Month: August 2020

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Narrative

The Tension Electric

With things as chaotic as they’d been of late, Autumn Belfontaine had been ordering most of her meals sent to the newsroom. As a result, being able to actually go to the dining commons was something of an Occasion.

As she walked past one after another table, looking for familiar faces, she noted the tension like an electric charge in the air. The stiff postures, the tight gestures, the voices that didn’t quite rise yet were oddly hard. Yes, everyone here was on edge, and who could blame them? Anyone with strong ties to people back on Earth had to be struggling with anxiety about the ever-increasing uncertainty about their safety as communication became more difficult. As if that weren’t enough, now they had the possibility of an extended period of bad space weather, depending on which solar astronomer’s interpretation of the data you believed.

She was so deep in thought she almost didn’t hear the familiar voice calling her name. When she realized that Spencer Dawes had saved a seat for her, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

“Sorry, Spence. I’ve got a lot on my mind right now.”

“No problem. I think everybody’s carrying a pretty heavy burden right now.” Spence looked around the table, which was occupied mostly by his friends. “Right now, let’s concentrate on having a reasonably enjoyable meal.”

Autumn recognized the signal that conversation should be kept to pleasant subjects. Which meant right now she’d just as soon let someone else take the lead.

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Document

The Power of Memory

Thinking back, it’s interesting how deeply certain periods are seared into one’s memory in such clarity that they seem to have happened only yesterday. Some of them are pretty much universal: your first kiss, the first time you get laid. Others are more personal. And then there are the ones that are shared by a whole generation, like the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination, the first Moon and Mars landings, the fall of the Soviet Union.

For us, the Expulsions had been the big Defining Moment. We all knew where we’d been and what we were doing when the word went through that we were being sent to Shepardsport. And all of us can remember that moment when we heard about the destruction of Luna Station, of the Kitty Hawk Massacre. Especially those of us who’d just gotten up here — the first thing that went through our minds was that could’ve been me. Just a little difference in the schedule of flights and we could’ve been one of those kids getting their names inscribed on the Wall of Honor.

After Shepardsport adapted to this sudden increase in its population, things pretty much settled into a pattern. Life actually started to become ordinary for us. We had our work, our training, our teaching responsibilities, our mandatory exercise hours. And when we didn’t have something scheduled, there was always studying to do, or class preparation for whatever we were helping teach. So it wasn’t like we had a whole lot of time on our hands to go oh wow, I’m on the Moon. And we really didn’t have a lot of time to brood about the tensions with the Administration, unless our work responsibilities related directly to it.

And then the Great Sick came along and suddenly everything was changing — but it was down there, dirtside. For us, the biggest change was the pilots being confined to the port facility down in Innsmouth Sector, so a whole bunch of classes had to be rearranged so that either they could teach by teleconference, or someone else took over.

But there was always the awareness that it was out there, and we had to make sure it didn’t get in here, because if it did, there was no way to keep it from sweeping through the whole settlement. Up here, we just live too close together. Even keeping the pilots in the port facility was probably not a sure shot, because they were still having some contact with other port facility staff who went home at night to their apartments up in Dunwich Sector.

So there was a continual low-level sense of menace, of being a tiny and very fragile bubble of safety, at a level that we hadn’t felt since we first got up here and were super-aware that we were living on a world where everything that sustained life, down to the air we breathe, had to be provided and maintained by an intricate system of technologies. But it was something you could put out of your mind if you weren’t particularly close to any of the pilots or had family still dirtside. After a while the immediacy of the threat started to fade, and life went on.

And then the solar storm alerts started coming through. It’s something you prepare and train for, just like we prepared for hurricanes back in Houston, and people up in the Midwest and Great Plains prepare for tornadoes. Watches and warnings, regular drills where we all had to go trooping down to the storm shelters under the settlement’s water reservoirs. But you usually figure that the Sun will hock one hairball and that’ll be it. This time the Sun’s magnetic field was doing some seriously weird things, to the point that even the solar astronomers weren’t sure how long the danger was apt to last, and NOAA space weather forecasts were outdated almost as soon as they went up.

I was working on a project for one of our resident astronomers, and half the time I was in her office, she’d be on the phone to colleagues all over the Earth-Moon system. People over at Grissom City, people at JPL who ran the big solar observation satellites, even people in Jerusalem and Tokyo and Moscow. Sometimes she’d even get e-mails from Mars, since there’s no way to have a realtime conversation with that kind of light-speed lag. So I was getting a ringside seat on a whole lot of uncertainty, and that was when I started really feeling like we were under siege.

—– Spruance Del Curtin, “Remembering the Diablovirus Outbreak” from The Lunar Resistance: An Oral History. Carpenter Point, Tycho Crater: Kennedy University Press, 2059.

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Narrative

In a State of Suspension

Why do I keep feeling like we’re under siege?

Rick Sutton was no stranger to staying in the BOQ. He’d done so plenty of times over the years, back on Earth when he was deployed on a station where one could not bring dependents, or here on the Moon when he had an overnight stay at another settlement. But he’d never been in the one here in Coopersville until now.

He understood the rationale. Every time pilot-astronauts visited Luna Station or another settlement, they were exposed to a multitude of outsiders. In normal times it wasn’t a huge concern, since the pre-flight quarantine periods were supposed to keep people from bringing anything up here, beyond the colds that could never quite be completely eliminated (and according to Medstaff, were necessary for the healthy operation of the immune system).

In the current situation, the stakes were far higher. Already a seemingly trivial breach of quarantine in the Indian space program had effectively shut down a big chunk of Japan’s spacelift capacity until everyone who might have come into contact with the infected individual had completed the necessary period of quarantine and was pronounced clear by the doctors. And there’d been a scare at Schirrasburg, although it had turned out to be an ordinary norovirus, not the diablovirus.

He knew he should be grateful that their isolation wasn’t absolute. He could still talk to his wife and daughter via FaceTime, but it just wasn’t the same.

And he was getting some worried texts from Quinn Merton up at Shepardsport. In normal times he would’ve visited his clone-brothers when he was up there, but now that simply wasn’t possible.

However, this was definitely not just a matter of missing his visits. No, Quinn was pretty clearly getting some contradictory information, about the current space weather situation and picking up a sense that something a lot bigger was going on behind the scenes.

Not surprising, considering that his position as a DJ at Shepardsport Pirate Radio would be putting him in touch with some information sources that ordinary civilians didn’t see. And he could read between the lines and pick up the gaps and lacunae in the official space weather forecasts too.

Rick’s wife was a planetary geologist specializing in cometary water deposition, so her understanding of solar storms would be glancing. However, she would know people in the appropriate specialties, and be far more able to contact them than he would.

Yes, it was time to ask her some questions.

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Narrative

Essential Matters

As Chief of Agriculture, Alice Murchison was well aware of the ultimate destination of the products of her department. However, she seldom “went backstage” to the industrial-grade kitchens that fed not only Shepardsport, but many of the smaller research outposts that didn’t have their own food production and preparation facilities.

However, today she needed to talk with the Chief of Food and Nutrition, and given the sensitive nature of what they needed to discuss, it was really best to talk face-to-face.

So Alice walked down the long corridor filled with the scents of food being cooked. Some for today’s meals in the dining commons or to be taken by deliverybot to people eating at their jobs or classes, but others to be dehydrated and vacuum-packed for shipment elsewhere. This place was a lot larger than it had been when she had first come up here and taken charge of the settlement’s greenhouse farms. But that had been right after the Kitty Hawk Massacre, when the settlement was undergoing a period of explosive growth as a result of the Expulsions. More than once she had come here to discuss priorities in expanding food production and been handed a chicken to strip or beans to snap while they talked.

Today Jennifer Redmond was alone in her office, looking over recipes on the monitor of her workstation while making notes on a tablet. Alice tapped at the doorframe, and Jen looked up. “Come in, sit down.” She pulled a folding chair out from a nook behind her desk.

Normally they might spend a little time in small talk, but today things were sufficiently urgent that they launched straight into the matter at hand without worrying about social niceties. “As if trying to keep a dirtside pandemic from getting up here to the Moon, Bill just told me that it looks like the Sun may be screwing up our spacelift capacity for as long as a month.”

“I heard.” Jen made a sidelong glance at her computer. “Ken’s been keeping me up to date on the situation. He’s been so busy down at Engineering with this situation that we hardly ever see each other, but we keep in touch, mostly texts but some e-mail. According to what he’s passed to me, Astronomy thinks that the folks dirtside may be overstating the case for an extended period of solar storms, but there is still a heightened possibility of additional CME’s, and until they actually happen, there’s no way to be sure which way they’ll be going.”

“Which means we’ll want to be prepared for the worst case. Both the loss of certain supplies from Earth that we can’t produce locally, and the possibility that sufficiently severe solar storms could affect local production.” Alice retrieved her tablet. “The greenhouse farms were built with sufficient shielding to stand an average-strength solar storm, but it’s still possible that being hit with an X-class CME could result in radiation levels that will negatively affect plant growth. Of course different plants have different levels of sensitivity to radiation, and domesticated plants tend to be more sensitive than their wild relatives, for the simple reason that we’ve compromised hardiness in search for more desirable characteristics for our tables.”

Jen gave her that smile that wasn’t quite bless your heart, but came close. “Oh, yes. I have raised a garden in my time, and I know all too well the relative hardiness of weeds and the plants you actually want.” She laughed. “At least we don’t have to worry about that up here. And as long as you’ve got a decent stockpile of seed against emergencies, we should be able to replant and get back to business soon enough. Unlike on Earth, where losing a crop at a key moment can mean losing the entire season’s production.”

She returned her attention to her computer, pulling up what looked like a database. “According to our records, right now we have sufficient supplies to provide minimum adequate nutrition for everyone in the settlement for two months. Of course that would mean some pretty bland and repetitive meals, and no treats. Everyone would get a little thinner, and I’d need to be careful to have enough variety that we don’t end up with appetite fatigue, but we’re not looking at a famine unless we completely lost all production for at least three months.”

Alice realized that she really hadn’t been keeping that close a watch on what was happening to food when it left her department. But then she had plenty on her plate already,, so it was easier to consider her job done when the harvest was delivered to Food and Nutrition’s processing and storage facilities.

At least they did have the advantage of an institutional culture that planned for anti-fragility. Just as mechanical systems were built with triple redundancies to make sure a single-point failure couldn’t become a catastrophe, supply systems were arranged with capacity for stockpiles, rather than being run just-in-time. From the beginning of long-term settlement of the Moon and in-situ resource utilization, everyone had known that a large community could not afford to be one problem away from running out of something vital. Of course it helped that they ran everything as closed to closed-cycle as possible, although there were always losses.

“OK, now let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of specific steps we’ll need to take to make sure that as much as possible of our food production capacity is protected. We’ll want to prioritize breeding stock and reserve seed supplies, but we need to plan for a variety of scenarios, best-case and worst-case.”

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Narrative

Considering Necessary Measures

In ordinary times, Reginald Waite would’ve called his Chief of Safety and Security and his Chief Flight Surgeon in to his office for a conference. However, these were not ordinary times, and he didn’t want to take either of them away from their regular duties any longer than necessary. As a result, a three-way text messaging session was just going to have to do.

At least both of them were aware of the uncertain space weather forecast, with multiple solar astronomers disagreeing on the significance of the disturbances within the Sun’s magnetic field and what it foretold in regards to future solar storm activity. So it was just a matter of discussing how various possible outcomes would affect their particular areas of operations, and how to go about coordinating efforts to mitigate the damage, so they would not waste resources by duplicating efforts, or worse, end up working at cross purposes.

By the end of the conference, he was confident that they were all on the same page, and shouldn’t need more than daily check-ins to make sure everything was moving forward smoothly. Thinking he was finished, Reggie went to check his e-mail when he noticed another text had come in.

Wondering why Autumn Belfontaine was texting him, he pulled it up.

Since it looks like we could be having an extended disruption of spacelift, it might be good to put together some PSA’s on conserving the things we can’t produce locally.

It certainly sounded like a good idea, which made him wonder why she thought she needed to ask permission. On the other hand, given the tension with the Administration, he could also see why she might be concerned about revealing weaknesses that could be used against them.

Write up some possibilities and e-mail them to me. We can work out what revisions are necessary.

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Narrative

A Tidbit of Good News

“Some of the dirtside solar astronomers are thinking this CME is just the first of several, based on some satellite data on the Sun’s magnetic field behavior. I spoke to Dr. Doorne this morning and she doesn’t think any subsequent ones are likely to hit the Earth-Moon system. However, she added the caveat that she is a radio astronomer specializing in deep-space objects.” Ken Redmond looked from Brenda to Autumn. “I wish I could offer you ladies something more solid, but right now that’s all we have to go on. Which means that we’re going to have to remain prepared for the possibility of additional solar storms, maybe for the next two to three weeks. I’ve already ordered conservation measures to stretch supplies of consumables that we can’t produce locally, against the possibility of a complete shutdown of spacelift capacity for the duration.”

“A wise precaution,” Autumn averred. “If you think I should make some kind of general announcement–“

Ken gestured for her to hold. “I’d want to run that by the skipper first. The radio station’s getting to be our public face to the whole solar system, and as messed-up as things are getting down on Earth, we need to be careful how we present things.”

Autumn might have a good professional voice, but her skills at controlling her expression weren’t nearly at the level she’d need if she were doing video as well as audio. No, she wasn’t happy about getting told that Captain Waite should approve of any public announcement.

However, Brenda could definitely see it as a sensible measure. Her dad was right about Shepardsport Pirate Radio being the settlement’s public face to three worlds. And he’d been an Air Force officer back during the Energy Wars, so he’d be thinking in terms of opsec, of not giving the other side any information about one’s weak points. Brenda had grown up with her dad’s war stories, while Autumn had grown up with a black-matted photo on the mantle and a name on the Wall of Honor. Not to diminish Lucien Belfontaine’s sacrifice during the NASA Massacre, but it just didn’t give her the same perspective.

No, Autumn didn’t like the feeling that she’d just had her wings clipped, but she had to be aware that a goodly segment of the population around here put great store in astronaut lineages. She couldn’t very well be seen to disrespect the most senior member of the her father’s lineage in the settlement. For starters, she needed to maintain Spruance Del Curtin’s respect, and she couldn’t help but be aware that Brenda had married into the Shepard lineage.

Brenda was glad she wasn’t the one having to make a statement of agreement on the subject. Not that she was goingt to try to buck her father in his own domain, but it was still a very awkward position to be in.

After that, it was just a matter of winding down the conversation, a few parting pleasantries and taking their leave. The Chief of Engineering still had a lot of things he needed to take care of before that CME actually arrived and drenched the Moon in charged particles.

As Brenda walked back through the corridors of the Engineering department, she pulled out her phone and was surprised to find several texts from Drew. They must’ve all come while they were talking, and she hadn’t even noticed her text chime.

Unless one or another app had screwed up the audio again and she needed to reboot. However, from the worried tone of those last couple texts, it would probably be better to respond first and reboot only if Drew wanted to do an actual voice conversation.

Sorry, sweetheart, but I was talking with Dad about the CME that’s coming in. What’s going on?

Drew must’ve had his phone right beside him, because the text went from “delivered” to “read” in a few seconds. Moments later the “writing response” icon came up.

I wish you’d let me know you needed a neutral party to contact a friend dirtside. I know half a dozen people up here who wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow from the worst clone-phobes, and who’d be glad to do me a favor.

As soon as Brenda read that, she realized she should’ve thought of asking her husband. As a pilot-astronaut and an Air Force officer, he had a lot of connections.

Sorry, I guess I just didn’t want to bother you with my worries. You’ve got a lot on your plate already.

And you’ve got reason to be concerned that an old friend is in a dangerous situation. Just send me her e-mail address, her phone number, whatever contact information you have on her, and I’ll see if some of my friends can get things happening.

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Narrative

Evening Thoughts

Lou Corlin was just finishing reviewing some notes on his current training sequence when he noticed the module airlock cycling and someone entering the lounge. He looked up just as a Shep walked in.

What are you up to now, Sprue?

Spruance Del Curtin just flashed him that big Shepard grin that could be annoying or amusing. “I thought I’d find you up here. Brenda having you watch her kids again?”

“Actually, they’re visiting Grandma tonight.”

Sprue leaned forward a little, interested. “So she’s over at her mom’s?”

“No.” Lou stopped, realizing it might not be the wisest thing to just tell Sprue just where Brenda had gone. “Did something come up at the station that you need to talk about?”

“Actually, no. Drew just texted me. He’s worried because she hasn’t answered his texts.”

“Got it. I see why he’d want you to check around.” Lou considered how much to tell him. “From what she said, her dad wanted to talk to her privately. Apparently something about the space weather situation.”

“Right. And it probably wouldn’t be too wise to nose in on her. So I’ll just let Drew know that his wife is in a private conference and probably has her phone switched to vibrate. Thanks.”

“No problem.” Lou watched with some relief as Sprue sauntered back to the module airlock. At least he wasn’t up to anything that would’ve gotten both of them in serious trouble.

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Narrative

Sidetracks

Brenda Redmond had intended to go straight to her father’s office in Engineering. However, she’d been thinking about what she needed to review for the upcoming test in her current training course, the force of long-standing habit had led her to turn the other way, to the radio station.

It was only when she was opening the door and stepping in that she realized her error. Her face flushed warm with embarrassment as she recalled more than one time when her parents had made a wrong turn, automatically heading toward school instead of their intended destination.

No big problem, she told herself. This was after hours, and the only person who’d be here at this hour would be the DJ. Right now it was the disco show, and Spencer Dawes tended to stay in the DJ booth his whole shift.

Just as Brenda was about to step back out and close the door, she realized the light was on in the newsroom. Not just the usual telltales on the life-support monitors which were just part of living in a habitat where everything down to the air they breathed had to be provided and maintained by sophisticated technology. No, someone had the overhead lights on in there.

Maybe she’d better take a look, make sure the news crew hadn’t forgotten to turn the newsroom lights off when they left for the evening. Her dad had been grumping lately about that kind of carelessness, and how it was affecting the settlement’s heat and energy budgets. With an incoming solar storm that might require powering down everything unnecessary, she’d probably better check, rather than hope that Spence would notice.

She hadn’t even gotten to the newsroom door when a familiar voice called out, “OK, who’s out there at this hour?”

The flush of embarrassment returned to Brenda’s cheeks. “Just me.”

Might as well go on in and see what Autumn Belfontaine was doing. Otherwise, Autumn was going to wonder what she was doing poking in and then disappearing, and would probably have awkward questions tomorrow morning.

Or worse, she’ll come over to Dad’s office and ask.

Autumn Belfontaine was sitting at the main newsroom computer, and from the what Brenda could see at her angle, there was a bunch of data on the monitor. It looked like something from one or another of NASA’s solar observation satellites, from the headers, but she couldn’t see without being obvious about it.

She looked up from her work. “So what brings you down here at this hour?”

Brenda essayed an awkward grin. “Dad and I were going to talk privately over at his office, but I’m so used to coming here that it was like my feet just walked me over here.”

Autumn’s laughter was genuine, not just professional courtesy. “I could tell you a few stories about that myself. And speaking of your father, I was planning on speaking with him myself. Having near-realtime data is nice, but I simply don’t have the background to interpret it, and Dr. Doorne’s got enough projects on her plate already that I really don’t want to take any more of her time than I have to.”

“And Dad’s got the engineering background to tell you what it’s going to mean in terms of operational effects for us and the outlying settlements. At least Earth shouldn’t get hit too bad, since the magnetosphere should offer some protection, but it could get rough up here.”

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Narrative

A Season on Edge

Autumn Belfontaine looked at the coffeepot, considered whether to draw herself a cup. On one hand, she was tired, and didn’t want to literally fall asleep at her desk. On the other hand, she didn’t want to wire herself up so tight that she couldn’t get to sleep when she finished and got back to her apartment.

Considering that made her realize just how many late nights she’d been pulling these last few weeks. In normal times — at least as much as anything since the Expulsions could be considered “normal” — she would do most of her broadcasting in the morning, with the evening news segments left to the more junior members of the news team.

How long had it been since those first reports had come in, the empty villages in Central Asia, the cruise ships making emergency calls to the Navy for medical assistance, the abandoned cars and campers of the homeless that were mentioned only in local news? Of course it didn’t help one’s sense of time that up here on the Moon, morning, noon and night were just numbers on a clock, tied to a diurnal cycle at one’s national space control center rather than anything actually happening on the lunar surface. The artificiality of it soon induced a sense of unreality, no doubt because the brain didn’t get certain subconscious signals, even if the lights in the corridors did dim during the hours when it would be night in Houston.

Now she was having to monitor the development of a new crisis even as she was trying to keep track of the old one. At least a solar storm wasn’t quite as subject to rumors and misinformation, since it involved objective observations of an astronomical phenomenon. Thanks to the astronomy department, she had direct feeds on the key solar observation satellite data, although half the time she had to call someone in the astronomy department to interpret them.