Today was shaping up to be a rather frustrating day. After a day and a half of working with the Gagarinsk IT people on their network problems, Steffi was no closer to a solution.
Having exhausted the resources of her team here in Shepardsport, she decided it was time to talk to Toni Hargreaves over at Grissom City. Back when they were both working on the Dispater team at JPL, Toni had frequently come up with solutions for problems that had stumped everyone else. More than once she’d spent so much time helping other teams with their intractable problems that she’d ended up having to pull an all-nighter to get her own code written in time.
As they were discussing the ins and outs of networking, the text chime sounded in her ear. Surprised, she pulled the phone away from her ear to take a look.
It was her brother. Call me. Dad’s got a problem.
There was nothing to do but cut her call short and try to reach her brother. “Toni, I’m going to have to let you go. I just got a text from my brother. Something’s happened, and I’d better find out what.”
“No problem. Talk to you later.” Although Toni tried to sound unflustered, Steffi could hear the catch in her voice.
Then she remembered — Toni was from Phoenix. An only child, she’d lost both parents when the old Chinese space station crashed into the city. Even after all these years, she remained a little sensitive about being left with no family but the one she’d made for herself: her husband, her children, and her husband’s various clone-brothers, most of whom lived over here in Shepardsport.
No time to worry about it. Toni was a resilient woman, and right now Steffi needed to find out what was going on with her dad. The last she’d heard, her mother was doing better after what the doctors was pretty sure was a mild heart attack, and it had sounded like she was about ready to be discharged, albeit with the requirement that she and Dad both quarantine themselves at home for three weeks to ensure neither of them had been exposed to the diablovirus.
However, when Steffi dialed Matt’s number, she got only a busy signal. It didn’t even go to voicemail, which suggested something was overloading the circuits.
On the other hand, it was also possible that he’d gotten a new phone and neglected to configure his voicemail. Matt was a good guy, but had a certain tendency to let things slide by him. And if he was calling the rest of the family right now, giving them the heads-up, it might take a while.
Whatever was going on, she couldn’t wait indefinitely. After the third attempt to connect got the same busy signal, Steffi decided it was time to shoot him a quick text. Tried to get through to you, but it’s not even going to voicemail. I’ll try to call later this evening.
Now it was time to get back to work.