Month: October 2020

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Narrative

Keeping On Keeping On

With technical people coming and going pretty much constantly, Autumn Belfontaine was glad that she’d learned early in her broadcast career how to work in chaotic circumstances. Some lines of work, you could count on a nice quiet office to retreat into, but broadcast journalism wasn’t exactly one of them.

At least this set of problems hadn’t disrupted Shepardsport’s connections with Earth. She could still do her usual checks of various TV and radio stations’ websites, searching for patterns of events that someone seemed to be trying to put a cone of silence on at the national and international level.

Not to mention the help that her old colleague Dan was giving her. He seemed to be pretty well plugged into the rumor mill wherever he was, and had picked up some really interesting bits of information. In particular, he’d been a bit of a CB enthusiast long before he decided on radio as a profession, and he still kept a base station at home, albeit only to listen to the truckers on nearby highways.

Autumn had to agree that listening to radio chatter could be interesting — more than a few times she’d gone to websites that allowed a person to listen in on air traffic and space traffic control channels. If nothing else, the jargon was fascinating.

However, Dan’s interest was less in the lingo that had developed over the decades since CB had originally become popular. Instead, he was more interested in what the truckers had to say to one another about travel conditions. These men and women drove thousands of miles every week, crossing the country to deliver critical goods, something that couldn’t be suspended.

Everywhere they were reporting a eerie pall over the cities and towns through which they passed. Stores were closed, even many that should’ve been essential like gas stations and grocery stores. Even where businesses were open, people would keep their distance, as if afraid to get too close to a stranger. Shipments had to be dropped on loading docks and left, and all bills of lading had to be handled in digital format.

The latter was reminiscent of the protocols that had been developed up here to supply the various outlying settlements, especially the small research habitats. The biggest difference was the simple fact that most terresetrial businesses couldn’t just send out a robot to collect what the pilots had dropped off, typically using one of the lander’s robots.

But then again, terrestrial businesses wouldn’t have the additional layer of protection that was provided by the lunar surface environment. If the diablovirus could survive on surfaces, packages dropped off on a loading dock could remain a source of contagion for hours, even days.

Even more concerning was the increasing difficulty truckers were reporting in meeting their basic hygiene needs. Truck stops might be open for them to pump gas, since pay-at-the-pump had been common back when Autumn was still a girl. But more than a few had closed their stores, and with them access to restrooms and showers.

If the truckers were having to resort to makeshift hygiene solutions, how long would it be before those took a toll on their health? Even if they could avoid the diablovirus, getting ill from fecal-borne illnesses or succumbing to skin infections from being unable to shower could take them off the road just as thoroughly. And if too many truckers began falling ill, what would happen to supply chains already strained to the breaking point from the closure of the production facilities?

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Narrative

A Change of Plans

Spruance Del Curtin was on his way to the Astronomy Department when his phone chimed incoming text. What would it be now?

It was Dr. Doorne: Meet me at the station.

So whatever was going on with broadcast quality, she was involved in it. On second thought, he probably shouldn’t have been surprised, given that signals processing was her engineering specialty.

He wasn’t sure whether to be happy or disappointed that he wasn’t going to be going through data today. Quite honestly, it was getting tedious, even if he did like being someone’s special student, trusted with actual research material.

All the same, he knew he was going to get some questions when he turned around and headed back the other way. There were enough people up here in Miskatonic Sector who knew he was doing data work for Dr. Doorne every morning, and would want to know why he was heading the “wrong” way.

Except that, given most people around here did listen to Shepardsport Pirate Radio at least some, even if only on their alarm clock, they’d be aware that something was wrong down there.

As it turned out, he actually managed to arrive at the station offices before his mentor. Then again, she might not know some of the back ways through the service passages that he did. He’d worked for Engineering long enough that he’d learned quite a few shortcuts that weren’t strictly approved, but could shave off a few minutes when seconds counted.

As he’d expected, the place was already crowded. Not just the usual station staff, but half a dozen people from Engineering, including the big boss himself. And no, Ken Redmond did not look pleased today.

Make that double when he looked at Sprue. “So what brings you down’ here today?”

“Sir, Dr. Doorne just texted me to come down here.”

Ken narrowed his eyes. “How convenient–“

At that moment a familiar voice joined the fray. “Major Redmond, if you will listen to me for a moment.”

Dr. Doorne spoke with sufficient authority that Ken Redmond turned to face her. She continued in the same firm tone. “I requested Mr. Del Curtin to meet me here because I believe the skills he’s learned with me will be of use in this problem. Now, if we can take a look at the equipment we are dealing with.”

With that settled, Ken Redmond led them back to the main mixing board. Dr. Doorne set out a bag of equipment and they set to work.

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Narrative

The Many-Talented

Ursula Doorne went over the latest solar activity data, seeking the patterns that warned of imminent instability in the Sun’s magnetic fields. Normally she’d be reasonably confident of her ability to scan through the data and pick out those patterns, although it wasn’t her specialty. After having been surprised twice now, she was no longer feeling so confident.

In fact, she was feeling very much like a rank beginner all over again. A whole lot of stuff she had assumed about the way in which the Sun — and by extension main-sequence stars of that size in general — operated was now very much in question once again. Theories that had been considered pretty much standard when she was doing her undergraduate work were now having to be reconsidered.

When she’d been a student, she’d thought it would be so exciting to be a scientist during such a major paradigm shift. And quite honestly, it might well have been, if the science she was dealing with were something in distant galaxies, so far away as to effectively be abstract. But this was stuff that could mean the difference between life and death for thousands of people up here on the Moon, millions down on Earth. And not just faceless masses, but her own family, her colleagues, her neighbors. Her own husband was a pilot-astronaut, and while spacecraft shielding was a hell of a lot better than in the early days of Apollo and Zond, it still provided only sufficient protection for ordinary solar storms. For the big X-class ones, the astronauts depended in getting sufficient warning that they could get to shelter, whether in one of the larger orbital facilities or on the surface.

And if the Sun isn’t behaving the way our theories say it should, our forecasts are going to be just as unreliable.

Maybe that was why she felt as much at sea as right after the Expulsions began, when she got a message from the training department that she was being assigned an intro to astronomy class. And not even an undergraduate-level one. This one was going to be aimed at middle-school kids, at a time when she wasn’t even sure how to talk to kids that age, let alone describe the discipline she’d spent a lifetime mastering in words they could understand.

And you went back to first principles. Started with the story of early humans looking up at the sky and seeing the lights in them, and realizing over time that there were patterns to their movements. There’s got to be a new set of patterns in the data, but we just don’t know how to see them yet. Best case, it’ll turn out that our current theories are a special case, and we just haven’t seen the conditions that are leading to what we’re observing. Let’s hope we don’t have to throw out everything we thought we knew and start all over.

And then her phone rang. She’d halfway expected it to be one of her colleagues with a new insight on the data. Instead it was Ken Redmond from Engineering.

“Dr. Doorne, we’ve got a problem down here at the station. You’re our best signals processing person who isn’t tied up in one kind of quarantine or another. Can you get down here and take a look at it?”

In this context “the station” would refer to Shepardsport Pirate Radio. For the most part she’d viewed it as something on the order of the underground newspaper that had been circulated at her high school, albeit a little more approved by the authorities than those photocopied sheets that passed from hand to hand every morning. But given that the head of Engineering was specifically requesting her skills, there wasn’t much way of saying no.

“I’ll be on my way.”

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Narrative

Bigger Than We’d Expected

Ken Redmond had called a halt on their efforts to repair the main mixing board shortly before midnight, right before Spencer Dawes would wind down the Disco Ball and sign off. It was becoming increasingly obvious that everyone was tired enough to affect judgement, and given that the midnight-to-six segment was run by a software robot that selected songs and could make basic announcements, it made far more sense to send everyone home for a good night’s rest and start over in the morning.

Now that morning was here, Ken was no longer feeling quite so sanguine about the ease of repairs on this issue. It didn’t help that he couldn’t go straight to the studios of Shepardsport Pirate Radio, since there were a number of other issues around the settlement that he needed to follow up on first. Not that Juss Forsythe was a bad tech, but he was still young enough that he simply didn’t have the years and decades of experience that often allowed an old hand like Ken to make intuitive leaps on fragmentary information.

By the time Ken finally had his docket cleared enough that he could even consider going over to look into matters personally, Brenda was winding up Breakfast With The Beatles and getting ready to hand things over to Lou Corlin. They were both experienced enough with dong remote broadcasts to be able to use that system to its best advantage, but there was no mistaking it for the full studio system.

On the other hand, the network traffic reports he’d gotten from IT were showing that the lowered transmission quality hadn’t led to a significant drop in listenership. In fact, it looked like connections from outside the lunar Internet had actually picked up, which made him wonder. Could it be a case of people trying to connect multiple devices in hope that one would have better reception?

From some things that Autumn Belfontaine had said, it was sounding like a lot of dirtside radio stations were resorting to various makeshifts just to be able to broadcast at all. Some of them were sharing transmitters, running simulcasts, even going all Internet when their ability to broadcast over the airwaves was lost. So it was possible that a lot of people were getting used to making do with whatever they could find.

It must be getting really bad down there. It made him realize just how little connection he had with family on Earth. Both his parents were deceased, and Jenn was estranged from her mother. He had a couple of siblings, but they’d drifted apart, to the point they rarely corresponded other than at the holidays. No hard rupture like Jenn’s break with her mother, just an ever-growing lack of common points of reference that made it hard to communicate.

As Ken walked into the offices of Shepardsport Pirate Radio, he encountered Juss walking out. The younger man had a worried expression. “I was just looking for you. We’ve got a major problem. I’m thinking we’re going to have to tear that mixing board down and rewire about half of it.”

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Document

One Fix at a Time

Most of the time having a good overview of the situation is a good thing. However, there are a few situations in which being able to see all the problems in the system can actually be detrimental, for the simple reason that it overwhelms a person, leading to a perception that a solution is impossible.

In this sort of a situation, the best thing to do is to focus on fixing the immediate problems. This way you buy yourself time to solve the other problems, while avoiding overwhelm and resultant despair.

As the diablovirus pandemic proceeded, this sort of situation was a serious risk. In many parts of Earth, basic utilities such as electricity, water purification and sewage treatment had broken down altogether — which assumes that the region in question even had those services to begin with. Even basic civil order had broken down in some of the worst-hit regions, with people fighting among themselves on a tribal basis.

For the most part, these were regions where civilization had always been a thin veneer over a tribal culture, often further hampered with traditions of amoral familialism. With little or no general trust, people could not make those random associations that enabled people in general-trust societies to pool resources, both physical and social, to build on what they had managed to preserve.

Even within societies that were generally high-trust, there were often pockets of low-trust communities, where people would just as soon stick a knife in a neighbor’s ribs and take his stuff than work with him to piece together solutions. In the US and Western Europe, many of these problem spots were found in areas of urban blight. The question of whether low-trust communities produced blight or blight produced low-trust communities is one of those chicken-and-egg questions that historians and sociologists will be arguing about for decades to come.

What we do know is this: the level of general trust in a community is the single most useful predictor of how a given area will be able to marshal resources and to address the problems of recovery in a disaster situation. And the diablovirus was no exception. In fact, it can be argued that general trust was even more important, for the simple reason that there was so much that needed to be done. People had to be able to trust that non-relatives could be relied upon to handle various aspects of recovery, rather than using them as a means of enriching oneself.

—- William Robert Hearne, Col., USAF (Ret.) “Reflections on the Problems of Disaster Recovery,” An Oral History of the Diablovirus Pandemic, Kennedy University Tycho Archives.

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Narrative

Is No News Good News?

Reggie Waite was coming to dread these meetings with Dr. Thuc. Although she continued to report that the lunar community had been able to keep the diablovirus at bay, the news from Earth just kept getting worse and worse.

After delivering the latest litany of bad news, Dr. Thuc added, “However, we must be careful to remember the rule about absence of evidence. We cannot assume that regions that are not reporting information are necessarily charnel houses. While it’s true that some of the earliest warning signs came in the form of reports from travelers of entire villages found desolate, even then it didn’t mean every inhabitant had died. There is some evidence of survivors deciding their numbers were simply too small to sustain a village, and leaving in search of a community that could support them. In fact, there is some speculation that such migration played a significant role in the early spread of the diablovirus.”

“And given how poor record-keeping was in those parts of Earth even before the current crisis, we’ll probably never know.” Reggie considered the situation, trying to push back the old memories from the Energy Wars. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some of those ass-end-of-nowhere places were still functioning at some minimal level, but nobody knows about it because the communications net is so thin they hardly notice when it goes down. There’s even some places in the US that are like that, out in Alaska, up in the Rockies, heck, even up in the mountainous parts of New England.”

“That’s completely possible. On the other hand, it appears that a surprising number of areas are keeping things operating by various ad hoc solutions as things break down and repair parts aren’t available.” Dr. Thuc flipped through a number of files in her tablet. “I have several reports of hospitals jerry-rigging repairs to generators and other vital equipment when normal spares couldn’t be found.”

“That’s good to know. However, I’m wondering what’s happening outside the medical field. How many factories are still in operation, and of the ones that weren’t, how many were properly shut down before they were abandoned? Ken Redmond would know this sort of stuff better than I do — he’s the mechanical engineer — but I remember from some of my coursework at Annapolis that there are a lot of processes that you can’t just terminate with the flip of a switch. A lot of chemical plants could be in a bad way if the operators weren’t able to execute an orderly shutdown before they lost power for good, or didn’t have enough personnel to continue operations.”

“That’s really out of my area of expertise. But I certainly can appreciate your concerns. The issue has certainly gone through my mind. However, given that there’s not a lot we can do about that situation right now, my primary focus has been on determining what we’re going to be looking at in terms of rebuilding when all of this is over.”

“And that’s all any one of us can do at the moment. Other than getting information out via Shepardsport Pirate Radio, we pretty much have to concentrate on keeping contagion out and keeping our own systems running.”

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Narrative

Coming Back to Try Again

Brenda could tell it was just one of those days, when you started late and spent the whole day scrambling to catch back up. The kids were still upset about missing out on their visit to their grandparents. They weren’t openly pouting, the way kids their age back on Earth might have done. But they were definitely less than enthusiastic about getting dressed and ready for the day.

They’re just kids, said a voice in the back of her mind. With everything that’s going on, they have a right to be disappointed.

But she also knew that they were living on a world that was very unforgiving, and it was far easier to form good habits from the beginning than to break bad ones. Indulge them now, and when it was time for them to assume serious responsibilities in a few years, it could end in tears. No one had forgotten the Munroe girl, and what her stubborn self-pity had gotten her.

All the same, by the time she got the children through breakfast and handed off to their teachers, Brenda was thoroughly frazzled. And she had an air shift to get through — and given her dad had finally called it quits on the main studio board last night, she’d have to do hers on the remote broadcast system.

As she was approaching the station offices, she was surprised to see Cindy Margrave walking just ahead of her, head bent over phone. Brenda lengthened her stride to close the gap with the younger woman. “How are things going.”

“OK.” Except her voice didn’t sound OK. When Brenda made it clear she was willing to listen, Cindy expanded. “I mean, I’m doing OK, and the rest of the family is. But I just got a text from an old friend I hadn’t heard from in years.”

When Brenda asked whether it was a friendship disrupted by the Expulsions, Cindy shook her head. “No, it was when Aunt Betty got transferred, a couple of years before. Shelly and I both swore we’d e-mail every day, but things happened, and we sort of grew apart.”

Brenda could understand how that sort of thing worked. She’d lost touch with a number of friends who’d moved away, especially the ones whose parents worked in the oil industry. No matter how close they’d been, no matter how sincerely they’d sworn to keep in contact, things would come up and the letters or e-mails or texts would become fewer and far between.

However, she doubted that reflecting on that would help Cindy. “So how is she doing?”

“It doesn’t sound good. Apparently the Pennsylvania child welfare system isn’t going around scooping up kids whose parents are in the hospital, whether or not they’ve made other arrangements. In fact, she was a little surprised when I told her about Amy.” Cindy paused. “Shelly went to stay with a friend’s family when her folks got sick, and then her friend’s folks got sick, and now all of them are sort of holed up in another friend’s place, with that friend’s twenty-something big sister as the only adult in the whole place. From the sound of things, they’re kind of worried about what would happen if the government ever notices, but apparently things are getting bad enough around there that the government’s got a lot bigger fish to fry than making sure every child has a proper legal guardian.”

“No, that doesn’t sound good at all.” Although Brenda suspected that the big sister in question was about her own age, maybe even older, she also knew that things were different dirtside.

Except telling Cindy that there was nothing they could do right now wasn’t going to be helpful. If anything, it was apt to make her worry more. “How about trying to find out as much as you can about their situation, anything they need to know to keep their place going. If you need to, let me know so I can see what I can find out.”

By then they were at the doors to the station offices. There was work to be done, and it wouldn’t wait.

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Narrative

A Distant Echo

The night before, Cindy Margrave had noticed the sudden drop in Shepardsport Pirate Radio’s broadcast quality, but no one had texted her to come down to the station offices. Not surprising, given that she was just the receptionist, and her technical skills were pretty much limited to running the station switchboard. Like as not, she’d just be underfoot if she went running down there to see what was going on.

With nothing else to do, she’d focused on her studying and hoped that things were resolved by morning. Ever since the family had been sent up here, she’d learned some hard lessons in the importance of not worrying about matters over which she had no control.

However, it had been pretty clear when she woke up that no, the problem was not resolved. Given that the dj’s announcements sounded like they were using the remote broadcast setup, she figured that the technical crew had done what they could, then knocked off when it got too late. As long as the remote gear held on, it was better that everyone get a good night’s sleep and tackle matters in the morning.

It was a sentiment she could agree with, especially after the time she’d pulled an all-nighter to study and ended up making a complete hash of her final exam after doing so well on all her quizzes and tests. No doubt she’d get down to the station offices to discover the technical crew hard at work sorting out the issues.

In the meantime, she needed to get to the dining commons and get her breakfast. Sure, she could have breakfast sent to the station offices, but she really didn’t want to have to eat food that had gone cold. Especially if it was something like sausages or cheese omelets, it could be downright nasty.

The dining commons was quiet at such an early hour. Normally there would be some people at the pilots’ table, but with all the pilots having to quarantine down in Flight Ops, the long table had been removed and replaced with more of the small round tables for the rest of the community.

She looked around for anyone she recognized, but saw only some of the technical staff, people who had to deal with stuff that needed attention 24/7. Nobody invited her to join them, and she wasn’t going to intrude on anyone by asking if she could.

Still, it felt awkward to have to sit alone. Usually she could wait until her sister and cousins were ready to go, but today she needed to be to work early.

As she scanned the QR code at her seat, she realized that she’d gotten a text sometime during the night. While she waited for the serverbot to deliver her breakfast, she pulled it up and read it.

It took her a moment to recognize the name. Michelle Walstrand had always gone by “Shelly” in school, and it had only been during some big tests that Cindy had even discovered her actual name.

Still, it was good to hear from her again. The message was brief, asking where she was and how she was doing — and quite honestly it had the feel of someone going down a long list of former contacts and sending the same text.

But she was definitely not going to ignore it. Better to at least write back, let Shelly know she was safe on Farside, that so far far they’d kept the pandemic out of the lunar settlements.

Even as she started to write, she paused. Would it sound like boasting? Would it sound inconsiderate of whatever losses Shelly might have suffered in the meantime?

Cindy deleted the text, then began again, choosing her words more carefully this time. Make their safety more tenuous, emphasize the privations of living on the high frontier, and maybe it wouldn’t sound condescending.

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Narrative

A Welcome Note

Two more airlocks, Brenda told herself. Just two more airlocks and we’ll be to the station offices.

It shouldn’t have been such a big deal, except that a crew was hauling a big piece of equipment down to Flight Ops after Engineering had worked on it. In normal times, transporting it at this hour made perfect sense, since there weren’t that many people moving around. Today it meant she and Lou got stuck waiting a lot longer than they should’ve. Lou had texted ahead so that everyone would know the reason for the delay, but it was still frustrating to have to lose time waiting, especially since there wasn’t a whole lot of ways to catch back up.

Just as they were entering the next to last airlock, her phone chimed incoming text. Wondering if it was her dad, she pulled it out.

No, it was Drew: Just wondering if you’re having trouble with your system over there. Some time in the last hour, sound quality just went to crap.

Better let him know she was aware of the situation. Thanks. Right now I’m on my way down to the station to help sort it out. Rand’s watching the kids.

He’s a good kid. Typical straight-arrow Chaffee, but still a good kid.

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Narrative

All Is Not Well

Drew Reinholt had Shepardsport Pirate Radio tuned in on his computer while he was going over the latest materials on comm upgrades. Not very loud, not just because he didn’t want to draw attention to himself, but also because disco wasn’t exactly his thing.

But he had it just loud enough to form a pleasant background to shut out the ever-present random background noise. Less the white noise of the ventilation fans than the intermittent thumps and bumps of people moving equipment through the corridors of the Roosa Barracks, talking a little louder than they should’ve, particularly when they were right on that edge of where they should switch from hollering to using their radios.

Drew had been concentrating just enough that he hadn’t really noticed when the dj’s announcements suddenly took on a much rougher quality, as if the guy had switched from a pro-grade broadcast mic to some random headset he’d found lying around in a tool locker. But once he realized the quality had really dropped, he started listening in earnest.

Yes, there was something wrong with their broadcast quality. However, it didn’t seem to affect recorded material, just the live announcements.

Most of Drew’s formal experience with audio transmissions related to comms on spacecraft, not broadcast standards. However, he’d helped Brenda with her broadcast training enough that he had a fair comprehension of the equipment they were using over at Shepardsport Pirate Radio. Given how much of it her dad had put together, since it wasn’t exactly practical to be bringing pro-grade studio equipment up from Earth, and the man did enjoy geeking out about his work, Drew actually knew a fair amount.

However, it was just enough to suggest several possible faults that could degrade on-air performance, but not enough to narrow it down to any one or to suggest possible fixes. Drew glanced over at his phone. Should he text Brenda and let her know there was a problem at the station?

Heck, would it be better to go straight to the source and text his father-in-law? As head of Engineering, Ken Redmond would be the guy who would marshall the necessary personnel to get the problem fixed.

On the other hand, if it had been some time since the problem cropped up, they probably knew about it already. For all he knew, the whole team was already hard at work rectifying the problem, and his texting would only serve as a distraction.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to send Brenda a little text of encouragement. If she was already working on the problem, she didn’t need to respond until she got some slack time. If she wasn’t, it would be a heads-up.