Month: January 2021

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Narrative

A Rather Awkward Position

After all his efforts, Spruance Del Curtin was still at square one on Drew Reinholt’s request. Whatever was going on down there at Schirrasburg, it was buttoned up so tight that no information was getting out at all.

That or people knew but just didn’t want to talk about it. Or had been forbidden to talk about it.

Certainly Autumn Belfontaine’s remarks to him hinted at that. She was almost certainly able to get pretty much any information she wanted that wasn’t outright classified. However, she also was not the boss at Shepardsport Pirate Radio — he still remembered her remark when they were first setting it up, that freedom of the press belonged to those who owned the press.

On the other hand, she’d just made that offer to take him into the news crew. He was still ambivalent about the idea, mostly because he really didn’t want to give up being a DJ. But he was starting to wonder if he ought to talk to her about the possibility of doing some of the back-office work of the news department while keeping his air shift.

Even as he was considering that, his phone chimed incoming text. He found a new text from Cindy Margrave.

How much do you remember the beginning of the Sharp Wars? The Arizona Memorial Incident and all that stuff.

Some, but I was still in grade school, and they kept a pretty close watch on our media access at the NASA clone creches. So we got a very filtered version, what the grown-ups thought we were ready to handle.

And you didn’t try to get around it?

Yep, Cindy knew his rep for viewing those situations as technical challenges. Trying’s one thing. Having the skills is another. So’s having the necessary access to computers and the Internet.

The three dots icon flickered for an unusually long time. Probably Cindy was needing to think about her reply.

Finally it popped up on his screen: That would be a difficulty. Did the older kids have those restrictions too?

Some of them. I think the guys who were in high school had unrestricted TV and Internet access, but they lived in the other dorm across the courtyard from us, and we didn’t have a lot of contact.

Sprue paused, considering how far he wanted to carry it, then decided to take his chances. I’m sure they’re up here, but most of them had left the creche years before the Expulsions. I mean, they started using artificial uterine environments right after the Lanakhidzist Revolution, when we first got the technology from the Soviet labs. You’re talking about more than thirty years since the creches first opened, so those guys would’ve been tracked down and Expelled individually, just like the ones who were gestated the old-fashioned way and grew up in regular families.

He felt oddly naked, talking so frankly about those matters to a young woman who wasn’t even the child of a clone, just a member of Colonel Dalton’s household.

Cindy’s response came more quickly this time. Thanks anyway. I was hoping maybe you could connect me to someone who was old enough to remember, but isn’t too busy to talk to it. Some stuff came up in Constitution class today, and I wanted to find out more on my own.

Maybe you ought to talk to Autumn about that. She was already working as a reporter for the college radio station during the 2012 election, and barely escaped a riot at the Minnesota statehouse.

Thanks. I’ll see if she has the time and wants to talk about it.

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Narrative

Awkward Questions

By the time Cindy got back home, her mind was itching with curiosity about those early days of the Flannigan Administration. Days she sort of remembered, glimpses of things on TV without any context, hurriedly turned off or changed to another channel if an adult noticed she was looking in that direction. Vague answers about bad people doing bad things and how she should not worry because she was safe here and Adult Authority would protect her.

Reflecting on those days with the experience of a decade and a half, she wondered how much she was confusing memories of national events with memories of her parents’ accident. She and her sister had been safely at home with a sitter that night, since their parents had been going to an event for grown-ups, so all her memories were of strange people suddenly appearing at the door, of a neighbor’s adult daughter coming over to stay with them for a couple of days until Uncle Carl and Aunt Betty could pick them up and make the necessary arrangements. A vague memory of what she now knew to be a courtroom, in which they were granted legal guardianship, but which at the time had been frightening in its echoing vastness.

One thing was certain — she had no meaningful memories of the events themselves. And she was pretty sure that what she’d been told in school back on Earth had been so heavily slanted that it was best discounted altogether.

And since we got up here, everything’s been either practical stuff like safety and first aid or science and technology, until the time came up to take our mandatory Constitution class.

She’d no more than stepped into the apartment when one of her cousins gave her a sharp shhhh and whispered,”Mom’s got a headache. Something happened at work, I don’t know what, but she came back looking awful and went straight to bed.”

Cindy nodded her acknowledgement, scarcely daring to breathe. A sudden headache… her guts clenched with dread. Hadn’t that been one of the symptoms of the diablovirus?

Except it was also a symptom of a dozen other things, some minor and others very dangerous. Dwell too long on the worst possibilities and you’d be running up to Medlab certain that you were in the throes of a cerebral aneurysm or a brain tumor when you’d just gotten a kink in your neck.

In the meantime, maybe she’d better start thinking about who else she could go to with her questions. People who were definitely old enough to have clear memories of that period and understand what they saw, but who wouldn’t consider it an imposition to take some time to talk with her about those events. While she was getting old enough that adults were starting to take her seriously, it was still tricky to know exactly where the boundaries were when it came to conversations that didn’t immediately relate to work or class.

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Narrative

Thoughts and Implications

Constitution class seemed unusually subdued today. On the other hand, they were rapidly approaching the end of the course, at which point they had to take the test. So of course everyone would be paying close attention for a change.

Today Colonel Hearne was doing another of his “big picture” lessons, in which he pulled back from the minutia of articles and clauses and amendments to see how they all worked together. However, this one was a little different from the earlier ones because he was also trying to put the entire Constitution into the context of the Revolutionary War and the Framers’ concerns about putting too much power in the hands of any one person.

Cindy Margrave listened raptly, realizing that none of her American history classes back in Houston had drawn the connections between the colonists’ quarrel with King George III and the flaws of the Articles of Confederation. In retrospect it was obvious, once someone connected the dots, so why had none of her teachers ever done so?

As class wore on, she realized that Colonel Hearne was holding back. Although he was talking about the weaknesses and failure points of the Constitution, particularly as related to the Civil War and Watergate, he was very carefully avoiding the issues that had led up to the Sharp Wars and the Expulsions.

It’s not just the issues of human cloning and genetic engineering. If those were the real issue, he could just point out that the questions could’ve been resolved with an amendment any time after the revelations of the Lanakhidzist Revolution. And he’s talked about the issues of technological change as they relate to Constitutional law multiple times, especially when we were talking about the Twenty-fifth Amendment and its relationship to improvements in medical technology.

It must have something to do with President Flannigan that he doesn’t want to come out and say. Cindy recalled talks with her Uncle Carl, about a military officer’s obligations of respect to the Commander-in-Chief, and how it related to the peculiar situation that had obtained since the disastrous 2012 elections

So he has to walk around the edges, and trust our training in independent thinking to lead us to the conclusions he’s trying to point us toward. Presumably related to the way the Framers wouldn’t have been able to anticipate the disastrous 2012 elections, balanced against the dangers of specific language allowing for emergency powers, given how so many other countries have seen tyrants use them as vehicles for assuming absolute power.

Yes, she’d have to talk with Aunt Betty tonight. Unlike Uncle Carl, she was civil service, so she didn’t have the issue of not appearing to speak disrespectfully of the Commander-in-Chief. If she needed to say hard words about President Flannigan, she could.

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Narrative

Beginnings

Those of us who grew up here on the Moon tend to think of the Sharp Wars as beginning with the Expulsions. Much as our tendency as Americans to think of World War II as beginning with the attack on Pearl Harbor, this is a misconception born of our perspective as a people isolated from the earlier parts of the conflict.

In fact, the Sharp Wars begin almost a decade before the Expulsions, with the Arizona Memorial Incident. Although Mitchell Sandoval’s actions could be more than adequately explained by PTSD from his experiences in the Energy Wars, the press pounced upon his experimental combat biomods as having made him unstable.

This played on the attitudes that had been present in American culture from the moment the US cloning program was revealed in 1984, in response to the Lanakhidzist Revolution in what was then the USSR. In some ways the perception of cloning and biomodding as Frankenstein science predated those revelations, having been developed in various works of fiction such as The Boys from Brazil and In His Image.

From this came the tendency to stigmatize the victims of those technologies, although the difficulty of identifying the actual culprits involved in these secret government programs also played into it. But after Sandoval’s actions, it turned into a hue and cry to “get them under control,” which in practice meant making the stigmatization of clones a formal matter of law, with identifying marks on driver’s licenses and other forms of ID…

—– PR Yamaguchi, essay for history class, Shepardsport.

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Narrative

Connecting

Payton Shaw was just finishing his latest report to Colonel Hearne when a familiar voice called his name. Payton looked up to see Spruance Del Curtin leaning over the back of the sofa. “What brings you here?”

“I need a little help.” Sprue gave a quick look around, lowered his voice. “You’ve heard about the guy over at Schirrasburg who’s supposed to have caught the diablovirus?”

“Mostly because the whole settlement’s closed down and Colonel Hearne had to completely redo our flight roster to isolate the pilots who’d been there right before the guy turned up sick. Sure, we’re following strict quarantine procedures and pilots are no longer allowed to go inside the settlements they’re visiting, but there’s still a certain limited amount of contact.”

Sprue’s lips quirked up a little, not a full-out Smilin’ Al grin, but definitely mark him down as pleased with the situation. “So here’s the problem. There are a bunch of rumors going around now. Some of them say the guy’s recovered and may never have had the diablovirus in the first place. The rest are claiming he died but NASA’s covering it up to prevent panic, since nobody’s sure where he got it from.”

“That’s pretty heavy stuff, Sprue.” Payton considered just how deep he wanted to get into this mess. especially since he had no idea where Sprue had gotten his information. For all Payton knew, he’d gone and poked his nose into some place he shouldn’t again. “And you know the big boss really doesn’t want people passing rumors.”

“I know what Captain Waite’s said. We had a talk about it a while back.” Sprue sounded a little exasperated. “Anyway, I’m not passing rumors. I’m trying to find out whether there’s any substance to them. After all, isn’t the whole point of Shepardsport Pirate Radio trying to get the truth out so that people aren’t stuck having to sift through masses of contradictory rumors?”

“You really have a talent at putting me in a rough place, Sprue. I’m not going to promise anything, but I’ll see what I can find out.”

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Narrative

Other Means of Validating Data

When Ursula Doorne first started advanced studies in astronomy, digital imaging technologies were really starting to come into their own in optical astronomy. Although she’d already specialized in radio astronomy, she had to work with the optical astronomers on a regular basis, and a lot of them were still very much of the glass photographic plate school. To them, there was no way a microchip could possibly compare with silver halide emulsion in capturing images.

By that time she already had enough background in electrical engineering to have a grasp of all the benefits of digital imaging. However, most of the most adamant members of the faculty were also very senior, and not exactly someone a student wanted to get crosswise with. Although given her specialty, it was unlikely they would be on her committee, there were other ways for someone of their stature to ruin a career before it even got started.

So she’d kept her head down and avoided them as much as possible. Which was probably why she’d spent almost as much time with the electrical engineering people as even the radio astronomers. At least there she didn’t have to watch her step quite so much, because the EE people weren’t going to be talking over coffee with the very people who most irritated her.

And that was probably why she often felt as comfortable down here in IT as she did in the Astronomy department offices. Especially when she needed to talk signals processing and data, these were her people. Of course Steffi Roderick was more of an AI specialist, but given how data-driven most AI was, especially when it involved autonomous robots like deep-space probes, she had a solid grounding in ways to deal with suspect data.

“We can certainly take a look at it. Just having more eyes looking at data helps catch anything that’s out of kilter. But there are a few things we can do that would be able to catch some of the less common instrumentation errors. Not perfect, but better than nothing while we’re waiting to get something else in position. By the way, you haven’t released any of this?”

“Only to the space weather people, as a precaution, and with a very clear caveat that it is not for general distribution. If we’re majorly wrong about some aspect of the Sun’s function, they need to know so they can adjust their forecasting accordingly.”

“That’s good to know. If we do find evidence of errors, it’s much easier if we don’t have to worry about retracting any pre-prints or poster sessions.”

“Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten the AXIL fiasco.” Ursula paused, looked directly at Steffi. “Were you at JPL yet when that happened?”

“No, I was still finishing up my degree, but we heard about it. One of my professors discussed the sensor issues in class, since he had been one of the designers of the AXIL sensor system. Interesting days.”

“Yes, interesting days indeed.”

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Narrative

Indecision

Spruance Del Curtin looked at his phone, trying to decide what to do. So Drew wanted him to get answers about the situation in Schirrasburg, right when he was getting told that Command was taking notice of his curiosity, and not in a good way.

Should he contact Autumn Belfontaine, express interest in taking her up on that offer to put him on the news team? Except he really didn’t like the idea of having to give up being a DJ.

Who else could he talk to? A lot of times he’d ask Brenda, but she was Drew’s wife and Ken Redmond’s daughter, and Sprue wouldn’t be surprised if she told both of them that he’d asked her. Drew might be amused at having his own question come full circle, but Sprue was pretty sure that Ken was the one that sent Lou Corlin to make those passive-aggressive remarks last night.

However, Sprue did have a reasonably good rapport with Chandler Armitage. Not close, given that they were both Sheps and there was always a certain edge of competitiveness in any interaction between them. But if Sprue played his cards right, Chandler might just take the question as a challenge and plunge right into the search for the answer with all the determination of a terrier digging out its prey.

On the other hand, did he really want to discuss it over an insecure channel like SMS when it was clear that very senior people were taking an interest in his activities, and not in a good way? In normal times he might’ve found an excuse to go down to Flight Ops and see if Chandler was in his office. When you had lineage rights, there were plenty of ways to make the connection without catching flack about it.

Maybe sent a carefully worded text, to avoid making it too clear why he wanted to talk, and see if Chandler was at least in town. In the meantime, he had studying to do, and at least the latest lesson packet in his statistical analysis class would keep his mind too busy to fret.

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Narrative

A Much-Welcome Connection

Brenda Redmond had just gotten to the dining commons and was looking for a table for herself and her children when her phone chimed a text alert. She reached for her phone, then checked herself. No, right now she needed to get the children settled in for their meal. The last thing she needed was for them to get bored while she was looking at her phone and go running all over the place.

Tonight seemed to be unusually busy. Some days she’d welcome sitting with friends, but right now she really wanted to find a table where she and the kids were by themselves. Especially if that text were important, she wanted to be able to take care of it right away.

Technically, you weren’t supposed to be texting in the dining hall unless it was an emergency. But right now there was a lot more gray area around the definition of “emergency,” and people tended to assume you were following the rules unless you were being an ass about it.

And the beginning of the text would come up on the lock screen when she woke it to scan the QR code at her seat to sign in. Which meant she was more than a little surprised to see that it had come from Drew. Wanting to know if she knew about something, from what she could see.

As soon as she had the kids settled in at their places and there was nothing to do but wait for the serverbot to deliver their meals, she pulled the text up.

Wondering if you’ve heard anything new about the situation at Schirrasburg. We’ve got rumors going around here that either the guy recovered and never had the diablovirus at all, or that he died but it’s being kept secret to prevent panic.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I haven’t heard much of anything. Command and senior staff’s really been stepping on gossip hard lately, and to be honest, I can’t blame them. Especially how young this community trends, we can’t let people’s fears run wild.

Understood. I was just hoping you might’ve come across some information at the station.

The news department’s been a lot more careful about information of late. Autumn’s told all the reporters that they are to watch their mouths, and what they read in the newsroom is suppose to stay in the newsroom unless she gives them the go-ahead.

Probably a wise idea. But it’d help if you could keep an eye out and let me know if you see anything about it.

I’ll try, but I can’t promise anything.

Brenda would’ve said more, but the serverbot had just arrived, and it was time to eat and free up the seats for someone else.