“Reggie, we’ve got to step on that kid, hard.” Even over the phone, Ken Redmond’s voice had that gruff-Gus growl that brought back nostalgic memories. “I’ve seen this kind of shit again and again. He thinks the rules don’t apply to him.”
“He’s a Shep, Ken.” Reggie Waite didn’t like to belabor the obvious, but he could tell Ken was thinking in terms of the average difficult kid. “Punishing him will only make him focus on avoiding getting caught in the future.”
“And you’re just going to let him break rules and get away with it? What happens when someone gets hurt because of him?”
Reggie could see Ken’s point. The Moon wasn’t a safe place, could never be a safe place — but so were a lot of places on Earth. On the other hand, he was thinking like a Grissom, not a Shepard.
“Ken, I know he works for you down in Engineering. Has he ever broken any rules that have actual safety consequences? As opposed to administrative rules?”
“Goddammit, Reggie, it’s the principle of the thing.” Ken paused, took a deep breath, then started again. “You’re a military man. You understand why the military trains new recruits the way we do in boot camp. It’s not just the specific skills we’re trying to instill in them. It’s the habit of obedience, of attention to detail, of following procedure even when you don’t know why it’s important. That kid’s the very model of the barracks-room lawyer, and if we don’t step on him, hard, we’re going to have no end of trouble with him. And damn likely, half the other Sheps in this place.”
Yes, Ken was riled up. He’d completely forgotten he was talking to a clone of Alan Shepard right now.
But remarking upon that fact wasn’t going to be productive. “But he’s not a recruit at boot camp. Making him do busywork as punishment is just going to reinforce the problem instead of resolving it. And the real problem is that he’s not being challenged. Most of his work is so easy it just occupies his time, not his mind. I’d be ready to bet money that he does absolutely no studying in that stats class he’s taking right now. Just reads through the text, then plugs and chugs on whatever stats package Dr. Doorne’s got them using, and still gets A’s. And how much actual problem-solving is he doing in his work for you, and how much rote work?”
No, Ken didn’t like to have to admit that he’d decided to punish Sprue’s attitude issues by keeping him on very basic work, the stuff that wasn’t done by a robot only because it needed just a little more executive function than could be programmed into one. For most genesets it would have brought about the desired change in attitude, but a Shep would just see it as the boss having it out for him.
“We’re going to have to find something that actually makes him work hard, not just busy. Something that actually makes him have to stretch to meet the mark, instead of just mailing it in. Until then, he’s going to view the rules as a technical challenge instead of boundaries he needs to respect.”
“Reggie, you can’t reward this shit of his. He’s got to be punished.”
No, Ken wasn’t getting it. He was a top-notch engineer, and a great organizer, but he just didn’t get Sheps. “Ken, how about we just plain take him out of Engineering. If he likes playing hacker so much, maybe it’s time we move him to IT. Or if that doesn’t work, I’ll take him on myself.” Although that could be risky, since Sheps tend to set each other off.
Ken grumbled, but he agreed that his approach wasn’t working. Maybe it was time for some kind of interdisciplinary approach — give him work that bridged several different departments. Especially if they could get Dr. Doorne on board, since they might be able to involve whatever project she was having him do on the side.