Month: September 2020

Categories
Narrative

Beneath the Wall of Sleep

Although there was a fair-sized crowd in the library today, it was astonishingly quiet. The crowd was scattered among tables and carrels, studying singly or in twos and threes.

Brenda Redmond had come up here to pick up some material she needed for this afternoon’s class. But when she saw Kitty Margrave over at one of the study carrels, she recalled how Cindy had seemed rather upset this morning at the station.

Cindy had been trying to keep her professional face on, but she was still young enough that she didn’t have as much control as she thought she did. That little quaver in her voice, especially on the phone when she was sending callers to the appropriate office. The tendency to rush just a little whenever something difficult came up. It was only noticeable if you really were looking — but Brenda knew Cindy well enough to recognize the tells.

Except she was doing well enough that I didn’t want to raise the issue, because it would come across as criticism.

Which made Brenda wonder if she really ought to raise the question with Kitty, or if it would be better to leave well enough alone. In ordinary times, Brenda would’ve asked Betty Margrave, but the chief of Safety and Security was far too busy right now to be distracted by concerns about what might well be an ordinary personal upset.

And then Kitty looked up from her carrel. “Hi, Brenda. Have you heard anything new about what’s happening with Amy?”

“Actually I was wondering whether something was worrying your sister. Cindy seemed a little uneasy today at work.”

Kitty glanced around. “Well, it’s been a few days since we’ve gotten anything at all from her. Not even those weird, stilted messages that sound like someone’s dictated the words she’s to say.”

“That is worrying.” Brenda considered what their next step should be. She still hadn’t heard anything back about Robbie’s situation either, and she wasn’t sure which one was touchier.

In some ways, not knowing anything can let me hope that she’s found some kind of modus vivendi with her parents’ prejudices. Those weird stilted messages make me think of the elective I did a while ago on the Great Terror, and how they’d sometimes make prisoners write several postcards to their families, all about how they’re doing well in the labor camps, to hide the fact that they were actually about to be executed.

“Do you think we ought to ask Eli if he can find out whether Amy’s OK? I mean, he’s family–“

“But he’d have to have formal authorization to be able to break into secure systems, which means we’d have to go through IT, and possibly have to go all the way up to Captain Waite. I’m not sure he’d want to authorize it. Every time one of our people goes poking around government databases dirtside, it raises the risk that the Administration will take action.”

Categories
Narrative

A Reprieve — or Maybe Not

There was something vaguely satisfying about the afternoon receptionist coming in early. Maia might not be a stunning beauty, but she was reasonably pretty, if tending more to the cute, and most important, unlike Cindy, she wasn’t family. She belonged firmly in the McDivitt lineage, and nobody was going to complain about a Shep being interested in her.

Of course Sprue couldn’t be too blatant about his interest in her, and not just because they both worked here at the station. With the tension of a solar storm watch, excessive levity was not appreciated around here. He’d already gotten some sharp words about treating the girls in his class like capture targets in a dating sim, and he really didn’t want to get the same static here.

“You’d think that things would start loosening up now that the CME just barely grazed us. Radiation levels hardly went up, even in the most exposed areas like the observatory.”

Sprue considered how to answer that. Dr. Doorne had told him a few things about the unsettled state of the Sun’s magnetic field, but he wasn’t sure just how much was for general consumption. Especially considering that some of it was technical enough that he wasn’t sure that he could explain it properly, and mixing things up was a good way to get stupid rumors going. He hadn’t forgotten the times when he’d tried to catch a girl’s interest by showing off insider information, only to get things mixed up badly enough that he made a fool of himself.

And then he looked over at the clock, realized just how swiftly the time had gone by while he was chatting her up. “It’s complicated, and you’d probably do better asking someone in Astronomy. If you want, I can connect you up with my boss there. Right now, I’ve gotta go.”

Maia might not be an on-air personality, but she understood one critical principle of broadcasting: you were not late to start your air shift, ever.

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Advertising

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Categories
Narrative

So Near and So Far Away

Steffi Roderick looked over the tangle of equipment they had worked so hard to relocate so quickly. “So it’s ended up going far enough to the side that we just got a didn’t get any worse electromagnetic effects than a typical lunar sunrise.”

Dr. Doorne’s lips tweaked into a wan little smile. “More or less. Of course we’re talking in layman’s terms, using analogies of terrestrial weather and geography, for the complexities of orbital mechanics.”

“Of course.” Steffi knew her own smile was a little forced, that the astronomer was trying very hard not to sound condescending, and now doing nearly as well as she thought for the simple reason that it was so obviously effortful. “It’s the language we’d use in an announcement for general consumption. Just like the average user doesn’t need to know the ins and outs of the quantum behavior of electrons to understand that they’ve got a glitchy system that throws unpredictable errors in certain circumstances.”

She paused, looking back at all their hard work. “But it still leaves me feeling like we did all this for nothing.”

“It’s not wasted, Steffi. All the current data is indicating an extended period of unsettled solar magnetic activity. Solar astronomy is most definitely not my specialty, but I’ve been in touch with all the big names, and while they disagree profoundly on the particulars, they’re pretty much agreeing that something serious is going on in the solar magnetic field.” This smile was a wry one. “As an astronomer, I’m feeling like a kid waiting for Christmas, going oh goodie, we’re going to be learning a whole bunch of fascinating things about how the Sun works, and by extension, how stars work. But as an electrical engineer, I’m going oh crap, this could be really, really bad.

“In other words, fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a wild ride.”

“That’s about the size of it. If we’re lucky, the bigger flares and CME’s will pass far enough away that we’ll just have great seats for the show, and I’ll have so much data it’ll have to be sent on physical media so it doesn’t choke our downlinks to Earth. If we’re not, everyone up her had better use this interval to harden all their vital electrical and electronic equipment, or we’re going to be in a world of hurt. Especially since we’re pretty much on our own for the duration.”

Categories
Document

Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop

Solar storm watches are often compared to tornado watches, but in many ways a solar storm is more comparable to a hurricane. For instance, a solar storm affects large regions, even whole worlds, rather than a single settlement. In addition, there is a period of time when the mass of charged particles can be seen inbound, which allows for some emergency preparations similar to boarding up houses and evacuating communities.

But one of the biggest problems with solar storm forecasting is the continuing uncertainty about the mechanisms that drive them. As a result, there are times when even senior solar astronomers disagree about the proper interpretation of solar magnetic field activity, and thus the probability of additional solar storms after a strong flare or CME is detected.

This situation creates an ambiguity about solar weather that can often be even more of a strain on the people who are affected by it, especially settlers on the Moon and Mars, but also people working in orbit. While people who live and work up here have to be able to make their peace with risk, ambiguity is something that is inherently stressful. Not knowing from hour to hour whether conditions will be safe for vital activities, especially when one is accustomed to accurate and reliable weather forecasting, becomes extraordinarily stressful.

As a result, we soon learned to watch for signs of unusual stress among the settlement population whenever we had an extended period of unsettled space weather, and particularly when our experts in the Astronomy Department were not in agreement with astronomers on Earth. Given the close quarters in which we were all living, it didn’t take long for support staff in the sciences to pick up the senior scientists’ uncertainty and pass it throughout the whole community.

—- Barbara Bhin Thi Thuc, MD, Col. USMC. Memories of a Frontier Physician. Carpenter Point, Cycho Crater: Kennedy University Press, 2044.

Categories
Narrative

Interruptions

Lou had thought he’d be able to get right back to Autumn with the translation of the Japanese text she wanted to know about. After all, it hadn’t taken that long for Tristan to go through it and point out where they’d been misreading key kanji, usually using a native-Japanese reading when they needed to be looking at one of the various readings that used the sound of the Chinese word to represent something in Japanese, often something abstract or peculiar to Japanese culture.

However, getting back to the station had proven more difficult than Lou had anticipated. He’d never expected to have so many people wanting to ask him questions about this, that and the other thing — and he had his own obligations that had to be tended to.

Maybe it had been a mistake not to just e-mail her the annotated document, rather than try to get back to the station and deliver it in person. The idea had been to be available to answer questions in realtime, and it was looking more and more like that simply Wasn’t Happening.

As it turned out, he wasn’t able to get free of his various obligations until almost suppertime. When was it that Autumn had her shift as a proctor at the Testing Center?

Maybe he’d better check if she was available. At least he’d be able to send her a text, since the proctors weren’t required to surrender their phones on check-in like examinees were.

He’d no sooner sent it than Autumn responded. Don’t worry about it. Tomorrow will be soon enough.

Thanks. I have some studying I need to do.

Good luck.

Categories
Narrative

A Worrying Development

The corridors of the Roosa Barracks were almost painfully quiet. Normally they would’ve been crowded with people coming and going through Slayton Field, but all that traffic had been disrupted, first with the diablovirus, and now with the solar storm watch, which had pretty much shut down all space traffic.

Which meant a very lonely walk back to the BOQ for Drew Reinholt. It didn’t help that there wasn’t that much to do in here. Because of the risk of contagion, gatherings were being discouraged — and what was the point in watching a movie or listening to a lecture on your computer in your private quarters? Maybe it would’ve been different with the family, but Brenda and the kids were at Shepardsport.

And maybe it’s just as well that way. If someone does bring the virus to the Moon, it’s far more likely to hit here. With luck, we can catch it quickly enough that it stops here.

On the other hand, the closing of space traffic was also meaning that freight wasn’t coming up, including essential items. As Drew walked past the Caudells’ apartment, he recalled a conversation he’d had with Peter Caudell earlier in the day.

Most essential parts could be fabricated up here, thanks to two decades of determined development of in-situ resource utilization. Everything that could be produced locally was that much that didn’t have to be lifted out of Earth’s substantial gravity well — which meant that even astronaut meals for the lunar ferry and stations in Earth orbit were grown and prepared in lunar greenhouse-farms.

However, there were still a few things that still needed to be brought up from Earth — some because there just wasn’t enough demand to justify the duplication of specialized equipment, and some biologicals because the relevant organisms required very particular environments. Most of them were medicinals, and there had been ongoing efforts to synthesize their active ingredients.

Which means that we’re depending on how long those things remain in stock. At least most of them aren’t life-or-death, but there are a few specialized seals and filters that we still don’t have the ability to fabricate up here.

Something we need to work on changing, ASAP.

Categories
Narrative

Awkward

Usually Lou Corlin was reasonably confident about his Japanese reading comprehension. Not enough to provide a formal translation, but at least enough to get the gist of a text and confirm Autumn Belfontaine’s understanding of it before she put anything on the air.

However, today he wanted to run some rather sensitive text past someone who had a lot more experience with Japanese than he did. While Lou had studied conversational Japanese an academic subject, his clone-brother Tristan had spent significant amounts of time in Japan and Edo Settlement, and was fluent not only in the every-day language, but in technical vocabulary and usage. Not to mention some of the finer points of cultural nuance, which could be at play here.

Making connections with Tristan had proven easier said than done. Which was especially awkward when Autumn was waiting for him to get back to her. But he’d just missed Tristan at lunch, which meant tracking him down in Miskatonic Sector, where he was preparing for a class.

At least study lounges provided plenty of good places to consult. On the other hand, this particular one had a lot of younger kids coming and going, and about half the time they were singing rather garbled versions of the lyrics of whatever was playing on the stereo.

As half a dozen kids came traipsing through on their way to class, belting out a song he knew a little too well, Lou glowered at the stereo. “Sprue, why did you have to play that song right now?”

Tristan looked up from the tablet. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t think a lot of people realize just how hentai that song is. Starting with the fact it’s about bukkake, not jewelry.”

As understanding dawned, Tristan grinned. “Especially you realize that bukkake became such a big trope in erotic anime because they had to work around Japanese decency laws. Sliding crap past the moral watchdogs’ radar has a long history on both sides of the Pacific.”

“Yeah. And there’s a bunch of that band’s stuff that probably went right past old Tipper because she didn’t know the slang meanings of certain words. Heck, she probably didn’t even know those words had dirty meanings.”

Both of them started laughing, then looked at each other. “Good grief. Here we are, in the middle of a solar storm watch that may turn into a warning at any time, talking about double meanings in music. And everybody thinks our geneset is such a bunch of straight-arrows.”

Categories
Narrative

Before the Storm

Cindy Margrave had been just as glad to get assigned to the six-station weight machine for today’s exercise session. Having to count her reps gave her something to occupy her mind, unlike time on an exercise bicycle or one of the other machines.

Still, it was only a temporary respite from everything that was on her mind. She’d overheard altogether too much worrisome stuff while she was doing her shift as receptionist to Shepardsport Pirate Radio this morning. Autumn Belfontaine had been in and out of the newsroom, talking to her news staff, or talking on the phone to people who knew where. She’d even called Lou Corlin out of the DJ booth to help her with something in Japanese, although Cindy didn’t know whether it was from Edo settlement or from the Home Islands.

Some of the stuff Autumn was talking about had sounded pretty technical. Cindy knew a lot of astronomers and space weather watchers were getting concerned about the Sun’s magnetic field, but her own knowledge of astronomy stopped at the basic course she’d taken from Dr. Paulding last year.

However, she did know one thing — the vibe was just like back in Houston when there was a busy hurricane season. The sense that the current hurricane in the Gulf wasn’t likely to be the only thing they had to worry about, and everybody had better be prepared for the possibility of lengthy disruptions of basic services.

Which is probably why Aunt Betty’s been so scarce of late.

Categories
Narrative

Battening the Hatches

Spruance Del Curtin was winding up the day’s work for Dr. Doorne. Now that he knew what the data represented, and why certain types of data tended to move in tandem, what he was seeing was very worrisome.

If this goes on, what will even be left? Already some countries were no longer reporting data, and were having to be dropped from the analysis. Most of them were small countries in Africa, but there were some in South America and in Asia.

Others were hanging on in spite of taking a beating. The US was a big country, with lots of depth of field to absorb blows, but Japan and even Israel remained functional, albeit struggling under the weight of enormous losses.

Sprue recalled his conversation with Cindy Margrave — when had that been? — about Colonel Hearne’s discussion in class about trust, and about how levels of trust were so critical in determining how well a society would function, particularly when under strain. Of course the colonel was recalling the Energy Wars — although he was already a veteran astronaut by that time, he knew more than a few people who’d served in the Middle East during that time — but current events were certainly playing out that argument in real time.

Just as he was doing the final checks on the data, Dr. Doorne walked in. “Statistics class is canceled for today. I just got word that Engineering and IT are beginning a special effort to increase the hardening on our electronics in the upper levels against a worst-case solar storm.”

Not surprising when one considered she held an advanced degree in electrical engineering as well as astronomy — one of the big reasons she was up here, rather than down on Earth. “Do you really think we’ll have a storm bad enough to do that kind of damage?”

“It’s hard to say. However, we are clearly moving into a historic solar minimum, and there is strong evidence both from history and from studies of other G-class stars of similar age in the galactic neighborhood that the incidence of these sorts of events actually increase during these periods. There’s a lot of speculation about stellar dynamo magnetodynamics, but to put it in layman’s terms, we think that sunspots actually serve to relieve the strain, rather like small earthquakes on a fault line.”

Sprue recalled some things that Juss Forsythe and Spencer Dawes had said about studying in California. “And if there aren’t any for a long time, when the fault does move, it’s a big one.”

“Exactly. Although we have a much better grasp of the mechanics involved in earthquakes, for the simple reason that seismologists have a lot of faults to study, and we astronomers have only one Sun. Until recently, we simply didn’t have the technology to study other stars at the level of detail we needed to even make educated guesses at how their internal dynamics compared to that of our own.”

It sounded very much like she was about to launch into a story of the state of astronomy when she was working on her PhD. Sprue didn’t need to be told to know the technology she was talking about would be the radio and optical telescopes right here on Farside.

Not to mention that he couldn’t linger here. “Um, Doc, I’ve only got an hour to get down to the dining commons and grab lunch, and then get to the station and start my air shift.”

“Right, of course. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He could hear the unspoken assuming we don’t have further schedule changes as the situation develops. And given that his work with Engineering was now having him liaison with IT, there was a good probability he’d be roped into this task too.