Category: Narrative

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Narrative

Of Resilience and Antifragility

When Autumn had talked with Lou Corlin, she’d expected that it would take a while to get the data, if it was even possible. IT had a lot of work on its plate already, and this job was more a matter of curiosity. So it was better to spend the time developing some contacts in the Astronomy department so she could follow up on Sprue’s lead without having to out him as the leak.

Being a proctor down at the testing center did give her one advantage — she already had established contacts with plenty of research scientists up here. Even if they weren’t in the Astronomy department, most of them had working relationships with people there. So much of science these days was heavily interdisciplinary, and Shepardsport was still small enough that it was more like a small town.

She’d just finished talking with a physicist who’d immediately started geeking out on her about his specialty, magnetohydrodynamics. From what she could extract, it had definite applicability to the Sun, and to stars in general, which had gotten his name on a number of astronomy papers as a contributing author. However, most of his knowledge was sufficiently technical that she’d been hard-pressed to make heads or tails of it. Sure, she had the general astronomy classes everyone up here had to take, but it sure didn’t give her the background to really grasp it.

So she’d decided to take a break and stretch her legs. As news director, she was salaried and didn’t have to worry about being on the clock like the hourly employees.

As she stepped out of the station’s front door, she saw Ken Redmond and Steffi Roderick walking down the main Engineering corridor, talking in low voices. Assuming it was something private, she turned the other direction, only to have Steffi call out her name.

“I was going to drop this off with Maia, but since you’re here, I thought I’d give it to you in person.”

It was a USB stick. “Um, thanks. I gather this is some data I’ve asked for.”

“The project you’d approached Lou about, related to Internet connectivity and how it has degraded since the beginning of the pandemic. I had some of our programmers write up a script to systematically ping IP addresses all across the system. I did some preliminary statistical analysis on it, and yes, there are definitely patterns in it. From the looks of it, we’ve lost whole regions. Some of them were to be expected, in countries where the tech base was always fragile, but we’ve had some surprising ones, especially in Western Europe. However, the US is holding together better than would be expected, although from some of the response times, we may be looking at a lot of jerry-rigged connections.”

Ken was nodding in agreement. “Not surprising. The Internet was originally a Defense Department project to create a decentralized communications system that would hold together even if numerous major cities were destroyed in a nuclear attack. Just like the old Timex watches, it takes a licking and keeps on ticking.”

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Narrative

In Troubled Times

Ken Redmond had expected to have difficulty finding an adequate supply of replacement tubing for Agriculture’s latest problem. As it turned out, once he had the specs, it was easy to have a company over at Grissom City to run up an adequate supply. With food being a vital resource up here, it hadn’t been that hard to find it a place on a suborbital hopper, rather than having to send it overland via the Ice Train.

However, now that it had been delivered and sanitized — an easy job when hard vacuum was just outside the settlement — he had the problem of getting it installed. And that was proving a lot more difficult than he’d expected.

It had taken a lot of restraint not to ask Alice Murcheson what the hell the designers of those planter towers had been thinking when they’d set them up with the irrigation tubing worked through the structure in a way that it was effectively impossible to replace it without disassembling the whole thing. Something that would’ve been doable if this mess had been discovered right after harvest, but with the plants in question right in the middle of their growing season, not exactly advisable.

However, there was one person down here in Engineering who might just be able to work out a solution. Ken still remembered all the flak he’d taken when he decided to put Harlan Lemont in charge of the robotics shop. The kid was sharp, and he was meticulous, but everybody was certain that giving him that kind of responsibility was just asking for a major screwup.

Ken had finally put a stop to it by pointing out that they were all doing the very thing the Flannigan Adminstration had been encouraging. Instead of looking at Harlan’s actual abilities, they were looking at his geneset and assuming that, simply because his ur-brother had completely screwed the pooch on that icy winter day and crashed a T-38 into the very building where the Gemini spacecraft had been being built, he too would be a screwup.

Ken found Harlan busy explaining to one of the newest trainees how to swap out RAM modules on a standard trackbot’s motherboard. It was fairly basic work, not that much different from doing the swap in the sort of computer you had on your desktop, but it did require a steady hand and patience to get done right. Fortunately the kid was a quick learner, and soon was replacing the rest of the modules.

Harlan turned, met Ken’s gaze. “Hi, boss. How are things going?”

“That was sharp thinking on your part, setting up those bots to carry water to those planter towers down in Agriculture. “

“So it did work? The programming was still pretty shaky, especially since all the big brains down at IT were covered up with other stuff.”

Ken knew that Harlan had been hoping for full autonomous operation. Better put the best face on that failure.

“We ended up having to teleoperate them. But this way we’ve got a bunch of tweens with spex and haptic feedback gloves running the bots form a standard-environment room, instead of a bunch of highly trained people with breathing rigs carrying buckets of water, when we need them working on a dozen other projects that actually require that level of expertise.”

Harlan’s expression lightened. “And I bet those kids are rapidly becoming expert bot wranglers.” His smile quirked a little oddly. “But I don’t think you came here just to tell me how well things are working.”

“No, I didn’t. It may be working well, but it’s still a stopgap solution. We need to get the irrigation tubing replaced, and I’d rather not have to wait until those towers are ready to harvest.” He explained about the problem with the way the tubing was installed in the tower, his hope that perhaps a robotic solution could work better than having people trying to work the new tubing in by hand.

Harlan considered the problem. “I think it should be doable. It may take us a couple of days, and we’ll probably need to talk with some of the people in the other departments.”

Ken caught the hint that there’d been trouble with IT on the development of the water-carrying bots. “This is a top-priority job, on my authority. Anyone gives you trouble, let me know.”

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Narrative

Network Degradation

Lou Corlin had arrived at work a little early today, figuring that he could get ahead of the situation for a change. However, he’d no more than started taking stock of the situation when he got a phone call. Not on the official IT department phone, but his personal phone.

He was surprised to discover that it was Autumn Belfontaine. Why would she call his personal line when she knew he would be at work right now?

Still, he was technically three minutes before the beginning of his shift down here, so he could take a personal call without any trouble. “Hello, Autumn. What’s going on?”

“What kind of network analysis software do you have access to?”

“Pretty much everything that’s legal for civilians to have, although some of it is the sort of thing that would get questions raised if I were using it.”

“OK, is it pretty much limited to the local networks here in Shepardsport, or could you run scans on networks elsewhere?”

Lou had to pause a moment to consider how to answer it. “I’ve never had to do any scans that go beyond our own systems, but I’m pretty sure it would be possible. What are you looking at?”

“I’m noticing that an awful lot of the local news websites are either intermittently available or have gone down altogether. I keep wondering if I can’t get to them because the servers have crashed, or if whole segments of the Internet are failing.”

“OK.” Lou considered the implications of that information. “Are there any patterns in the locations that are failing? I know that a lot of companies use webhosting companies in other cities, and the physical servers are often located in rural areas where electricity is cheaper, which are often some distance from the company’s business offices. But if you’ve noticed patterns, it would at least give us a start.”

That got an awkward pause. “Let me do a little looking around and put together a list. Right now it’s more of a hunch, one of those right-brain intuitions that sees a pattern as a whole, the sort that says something’s wrong to a very ancient part of the brain.”

It wasn’t like Autumn to go off half-cocked, which suggested that she hadn’t realized the implications until she was talking with him as an IT person, not an on-air personality for Shepardsport Pirate Radio. But Lou wasn’t going to criticize her — she didn’t have all that much training in IT, and certainly not that much in the operation of online networks. So he let her wind up the conversation and get the necessary data together to send to him.

It was only when the connection terminated that he realized he’d been standing here taking what was fundamentally a business call while he still wasn’t checked in. Which meant that officially he would appear to be late.

Even as he was considering whether it was worth it to ask for his official timesheet to be amended, the door opened and in walked Steffi Roderick. “What’s going on? You’re not the sort of person to be taking personal calls while you’re on the clock.”

“Um, actually it wasn’t a personal call.” Lou explained about Autumn Belfontaine’s query. “Would it be possible to do a general scan of the terrestrial Internet to see what parts are still up, and whether it correlates with reports we’re getting through other channels of whole regions that seem to be shutting down?”

“That’s a pretty ambitious task. Let me do a little research of my own while Autumn puts together her list of news sites that have gone dark. We may just have something important going on here.”

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Narrative

Rumint Isn’t News

Autumn Belfontaine was trying very hard not to listen in on the sales director’s halfalogue from the next room. Tempted as she was to close the newsroom door, it would be simply too obvious a message of I don’t want to hear you, and in its own way as rude as blatant eavesdropping.

By effort of will she readdressed herself to the wire service feeds. These days they were getting awfully spotty, and worse, she was a lot less confident in their accuracy. Once she’d been able to recognize all the major correspondents’ names at a glance, but more and more of them had disappeared in the last few weeks. Several times she’d realized it had been some time since she’d seen a single story filed by one or another big-name correspondent, and she’d end up losing an hour or more searching backward for the last time that person’s byline had shown up.

Even more worrying was how many completely new names were showing up. A lot of their writing seemed really shaky, not just in their composition skills, but in the depth and diligence of their research. More than once, she had a bad feeling that they were taking friend-of-a-friend stories and treating them like actual reporting.

Quite honestly, a lot of it sounds like it’s on the level of me and Brenda Redmond talking this morning about how she overheard her folks talking about a problem down in Agriculture with some of the irrigation systems. If she heard her dad right, it could wipe out a big chunk of our soybean crop, which would mean a big hit on our protein supply.

But second-hand reports like those were leads, not news. Autumn considered whether she wanted to call down to Agriculture for confirmation. Even as she was weighing the pros and cons, a familiar voice called her name.

She looked up to find Spruance Del Curtin standing at the door. He was a bit early for his air shift, but right now he didn’t have a class or any other obligation right beforehand.

“Hi, Sprue. What are you looking for?”

Sprue sauntered across the newsroom. If he’d been approaching one of her reporters, Autumn would’ve been ready to intervene. The kid had a reputation for hitting on girls every chance he got. However, he was well aware that Autumn was family, the daughter of one of his clone-brothers, and therefore off-limits for amatory adventures.

He cast an uneasy glance around the room. “I need to talk to you.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Maybe. Right now, I don’t have a whole lot of data to go on. But while I was up at the Astronomy department, I overheard a couple of the solar people talking about a new CME. They’re pretty sure it’ll miss the Moon, but it’s possible its outer edges could graze Earth’s magnetosphere.”

“Which could affect electric transmissions and electronics.” At least where they still even have electricity. From some of the reports she was getting, it sounded like some areas had come apart so badly that they couldn’t even keep power plants running. “If you think there’s a big risk, I can try to contact the solar astronomers directly and see what they’re actually looking at.” As soon as she noticed the first hints of alarm in Sprue’s expression, she added, “Don’t worry, I won’t mention your name. They should understand that journalists sometimes need to protect their sources.”

“Thanks.” Sprue’s voice still sounded tighter than his usual confident tone. “Maybe it’s nothing, but if there is a danger, at least this way you can find out what’s going on.”

“You’re welcome.” Autumn cast a significant look at the clock on the other side of the room. “And you’d better start getting ready for your air shift.”

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Narrative

From the Top

Reggie Waite usually ran Shepardsport with a relatively light hand. He picked division heads who knew their lines of work and trusted them to pick subordinates who were competent in their own areas, and to generally run their respective divisions without needing to be micromanaged.

However, there was always the occasional matter that really needed to be seen in person. And the news from Agriculture was just one of those kinds.

Alice Murcheson always made him think of some of the older women at church when he was growing up back in Salem. Not just the graying hair and the smile lines at the corners of her eyes, but also a certain maternal air about her that made a person feel at home.

Today those lines were downturned, and the atmosphere around her was filled with an uneasy tension. “We were lucky we discovered the problem at all. All the indicators were showing adequate flow, so we assumed everything was fine.”

Reggie looked from Alice to the image of the affected greenhouse, the people in breathing gear carrying buckets of water to the affected plantings. “And with the carbon dioxide levels you’re running in those greenhouses, there’s a big temptation to just trust your readouts.”

Alice nodded, her expression regretful. “We ought to be doing more frequent inspections of all the plantings, but until we can get a lot more people through oxygen-delivery training and able to use breathing rigs–” She left the sentence hanging.

Reggie understood the problem all too well. The Expulsions had enormously expanded the population of Shepardsport, primarily in the younger age cohorts. Although some of the kids were finally getting old enough to qualify for the necessary training, it still was behind the numbers they needed to properly inspect all the plantings necessary to feed the settlement’s population and keep up with their obligations to provide prepared meals to the various outposts scattered around Farside. The kids could teleoperate inspection robots, but even with spex and haptic feedback gloves, it was still far too easy to miss things.

Especially if it’s not something you’ve been trained to look for, which is what Ken Redmond thinks happened. Reggie had all too many memories of such situations back in the Energy Wars. The Navy — heck, the whole freaking Department of Defense — was pushing people through their training programs way too fast, which meant a lot of people with surface facility with the skills and techniques, but no deep understanding of the underlying principles. Even his own flight training had been horribly rushed by peacetime standards, and he’d learned a heck of a lot on the job.

But there was no use dwelling on how close things had been three decades ago. Right now, they needed to deal with the current problem, so they could get these highly-skilled people back to the jobs where they were really needed.

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Narrative

Sunrise Surprise

Cindy knew she wasn’t supposed to be studying for class during her work hours, but right now there wasn’t anything to actually do beside wait for someone to call in or drop by. And she sure didn’t want someone to decide to make busywork for her to do, just so they could feel like the station was getting its money’s worth out of her.

Because there’s always someone who confuses Visible Busy with actual productivity. And if they’re someone in authority, pointing it out to them would be insubordination.

One good thing about what she was working on right now, it would look busy to a casual observer. Hold her tablet at the right angle, and she would look like a very diligent worker.

Still, it meant that she was just a bit edgy about having someone get behind her. Aunt Betty would probably tell her it was a sign of a guilty conscience, and Ken Redmond would say that bending rules was not a good habit to get into, because it eroded the barriers against doing it on the things that could get people killed.

Except it turned out to be Lou Corlin, taking a break during a long set. “Something’s going on. There’s three PSA’s on food waste on my ad schedule, and I know I heard Brenda play another two. We haven’t done this many since things first started getting hairy.”

Cindy considered how to respond. Lou was a real straight-arrow, not the sort of guy who’d chat up a girl in hopes of making a play on her. Which meant he had some serious concerns.

“I’ve noticed it too. And yesterday Juss Forsythe went by in a real hurry, carrying a breathing rig. Which means he must’ve needed to work on something in a non-breathable atmosphere, but not dangerous enough to require a full environmental suit.”

“Like some of the greenhouse farms. Running them at high concentrations of carbon dioxide really pushes plant growth.” Lou’s thick, dark eyebrows always made him look grim when he was thinking hard. “If something went wrong in one of them and they lost a bunch of plants, that would explain all the PSA’s about food waste.”

“But how could we find out? I mean, if they’re keeping it quiet for a reason, asking too many questions could get us into a lot of trouble.”

“Brenda’s mom is head of Food and Nutrition. She’d know, and I’d bet Brenda could ask without getting in trouble.”

“Which leaves us with the problem of figuring out how to get her to ask without looking obviously nosy.”

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Narrative

When It Rains, It Pours

Spruance Del Curtin had come to the Astronomy Department a little early today in hopes of touching base with Dr. Doorne, not just about his ongoing work for her, but also about the statistics class which had been in a state of suspension ever since the first serious CME threat. However, he arrived to find the entire department in what could only be described as a situation of organized chaos.

People were coming and going, about half of them talking on their phones. From the halfalogues he could hear, it sounded like most of them were talking to colleagues elsewhere in the Earth-Moon system. Whatever it was, it clearly had them worried, but most of what they were saying was way too technical for him to make heads or tales of. A lot of numbers, terms that made him think of the engineering side of radio broadcasting, all of which soon became such an intense information overflow that there was no way he could even hope to follow it.

And then here was Dr. Doorne, breaking off a conversation with someone on the other end of a phone connection. “Sprue, I have a new data set I need you to sanitize ASAP. You’ll find it in the usual folder.” She rattled off a file name that was an alphanumeric string.

There was nothing to do but say, “Yes, ma’am” and hurry over to the computer. Already Dr. Doorne was heading off to confer with someone else about whatever she was getting from her colleague elsewhere.

As soon as Sprue logged on and pulled up the data file, he had a good idea what it probably was. However, Dr. Doorne’s tone made it pretty clear that he was not to ask any questions or or otherwise do anything that would compromise his ability to get the data ready for whatever she was planning to do with it. Whatever it represented, it was so critical that there was no time to risk introducing bias because he just had to find out what he was looking at.

And if he was right and it did involve solar activity data, it might well be a matter of life and death for people in space and some of the smaller lunar habitats that weren’t nearly as well shielded as a big settlement like Shepardsport.

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Narrative

Bad News

Ken Redmond had sent Juss Forsythe down to talk with Alice Murchison in Agriculture, thinking they were dealing with yet another irritating little problem. The sort of problem they’d been dealing with whack-a-mole fashion ever since the Expulsions. Way too many of the new greenhouses had been thrown together as fast as they could and maintain an acceptable standard of safety.

Instead, Juss had just texted him with the message that the leak was not just a bad fitting, like most of the leaks they’d been chasing down and fixing over the past several years. Instead, he was looking at several thousand meters of substandard plastic tubing that was breaking down. While there were some obvious leaks, complete with water spraying across the area, far more were a matter of slow seepage, which could easily be mistaken for condensation — and probably had been, given that most of them were in the greenhouses that were run with high levels of carbon dioxide to encourage more rapid plant growth.

Which goes to show just how much we need to increase the number of people around here who have the necessary certifications to work in those areas. As long as we’re really understaffed in those areas, it’s way too easy to hurry through the standard maintenance procedures, and not really look at everything. We’re damned lucky that it was “just” a bunch of irrigation lines.

However, all that was long-term. Right now, he had two problems he needed to deal with. First, he needed to find out how quickly his people could fabricate replacement tubing for the material that was immediately defective. Second, he needed to determine whether the tubing in question had been fabricated locally or brought in, and if the latter, where any additional tubing from that source had been used. If they’d gotten a bad batch of tubing from somewhere, they could have a ticking time bomb on their hands, and they might not find out about it until they had an accident on the level of the disaster back in ’96 that had left a whole section of the Roosa Barracks permanently sealed off.

Which meant he’d better start making some phone calls.

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Narrative

Nourishment for Body and Soul

Jenn Redmond had spent most of the morning going through inventories in preparation for her touch-base meeting with Alice Murchison. At least now she knew all the things she needed to ask the head of Agriculture, but she had very mixed feelings.

This time she was going down to Alice’s office for the meeting, which made sense. They both needed to actually see what the other was doing.

However, when she arrived, she discovered that Alice was already in a meeting with someone else. From the sound of it, something had gone seriously wrong with the drip irrigation system in one of the greenhouses, and they were having to hand-water some five hundred square meters worth of tiered vegetable plantings. Just to make it complicated, it would be in one of the high-carbon-dioxide intensive vegetable production greenhouses, which restricted who they could press into service. No one without oxygen-delivery certification could wear the self-contained breathing apparatus that was necessary to work in that atmosphere, which meant she was having to pay highly-skilled technical personnel to haul buckets of water.

But if those plants go into permanent wilt and die, people are going to be going hungry. Even as that thought came to her, Jenn recalled her experience in victory gardening back during the Energy Wars. In fact, depending on exactly what they are, even if they do come back, the yields are going to take enough of a hit that meals could get a lot smaller.

Apparently whoever was talking with Alice was on the technical side of things, because he said he’d take a look at it just as soon as he could retrieve his breathing rig from Engineering. Alice thanked him, and then the door slid open and a tall, muscular young man stepped out.

“Hello, Miz Jennifer.” Juss Forsythe was a clone of Ed White, and Ken’s all-around troubleshooter and fix-it man. “I hope I didn’t cause you any trouble.”

“No, not at all.” The words came out awkwardly, in a rush. “You obviously are dealing with a critical matter, and a routine meeting can wait.”

“Thanks. I’d better be going now.” With that, Juss hurried away to complete his errand.

At that point Alice gestured for her to come in and take a seat. “Sorry to keep you waiting, but we have a problem.”

As Alice explained the problem, Jenn listened attentively, although she was already aware of the situation. “Do you think you can save those plantings?”

“We hope so. That’s why we’ve been working so hard to hand-water them while Juss works on the irrigation system. That kid’s sharp, and it really helps that he’s finally old enough to get his oxygen-delivery certification so he can work in those greenhouses.”

“That’s good to hear. Right now, we have enough food that we can keep everyone fed a diet that meets NASA nutritional standards for the next three months. It’s going to be monotonous and not necessarily very filling, but nobody’s going to starve..”

“Which is good to hear. There are some things I can do to help make things better, but there are some foods that simply require too narrow of growing conditions for us to be able to produce them in a lunar greenhouse farm, or at least produce them in the quantities we need to feed the entire community.”

Jenn had a fairly good idea of what those were. She’d talked with her husband about whether the chemistry people down at Engineering might be able to synthesize some of the flavors of certain spices that had to be brought up from Earth. But even those would take time to work out, particularly if there wasn’t that much to work on.

We may just have to focus on keeping everyone fed, even if it isn’t the tastiest food.

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Narrative

The Unwinding

The station was oddly quiet today. Maybe it was the absence of Spruance Del Curtin, who’d gotten pulled off to some other duty and had Quinn Merton taking over his shift for the day.

But Autumn never had any trouble with him. It probably helped that she was the daughter of a Shep herself, and had inherited her father’s long face and lanky build. All the Sheps had taken one look at her and known that she was Off Limits for their antics.

Still, she was noticing his absence far too much as she sat at her desk, trying to work her way through the latest reports from Earth. At least AP and Reuters were still reporting, although she had her doubts about the reliability of some of the stringers. Especially after she’d talked with Dr. Thuc and some of the people up at Gagarinsk, she was very cautious about any reports about analysis or sequencing of the genome of the diablovirus, especially the ones suggesting it might have been artificially manipulated. Without evidence that the person doing the reporting had a strong background in the biological sciences, there was no telling how well they understood what their sources were telling them, or how much they might be letting wishful thinking or fear color their understanding.

Of more concern were the local reports she could still pick up — and the fact that a number of local radio and TV stations had stopped updating their websites altogether. Just how badly were things unraveling down there? Not just in the areas where technological civilization had been primarily an elite phenomenon and people outside the big showplace cities continued to live as their ancestors had from time out of mind, but in places she considered thoroughly modern.

Heck, there were several small-town radio stations in Minnesota that hadn’t updated their websites in over a week. Call signs she recognized from late-night twirling of the radio dial,. that she’d followed for old times’ sake. Some of them even had people she knew personally from broadcast journalism classes at U-Minn.

Would it do any good to try to raise them by e-mail? Most of the station websites did include contact information, at least for their news staff if not for the on-air personalities.

At least then you might be able to get a better sense of just what’s happening on the ground, without the filter of what appearances officialdom wants presented to the rest of the Solar System.