Month: November 2020

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Narrative

Damage Control

Given the ever-increasing precariousness of the situation, Reggie Waite had started having his various section chiefs check in with him on a daily basis. Nothing in-depth, just touching base on anything that had changed, but the last thing he wanted to have happen now was to get blindsided by something because the early signs were overlooked. He remembered too many times that sort of thing happened during the Energy Wars.

Hell, they even had reasonably good intel that a terrorist attack on a NASA facility was in the works. They were just so certain that it was going to be the Space Shuttle that was launching for a secret DOD satellite repair mission that no one stopped to think that an attack on Johnson would be just as disruptive to the mission as an attack on Kennedy.

Right now he was talking with Bill Hearne. Mostly about the situation at Schirrasburg, or at least as much as anyone could find out with the settlement completely quarantined, its spaceport shut down and even overland deliveries such as the Ice Train prohibited. But Bill was also in regular communication with family on the old home place, which provided a line of information on just what was happening on Earth.

“Of course you have to remember that Fred and the rest of the family are pretty much staying on their farms as much as they can. It’s not like they’re going into town and chatting up the clerk at the feed store who talks to the truckers who get the gossip on the CB or at the truck stops.”

“Completely understood.” The last Reggie had heard from his family, they were all hunkering down too. He just wished they could get some messages up here, but given Chris was career Air Force, contact with someone at odds with the Administration might not be a wise move. “And quite honestly, gossip and rumint can be as much trouble as benefit in uncertain times like this. I’m receiving multiple reports of wild rumors going through the settlement right now, and a number of the kids getting frightened, having nightmares, the whole works.”

Bill started to laugh, turned it into a cough. “I think you can count Flight Ops out on that front, Captain. With all the pilots isolated from the rest of the settlement population while they’re in, and under minimal-contact orders while they’re on missions, it pretty much cuts them off as a source of gossip.”

“True, but I’m thinking more on getting some ideas about what we can do to keep this stuff under control. I spent most of the Energy Wars either at the Academy, which was buttoned up tight for security reasons, or at sea, where shore leave was pretty damned rare for the same reason. But you were already an astronaut, so you would’ve seen more of the way rumors go through a civilian population.”

“It’s been a long time, and I was pretty busy with training when I wasn’t actually on a mission or doing support work for someone else’s mission. But I’ll talk to Alice and see what she can remember.”

“Thanks. Let me know tomorrow what you can come up with. We need to get this situation under control, and soon.”

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Paying the Bills

On an eighteenth-century Earth crippled by alchemical disaster, a secret American cabal led by Benjamin Franklin strives to prevent the annihilation of humankind

The dark magic that the great alchemist Sir Isaac Newton inadvertently unleashed with his discovery of philosopher’s mercury has taken a devastating toll on Earth: The destruction of Europe and the advent of eternal winter have aided the mysterious malakim in their apparent quest for the annihilation of the human race.

In the American colonies, Benjamin Franklin hones his alchemical skills and prepares the Junto—his secret cabal of scientists, Native American tribesmen, former slaves, and fugitive European intellectuals—for the upcoming battle for humankind’s survival as the army of the Scottish “pretender” king James Stuart invades the continent to reestablish British dominion.

Meanwhile, on the other side of a shockingly diminished world, in the court of the mysteriously vanished Peter the Great, the missing tsar’s chief alchemist, Adrienne de Mornay de Montchevreuil, prepares to depart Russia in search of her lost son, who may well be at the heart of the conspiracy of malevolent angels to eliminate the human scourge.

The third volume in author Greg Keyes’s ingenious Age of Unreason alternate history series, Empire of Unreason broadens the story, elevates the action, and reveals secrets within secrets as the surviving inhabitants of this different, endangered world race frantically toward a climactic confrontation.

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Document

Breaking Strain

There’s a lot of ruin in a nation. Adam Smith, the father of modern free-market theory, is said to have responded with this remark when told that General Burgoyne surrendering at Saratoga (one of the early acts of the American Revolutionary War) would be the ruin of the UK.

As it turned out, the UK not only survived the loss of her North American colonies, but went on to build a second colonial empire that would last into the twentieth century. She would fight two world wars, stand against incredible odds when it seemed all hope was lost, and even in her diminished state after decolonization would remain a desirable destination for both tourists and immigrants well into the twenty-first century.

The diablovirus pandemic of the mid twenty-first century became a demonstration of just how much ruin nations could absorb before coming apart. To be sure, many began cracking almost as soon as the first outbreaks reached their major population centers. Politicians fled the capitals in favor of the major cities of wealthier nations, where they hoped to be protected against infection. Other wealthy people fled to estates in the countryside, and without leadership, the populace began to fracture along the lines of tribe and clan.

In many cases, these countries were never really “nations” in any practical sense of the world. Their territories had often been drawn as so many lines on a map by colonial powers who had decided an enemy’s territory should be broken up, or it behooved them to shed their own colonial empires which had become both economic and political liabilities. As a result, there was no real polity corresponding to the territory, and often as not these paper countries combined warring factions while dividing previously existing communities. Most often they were held together by force, often by one or another strongman who typically favored his own people at the expense of rival groups. Without the threat of the force of arms to keep the various factions cooperative, these countries soon fractured. They were the ones with the empty villages, the ones where power generation failed quickly, even in the cities.

Where civil society had deeper roots, people pulled together instead of apart. Although many pundits worried about how several decades of immigration from the former colonies might have diluted Britannia’s spirit of keep calm and carry on, by and large people in the UK behaved in ways that their forebears of the Blitz would have been proud of. There were some defectors, some opportunists, particularly in certain neighborhoods of the larger cities in which integration with the larger society was weak. But for the most part, neighbors found ways to help one another while minimizing interpersonal contact. Critical workers continued to go to work, even when it involved exposing themselves to contagion.

We see similar stories across northern Europe, and in Japan and South Korea. All of these are relatively small countries with a cohesive national culture and deep traditions, to the point of being insular. They’re the sort of countries where the grandchildren of someone who brought home a foreign bride are often regarded as at least partly alien to the culture.

However, this cannot be taken to imply that only nations of a blood-and-soil tradition are able to maintain social cohesion under this level of stress, because we also see the pull-together response in the US and many of the other English-speaking nations that are the product of extensive immigration. In fact, we can often see down to the neighborhood level where we have cohesive communities and where civil society has broken down, just by looking at which areas pulled together and which devolved into warlordism.

But as the situation progressed, even cohesive communities could do only so much in the face of increasing shortages of the resources that make modern technological life possible. When trucks could not bring in essential supplies of food and fuel because there simply were not enough truckers to drive them, situations became truly desperate. This was particularly true in regions that were heavily dependent upon fuel oil for electrical generation, and thus for the maintenance of water and sewage treatment facilities, all of which are critical for keeping a modern city running.

Even so, in some areas we see people with knowledge and skills stepping forward, jury-rigging solutions to problems as they emerge and hobbling things forward, while in others people simply give up and resign themselves to enduring the privations…

—- JN Sorensen, A Study in Social Cohesion Under Emergency Conditions, (Doctoral dissertation), Kennedy University Tycho, Carpenter Point, 2044.

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Narrative

Touching Base

Autumn Belfontaine had been a little surprised when she got the text from Brenda Redmond, asking for a private meeting. In particular, there was something odd about the insistence that the meeting be private, not in the newsroom, not in either of their module lounges, but somewhere they would not be overheard.

It had taken a little thought to find a place where it would definitely be just the two of them. Shepardsport wasn’t as crowded as it had been right after the Expulsions, but pressurized volume was still at a premium. But she’d finally located a place where they could both speak in confidence.

When Brenda arrived, it was very clear that she was holding her professional face on by force of will. Whatever she wanted to talk about, it had obviously shaken her, even if she was determined not to let it show.

No wonder she was so insistent about a private meeting, especially considering all the problems we’ve been having with rumors.

Autumn was glad she’d brought some snacks, mostly comfort food, so she could offer Brenda something to nibble while they talked. Back when she was still doing radio news reporting dirtside, she’d met more than a few sources at a coffee shop specifically so they could talk over food.

Except Brenda wasn’t all that much in the mood for food. She took one cookie, almost as if she felt obligated to accept a token amount, and immediately launched straight into what she needed to say.

“Drew and I were texting. I’d asked him a few days ago if he could look into some of the rumors I’d been hearing. He’s able to plug into some military grapevines I wouldn’t have access to, and apparently some of them go all the way to some interesting places.”

With that, she described attacks on trucks going to grocery stores in Chicago, apparently by gangbangers. The first attempt had succeeded, but it had alarmed the company enough they’d issued their drivers weapons — Autumn tried to remember what kind of gun control laws Chicago had, since so much had changed since the Energy Wars, when continual terrorist attacks had led many municipalities to decide an armed populace might well be their best defense — and the second attempt had resulted in a firefight. All of which was news to her, and Chicago had definitely been on her list of cities to monitor.

Even if Brenda’s sources were right and the cone of silence was opsec for some kind of Illinois National Guard action against the gangs of the worst neighborhoods in the Windy City, having to delay while they got the proper authorizations was not a good sign. How many people in the proper line of command would have to be out of commission for such an action to get no response when it so clearly called for an overwhelming one?

“You were definitely right to come to me in private.” Autumn looked around the tiny room, glad it had been available at this odd hour. “This is not something we want to go spreading around. In fact, right now I’m torn between keep this under our hats until thing sort out and we’d better take this to someone with authority right away, and quite honestly I’m not sure whether I’d rather take it to Security or straight to command.”

Brenda moistened her lips. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. Because I’m not sure who would be the most likely to actually listen, especially since everything I have is hearsay, and I’m not completely sure whether I want to mention that Drew told me, since I sure don’t want to drag him into something that could get him in trouble.”

“Absolutely. Even if we are all members of the Shepard lineage, whether by birth or by marriage, there’s still a limit to how far family can go to cover for each other. But one thing I can do is put out some feelers. I do know some people from my college radio days who are working in the Chicago market. Even if they can’t report on it yet, they may be able to let me know whether there’s any substance to some rumors I’m getting.”

“That’s probably wise at this point. If you can get it through the news grapevine, we don’t have to expose the military one.”

“In which case, there’s not much point of talking any further, especially when both of us have things we need to get done.”

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Narrative

Reminiscences

Ursula Doorne had become a number of things she’d never expected when she accepted this posting on Farside. She’d known when she’d come up here that she would be participating in the maintenance work of the settlement as well as being an astronomer — she’d been chosen at least partly because her secondary degree in electrical engineering had so many additional applications relevant to living and working up here.

But she’d never anticipated teaching grade schoolers basic science. Sure, she’d done her fair share of work as a TA during her grad school days, but even undergrads were adults, and it was generally expected that they would take a certain measure of responsibility for their own education. Not so kids of eight or nine, or even tweens. You had to spend as much effort on keeping order in the classroom as actually getting the concepts across — concepts you had to break down into much simpler terms than even a 101 level intro class in college, where most of the students were actually just there to get one of their general-ed classes done.

And she’d never expected to be a mother. It wasn’t like she was asexual — she’d had various boyfriends over the years — but she’d never really seen much way to pursue her career goals and have children. And then, not long after the Expulsions began, there was an accident in the cryo-freezers. Thirty-seven embryonic clones were thawing, and there could be no question of re-freezing them.

She’d stepped up, and her whole life had changed. And now she had a little boy who was overhearing the bigger kids’ whispered speculations and worrying. A lot.

“We’ll pull through somehow.” She tried not to think about the small number of things that the lunar settlements were still dependent upon Earth for — right now there were sufficient spares that there was time for someone to come up with substitutes. “We pulled through the Expulsions, and that was a really close-run thing.”

“I know, Mom. We studied oxygen-carbon dioxide cyclesin science class last week.”

Rusty had the basic understanding of artificial habitats that every child on the Moon picked up. They might not know the fine details of a settlement’s oxygen budget, but they had the basic concept that oxygen production and consumption had to be balanced, and if it got out of balance, there would be trouble.

“Which was why there were times when we literally had carbon-dioxide scrubber modules set up in people’s rooms, like something out of the old Apollo missions, because that was the only way we could keep things going. We even sent some of the older teens out to the various outlying settlements who had room for another person, just to stretch things out here. But we pulled through.”

No, she couldn’t say and nobody died. True, nobody literally had to stop breathing because there wasn’t enough oxygen to go around. But there had been a number of accidents in those desperate days of jury-rigged solutions to the latest crisis, and a number of new names on the Wall of Honor down in the formal entrance.

But she wasn’t going to dwell on that. “And the first Thanksgiving Day after the Expulsions, we had a big celebration, because we finally were ahead of the game enough that we actually had a little surplus. But first, we all had the traditional three kernels of parched corn, so we wouldn’t forget those desperate days, or the privations of other pioneers before us.”

Yes, Rusty was familiar with the old/new Thanksgiving tradition. Ursula had read about it — was it in the Little House books? a history book? — but it was something old-fashioned, something you’d read about in a book. And then Captain Waite had reintroduced it that first Thanksgiving after the privations of accommodating all the Expulsees and integrating them into the community, and the old was new again.

And yes, she could see some of the fear in Rusty’s eyes subsided. Whatever he’d heard the older kids saying, her words had convinced him that yes, there was hope. That this was a community of can-do people, used to resolving “impossible” problems.

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Paying the Bills

In an alternate eighteenth-century Europe devastated by alchemical disaster, Sir Isaac Newton and his able assistant, Benjamin Franklin, confront enemies who seek humankind’s destruction

Sir Isaac Newton’s discovery of philosopher’s mercury in 1681 gave rise to a remarkable new branch of alchemical science. Forty years later, the world stands poised on the brink of a new dark age . . .

England is in ruins, crushed by an asteroid called to Earth by the very alchemy Newton unleashed. France is in chaos following the long-delayed death of Louis XIV. Cotton Mather, Blackbeard, and the Choctaw shaman Red Shoes set sail from the American colonies to investigate the silence lying over the Old World. And in Russia, Tsar Peter the Great, now host to the evil entity that kept the Sun King alive, seizes a golden opportunity for conquest as he marches his unstoppable army across a devastated continent.

Meanwhile Newton and his young apprentice, Ben Franklin, hide out in Prague, awaiting the inevitable violent collision of all these disparate elements—human and demonic alike—while a fugitive Adrienne de Mornay de Montchevreuil pursues the secrets of the malakim and her own role in their conspiracy to obliterate humankind.

The second volume of the Age of Unreason series, Greg Keyes’s masterwork of alternate history, A Calculus of Angels brilliantly expands the scope of the world he introduced in Newton’s Cannon as an unforgettable cast of historical heavyweights collide on a different Earth where magic and science coexist.

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Narrative

When the Answers Are Not Good

Brenda Redmond was in the residence module lounge, going over notes for tomorrow’s lesson plans while her children studied. At least the kids were pretty well occupied, but the educational software they were using required both speed and accuracy to score, which pretty much ensured engagement. Staying focused on lesson planning was a lot more work.

And then her phone chimed incoming text. She looked, saw it was from Drew. Got some news.

The kids are here. Want to FaceTime?

No. This needs to be private.

Brenda’s gut knotted. Whatever Drew had to say, it was not good news. OK, we can text.

You were wanting to find out about the rumors of gangsters in the inner cities setting themselves up as warlords, seizing food shipments and using them as weapons of control. It took me some time to make the necessary connections, but apparently there is some truth behind the rumors. I’m not sure how widespread it is, but apparently there was an incident on the south side of Chicago. Two food trucks hijacked on the way to a local supermarket. Dominicks, I think they said.

I’m not too familiar with Illinios, but I think Dad mentioned that name from a time he was stationed up in that area, back in the Energy Wars. So what happened with the food trucks?

Apparently the local gangstas set up their own little food distribution system, giving the food to people who’d kiss up to them. At least until they discovered the drivers on the next set of trucks were armed. Apparently there was a shootout on the inbound Ryan, or maybe one of the get-off ramps from it. Latter’s more likely for an ambush.

Yikes! How did they keep that off the news websites? I know Autumn checks at least three Chicago news stations on a regular basis.

Apparently they’re keeping it quiet while they find someone with the authority to send the National Guard in to clean things out. I’ve got rumint about similar situations in Detroit and LA, but no details.

Brenda paused to consider the implications of the first part. She was familiar with posse comitatus, if only because of the NASA Massacre, back in the Energy Wars. There were still conspiracy theorists out there who were convinced the Federal government had faked the evidence of the terrorists’ international ties to avoid having to court-martial Gus for leading Air Force police into Johnson Space Center.

But if the Illinois state government had broken down so badly that they couldn’t get someone to authorize the use of National Guard forces? She really wished she was more familiar with Illinois, but she’d been born and raised in Texas, and all her civics courses had focused on what went on in Austin, with a little nod to the other forty-nine states. She did know that the Illinois capital was Springfield, a much smaller city in the middle of the state, but she had a vague sense that a lot of the business of the state government got done in Chicago, and it provided most of their governors.

Hadn’t there been a governor who considered Springfield such a hick town that he wouldn’t even live in the Governor’s Mansion, and commuted from his home in Chicago? If the current governor took that attitude, would he be more likely to catch the diablovirus than if he lived full-time in Springfield?

There were so many questions, and far too many answers, and she doubted Drew would know much about Illinois state government. He’d been raised in New England — not surprising, given Alan Shepard was from New Hampshire — so most of his on-the-ground knowledge was from that area.

So there wasn’t much to do but chat a little. Some talk about the implications, but more just winding down the conversation, assuring each other they were well, that things in their respective settlements were remaining on an even keel, no matter how crazy things might be going on Earth, or how uncertain things were in Schirrasburg. No, Drew hadn’t had any contact with anyone from there. Things were being kept pretty tight right now, everyone staying in their spacecraft or suited up if they had to interact. Not necessarily full EVA gear, but still a pressure suit, with all the protection that implied.

Brenda was a little reluctant to have to say good-bye to Drew. However, she knew he would have work to do, and she still had some of her own she needed to finish.

All the same, she suddenly felt very lonely when she drew the conversation to a close. It seemed forever since that last night he was able to come up here to their apartment, to share a bed.

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Narrative

New Reasons to Worry

Autumn Belfontaine had just started sounding out some of her contacts in Engineering, trying to find out who had the strongest background in backup and emergency power generation, when she got a text from Betty Margrave. No explanation, just a request to come by Security.

So here she was, cooling her heels in the reception area. At least she could surf local news websites on her phone while she waited, and not look like she was indulging in nerves. As news director for Shepardsport Pirate Radio, she was just doing her job.

And then her name was called, and now she was inside the office of the Chief of Security. Was it her imagination, or did Betty Margrave look like she’d aged several years in the last few weeks?

Certainly the woman looked exhausted, with dark circles under her eyes. Her hair looked brittle and lifeless, another sign that she was pushing herself to exhaustion.

Does Dr. Thuc realize just how bad off she’s getting? Even as the thought came to Autumn’s mind, she realized Shepardsport’s chief flight surgeon probably had as much work, if not more, down at Medlab.

And there was no time to ponder it, because Betty was talking. “…need to know where this information is coming from. Having rumors running around the place is bad enough when they’re false and we can offer facts to the contrary. But there are just enough facts here that they can be spun into something that can result in panic.”

Autumn’s cheeks warmed with embarrassment as she realized she’d started listening only after Betty had directly referred to whatever rumors she was concerned about. And given the current situation, it could be any of half a dozen things that someone could come across by surfing onto the blog or social media page of someone who knew a little bit about the situation. And there was no way to ask without admitting that her mind had been elsewhere when she should’ve been listening.

Might as well just brazen it out. “Absolutely. That’s why there are a number of subjects that will be covered on-air only after we’ve run it past the appropriate authorities, specifically so we don’t spread rumors or dangerously inaccurate information. Right now a lot of it’s medical, and sometimes the embargo has to last longer than I’d like because Medstaff is so busy right now. But there are some sensitive political items that I always run past command, just in case there are reason Captain Waite needs something kept quiet for some length of time.”

“That’s good.” Betty actually seemed pleased, although her expression remained weary. Maybe she was tired enough that the signs of Autumn’s lapse had slipped right past her. “Especially when we’re looking at the possibility of having to enact much more stringent isolation measures here in Shepardsport, depending on what news we get from Schirrasburg Medlab.”

Autumn’s nerves tingled with alarm. Schirrasburg had had a close call earlier, but that individual had turned out to have an ordinary respiratory illness of the sort that periodically swept through lunar habitats in spite of every space operator’s pre-launch quarantine rules. But if they had a second potential case…

“What kinds of measures would we be talking about?”

“At the moment things are still under discussion, and it doesn’t help that so many of the people at Johnson are indefinitely out of the office.” Read that as sick, likely with the diablovirus, maybe even deceased. “But if there’s any strong reason to believe that any of our people was in contact with the infected individual, we’d be talking about a lot tighter controls on interpersonal contact. We’d definitely have to shut down the dining commons and have all meals sent via deliverybot, although right now that would be difficult for the simple reason that we don’t have enough bots to do it. And we couldn’t have people hanging out together in the lounges of residential modules, or in department offices up in Miskatonic Sector. It’s going to make group study hard, and it’s going to play hobs with our physical fitness program, but this thing is a killer. Not as bad in areas where people have good general health — we’ve known that ever since it started — but still bad enough that it could very easily sweep through a lunar settlement. And unlike dirtside cities, we cannot afford to have a significant number of our critical workers laid up with this thing.”

“Completely agreed. I’ll sound out the reporters and the dj’s, see if one of them is the source of the leak. But to be completely honest, we’ve got a lot of people with ties to Schirrasburg. So it’s completely possible it started with a private e-mail or text message that someone else saw. We may never know for sure where it came from.”

“Well, do what you can. With luck we can avoid having to make an official matter of it.”

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Document

The Fraying Web

As the diablovirus pandemic progressed, it began to put strain on all aspects of society. Not only did it overwhelm medical facilities, it also began to break down other fundamental services.

One of the first things to break down was the supply chain that brings merchandise to stores, from the corner convenience store to the big-box mass merchandisers that anchored strip malls all over the US. The phenomenon is familiar on a smaller scale in any region that gets large-scale natural disasters. After a hurricane or a blizzard, shelves will often be empty, especially of food and other necessities of life, for several days while roads are cleared so trucks can bring in fresh supplies.

However, in this case it wasn’t just one region. It was everywhere at once, which meant that there wasn’t slack available to restore stock levels. Worse, it wasn’t just a problem of trucks not being able to get through impassible roads. In many cases, there simply weren’t enough drivers available to keep the trucks moving. Casualties were high among truckers, at least partly because they have a tradition of not letting mere illness get them down, so they tried to force their way through the early symptoms. In the process, they also infected many of their fellow drivers, as well as the support personnel at depots and truck stops around the nation, further intensifying the breakdown of the transportation network.

In addition to the obvious shortages of food, toiletries, pharmaceuticals and other ordinary necessities, fuel soon began to run short. Initially the problems were masked by the reduction in the level of driving ordinary people were doing. However, it was only a matter of time before other kinds of fuel began to run short. For instance, fuel for backup generators began to disappear, right about the time many coal-fired and oil-fired power plants began to have trouble getting fuel.

Coal was generally delivered directly to the generating stations by train — but locomotive crews were also being stretched thin as a result of the pandemic. Even worse, many of the coal mines were having trouble keeping all shifts staffed as more and more miners called in sick. Some of them would return to work, but far too many did not.

As a result, many of the coal-fired generating stations had to either shut down altogether or run at reduced capacity — and the oil-fired power plants that would normally pick up the slack were running out of fuel oil, with little or no hope of getting supplies in.

This led to what would previously have been considered unthinkable in the US — widespread rolling blackouts as electric utilities struggled to keep at least some power flowing. And with shortages of fuel to power emergency and backup generators, even essential services could not maintain electricity. Hospitals went dark. Refrigerators and freezers in grocery stores failed, resulting in enormous amounts of food spoiling and having to be discarded.

Even water treatment and sewage treatment facilities began to fail. In urban areas of the US, people had come to take the availability of clean water for granted. Intelectually they knew their water bills paid for the pumping, purification and distribution of the water that came to their taps, but few people really thought about the logistics of this process. Even during power outages, water came on when they turned on the tap — until the day it didn’t.

At that point, things began to get truly desperate. Without clean water, basic sanitation began to break down. Without those fundamental systems, the shining modern city soon began to descend into a horror of filth more akin to an ancient or medieval city, further exacerbating the death toll of the diablovirus pandemic.

—– JS Reinholt, essay for civics class.

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Narrative

Trying Not to Worry

Lou Corlin was relieved that Eli hadn’t been too obnoxious about getting criticized. Whether he’d take it to heart and stop showing off what he knew in front of the younger kids, only time would tell. In the meantime, there was no use worrying about it when he had work to do.

He was surprised to discover some bench work already waiting for him. From the look of it, most of it would be routine. Check out a hard drive that was acting flaky, run memory checks on a printer that kept choking on larger print jobs, the usual.

While he was doing basic continuity tests on three mice from the testing center, Juss Forsythe came in. “How closely have you been keeping track of stuff going on down on Earth?”

“Not all that closely,” Lou admitted. “Things have been pretty busy lately, so most of what I know is from friends who are in communication with people dirtside. What’s on your mind.”

“This.” Juss set a tablet on the desk. “These are composite images taken from Freedom Station. The first was about six months ago, and the second was last week.”

Lou was familiar with images of the Earth’s night side, of the bright lights of cities trailing off into suburbs and exurbs, connected by the strings of pinpoints that were small towns along the major highways. He could pick out most of the major cities of the US, as well as those of Europe, Asia and Australia.

But looking at that second one, the one showing the situation only a week ago, was alarming. Whole regions had gone dark. While it might be unsurprising in Africa and parts of Asia, it was alarming to see dark patches scattered here and there across Europe, like mold on a loaf of bread. Could things have broken down that bad, that they couldn’t even manage to keep the lights on? What did that mean for other basic things like clean water and sanitation?

At least on Earth they didn’t have to worry about breathable atmosphere. But everything else that made civilization possible depended upon an infrastructure that had to be maintained — and if it wasn’t, how long would the cities remain liveable? How bad could things get before they broke down altogether?

“I’d heard some rumors about rolling blackouts in some areas, but I hadn’t wanted to give too much credence to rumors. You know how that goes.”

“Completely understood. I’ve had to get after a few of the younger kids myself. But this isn’t rumors. This is photographic evidence.”

“And the worst thing is, there’s not a whole lot we can do about it. Maybe give advice — but we’re not a normal broadcast station. We’re an Internet streaming service, so people can listen to us only if they can get Internet where they are, and there’s enough bandwidth to support audio streaming.”

“I know. I just wish I had some better ideas.”

“But maybe we know someone else who has better ideas than we do.”

“Let’s hope.” Juss cast a significant glance at the clock. “Right now I need to get going.”