There was something really strange about reading the old childhood classic Good Night Moon to your children when you were living in a lunar settlement. But Brenda knew her kids got a kick out of the story of a dirtside kid determinedly dragging out the process of going to bed by saying good night to everything in the room. It was almost as fun as Marvin K Mooney, Will You Please Go Now, but less likely to get them wound up into fits of giggles.
Finally she had both children tucked into bed in their respective sleeping alcoves, favorite plushies in hand to comfort them. Now to rig her own bed for the night. She folded down the desk into a nightstand, then set her phone on it.
Better check to make sure she’d set the alarm. It wouldn’t do to oversleep and miss her air shift.
Having your phone chime while it was in your hand was always a little weird. Brenda nearly dropped it, although with the Moon’s lower gravity it wasn’t as likely to do damage as doing so on Earth.
Still, it was a bit surprising to get a text from Lou Corlin at this hour. He had the air shift right after her, so he didn’t usually stay up overly late.
Just heard from Toni Hargreaves. She’s thinking someone at Medlab might be able to get the geolocation metadata from Robbie’s phone if we can convince them that she’s in danger.
Brenda tried to figure out how that could work. Although she knew senior Medstaff could use their authority to access a lot of databases that were usually covered by privacy restrictions, they were typically medical information. Phone metadata seemed unlikely — unless one was trying to determine whether a particular person was within a disaster area.
Except the whole planet was a disaster area, from everything Brenda was hearing. Trying to argue on that basis that one person’s metadata should be accessed sounded a little shaky.
On the other hand, it was a thread of hope. I suppose it might work. What do you need to know?
Right now, whether you’ve heard anything else from her. We sure don’t want to go getting Medstaff involved when she’s actually safe at a friend’s place.
You’ve got a point. Let me double-check.
Brenda took a look through both her SMS and mail apps. No, that text seems to be the last one.
Then our next step is figuring out how to approach Medstaff so they don’t blow us off. You may want to take care of this one, since they’re a lot more likely to take you seriously.
Brenda could see Lou’s point. Although they weren’t that far apart chronologically, she was married and had two kids, while he was still single and living in bachelor quarters.
OK. But let’s think things through overnight. It’s been several days now, and a few more hours shouldn’t hurt. And we’re a lot more likely to get a negative response if we go in their looking rushed.