Author: leighkimmel

Categories
Narrative

The Weight of Waiting

Payton Shaw had never intended to spend so much time texting with Tom Burdett. They both had work to do tomorrow, but Captain Burdett was the best leadership figure Payton had to turn to within their lineage. And Captain Burdett was aware of that situation, which was why he was so willing to give freely of his time, at least as much as he could while quarantined down in Flight Ops whenever he was in town.

But now the conversation was over and Payton knew he needed to get to bed. At least he didn’t have an air shift tomorrow at the station — he only did the Sunday morning all-Elvis show, the Church of the Blessed Elvis — but he had plenty of other work to keep him busy. And enough of it required close attention that it wouldn’t do to be so tired he was on the verge of nodding off the whole time.

His roommate had already gone to bed by the time he got back to the apartment. It made the process of rigging his bed a little more difficult, but once his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting of the panel of the room’s life-support monitor, it wasn’t that difficult.

He remembered when he first got up here, how the light from it had made sleeping difficult. He’d found out later that several of the other kids had gotten in trouble for covering theirs at night, because they simply could not sleep unless the room was much darker. However, in an artificial habitat on a world with no life-giving atmosphere, being able to see at a glance those vital figures on the conditions upon which life depended was simply non-negotiable. Adapting to the resultant light level in sleeping rooms was your problem.

Like so many things up here, Payton thought as he lay there looking at the ceiling. For Expulsees, there was no option of washing out of training, of being sent back in disgrace. Either they adapted, or they died.

Like Clarissa Munroe. Why should she come back to his mind now? He hadn’t thought of her since the day he went down to the Wall of Honor to pay tribute to his clone-brother, who’d died trying to save her from her own foolishness. But then the damnatio memoriae that had been placed upon her did not exactly encourage thinking about her overmuch.

But there’d been plenty of other people who’d died up here, in circumstances such that they weren’t condemned, and in some cases even got a place on the Wall of Honor, but left people wondering. A few accidents, but also more than a few seemingly heroic actions that had a certain odor of “get out of jail free card” to them.

And there too, it was considered an impropriety to speculate. Especially with the honored dead, one did not say anything that might appear to disparage.

Quite honestly, some of the stuff he was hearing about right now had that feel to it. Were people taking stupid chances because they no longer cared whether they lived or died, but were not going to destroy their reputation by an obvious act of self-destruction? Especially this business with the guy over at Schirrasburg suddenly coming down sick — the various protocols the pilot-astronauts operated under should have protected them from infection. But he was also aware how people took shortcuts — how many times had Betty Margrave put out reminders of the absolute importance of not propping safety doors when bringing large objects through?

Except most of the likely mistakes are the stuff you’d expect of dirtsiders, not someone who lives with the constant awareness of the slender margins of our survival.

But right now there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it. Do his best in his own area, but better to put those thoughts out of his mind so he could go to sleep.

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Narrative

As Our Fears Take Shape

Right now Lou Corlin was counting himself lucky to actually have some study time before he needed to turn in for the night. He really didn’t like to have to decide between sleep and essential studying, unless he was dealing with a genuine emergency, given how sleep deprivation messed with good judgement in ways that caffeine couldn’t completely undo.

Thus he was a little annoyed when he heard someone tiptoeing up beside him, not quite sitting down in the sofa beside him, but standing right at the edge of it. Then he looked over to see Rand Littleton, looking very nervous, and squelched that annoyance.

“Hi, Rand, sit down.” Lou patted the cushion beside him. “What’s wrong?”

“How bad is it going to get? I mean, Eli’s saying that Schirrasburg is under a complete lockdown because someone there came down with the diablovirus.”

“Eli’s a Shep.” Lou quick scanned the module lounge, just in case any Sheps were hanging around to take offense. “You’ve got to keep that in mind when you listen to him bullshooting around.”

“Oh.” Rand lowered his gaze, looking very awkward. “So he’s just making stuff up?”

Put me on the spot. Given some things he’d heard at the station and down in IT, Lou didn’t want to dismiss the story as a complete fabrication. However, he was pretty sure it was not yet cleared for general consumption. “You know what they’ve been telling us about the dangers of spreading rumors. Even if I did know something, it wouldn’t be wise for me to go telling everyone about it.”

Even as he said that, he realized the specific rumor might not be the real issue. Rand was one of the kids who’d survived the ordeal in the lander. Although he would’ve been under deep sedation during most of the time he and the other kids had been trapped under the wreckage of old Luna Station, it had still left its scars. A heightened awareness of the slender margins of survival, an inability to relax and trust that tomorrow would actually come.

“And right now there’s not a lot we can do about whatever may be going on over at Schirrasburg. Let’s take a look at whatever you need to be studying right now. At least that’s something we have at least a little control over.

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Document

Precipice

From: Reginald Waite (rwaite@nasa.gov)

To: George Waite (gwaite@waiteassociates.com)

Subject: Checking In

I’m hoping this missive will reach you reasonably quickly. Steffi tells me that connectivity on Earth has taken some hits, but that it should be possible to make the necessary hops (the advantage of e-mail being a store-and-forward medium).

Right now we are in reasonably good shape. We’ve had some problems, mostly of a technical nature, but we’ve been able to resolve them one by one.

However, with all the reports coming in from all over Earth, I cannot shake the sense that we stand on the edge of a precipice. I have no idea how deep the fall may be, or how hard the landing, only that we will be looking at some very difficult times ahead.

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Narrative

And Bad News on the Moon

Ursula Doorne had sent a text to her husband as a sort of heads-up. Let him know it looked like they’d all be in for some unsettled space weather. She hadn’t expected him to text her back.

Just as she was doing spot checks on some data, her phone chimed incoming text. Thinking it might be one of her student assistants, or perhaps a colleague elsewhere, she picked it up to see Tanner’s name at the head of the message.

Things are getting interesting here at Schirrasburg. Rumint is someone turned up sick. We’re now all under complete lockdown. No movement outside your quarters unless absolutely necessary, food and other deliveries by robot. They’re even canceling every mission that isn’t critical, so who knows when I’ll be out of here.

Ursula’s guts clenched. Could the diablovirus have somehow slipped through all the quarantine procedures and gotten up here on the Moon? They’d already had one close call, and while all the various space programs had tightened up their protocols to make sure no one who went home at night had any contact with astronauts preparing for a flight, or the people who had direct contact with them, human nature didn’t change. There was always the possibility of one person deciding the rules didn’t apply to them, that this one little trip wouldn’t hurt.

On the other hand, it was also possible that the person in question had come down with a completely ordinary bug. But given the current circumstances, Medstaff would have to assume the worst. Until the patient’s illness could be identified — which could take several days depending on what they had — they’d follow full biocontainment procedures. And if the person fell sick after arriving, there’d be no telling how many people they were in contact with.

However, there was nothing she could do about it at the moment. Fretting about it would only take time and energy away from her work, some of it extremely serious.

You take care. Keep me posted on how things develop. So far things are remaining calm over here on Farside, but that could change if the Sun starts acting up again.

Will do. And you keep me posted on things over there.

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Narrative

Worse News from the Ground

Even in the office of the head of Agriculture, Jenn could hear the whir of pumps, the gurgle of fluids through pipes, the mechanical sounds of robots at work in a greenhouse just beyond the wall. But it was easy enough to block it out even as she and Alice were making small talk over coffee.

They had spent the bulk of their meeting going over figures — production and consumption, goods in stock, all the things that were essential for maintaining a settlement that was still more like a scientific research outpost crossed with a military base. At least things were looking a lot better than they had even a few days ago, when it was uncertain what would be happening with the damaged irrigation tubing in those planters. Yes, they’d lost some plants, which meant some production gone, but they were already replanting those trays, and it wouldn’t be long before the new plants were sprouting and growing.

As they talked, their conversation turned to more distant family still on Earth. It was a subject to be handled very delicately in this uncertain situation, but Jenn felt reasonably confident that it would not seem insensitive to mention a FaceTime call with one of Ken’s sisters. It had been something of a surprise, so there’d been no time to let Brenda know so she could bring the grandkids over, but the younger kids had loved seeing their aunt, even if only as a rather distorted image on the screen of a tablet.

Alice nodded, although her smile was a bit wan. “At least you know they’re safe, which has to be a comfort. Yesterday Bill got some more bad news from his brother Fred. Things are getting even worse down there. Apparently someone from one of the cities broke quarantine and decided to look for a place out in the country to hole up for the duration. Except they were already infected, and apparently they infected pretty much the whole town. The post office, the feed store, the grain elevator, the local FS distributor, you name it, it’s closed because everyone’s down sick. He’s starting to really wonder how they’ll keep things going.”

“That’s not good.”

“No, it’s not. Right now they’re dumping milk just to make sure the cows don’t go dry. But what happens if they get to the point they can’t keep the milking parlors going? Say they lose power, and they don’t have the backup power to run the milking machines. When Bill was a kid, their herd was small enough that they could hand-milk the cows in an emergency, even if they had to dump the milk because it wouldn’t meet FDA standards. But these days, they just don’t have enough people to get all the cows milked often enough to keep them from going dry. And once that happens, you’re stuck feeding dry cows until you can get them bred and the calves delivered.”

Jenn nodded in understanding. “I may be a city girl, but I’m also a member of La Leche League, so yes, I am acquainted with the physiology of lactation.”

Alice smiled. She might be just enough older to have had her kids when bottles were still the norm, but she was never the sort to be judgemental about other women’s choices on feeding their babies. “Now imagine that sort of situation playing out in farms all over the country as things start unraveling. They’ve got plenty of livestock, and crops are already in the fields, but what happens when they can’t bring the necessary resources to bear to get those livestock to slaughter and the crops harvested and binned? We could be looking at a situation like the old USSR used to have, where crops rotted in the fields for want of labor.”

“Which raises the question of how much longer it will be before even the US is looking at actual famine. Not just shortages of certain products, but literally not enough food to go around.”

“That’s what concerns me. So far, most of us have been lucky, and our families dirtside have been spared for the most part from the diablovirus. But have they been spared just to fall victim to starvation?”

Categories
Narrative

The Uneasy Balance

Lou Corlin had planned to do some studying for the digital logic course he was taking for this unit. However, he hadn’t been expecting a call from Juss Forsythe, asking for some help with a pump controller.

It would be something he’d know just enough about that he could actually be useful, so he couldn’t very well beg off on lack of background. And given the closeness between their respective ur-brothers, he couldn’t very well refuse on any lesser grounds. Yes, he needed to study, but he could fit the time in later in the day.

So here he was, heading down to the deep service levels under the greenhouse farms. Areas a lot of people didn’t even realize existed — but if you gave any real thought to the mechanics of operating a greenhouse, you’d know they had to be down there. Areas where all the pipes and tubing gave things a certain visceral look.

And there was Juss, his auburn hair bright in the harsh industrial lighting, kneeling beside a tall pump. Lou hurried over to join him.

“So how’s it going?”

“Not well.” Juss looked up from his work. “It’s looking like defective irrigation tubing wasn’t our only problem. We’d just finished getting it all set up, and the next morning we’ve got leaks. Not huge ones, but it’s pretty clear that water is pushing out at all the connectors.”

“Sounds like a pressure issue.”

“My thought too. Which is why I’m checking the pressure on all the irrigation pumps. With luck, it’s just an issue with the controllers and we can fix them ourselves. I’d really prefer not to have to take any of these things to Engineering.”

Lou could understand the sentiment. However, if it was necessary, trying to get by with half measures was apt to bite you in the butt down the road. And with the current situation, they couldn’t count on being able to get food shipped in to make up for losses.

“Do you get the feeling like everything’s balanced on a knife edge, and anything could send it teetering?”

“Yeah, all the time.” Juss wiped his hands with a rag that wasn’t a whole lot cleaner. “But all you and I can do is fix the problems in front of us, and hope the guys at the higher pay grades do their jobs.”

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Narrative

The Sun that Warms

Ursula Doorne had known when she accepted the much-sought-after astronomy position up here on the Moon that she would not get to spend all her time on her specialty. She’d need to apply some significant amount of her time to using her EE degree to deal with the more mundane aspects of the settlement and of the various outposts where the radio telescopes were located.

But it always felt good to be able to return to her primary specialty, to analyze the reams and reams of data pouring in from the various radio telescopes under her purview, to determine what new observations would be needed in the light of what they were learning from the latest. And that was just the deep-space work that had always been her primary area of interest. Now, with the Sun in an unsettled state, she had an even greater reason to want to get back to her office quickly.

True, she was well aware that many of her colleagues on the ground were specialists in solar astronomy and knew far better how to read the reams of data she was dealing with. However, she also knew that a number of them had ceased communicating since the current crisis began. Some of them were just in areas where modern digital communication systems were thin on the ground, and were lucky if they could even manage to check in with other people on Earth once a week or so. But far too many of them were in the US, in Europe, in Israel, in Japan and South Korea, places where communications infrastructure was pretty much presupposed. People who should’ve been able to keep in touch, even if they weren’t able to go in to their offices at the various universities and other research institutions where they worked.

Ursula tried not to worry about them, reminding herself that there was nothing she could do on their behalf — even trying to contact their local police departments for a welfare check was an iffy proposition when law enforcement agencies had more important things to do than allay the fears of a colleague in a distant city. But it still concerned her, especially given that several of them were older, even in frail health.

But she was still glad to be back in her office, to pull up the latest data and look through it. Most of it was just more of the usual, but as she was looking at the magnetic field data, she noticed a number of anomalies.

Either we’ve got a problem with our sensors, or we’re looking at a serious new development. Time to get as many eyes looking at it as possible.

As soon as she’d set up a mailing to send the relevant segment of the data to the people best able to deal with it — more complete datasets could be put on hard drives and sent down via the lunar ferry — she retrieved her phone to text Tanner. Even if the situation was still uncertain, it was best if he and the other pilots were aware that changeable space weather was on its way.

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Narrative

A Change of Program

Being called in to someone’s office on no notice was never fun. It felt too much like being in trouble.

Which was probably why Autumn Belfontaine’s stomach was knotted up so tight right now. She figured she was probably dealing with it better than a lot of people would, thanks to her experience in broadcast journalism. The techniques for dealing with stage fright went a long way to handling this kind of situation too.

As she approached the office of the Director of Training, she wondered whether she might be made to sit and wait. She really didn’t think Deena was the sort of person who’d do it as an exercise in power, like a couple of bosses she’d worked under many years ago.

But truth be told, most of her associations with Deena had been casual, social. They were both members of the Shepard lineage, so there’d been plenty of opportunity to interact in a family setting, which by agreement would almost always mean avoiding discussion of anything that could be considered business. So Autumn really didn’t have a good handle on how Deena ran her office.

Not to mention that the trip over here had presented plenty of time for Autumn to rack her memory for anything that could have merited a reprimand. The fact that she couldn’t think of anything obvious was even worse than realizing a major lapse — might there be something she hadn’t even considered that had become a problem?

And then she arrived, and Deena came right out to welcome her. “Please come in, have a seat.”

Why should her pleasant greeting, her willingness to make small talk, raise even more alarm? Was it just an echo of the particularly clumsy use of the “praise sandwich” technique by a long-ago teacher who never seemed to actually praise you for anything?

And finally Deena reached the substance of this meeting. “Autumn, we’re going to take you off the testing center.”

Autumn must’ve tensed up, because Deena smiled. “No, this is not a disciplinary action. Reggie and I both agree that you’re working way too many hours as it is. So we’re going to switch you to planning a full broadcasting curriculum, to pull together the courses we currently have into some kind of cohesive program of study.”

“OK.” Autumn tried to understand how this was supposed to be lightening her load.

“This isn’t something that has to be done next week. We’re looking at it as a long-term project to examine the existing courses we’ve put together on the fly since the establishment of Shepardsport Pirate Radio, so we can determine the gaps we need to fill. Maybe they’ll require new courses, but it’s equally possible that we just need to adjust the material and presentation of our existing courses. This is supposed to be something you can do as the time is available, rather than in a specific slot in your schedule.”

“That’s helpful, but I’ve seen too many of these open-ended projects become never-ending ones.” Autumn recalled one she’d gotten sucked into at a previous employer. “Or worse, ones that never get off the ground because there’s always something more urgent.”

“If you’re really worried about that thing, how about we make plans to touch base weekly on your progress. It’ll also help make sure you’re not overlooking something important that’s outside your regular bailiwick.”

“Thanks. That makes a lot of sense.”

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Narrative

It Don’t Come Easy

After such a long and difficult day, Spruance Del Curtin didn’t even feel like hanging out with his clone-brothers and scoping girls at the dining commons. Right now he just headed to the table where Brenda Redmond and Lou Corlin were eating supper.

As he approached, both of them looked up. “So what are you doing here?”

“Just wanted to find a quiet place to eat, maybe talk shop a little.”

Lou narrowed his eyes and studied Sprue. “That’s unusual for you. Are you sure you’re feeling OK?”

“No, I’m not coming down with anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Sprue slid into an empty seat and checked himself in. “It’s just been a really long day. First, Dr. Doorne pulls me in on the problems with the main mixing board, never mind I don’t know that much about it. And I only get off that job because I’ve got an air shift to do. I mean, they even ordered my lunch delivered to the station.”

Lou wiped up the last bit of gravy on his plate with a piece of bread. “So how are things coming on it?”

“Apparently some time while I was on the air, she decided that the problems were so complicated we were better off tearing it down all the way and rebuilding it from scratch. So now Ken’s sent it off to someone in Engineering, I’m not sure exactly who’s handling it. But assuming they don’t have any major problems with parts, and there’s not other weirdness in that thing, we should have it back on the air in a couple of days.”

That got a wry grin from Brenda. “Yeah, all we’d need is a case of Moon gremlins.”

Except it wasn’t really a laughing matter. More than once there’d been weird things up here, of the sort that left people wondering about the possibility of incorporeal intelligences, whether mischievous or malicious. And given the very thin margins by which humans survived up here on a world utterly inimical to biological life, those thoughts were not reassuring.