Month: August 2020

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Narrative

Of Memory and Time

At this hour, Ken Redmond’s office was a quiet place to get a little privacy. Although Engineering was a department that ran 24/7, most of the routine work was done during normal daytime hours. That meant the evening staff was fairly small and he wasn’t apt to be interrupted.

Right now he was looking over the latest data from the SOLARIS solar observatory satellite system. The solar astronomers were still in disagreement right now on what exactly the data represented, but all of them concurred that space weather would be unsettled and quite possibly dangerous for the next several days.

It was bringing back memories he hadn’t thought about in years, of being in first grade and riding home on the bus, listening to some of the older kids talking about the strange heavy feel to the air, how they were certain a bad storm was brewing. He’d gone home and turned on the TV to watch his usual after-school shows, and hadn’t thought anything about it until the power went out.

Only later had he discovered that over a hundred tornadoes had swept through the Midwest. His own home town of French Lick had been lucky, but there had been a period that day when the entire state of Indiana was under a tornado warning because the weather forecasters simply couldn’t keep up with all the incoming reports. In the weeks and months that followed, he’d read a lot of accounts of what came to be called the Super Outbreak.

It had been another time, frightening mostly because it was the first time he became truly aware of what a big and potentially dangerous world he lived in. Only a few months the Watergate scandal had been the first political event to impinge upon his awareness.

And wasn’t that about the same time as everyone was so concerned about the Swine Flu, or was that a few years later?

It was odd, how time and memory could play tricks with the mind. Sometimes all of that seemed like another lifetime ago, and at other times he could remember a day, an event as if it had happened just yesterday. The bus making its way down that long, lonely country road, up and down the limestone hills of Southern Indiana, the windows opened to let in a bit of breeze to relieve the hot, muggy atmosphere electric with tension.

But then he’d been just a little kid whose biggest worry was being one of the smallest kids in his class, and how he kept getting picked on by the bigger kids. Now he had the responsibilities of being a father, a grandfather, and of holding one of the senior leadership positions of this settlement.

And right now there’s not a lot we can do about our situation except keep our heads down and hang on.

Which was why he hadn’t wanted to talk more than he had to about the situation with Brenda while they were in the gym. The current situation was precarious enough without people worrying about further solar storms, possibly requiring intermittent shutdowns of surface activity over the next week or more.

At least he knew he could discuss the matter with her in private and be confident she wouldn’t go spreading a confused version of it all over the settlement. She would never have stayed a DJ with Shepardsport Pirate Radio if she couldn’t be relied upon to handle such information responsibly.

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Document

Watches and Warnings

From: Louis Corlin <lvcorlin@nasa.gov>

To: Randall Littleton <rmlittleton@nasa.gov>, Anthony Stanislawski <aystanislawski@nasa.gov>

Thanks for letting me take a look at your essay on the history of solar storm forecasting. One of the quickest ways to expand it is to dig into the history of the terminology, which derives directly from the nomenclature of tornado forecasting. It may seem unbelievable, but until the late 1940’s the National Weather Service banned the use of the word tornado in forecasts, believing it would spur panic. Only after an Air Force base was caught by surprise and a large number of aircraft were destroyed did this policy change.

I can also give you some specifics on radio procedure related to the on-air announcement of watches and warnings. Let me know if you’d like me to put you in contact with someone in the news department.

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Narrative

The Calm Before the Storm

Brenda Redmond recognized the quiet tension that had taken over Shepardsport, the hushed voices and watchful looks. She’d seen it during hurricane watches back in Houston, and the tornado watches when she’d stayed with her grandparents in Indiana one summer. That awareness of elevated risk, balanced with a knowledge that life had to go on in the meantime, and necessary work would not wait.

It had hung over her all afternoon, as she did her best to keep her mind on class, on her teaching responsibility. Keeping a tight focus on the task at hand had enabled her to push the worry out of her mind, but now that it was exercise time, all those thoughts were crowding back in.

Maybe she would’ve had an easier time if she’d been assigned one of the machines where you were supposed to count your reps. Instead, she drew a stationary bicycle, which was purely timed exercise.

By the time she finished her cool-down and changed back into her regular clothes, she was trying to decide whether she should sit with her radio friends or with the other pilots’ families. And then she heard a familiar voice call her name.

“Hi, Dad. Don’t you usually have a later exercise slot?”

Ken Redmond’s lips quirked upward. “I switched with Harlan. I want to be on deck when that CME goes through the Earth-Moon system.”

No matter how busy you might be with work or training, mandatory exercise hours were non-negotiable. If you needed to, you could swap time slots, but unless illness or injury had you incapacitated, you made your exercise hours.

“How bad is it going to be?” As soon as Brenda said it, she realized just how shaky her voice sounded. Not exactly the professional voice of the DJ.

“Right now it looks like we should just barely catch the outer edges of it. We’ll probably have to power down surface equipment, but otherwise it should be business as usual down here.”

Except his voice suggested a but at the end of that superficially confident statement. Brenda looked closely at her father. She wasn’t that strong on solar astronomy or engineering, but she was pretty good at reading people. Maybe not as sharp as Autumn Belfontaine or the rest of the news team, but with someone she knew as well as her dad, she could pick up the unspoken stuff.

However, now was probably not the best time to come straight out and challenge him on it. Especially if he was downplaying real concerns in order to keep from alarming people, he’d want a little more privacy than the settlement gymnasium to discuss it.

“Would there be a better place to discuss this?” She cast a meaningful look around at the people sweating away.

Her dad got that little thought-furrow between his eyebrows. “Can you come down to my office after supper?”

“I’ll need to make sure I have someone to watch the kids, but I think I can swing it.”

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Paying the Bills

Sutty, an Observer from Earth for the interstellar Ekumen, has been assigned to a new world—a world in the grips of a stern monolithic state, the Corporation. Embracing the sophisticated technology brought by other worlds and desiring to advance even faster into the future, the Akans recently outlawed the past, the old calligraphy, certain words, all ancient beliefs and ways; every citizen must now be a producer-consumer. Their state, not unlike the China of the Cultural Revolution, is one of secular terrorism. Traveling from city to small town, from loudspeakers to bleating cattle, Sutty discovers the remnants of a banned religion, a hidden culture. As she moves deeper into the countryside and the desolate mountains, she learns more about the Telling—the old faith of the Akans—and more about herself. With her intricate creation of an alien world, Ursula K. Le Guin compels us to reflect on our own recent history.

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Narrative

Bad News Keeps Coming

The entire dining commons had gone silent as Captain Waite presented the situation. There’d usually be some whispering in the back of the room, the soft sounds of people shuffling their feet or shifting their weight in their chairs. But the only background noise Spruance Del Curtin could hear was the soft whir of the ventilation system.

Everything the commandant said was meshing with what Sprue had seen while working his way through all those statistics of Dr. Doorne’s, everything Chandler Armitage had told him as they discussed possibilities. Although the largest lunar settlements had developed enough industry in the last decade that they could make most of the things they needed, there were a few very specialized things that still had to come from Earth. Biologicals for the most part, especially some medicines, but certain devices and spare parts for others, simply couldn’t be produced with the equipment available up here.

However, the real chokepoint was going to be capacity. Yes, Shepardsport or Grissom City or any of the other big settlements could produce a lot of the parts that weren’t coming up here — but could they produce them fast enough to keep up with demand?

Which meant that a lot of things were going to have to be made to stretch a lot longer. It probably wouldn’t be as tight as those first few weeks and months after the Expulsions, when Shepardsport had to accommodate a sudden expansion of its population, right to the limits of their life support systems’ capacity, where they moved from crisis to crisis, finding ways to eke out just a little more capacity.

But it would mean a lot more work for everyone at the station. New public service announcements to record, and all of them would probably be pressed into service, not just the news crew. Especially if Captain Waite wanted to record some of his own, since that meant setting up the recording studio. With pressurized space at a premium, the station couldn’t justify a permanent recording studio when they might do one pre-recorded show a month.

But we’ll find a way to do it, somehow.

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Narrative

At Table

Although in theory only the pilots’ tables and the Medstaff tables were reserved for the exclusive use of particular groups, people still tended to sit with those they had something in common with, whether friends, family, or colleagues. Brenda usually sat with her children, but today they were eating with their training groups, so she was sitting with some of the other DJ’s. Not that there was a formal “radio table,” but she’d noticed several other people passing them by, even when there were empty seats.

Because who wants to sit here and listen to us talk shop and not understand half of what we’re saying.

Brenda could understand the feeling, since she wasn’t all that strong on the technical side of streaming Internet radio herself. Lou Corlin was talking about some issues IT was having with the streaming server. Nothing critical, nothing that would disrupt transmission, but still something that was obviously of concern. However, a lot of it was going over her head, for the simple reason that she wasn’t an IT specialist.

And it looked like she had some company. Sprue was trying not to look overwhelmingly bored, but he wasn’t doing nearly as good a job of it as he thought.

Recalling something Drew had mentioned, Brenda caught his gaze. “So how are things going with the new project of yours? Did you finally get to talk to Chandler?”

Sprue’s expression became awkward. “I’m not really supposed to be discussing it in a public place like this.” He extended a hand to encompass the dining commons, the crowd of people sitting at the tables or moving between them. “But Chandler did have a few ideas for things we might want to look at. You know, ways of analyzing data to tease out a little more meaning.”

He said “we.” Is he finally figuring out what it means to actually work as part of a team, or is he just saying that because Dad or Dr. Doorne put the fear of God in him for a change?

However, there was no time to ponder it, let alone ask any probing questions. Right then Captain Waite came in and took his place at the head table. Except he didn’t sit down to eat. Instead, he addressed the crowd: “If I may have your attention, I have some important announcements to make.”

Brenda’s gut clenched with anxiety. What was going on now?

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Narrative

Lonely at the Top

In the years since he’d taken command of Shepardsport, Reggie Waite had became reasonably adept with teleconferencing. Not that he’d really gotten used to it, because he still felt a measure of awkwardness whenever it was necessary. But he could handle even an hour-long teleconference with multiple people in different locations and not wind up feeling exhausted.

However, the teleconference he’d just completed had left him feeling far more worn out than usual. Perhaps it was just having to deal with several participants whose native language was not English. Even a slight accent or subtle differences in the ways of signalling when one was finished speaking created far more difficulty in a teleconference than in face-to-face conversation. In fact, sometimes it seemed like having the little image of the person’s face on the screen made it harder than a pure telephone call — and that was in a one-on-one teleconference. Trying to keep track of ten or fifteen faces in tiny little frames on your monitor could be actively painful.

But the real issue right now was the leaden dread that filled these meetings. Day after day, week after week, they had been talking about nothing but the diablovirus and how to keep it away from the lunar settlements. Twice now they’d had terrifying close calls, and there was always that unspoken dread will the next one be found too late?

And now there was the wait for an incoming solar storm, with no certainty that it would be the only one. While the understanding of the Sun’s inner workings had improved greatly in the decades since the Zond 12 disaster, none the least as the result of much better solar observation technology, the Sun still surprised even solar astronomers on a regular basis.

On top of it all, Reggie needed to go straight from this teleconference to the dining commons, where he needed to make a presentation to the entire community. Usually he would have at least a little time to talk privately with Steffi, or with one of the other department heads. But there would be no time for such reflection today.

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Narrative

Like a Watched Pot

Waiting was always difficult, but it was particularly hard when you had no idea of how long you might have to wait. Especially when there was no guarantee that you’d find any kind of results at the end of your wait.

Brenda Redmond remembered how much she’d hated that situation when she was a kid growing up. At least when the endpoint was known, she could make the wait go more quickly by marking off the days as they passed. The days until the school year ended. The days until a much-anticipated family vacation or a big launch. Even just the days until she reached some milestone that enabled her to enjoy one or another privilege. She needed only to look at the calendar and she could see the number of days remaining shrink.

But when you had to wait until you reached some achievement that Adult Authority refused to spell out, lest you put more effort into faking the outward markers than mastering the actual skills, it was super-hard. Or like she was stuck right now, waiting for someone else, over whom she had no control, to get something accomplished that would open a gate she needed to pass.

So far there’d been no word from Medlab, or from whoever they’d found to try to make contact with Robbie. And given that this person was doing her a favor, she didn’t want to be a pest about how they were coming on it.

Which meant there was nothing she could do about it right now. She’d learned from prior experience that the best thing to do in these circumstances was to keep busy with something that would take her mind off it.

And having the kids talk with Daddy was always a good way to raise everyone’s spirits. Drew had texted her earlier, letting her know that the solar storm watch meant he’d probably be staying down at Coopersville until the mass of charged particles had passed.

A storm that was likely to disrupt communications between settlements as well as with Earth. Perhaps not as badly with Coopersville, since they were connected by fiber-optic lines run alongside the tracks of the Ice Train, but even its repeaters could be knocked off-line if things got hairy enough.

The kids had loved talking to their father, even on the other end of a FaceTime connection. And they’d even headed to bed without any great resistance, for a change. Which meant now she and Drew could talk more privately.

“So how are you doing?” Drew leaned back a little, assuming a more relaxed pose.

“As well as I can. The kids are doing fine, Mom and Dad are OK, although they’re both working their butts off. I’ve got my work and my teaching to keep me busy.” Brenda tried to infuse her words with an enthusiasm she really didn’t feel right now.

Drew nodded, that slow bob of the head that was his way of saying, yeah, right, what are you really thinking behind the good-military-wife mask? “Yeah, ain’t that about the size of it. Keep on keeping on.” Then he leaned forward, lowered his voice in that conspiratorial tone he would use when he was saying it’s OK to tell me whatever’s bothering you. “I’m hearing rumint that you’re trying to track down someone dirtside.”

“Just an old friend from high school.” Brenda considered how much she wanted to tell Drew about Robbie’s situation. Minimize too much, and Drew would tell she was trying to gloss over her worries. Tell too much, and he’d be worrying about her when he needed to concentrate on his work. “We’d grown apart, so it’s kind of complicated. Right now I’m waiting for a neutral third party to contact her and make sure she’s all right and I won’t make things difficult for her by trying to contact her.”

“That doesn’t sound like a good situation.”

“No, it’s not. Which is why I’m trying very hard not to worry about her while I’m waiting.” Brenda wondered whether Drew still kept in touch with any of his friends from school. He’d been sent up here when he was all of fifteen, when he’d gotten entangled in the Angry Astronaut Affair.

Probably not, since he didn’t seem to want to reminisce. “Probably a good idea. Especially considering you need to be alert tomorrow for your air shift.”

“True. Especially if that solar storm watch turns into a warning and we start having to give radiation reports every half-hour.”

After that there was nothing more to say but words of parting. And then looking at the grayed-out FaceTime window for a moment before pressing the Home button.

Yes, Drew was right. She needed her sleep. From the sound of things, they were looking at a long day tomorrow.

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Narrative

Gain One, Lose One

The corridors leading down to the port facility were unusually quiet. Normally they would’ve been bustling with activity, and there was a good possibility he’d be stuck at one or another airlock, waiting for someone to bring a large piece of equipment through.

However, these were not ordinary times. With the restrictions on travel, shipping had been reduced to only essential materials. Food and Nutrition was still shipping cases of prepared astronaut meals to the small science outposts scattered about Farside, as well as some of the smaller mining outposts that didn’t have enough people to maintain a Zubrin hobby farm. Engineering was still fabbing parts for equipment at those outposts, especially when spares simply weren’t available, whether because the manufacturer had ceased to support something or shipments from Earth had been cut off.

But compared to the usual volume of material traveling through these lower corridors, right now there was almost nothing. In fact, from some of the things his clone-brothers had told him, operations had been reduced to the point that some of the more junior pilot-astronauts were having to fight for enough missions to maintain their flight status. Not to mention the financial consequences of losing one’s flight pay.

Not as serious a problem over here, where things were still run like a research station or a ship at sea. But at Grissom City and Coopersville, which were transitioning toward a civilian economy, it could be awkward for the pilot-astronauts who had apartments rather than living in the BOQ.

On the other hand, the shortage of missions meant that Chandler Armitage was going to be sticking around for a while. Which meant that it might be possible to pull him in on this project — but Sprue also knew that he’d have to be extremely careful about how he went about it.

Sprue was just exiting the airlock that joined Innsmouth Sector when his phone buzzed. Not a text chime, not a mail beep, but an alert tone that was used only for emergency communications.

Not a good thing to hear when they were in the middle of a solar storm watch. He didn’t think that it would be upgraded to a warning this quickly, although he doubted that they’d be so lucky as to have it turn out to pass by the Moon without causing any trouble. The best they’d probably get would be a near miss with low enough radiation counts that only flights and EVA’s would be suspended, but ordinary activty within the settlement would continue.

When he pulled out his phone, he saw the push notification. As it turned out, it was just a general alert for a couple of long-term EVA’s that weren’t reporting in. Both of them were based out of nearby outposts that were nominally under Shepardsport’s command, but were effectively autonomous. Some of the commercially-owned outposts were a bit lax about certain safety protocols, and according to some things Carl Dalton had mentioned, Betty Margrave had had words with their people more than once.

On the other hand, it wasn’t something Sprue needed to worry about, so he cleared it and continued on his way. If those teams were still an issue by the time he did tomorrow’s air shift, he might have to read announcements about it.

However, he doubted it would be an issue. Most likely, if they hadn’t reported in within the next few hours, someone would be tasked to fly out and search for them. Of course their companies would be charged for the search and rescue flight, so they had an incentive to make sure their people got back in before things reached that point.

Better to put the whole thing out of his mind. He needed to concentrate his mind on how he was going to present the situation to Chandler. Especially since he really wasn’t supposed to go blabbing about this stuff, so he had to find ways to talk about it without being obvious.

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Narrative

A Watch, Not a Warning

Fixing plumbing was just the sort of tedious job that gave you plenty of time to think about other things. Right now, Payton Shaw was planning his playlist for Sunday’s show. He usually tried to achieve a mix of the songs everyone knew by heart and deep cuts only the real Elvis fans recognized. And a few covers for variety, like ZZ Top’s take on “Viva Las Vegas.”

A sharp buzz brought him out of his thoughts, and for a moment he wondered if he’d made a major mistake and set off a pressure alarm. No, that was coming from his phone, which he’d put in his tool bag while he was doing this.

He set his pipe wrench down just long enough to check. Solar storm watch declared for lunar Farside and cislunar space. Solar disruptions indicate that a flare or CME with significant radiation potential may occur at this time.

Not exactly the sort of thing you want to hear when you’re trying to finish an important project. Especially one in an area which had only the minimum level of protective regolith piled over it, so it would have to be one of the first areas evacuated if radiation levels started to rise, before the general alarm for everyone in the settlement to retreat to the storm shelters.

He’d just put his phone back and was about to start working again when it chimed incoming text. It’d better not be Ken down in Engineering telling him to wind it up early. The last thing he needed right now was Alice Murcheson on his case because he hadn’t finished and the irrigation lines were still out of commission in this section. Never mind direct orders from his actual boss, she’d be down his throat, not Ken’s. And given that she was married to Bill Hearne…

As it turned out, it was a not-quite-panicky text from his girlfriend. She was a relative newcomer up here, and she’d never been through an actual solar storm. Of course she’d gone through the standard drills — those happened on a monthly basis, with the occasional surprise drill tossed in just to keep everyone sharp.

Better reassure her, especially with everyone already keyed up from everything going on down on Earth. This is a watch, not a warning. Think of it as being like tornado watch and warning announcements. Right now someone’s picked up a pattern of solar activity that looks concerning, so they want all EVA’s finished and everyone back indoors. If there’s an actual CME approaching and it’s clear there’s no way it will miss us, they’ll up it to a warning and have everyone ready to go to the storm shelters on a moment’s notice.

Then I shouldn’t worry because the teacher told us to keep working on our experiments.

Jodi was taking a basic chemistry class right now. Payton tried to remember where the chem labs were in relation to the rest of Miskatonic Sector. You’re probably safer where you are than I am right now. Just keep focused on what you’re doing, and I’ll get back to Engineering as soon as I get this job finished up.