Reggie Waite usually ran Shepardsport with a relatively light hand. He picked division heads who knew their lines of work and trusted them to pick subordinates who were competent in their own areas, and to generally run their respective divisions without needing to be micromanaged.
However, there was always the occasional matter that really needed to be seen in person. And the news from Agriculture was just one of those kinds.
Alice Murcheson always made him think of some of the older women at church when he was growing up back in Salem. Not just the graying hair and the smile lines at the corners of her eyes, but also a certain maternal air about her that made a person feel at home.
Today those lines were downturned, and the atmosphere around her was filled with an uneasy tension. “We were lucky we discovered the problem at all. All the indicators were showing adequate flow, so we assumed everything was fine.”
Reggie looked from Alice to the image of the affected greenhouse, the people in breathing gear carrying buckets of water to the affected plantings. “And with the carbon dioxide levels you’re running in those greenhouses, there’s a big temptation to just trust your readouts.”
Alice nodded, her expression regretful. “We ought to be doing more frequent inspections of all the plantings, but until we can get a lot more people through oxygen-delivery training and able to use breathing rigs–” She left the sentence hanging.
Reggie understood the problem all too well. The Expulsions had enormously expanded the population of Shepardsport, primarily in the younger age cohorts. Although some of the kids were finally getting old enough to qualify for the necessary training, it still was behind the numbers they needed to properly inspect all the plantings necessary to feed the settlement’s population and keep up with their obligations to provide prepared meals to the various outposts scattered around Farside. The kids could teleoperate inspection robots, but even with spex and haptic feedback gloves, it was still far too easy to miss things.
Especially if it’s not something you’ve been trained to look for, which is what Ken Redmond thinks happened. Reggie had all too many memories of such situations back in the Energy Wars. The Navy — heck, the whole freaking Department of Defense — was pushing people through their training programs way too fast, which meant a lot of people with surface facility with the skills and techniques, but no deep understanding of the underlying principles. Even his own flight training had been horribly rushed by peacetime standards, and he’d learned a heck of a lot on the job.
But there was no use dwelling on how close things had been three decades ago. Right now, they needed to deal with the current problem, so they could get these highly-skilled people back to the jobs where they were really needed.