Month: February 2021

Categories
Narrative

A Follow-Up

For the last several days Drew’s e-mails and texts had been brief to the point of curtness. Brenda had resolved not to take their shortness as a personal slight. Given the situation, he probably had a lot more stuff on his plate than she did, and right now she had a heck of a lot.

So she was surprised when her phone chimed incoming text, and not only was it from Drew, but it was also long enough that only the first two lines were displayed on the lock screen. Just wondering whether you’d had a chance to find out anything about….

Which was just enough that she had to swipe to open, and everything else could just wait.

Just wondering whether you’d had a chance to find out anything about what’s going on down at Schirrasburg. We’re getting a new round of rumors around here.

Brenda moistened her lip, considered whether to tell her husband about her and Lou’s abortive efforts. Might as well give him the gist, but leave out some of the awkward details. A friend and I took a look at Schirrasburg’s Internet activity. We were hoping we might be able to find out something, but everything’s encrypted super-tight. The only thing we do know is that the patterns of data transfer are atypical for them.

Not surprising. These days, most everything goes over encrypted connections, even if it’s not actually confidential material, just to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.

We’ve talked about that at the station. Especially with the political situation, it’s completely plausible that someone would create a fake radio station and redirect traffic to them.

When Drew didn’t respond, she wondered if he was trying to decide how to respond without casting shade on the Commander-in-Chief. Maybe better shift the conversation away from the awkward area.

So what are you hearing over there? Or can you tell me?

Don’t spread it around, but we’re hearing that it was diablovirus, and it went through the whole settlement in spite of their going on strict lockdown. Everybody confined to quarters, everything delivered by robot, no interpersonal contact at all.

Brenda considered that information. Of course if it was just a rumor, it might not indicate anything at all. But if there were facts under it…

How well is the air filtered over there? If there are straight-line connections between rooms in the HVAC ducts, confining everyone to quarters wouldn’t make any difference, especially if the virus is airborne. The life-support systems would just blow it right from one room to another.

You’d have to ask Engineering, and right now communications are official channels only. But from the times I’ve visited there, they have the standard modularized design, so it’s not like they’ve got the air blowing through the whole settlement. But if there’s not filters at every room, I could see how a virus could blow from one apartment to another in a residential module. Which does not bode well if the rumor is true that nothing would stop it until it burned itself out.

Brenda shivered as if caught in a sudden breeze. It took a moment to get her hands to stop trembling so she could type.

No wonder they’re keeping such a firm lid on it. No way do you want to have that kind of thing circulating.

She started to write more, then thought better of it and backspaced, then started again. Maybe we’d better wind this conversation up.

Probably. I still have a report I need to write, and it’s not getting any earlier. Take care, and keep your eyes and ears open.

Will do. Brenda closed her messenger app, intending to get back to the work she was supposed to be doing. Five minutes later she realized she was still sitting and stewing.

By conscious effort of will she put away her phone and turned her attention back to her laptop.

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Paying the Bills

On a planet with six suns, night is about to fall for the first time in two thousand years . . . 

The planet Kalgash is on the brink of chaos—but only a handful of people realize it. Kalgash knows only the perpetual light of day; for more than two millennia, some combination of its six suns has lit up the sky. But twilight is now gathering. Soon the suns will set all at one—and the terrifying splendor of Nightfall will call forth a madness that signals the end of civilization

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You will learn what happens at Daybreak.

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Narrative

Devastation

Ursula Doorne had just gotten her son tucked into bed and was getting ready to turn in for the night when the phone rang. Not wanting to have Rusty coming running out to see what was going on, she answered on the first ring, not even looking at the Caller ID.

As it turned out, it was Tanner. Beyond the initial ‘hi,” he didn’t even bother with opening pleasantries, just launched straight into what he had to say. “Ursey baby, I’ve got some stuff to tell you, but don’t go spreading it around.”

“Understood. Strict information embargo until you say otherwise.”

“Good, because I can get in a hell of a lot of trouble if this gets around and they think I’m spreading it. Things are finally turning around at Schirrasburg, and it’s not a good situation. Yes, the guy did have the diablovirus, and we were damned lucky they discovered it before anyone else left and spread it to the whole lunar population. As it was, it pretty much went through the entire settlement. Maybe a tenth of the population is naturally immune, and another tenth were able to throw it off with mild symptoms.”

Ursula wasn’t an epidemiologist, but numbers and statistical analysis were such an important part of modern astronomy that she had some familiarity with their use in a wide variety of fields. As her husband gave her percentages for various severe forms and complications, she realized this was way out of the ordinary, even for a virgin-field epidemic.

“Of course we have to consider that a lot of the dead may well have been saved if they’d been in a location with a larger medical facility. From what I’ve heard, a number of people died because certain medical resources simply ran out before they became ill.”

“Understood.” Ursula was aware of the protocols for dealing with such situations. Harsh as they might seem to people accustomed to large Earthside medical centers, they had been carefully developed to ensure that resources would be allocated responsibly and ethically. “So what did finally stop it?”

“Basically, it just ran out of susceptible people to infect. Although that’s a hell of a way to put a stop to a pandemic on a global scale.”

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Narrative

Not Looking Good

Alice Murcheson liked to give at least half an hour every day to going over ag reports from Earth. However, with the news becoming progressively more grim with every passing day, she was finding it more and more difficult to read them. After all, there were so many things she needed to deal with right here in Shepardsport, things that she actually had some control over.

She’d gotten back to the apartment for the evening when she realized it had been almost a week since she’d last gone through those reports. While it might be easier to let them get crowded out by various tasks up here, it was not a good habit to let herself slip into.

Which meant it was time to sit down, grit her teeth, and deal with the bad news. The longer she put it off, the more likely it became that she’d get blindsided by something she should’ve picked up if she’d been on top of things.

Not that there’s a whole lot we can do about stuff on Earth. On the other hand, at least we’ll have some warning of interruptions of critical supplies.

As she’d expected, the ag reports made grim reading. The more intervention any given crop required, the more likely production was going to be disrupted for this growing season. At least most grain crops that were already in the fields would probably turn out well enough, although the big question might end up being whether there would be sufficient workers available to harvest in a timely manner.

Alice recalled her own childhood on a grain farm near Duluth. They’d raised a mixture of winter wheat, short-season corn and soybeans, and there had been times when getting the corn out in time was tricky. She recalled at least two years when early snows had caught them with corn still in the fields, and they’d lost a lot of it. There were tricks to recovering some, like running the combine only in one direction to pick up the fallen stalks, but it still didn’t get as much as they would’ve gotten in a timely harvest.

She’d become so deep in this grim news that she didn’t even notice the door opening or her husband walking in until he rested his hand on her shoulder. “Alice?”

Startled, she had to quick squelch a flinch as soon as she recognized him. “Sorry, Bill, I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

He pulled up a second chair beside her, set to working on the muscles of her neck with those big strong hands that were so deft with the controls of an airplane or a spacecraft. “You’ve got a lot of company right now, sweetheart. I just got an e-mail from Fred.”

An icy lump formed in Alice’s stomach. Her own parents had been pushed out of farming back in the 80’s, and all of her brothers and sisters had found employment in other fields. By contrast, Bill’s family had made the right choices to enable them to go big when the alternative was to get out, and now owned several dairy farms in addition to the old home place.

“How bad?”

“Not as bad as it could be. He hadn’t been writing because he didn’t want to worry me.”

Alice considered whether to remark upon that, decided to leave it alone. “So how bad is it?”

“So far they’re making do. But I know he’s said some of their neighbors aren’t, and I think he’s feeling really cut off because he can’t go anywhere. They haven’t had church in ages, restaurants are closed, and it sounds like the feed store is no place to hang out and chew the fat these days.”

“And isolation is almost harder on people than physical privation.” Although it had been years since she took that psychology course as part of her gen-ed requirements at U-Minn, she still remembered the studies on the effects of isolation on monkeys, the accounts of prisoners in Vietnam.

“It was one of the big things that either made or broke the early settlers, back the day.”

“True.” Alice closed one after another farm report. “And right now I really ought to write to my brothers and sisters. I’ve let myself get too busy with things up here.”

Categories
Narrative

Reporting One’s Findings

Cindy Margrave was still fighting off weariness as she arrived at the station offices. She knew she shouldn’t have stayed up so late, but she’d been trying to finish a project for her teaching responsibility and she did not want to disappoint the senior instructor by arriving at class with it still incomplete.

At least the people from Food and Nutrition had come by with fresh coffee for the coffee urn. Ken Redmond always said that the Engineering department ran on coffee, and insisted that the coffee urns scattered around his domain be refilled on a regular basis, to the point of having IT rig sensors on each of them to detect when they were getting low.

Cindy retrieved her mug and poured herself a generous cup. Not quite up to the rim, since she needed to leave room for sugar and creamer, but she needed plenty this morning. As she mixed in the sugar and creamer, she thought about just when she’d started drinking coffee on a regular basis.

Back home on Earth, coffee was most definitely a grown-up thing, and even junior hi and high school kids were discouraged from having it. In fact, there’d been a bit of a to-do about the vending machines at the high school including a coffee machine, to the point it had been moved to the teachers’ lounge. As if it were any less healthy for you than the caffeinated pop that was right next to it.

On the other hand, back on Earth kids her age were still very definitely children, and not just in the sense of being legally minors. None of them were shouldering the sorts of responsibility she and other kids her age did on a daily basis, not just as teaching assistants, but also in jobs that helped keep essential parts of the settlement running. Sure, some of them worked at fast food places or big-box retailers, but they did it because they wanted the spending money or to save for college.

Coffee in hand, Cindy returned to the front office and settled in at the receptionist’s desk. Someone else had already turned on the boombox which set on top of the big filing cabinet. It was still Breakfast with the Beatles, although Brenda was playing some of their post-breakup solo work right now.

The programming director had left a few things for the morning receptionist to take care of, mostly verifying some files. Get them knocked out quickly and she might be able to get a little studying in if Autumn didn’t have anything for her to do.

She was just finishing the last item when the door opened and in walked Spruance Del Curtin, looking very satisfied with himself. What was he up to now?

Cindy gave him a narrow-eyed look. “You’re sure here early.”

“Wanted to get to you when I have a little time to talk. One of the guys I used to work with in Engineering had some ideas about what might’ve riled up Colonel Hearne so badly.”

Cindy’s annoyance weakened. However, she wasn’t sure she wanted to let it show right now. “Oh? What does he think?”

“Apparently there was some serious back-room dealing to get Admiral Bradbury the top Pacific Fleet post back in ’09. Either someone had something on President Flannigan, or he owed someone a favor and they decided to call in their marker. It’s not exactly something that’s going to get into the official sources, but you know how scuttlebutt goes.”

“Don’t we all.” The words didn’t come out quite as cool as Cindy had wanted, but at least she came close enough to hitting the right note.

“Yeah. I’ve lost track of how many PSA’s they’ve had us run about not spreading rumors or unconfirmed information.” Those big buggy Shepard eyes did a truly theatrical eye-roll. “Anyhow, there’s a tradition that military officers aren’t supposed to criticize the Commander-in-Chief in the public forum. Tactical criticism through channels, yes, but not open condemnation. That’s why Captain Waite’s always used the ‘keep your oath’ exhortation in all his messages against the abuses of the Flannigan Administration.”

“I was thinking there was something like that going on. Thanks for taking so much time to dig into it, even if you did run into a dead end.”

“Hey, we’re family, and family’s gotta stick together. Especially in times like these.” Sprue held up his fist.

Cindy gave him a fist-bump. Then he was off to whatever he was supposed to be taking care of.

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Paying the Bills

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Document

Not the Best News to Get

From: Fred Hearne <fthearne@sweetwaterfarms.com>

To: Bill Hearne <wrhearne@nasa.gov>

Sorry to take so long getting back to you, but we’ve been rather busy, and I know you’ve got worries of your own, so I didn’t want to burden you with our problems.

So far, we’re coping well enough, although I’m becoming more and more glad that Dad insisted we kept the capacity to raise our own grain, hay and silage, unlike some of our neighbors who went to buying all their feed. We may be running low on concentrates and supplements, and we’ve been having trouble getting resupplied, but at least we’re able to feed our herds.

The milk truck’s still hit and miss. From what the driver said the last time he did show up, the dairy is having trouble keeping their equipment working, and they’re having to dump milk half the time. It doesn’t help that jug delivery is getting spotty, so even when everything’s working OK, they’ll run out of jugs to put the milk in.

You really don’t realize just how interconnected everything is, how the whole country is like one huge, finely-balanced machine that depends on everything working like it should, until it starts breaking down. And from what little TV and radio news we can get, it sounds like a whole lot of things are breaking down at once. The TV stations around here are only broadcasting a few hours a day now, and even those are uncertain. Most of the radio stations are managing to stay on the air, but there’s an awful lot of time when they’re pretty clearly just put a bunch of music on and let it run.

I wish we had the bandwidth to listen to Shepardsport Pirate Radio, but out here in the middle of nowhere, we’re still trying to get decent broadband, and half the time we have to fall back on dialup.

I can’t even remember when we were inside a proper church. We’ve taken to getting together with the boys at each other’s places for a sort of home church, like we’re back in the catacombs or something. It’s better than nothing, but it’s still not the same as driving in to town and sitting in a pew in a proper church.

I hope I haven’t burdened you too much with our problems. Take care, and write back to me when you can.

Categories
Narrative

Reminiscences of A Less than Pleasant Time

Spruance Del Curtin had waited until he was almost finished with supper before texting Zack. The last thing Sprue needed right now was to look desperate for the information.

He’d been a little disappointed to be directed to one of the less desirable residential module lounges, but he had a good idea why Zack would pick this barren place. Given that they were going to be talking about sensitive subjects, they didn’t need a whole bunch of other people hanging around to listen in on what they were saying.

So here he was, waiting in an empty room, trying not to be too obvious about watching the module airlock, just in case someone were to emerge from their apartment and wonder why he was hanging out there. In any case, he had things he was really supposed to be doing, like going over the lesson plans for the class he was supposed to be teaching tomorrow.

He’d no more than begun to engage with the material when the inner hatch of the airlock slid open and out stepped Zack. “Hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time.”

“No problem at all.” Sprue closed his laptop and stuffed it back in his bag. “Just wanted to make good use of the time, considering how everyone’s always on us not to waste our time.”

“Yup.” Zack glanced around the chamber. “Let’s go back to my apartment. Roomie’s on the night shift, so he won’t be back until both of us are going to need to be in bed.”

They retreated down one of the branching corridors to a room not that much different from any other bachelor(ette) apartment around this place. When Shepardsport was originally founded, nobody had ever imagined it would be used as a place of exile for the unwelcome astronaut clones, so these apartments were supposed to be single-occupancy. With the sudden increase in population from the Expulsions, unmarried personnel had been required to double up “for the duration.”

The necessary retrofits had been minimalist at best. Add attachment points for rigging a second bed, then slip in a second set of furniture. It made the already cozy single-occupancy apartments downright crowded, but given the difficulties inherent in creating more residential-rated pressurized volume, the necessary expansion to alleviate the crowding would take time.

At least Zack did have two sling-back chairs that needed only be pulled out of their cubbyhole and unfolded, so they could sit and talk. A few pleasantries about each other’s jobs and studies, and then they got down to the nitty-gritty.

“So you’re looking for some information about how the Sharp Wars started.”

“Right. A friend of mine’s taking Constitution class right now, and a few days ago her teacher got into some of the philosophical stuff behind the Constitution, and was talking about various wars and crises, except he was kind of tiptoeing around the Sharp Wars.”

“Colonel Hearne’s teaching Constitution right now, if I remember correctly. He’s Air Force, and the stuff that really sparked everything involved the Navy. But Hearne’s been an astronaut since before the Energy Wars–“

Realizing this was wandering off into the weeds, Sprue interjected, “I don’t think it’s about interservice rivalries. From what she said, I think it’s something about not saying anything too critical of the Commander-in-Chief.”

“Ah, that.” Zack moistened his lips. “I was still young enough at the time that most of my information was coming from news media. But I’ve heard that Flannigan did not want Bradbury in charge of the Pacific Fleet, and there was some suspicion that he was trying to sabotage the man. Apparently the two of them had history that went back to the Energy Wars, maybe beyond. I do know that Flannigan was in the Marines, and he was injured at Second Nile.”

“Yeah, everybody knows that.”

“But what he tries to keep quiet is that it wasn’t a legitimate combat injury. He broke his leg falling down a ladder on the Ticondaroga, and rumor has it he was drunk on illegal hooch at the time.”

Sprue sucked in a sharp whistle. He knew that Conrad Bradbury had been commanding officer of the USS Nimitz during a good bit of the Energy Wars, including the Second Battle of the Nile. But even the captain of an admiral’s flagship had authority over only his own vessel, and even the air wing embarked had its own commanding officer.

But the flag captain was often quite close to the admiral — he wouldn’t stay flag captain long if they didn’t get along — so it would be possible that he’d accompanied the admiral for some kind of inspection on the Ticondaroga and had uncovered evidence of the truth about then-lieutenant Flannigan’s injury.

Except there was one big problem. “But if Flannigan was so adamantly against Bradbury, why did he put the assignment through? I thought the President had the final say as Commander-in-Chief.”

“In theory, but in practice there’s a lot of political consideration. From some things I’ve heard, Flannigan needed some legislation pushed through, and some Senator was an old wartime buddy of Bradbury’s and wanted him to get the Pacific Fleet command as his final post before retirement. There’s also the story that it was some kind of horse-trading within the Department of Defense, and Flannigan had to acquiesce to Bradbury’s assignment to get something he wanted more. In any case, he wasn’t overly happy about it, and wasn’t going to do any more than he had to on Bradbury’s behalf.”

“Which was stupid, especially considering that command would include forces that would be involved in any new Korean conflict. And with the Kim wackjobs getting wackier with every generation, that place was already a real powderkeg.”

“No shit, Sherlock. Flannigan’s got a vindictive streak as wide as his back, so it was just almost believable that he would’ve set things up so that Sandoval could get into a secure area, in spite of being known to have severe PTSD, and then make sure he just happened to be shot instead of captured alive after everything went off. All we know is that there were a lot of things going on in Pearl Harbor during the memorial service and transfer of command, and we’ll probably never learn the whole story.”

“But it’s probably nasty, and it’s likely that some version of it has been going around on the military grapevine ever since. So Colonel Hearne probably knows a lot more than he can say in any sort of official capacity, even if it’s just instructor for Constitution class.”

Zack leaned forward, spoke in a low voice. “If you want to take the risk, I’ve got a friend down in IT who could probably get you some interesting files off the darknet.”

Sprue had heard about the darknet, the system of servers that couldn’t be found by ordinary searches, but could be located by a person with a specialized browser and some specialized know-how. “I don’t think my friend wants to go that deep. Especially since she’s a minor and I don’t think her guardian would approve.”

Make that definite, considering her foster mother is head of Safety and Security, and was an FBI officer for years before that.

“OK. I hope what I could get you was helpful. Let me know if your friend still has any questions.”