’t going to be one of those days. She’d brought in a bunch of data sets from the rodent labs, passed out the USB sticks and told everyone to copy the data onto their laptops and proceeded to talk about exponential growth curves.

Sprue knew the theory — start with a single pair of mice and watch the population explode in a a few generations. Of course in the wild you never got anything like that except on isolated islands where they had no natural predators. But in the artificial environment of a laboratory, with complete safety and effectively limitless food, they could just keep breeding, and breeding, and breeding. And the data in front of him was bearing that out.

“However, it’s also important to remember that it is very difficult to distinguish between an exponential growth curve and the early parts of an S-curve without further data. Eventually, some forms of growth will reach a limit and level off.” Dr. Doorne looked around the room. “A population of rapidly reproducing animals will eventually reach the limits of even the most generous habitat, even if it is only because the researchers operating the laboratory take measures to limit their growth. What other forms of growth will start by looking like an exponential curve, and then level off into an S-curve?”

Trust a Chaffee to always be the first one with his hand up. Sprue still remembered taking intro to geology with one. The kid was practically the teacher’s pet within the first week of class.

“How about pyramid schemes and Ponzi schemes. Eventually they run out of suckers, for the simple reason that the human population was finite.”

Sprue was a bit taken aback. Usually that geneset was such a bunch of goody-two-shoes that you’d think they didn’t even know the concept of confidence games.

However, Dr. Doorne seemed to find it utterly unremarkable. “Who else can provide an example?”

This time Sprue made sure he got her nod. “The expansion of a virgin-field epidemic.”

Dr. Doorne’s eyes went wide. “Where did you hear about that?”

Sprue held his ground in the face of the implication that he had overstepped a boundary. “I do work at the radio station. A lot of stuff goes past the news desk.”

“That’s enough.” Dr. Doorne’s voice went hard, a tone Sprue had never heard her use. “Now, let’s turn our attention to the data sets in folder two.”

Make it definite, she knew something that wasn’t for general circulation, and did not like discovering that he was aware of it. Now the big question was whether she’d go complaining to Captain Waite too. Sprue didn’t think the big boss would be so easy-going a second time.

Categories
Narrative

Lightning Flashes Across the Sky

Quinn Merton got down to Innsmouth Sector and the spaceport facilities to find his elder clone-brother already waiting for him. At least Rick Sutton didn’t open the conversation with, “What took you so long?” Like as not he had a good idea of the reason why: someone bringing a big piece of equipment through an airlock between modules, such that all traffic had to wait until it was through.

Instead, Rick cast a quick look around him. “Let’s go down to one of the conference rooms to talk about this.”

Make that definite about this being something to keep quiet. Although as a pilot-astronaut stationed down in Coopersville, Rick didn’t have an office up here, he did have access to any of several small rooms where pilots could confer in private, either with other pilots or with non-pilot staff here in Shepardsport. They might not be completely soundproofed, but they were sufficiently enclosed that casual passers-by would not overhear.

Once they were inside and the door closed, Rick went straight to business. No preliminary small talk, just a stern, “Now this is not for public dissemination, but I think you deserve to know this now.”

“Understood.”

“You do know I have a cousin who lives out in the LA Basin and works as a paramedic.”

Even as Quinn answered in the affirmative, he considered what it must be like to grow up in a real family. Even if Rick knew he was adopted from when he was a little kid, it would still be so much different from growing up in the creche.

Rick’s expression grew solemn. “I just got an e-mail from him. Yesterday they went out to a welfare check, some guy living in an old van in an alley. Apparently they found him dead, and from the looks of the mess in there, he’d been pretty sick before the end. From what he’s been hearing online in some private groups for first responders, stuff like this is happening in a lot of places.”

Quinn considered it, recalled some of Autumn Belfontaine’s low-voiced phone conversations. “Then why isn’t it getting into the media?”

Was that a hint of an ironic smile. “That was what I was going to ask you, considering that you’re part of the media yourself.”

“I’m just a DJ, and I only have one air shift a week anyway. It might be different if I were working in the news department, but the only time I handle news is when I have to read solar storm warnings.”

Quinn paused, considering how much he wanted to tell his elder clone-brother. Finally, he decided to give Rick an abbreviated and rather general account of the news director’s comings and goings. “I think she knows something is going on, but for one or another reason she’s just monitoring things, not reporting on them, and not letting any of the junior reporters either. That’s why I e-mailed you earlier, hoping that maybe you’d know something.”

“Which was probably the best course of action you could’ve taken. Especially given the current political situation, she may want to avoid saying anything until she has a definite handle on just what is going on.”

“Understood.” Quinn considered how many times Shepardsport Pirate Radio had broken news that the Flannigan Administration was trying to keep secret, or had countered their distortions and outright falsehoods. A single rash statement could blow that carefully built good reputation.

“In the meantime, take care. If you need to get something to me quickly, just keep it discreet.”

Quinn promised he would. The walk back up to his quarters felt very lonely.

Categories
Document

A Letter from Home

From: George Waite (gwaite@waiteassociates.com)

To: Reginald Waite (rwaite@nasa.gov)

Subject: A Cause for Concern

I hope this message finds you well. I’ve hesitated to write to you about my concerns, since I know you have many responsibilities occupying your attention.

However, I think you should know this latest piece of news. I had been doing a little design work on the new construction at the Shady Rest Retirement Home, as much to keep myself busy as anything. This morning I had been scheduled to meet with the director to go over the final plans and sign off on the contract for the work.

However, just as I was ready to leave the house, I received a call from Mr. Markwalter, asking to postpone the meeting. Apparently they’ve been having some kind of illness going through their community the last several days, and he was concerned about my being exposed to it. I reminded him that I’d survived rolling a Jeep back in ‘Nam, and if that couldn’t kill me, a bug wasn’t likely to.

Mr. Markwalter was insistent, telling me that he was trying to minimize the number of people coming and going, for the protection of both the residents and potential visitors. We’re tentantively rescheduling our meeting for the first part of next week, hoping that this illness will have run its course by then.

I will keep you posted in case there is any more information of note. Your mother says to tell Steffi and the kids hello.

Take care.

Dad