Month: June 2020

Categories
Narrative

Of Family and Fear

Steffi Roderick was at the settlement’s small library, talking with one of the resource specialists. Although as an IT specialist, she would normally do her own searches, today she wanted to touch base with someone who would have a different perspective — and some specialized knowledge.

She was just winding up the conversation when she realized that her son had come into the room. Although Howie was staying along the periphery of the room, quietly looking at one of the databases, she could tell he was looking for her. Call it a mother’s intuition.

Finished with her business here, she walked over to him. “Are you looking for someone, Howie?”

As he looked up at her, she was struck afresh by just how much he was looking like his dad as he grew older. Although he’d inherited her red hair, he was definitely showing that long Shepard face, the long-lipped mouth capable of a big grin.

“Just wondering what’s up with Dad. He seemed kinda upset when I saw him.”

“It’s hard to say.” Steffi knew she was temporizing, since she had a good idea of what had probably upset him. “He’s carrying a pretty heavy load right now, and that kind of stress brings out the Icy Commander.”

Sheps all seemed to share their ur-brother’s peculiar temperament, which Big Al’s contemporaries had called “mercurial,” but which she preferred to term bimodal. It alternated between two basic modes, “Smilin’ Al,” a sunny side famous for that big grin, and “The Icy Commander,” grim and always on the verge of flaring that notorious temper that Gordon Cooper had written about.

Right now, Steffi knew that her own people had been entering a lot of dirtside databases, trying to find out just how bad things were going on down there. And while they were working under command authority, it didn’t necessarily mean that the agencies whose systems they’d entered would approve of it.

Ever since the Kitty Hawk Massacre, Reggie had been doing his best to fight this battle as a military officer sworn to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America from all enemies, foreign and domestic.” No matter how carefully he sought to balance things, there would always be those who saw him as a rebel for demanding accountability from the Administration.

Now Shepardsport was beginning to take on local and state agencies who were either grossly incompetent in the handling of the crisis, or were using it as a way to consolidate power and settle old scores. Which may well have just made the settlement and its commandant even more enemies.

Categories
Advertising

Paying the Bills

This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death.

And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides — or are chosen. A world in which good rides on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abigail — and the worst nightmares of evil are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg, the dark man.

In 1978 Stephen King published The Stand, the novel that is now considered to be one of his finest works. But as it was first published, The Stand was incomplete, since more than 150,000 words had been cut from the original manuscript.

Now Stephen King’s apocalyptic vision of a world blasted by plague and embroiled in an elemental struggle between good and evil has been restored to its entirety. The Stand : The Complete And Uncut Edition includes more than five hundred pages of material previously deleted, along with new material that King added as he reworked the manuscript for a new generation. It gives us new characters and endows familiar ones with new depths. It has a new beginning and a new ending. What emerges is a gripping work with the scope and moral comlexity of a true epic.

For hundreds of thousands of fans who read The Stand in its original version and wanted more, this new edition is Stephen King’s gift. And those who are reading The Stand for the first time will discover a triumphant and eerily plausible work of the imagination that takes on the issues that will determine our survival.

Categories
Narrative

What’s So Civil About War Anyway?

The old Guns ‘N Roses song “Civil War” was playing now, just loud enough for Reggie Waite to be aware of it. It brought back memories of the Naval Academy, of his midshipman cruise aboard the old aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy, one of the last conventionally-fueled carriers in the US Fleet. War had been in the air that summer, although everyone had expected it to be a quick dust-up like Grenada back in Reagan’s day, not the long haul the Energy Wars had turned out to be.

It also made him think of his first trip south of the Mason-Dixon Line, of stopping at some little shop and the elderly shopkeeper sharply scolding him, “There was nothing civil about that war.”

Being all of eight years old and under the stern eye of his father, Reggie had held his tongue. But looking back with the perspective of his classes on military history at Annapolis, he now knew that, as such affairs go, the Late Unpleasantness of the 1860’s had actually been quite a civil affair, as compared to the horrors of the Russian Civil Wars — either the 1918 one between the Reds and the Whites, or the Red Resurgeance of the 1980’s — let alone the various uprisings and insurgencies in Africa and other parts of the Third World.

And if the current conflict with the Flannigan Administration was to be termed a civil war, it too was quite low-key. Of course having the two sides be 1.5 light-seconds apart did help keep things from becoming too kinetic, particularly when the dissenters were at the top of the gravity well and the Administration at the bottom.

He was even in contact with his nominal superiors within the space bureaucracy. Take this latest e-mail missive from the NASA Administrator. How often did a separatist leader anywhere else in the world get a sternly-worded letter from the boss, written in a manner that showed the writer clearly expected it to actually mean something?

It might have meant a little more if the new guy in the big chair hadn’t been a political hack whose chief talent seemed to be knowing how to tell Flannigan what he wanted to hear. Reggie had his differences with Aiden McAllister, but at least the man was a veteran astronaut, someone he could respect, not a professional brown-noser.

A brown-noser who was now whining about how Reggie needed to get his IT people back under control, because NASA couldn’t very well have them running around the Internet playing hacker. Reggie fought down the urge to laugh. Given that his wife was head of IT up here, and he himself had a EE degree from Annapolis, he knew perfectly well what was going on, and why. Some things deserved to be yanked out into the sunlight, which was why he’d greenlighted his niece’s idea of a pirate radio station when she’d first presented it to him.

Still, one could not very well appear too blatantly insubordinate to the man who was at least nominally running the agency to which one belonged. Which meant he needed to formulate a reasonably civil reply — and decide whether he wished to argue his case for the incursions, or play the plausible deniability card.

Categories
Narrative

Of Friends and Family

The tutoring session finished and his students dispersing to their own modules, Lou considered whether it was time to head back to his own apartment. Or at least back to that module, although its lounge wasn’t nearly as nice as this one.

But as he was putting away his materials, he noticed Brenda Redmond sitting at the far wall, looking very much as if she were stewing over something. Should he ask her if there were something wrong? Or would that be an intrusion?

They were colleagues, both DJ’s at Shepardsport Pirate Radio. And they did have lineage ties: although Brenda had married into the Shepard lineage, she’d been born into the Grissom lineage. So he did have certain responsibilities.

Make it light then. Leave the door open, as it were. “Hi, Brenda. Just wondered if you needed anything before I took off.”

Brenda pursed her lips, as if ready to form a polite no, thank you. “Well, I was just thinking about some technical issues in telecommunications.” She paused, moistened her lips. “A few days ago, I got an e-mail from an old friend, from before the anti-Sharp stuff started really revving up. She’d apparently had some kind of breach with her parents, and when all the dorms closed at her college, she was really upset about having to go back to them. And then, with all the stuff with Kitty Margrave’s friend and everything we found out about that, it just slipped my mind.”

Yes, she definitely felt bad about that one. Not exactly guilty, but more than just sheepish at a mental lapse.

“Don’t beat yourself up, Brenda. This is not exactly a normal situation, and I’m hearing a lot of people are having to struggle to keep track of ordinary things.”

She essayed a wan smile. “Thanks, Lou. If these were normal times, I’d just write and let her know that things came up and I hadn’t gotten a chance to get back with her. But right now I’m not even sure if it’s safe for me to try to contact her.” Another of those awkward pauses. “I mean, her parents are so dead-set against clones that they made her dump me as a friend, just because my dad’s a clone of Gus Grissom. It was like they wanted her to forget I even existed after we headed off to training to come up here.”

Lou’s nerves prickled with alarm. “Then you think she could be in danger?”

“I don’t know. Maybe, depending on just what kind of breach she had with her parents. For all I know, she may be holed up in an apartment with a friend. But if she’s had to go back to her folks’ house and the price of peace there is that she pretend to agree with whatever position of theirs led to the breach, and especially if they’re insisting that they now have the right to monitor her telecom, just texting or e-mailing her could risk an ugly blow-up.”

Lou considered that information. “That is a nasty Schroedinger’s box. Do you leave it closed and hope for the best, or open it and risk making a bad situation even worse?”

“That’s a pretty good way to put it. Except if I don’t reach out to her and she really is in a desperate situation, might her feelings of abandonment and hopelessness lead her to do something rash?”

Lou could tell what Brenda was thinking but didn’t want to say aloud: suicide. It was a taboo topic for a reason, especially after Clarissa Munroe’s spectacular act of self-destruction. There were very good reasons to condemn that particular young woman to damnato memoria, but it meant it became very difficult to talk in a constructive way about someone else under unendurable pressure without looking like you were excusing what she did.

“Which means you need to figure out some way to find out where this person is without potentially letting other people in the same household know that you’re making inquiries about her.”

“That’s pretty much the size of it.” Brenda paused again to consider her words. “I mean, I know there are techniques, especially after I watched Eli dig out information on the crazy stuff that’s going on in several states’ child welfare departments. But those are techniques you’re only supposed to use if you’re acting in an official capacity. And somehow I don’t think this is the sort of thing that’s going to get taken seriously. I mean, that creepy I’m OK message that was supposed to be from Amy is going to set off just about anybody’s alarm bells, but someone unhappy to have to go home to their parents is far more apt to be told to make the best of it.”

“You’ve got a point.” Lou weighed the options. “I can ask around at IT, see what options I would have to legitimately find out where she is.”

“Thanks.”

Categories
Narrative

Echoes and Memories

Brenda Redmond didn’t like having to do homework in a crowded module lounge. However, she’d had enough trouble getting the kids to sleep after an all-too-brief FaceTime call with their dad that having a screen on in that apartment was not an option.

So here she was, trying not to listen to Lou Corlin tutoring a couple of teens. Differential equations, from the sound of it — stuff that dirtside kids didn’t even start studying until their third or fourth year in college. Up here, students moved forward as fast as they could master the subject material, rather than being forced to advance in lockstep with the rest of their agemates.

A lot of Alan Shepard’s problem when he was that age was probably being bored to tears by regular classes in grade and high school. Even at Annapolis, he didn’t really hit his stride until his third year.

How many times had her own father grumbled about the difficulty of keeping Spruance Del Curtin motivated to put out his best work? Brenda knew a lot of those remarks hadn’t been meant for her ears, but when she was still living in her folks’ apartment, it had often been difficult to avoid overhearing her dad’s remarks to her mom about problems in Engineering.

Sometimes it seemed like just yesterday that she was still living with her natal family, and sometimes it felt like another lifetime. Heck, the craziness of the last few weeks sometimes seemed to stretch backward through her memory far further than it had any right to.

Speaking of which, she realized that she’d become so occupied with Kitty Margrave’s friend Amy that she’d completely forgotten about the message she’d gotten from Robbie Sandberg. Sure, she’d sent some kind of very basic response right away, of the I’ll be praying for you type, but she’d never followed up with anything substantial.

And now enough time had passed that she had no idea what Robbie’s situation might be now. Had she been able to find some kind of accommodations with a friend or trusted mentor? Or had she been left with no choice to return to her parents’ home, told it was her problem to deal with the breach between them? In which case, would it even be safe to send her a message?

If her parents were reading her e-mails, checking her phone, on the grounds of under our roof, under our rules, discovering a new message from a former friend thought to be banished from her life could cause trouble. Anything from a shouting match to beatings, confiscations of belongings, even things that would leave her wishing there weren’t a stay-at-home order keeping them from tossing her out on her ass.

Was there some way to contact Robbie, buck her up if necessary, without revealing her identity? All of a sudden she wished she knew a whole lot more about hacking.

Lou was winding up his tutoring session. On the other hand, he was a typical Chaffee straight-arrow. If she asked him, he’d probably aver that they shouldn’t be trying to go behind the backs of someone’s parents when those parents were putting a roof over that person’s head, not to mention that a lot of the necessary hacks were a bit sketchy if you weren’t doing them under the direction of appropriate authority. And while it made sense for Kitty Margrave to go to her aunt when it was clear that Amy was in danger, Brenda wasn’t sure she wanted to go to Betty about an old friend’s situation with so little to go on.

Categories
Narrative

Like Ripples Upon a Pond

In normal times, the Roosa Barracks was a lively place. Maybe not as lively as the main concourse of Grissom City, but for a pilot-astronaut, there was always the company of one’s colleagues. Spontaneous games of poker or Magic: the Gathering in the dining commons, all-night bull sessions in the lounge of the BOQ.

But all that had gone by the wayside due to the present emergency. By order of the commandant, everyone was to remain in quarters during their off-duty hours.

Drew Reinholt looked around his room, considering how it had never felt all that small before. Of course it wasn’t as if this were an isolation cell — he did have full Internet access. A few taps on his tablet and he could talk with anyone in the three worlds. Of course communication with anyone outside the Earth-Moon system would be subject to light-speed lag, which made a phone conversation impossible, but text messaging worked just as well.

However, he was really supposed to be using this time to go over the new revisions on the landers’ instrumentation. The software was supposed to have gone into service over the next several weeks, but with the current crisis, the implementation was going to be delayed For The Duration. However, Flight Ops wanted everyone getting up to speed so they’d be ready as soon as NASA green-lighted the change-over. Which meant you were expected to spend pretty much every spare hour either studying or practicing on the simulators.

He hadn’t really been listening to the music — everything was pretty much familiar, so it made perfect background music. But when it stopped right in the middle of a song, his attention went straight to it.

For a moment he thought the stream had been interrupted again — not surprising when the Administration really didn’t like Shepardsport Pirate Radio. But then the DJ came on. “We interrupt this program for breaking news.”

And then Autumn Belfontaine took over the mic, reporting a most disturbing discovery. Drew knew that stuff was pretty messed up down on Earth, even in the US. It wasn’t surprising that a fast-moving disease like the diablovirus, which could incapacitate people in hours, would leave a lot of kids at loose ends, enough to swamp a city’s child-protection services. But what the heck was with this business of taking kids out of unofficial foster homes and stuffing them into makeshift orphanages in the very schools that had been closed to slow the spread of the virus? Was this thing driving people subtly crazy, such that they seemed rational, but their judgement went to heck?

At least his kids were safe with Brenda over on Farside, and her family was right there in Shepardsport, just a few modules away from their apartment. And much as he’d like to be with them right now, he was getting a thorough appreciation for why it was necessary that pilots be kept away from a settlement’s general population.

All the same, he was definitely scheduling some time to talk with his kids tonight. Screen time might be a poor substitute for romping with them like he would when he was able to visit, but it was better than nothing.

Categories
Narrative

At the Highest Level

Reginald Waite read through the proposed news brief a second time, wondering why it was even on his desk at all. He’d pretty much let Shepardsport Pirate Radio operate on its own, and certainly had never attempted to exert any sort of censorship authority over it.

Yes, Autumn had submitted that initial news brief after the Kitty Hawk Massacre to him for review, but it had been as much a courtesy because at the time she was still his guest here, not a permanent part of the community. Once she’d come to him with the idea of establishing a pirate radio station to get the real news out, he’d trusted her judgment as news director and never tried to micromanage her.

On the other hand, most of what she had been covering fell into the category of partisan politics. After he’d run the helmet-cam videos of the Massacre on U-Tube for the world to see, the worst abuses had been reined in.

What Autumn’s news brief described was nothing short of gross malfeasance of duty, being systematically covered up. Unfortunately, it was not hugely surprising — with so many people falling severely ill, it was inevitable that children would be left with no parent at home, and no close relative nearby.

But why did government agencies in several states feel such an intense need to disrupt the informal care arrangements that a lot of these children had worked out with their friends’ families? Legally speaking, they would be on shaky ground, especially if the parents were incapacitated as Dr. Thuc’s sources were indicating, but as long as nothing happened, it made far more sense to leave well enough alone and save state resources for where they were needed most. Certainly a reasonably safe home was preferable to this business of herding all these kids into gymnasiums and classrooms filled with cots, more akin to an emergency hurricane shelter than a foster home.

And to think that it probably would’ve gone unnoticed if Betty Margrave’s niece hadn’t maintained contact with an old friend from Houston. Did someone force that girl to write that stiff, stilted message, or had they simply confiscated her phone and written it for her? However it had come into being, it was so off that it actually managed to be more suspicious than if they’d left well enough alone.

Having someone from IT hacking into state child welfare office computers was irregular. However, given that it was done under the direction of the head of Safety and Security, it wasn’t like the Mallory kid had taken a wild hair to do it on his own.

On the other hand, Eli was a Shep, Betty was married to another Shep, and Autumn was the daughter of a third Shep. This was getting pretty en famiglia here.

Categories
Narrative

A Bitter Pill

Betty Margrave knew the information would hit Autumn Belfontaine hard, given her personal history. It had been a punch in the gut for Betty, because of her two nieces.

Small wonder Kitty was taking such an intense interest in Amy’s situation. She’s just old enough to understand what could’ve happened if I hadn’t been able to get to her and Cindy as quickly as I did, or I hadn’t been able to bring the authority of an FBI agent to the table when the child welfare people started making noises about the girls being taken in by a dual-career couple.

By the time Autumn finished reading the summation of the situation, her hands were shaking so badly she had to set the tablet down rather than try to pass it back. In the Moon’s lighter gravity a fall was far less likely to do it harm, but it certainly wouldn’t do it any good.

“This is disgusting.” She was so angry her voice shook, sounding quite unlike the professional voice people knew from her radio broadcasts.

She took a deep breath, except it came in a sharp gasp. Yes, she was trying to regain control over her emotions, but no, it wasn’t working nearly as well as she wanted it to. “I mean, I know that they’ve got to be short-staffed, if things are as bad as we’re hearing. But to just round up all the kids whose parents are in the hospital and herd them into schools turned into makeshift dormitories–“

“What do you expect from a government operation?” That was Eli Mallory, who was leaning against the doorframe in a pose very similar to a photo of Alan Shepard in one of his best-known biographies.

Betty had to fight not to laugh. She’d seen plenty of botch jobs in her FBI days. Even the Marine Corps and NASA, organizations in which lives were on the line, had their issues. But as a representative of the command structure of the settlement, she had to be careful about anything that could be taken as mockery or disrespect to the authority upon which it rested. “You might want to be careful how you say that. This settlement happens to be a government operation.”

Anyone else, it might have taken aback. But Sheps prided themselves on always having a snappy comeback “True, but up here you’ve got to be on the top of your game if you want to be around for very long.”

“He does have a point.” Autumn had recovered some of her composure, although her radio voice wasn’t quite back. “We managed to get over five hundred kids from the NASA clone creche settled in without anything approaching the mess the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services seems to be trying to cover up. Although you’ve got to allow that these kids were raised to be competent, responsible and industrious from the beginning, so it’s probably not quite comparable to a bunch of random kids from the general community.”

From the sound of that comment, Autumn must’ve been drawing from some personal memories. Then she looked straight at Betty. “However, that’s all a distraction. Right now we need to decide how to handle this. My instinct is to go on the air and blow it wide open.”

“And you’re not sure if that’s the best way to handle it, or if that’s the anger talking.” Betty studied the younger woman. In the last few years she’d gotten a good measure of Autumn Belfontaine, and could tell where her major weak points lay. “How about you write the story up as if you were going to file it for a news agency. Then I’ll take a look at it and see if it’s a go or if we need to run it past higher authority.”

Both of them knew that higher authority meant Captain Waite.

Categories
Document

Suffer the Children

In times of trouble, children make up a particularly vulnerable population. By law they are dependent upon an adult guardian to function in society. Generally that guardian will be a parent, or at least a close relative.

Even in normal times, a small number of children will have no parent or other close relative, or will be in such a dysfunctional family that their basic needs cannot be met. As a result, almost every polity has some mechanism for providing suitable guardianship for such children. Although most people think of this process primarily in terms of a foster home in which the child will reside, guardianship also involves such things as medical and financial decisions, which typically will be handled by a different group of people than those putting a roof over the child’s head and food on their plate.

In theory all the different aspects of the child welfare system work together smoothly to provide children with the best possible environment for them to thrive in the absence of their natural guardians (parents or another close adult relative). In practice, it often works more like a creaky and antiquated piece of machinery, simultaneously subjecting good parents to unmerited scrutiny and allowing other children to slip through the cracks.

A major societal disruption quickly strains these systems to the breaking point. In the case of the diablovirus pandemic, many children were suddenly left without functional adult supervision as their parents fell ill. Even in two-parent homes, many fell ill simultaneously, and often so quickly that there was no time to contact the typical substitute parental figures such as grandparents or aunts and uncles.

Worse, many of the foster parents upon which the child welfare system relied were also falling ill. As a result, child welfare departments began to take desperate measures to get children placed. People who were in the process of being screened as potential foster parents were simply fast-tracked, leading to red-flag situations being overlooked. In other areas, older teens were simply allowed to function as guardians for their younger siblings, even if they themselves were some months or even years short of their majority.

In some of the hardest-hit cities, schools that had been closed to stop the spread of the virus were re-opened as emergency children’s homes. Desks were cleared out of the classrooms, to be replaced by cots for the children to sleep on and perhaps small lockers for their possessions.

Needless to say, this open-barracks sleeping arrangement was less than satisfactory, and often resulted in serious abuses. Many of the staff were only very hastily vetted for reliability, resulting in more than a few individuals finding employment who should never have been allowed near children. But not all the abuse was at the hands of adults. Children are capable of being appallingly cruel, and in a situation in which the normal bonds and structures of society seem to be breaking down, the restraints that hold it back can quickly dissolve.

—– T Cartwright, “Child Welfare in a Time of Pandemic.” The Diablovirus: a Social History. Grissom City: St. Selene Digital Press, 2044.

Categories
Narrative

Of Distance and Difficulty

Autumn Belfontaine had plenty of experience in doing interviews. One of her very first assignments as a reporter at the U of Minnesota student radio station had been to get man-on-the-street interviews at a political rally.

However, she was used to being able to talk with her interviewee face to face. Sure, radio was an audio-only medium, so the listeners weren’t losing anything. But as an interviewer, she really liked to be able to see the other person, gauge their reactions to her questions in a way she couldn’t when she had nothing but a voice on the other end of a telephone line. And no, videoconferencing technology didn’t really substitute for being in the same room with a person and being able to look them in the eyes.

Having it be someone she knew should’ve made it easier, but somehow she was finding it much harder. It didn’t help that she and Chandler Armitage had a rather complicated relationship. Genetically speaking, he was her uncle, since he was her father’s clone-brother. But they were so close in age that he felt more like the brother she never had.

Which is no excuse. You’re a professional, so act like it.

Still, there was no denying that things simply weren’t clicking, and it wasn’t just because the assignment had been sprung on her with almost no time to prepare. She was supposed to be getting his insights on the situation from his experience as a pilot flying to various settlements, but all his responses sounded stiff, even canned.

At least this is a recorded interview, not something we’re doing live. With luck, he’ll loosen up. Worst case, we 86 the whole thing.

Autumn was so tightly focused on it that she almost didn’t hear the tapping on the door. When she did, she turned to see who could be interrupting her. At least coming in on a recorded interview wasn’t like barging into the DJ booth while the DJ was on air — they could edit out such interruptions.

To her surprise, it wasn’t the music director, or the sales director, or even the general manager, but Ken Redmond himself. When the Chief of Engineering shows up at your door, you’d better answer, ASAP.

“Commander Armitage, we’re going to need to wind this up.”

At least he was understanding, but it still felt awkward to cut things short. And even more awkward after the call was completed, to go out there and see what Ken needed.