Category: Narrative

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Narrative

Be Careful What You Carry

The Roosa Barracks had become uncomfortably quiet of late. Drew Reinholt kept catching himself wanting to look over his shoulder whenever he walked down an empty corridor.

Sure, there were stories about certain parts of the Roosa Barracks being haunted by the ghosts of the astronauts who’d died in the 1996 disaster and whose bodies had been left there when the contaminated area had to be sealed off. But they were the sort of things you told newbies to see that frisson of fear, not something you actually took seriously.

He tried to tell himself it was just the absence of activity making his own thoughts too loud in comparison. And truth be told, he would be resting a lot easier if he could get more than sporadic text messages through to Brenda over in Shepardsport. So far what little had come through had been upbeat, and she hadn’t used any of the codes they’d agreed upon if something serious had happened.

On the other hand, he had no idea how many text messages might still be stuck in the system, waiting for an open connection between Farside and Nearside. Any of them might contain one of those warning codes, telling him he needed to read between the lines of what she’d written.

And it didn’t help that the news coming from Earth was getting worse all the time. Small countries in Africa and Asia had simply stopped communicating with the outside world, as if they’d fallen off the map. He was hearing RUMINT through the Air Force grapevine about overflights of villages full of unburied bodies, of other villages reduced to burned-out wreckage.

Of course those were places still struggling to get a toehold in the Twentieth Century, where poverty and ignorance were so common outside the major cities that even an American small town of the Revolutionary War would’ve seemed sophisticated and futuristic.

But even in wealthy countries, things were going from bad to worse. The most worrisome was the reports of flight control centers having trouble maintaining staffing. Just a few days ago, an old friend who’d gone back to Earth to work at Johnson had e-mailed him, saying that all the NASA space centers were going on full lockdown. Non-essential employees were to stay home, and essential employees were to stay in place, sleeping in makeshift accommodations on military cots.

And the Moon was only three days away from Earth, well within the incubation time of this new bug. All it would take would be one person breaking pre-flight quarantine on a lark — his own ur-brother had made an unauthorized jaunt just days before his Apollo flight — and they’d have it up here too. Somehow knowing that Mars was far enough away to be spared had proven cold comfort.

Especially since Shepardsport is still a lot more crowded. Even here in the Roosa Barracks, we have more room per person, and we’ve got the tightest quarters of anything here at Grissom City.

Even as he was considering that, a familiar voice called his name. He turned to face Peter Caudell. “What’s up?”

“Bad news.” Caudell looked worried. “We’ve just heard from the Indian Space Agency that they’ve had an accidental exposure. Apparently some of the support staff for their quarantine facility are daily commuters, and one of them has turned up sick — two days after their astronauts docked with Space Station Harmony and boarded the Sakura for the Moon.”

Although India had its own spacelift capability into Low Earth Orbit and its own lunar settlement, it paid Japan and the US for transport up here. Which meant their carelessness had now endangered not only Chandra Settlement, but also a good segment of Japan’s space infrastructure. And considering there was only a single station serving all nations on the lunar end–

“Have they gotten to Luna Station yet?” Drew tried not to think too much about the implications until he was certain. Still, cultures that focused too much on saving face had a tendency to cover up these sorts of problems, which had proved dangerous, even deadly, in the demanding environment of space. No one would ever forget what happened to Phoenix.

“At the moment they’re still a day out, and JAXA is still negotiating on how they’re going to handle it. So far, none of the Indian astronauts are showing any symptoms, but we can’t afford to risk any contact with anybody aboard the Sakura until everyone is past the longest possible incubation period. I’m also hearing some discussion of a strict quarantine for all pilots.”

“Damn, that’s going to suck. Shepardsport’s already confining visiting pilots to their port facilities. If we can’t visit at all–” Drew realized he was coming dangerously close to self-pity.

“It’s not just ports of call. They’re talking about closing off the Roosa Barracks and Slayton Field from the rest of Grissom City. Nobody in or out without a three-week quarantine.”

And Drew realized why Peter looked so worried. His daughter works up in the rodent labs. Either she has to change jobs or she has to find some place to stay in Grissom City for the duration.

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Narrative

The Sound of Silence

When Cindy got to the dining commons for supper, she noticed Kitty sitting all by herself. Unusual, since her younger sister usually sat with her circle of friends unless it was Family Night.

Although Cindy had been planning on joining her regular study group and continuing their discussions from class, she decided she’d better make sure things were OK with her sister. She sat down beside Kitty. “How’s it going, kiddo?”

“Worried.” Kitty pushed her beets around with her fork as if trying to find the willpower to get the next bite down. “It’s been almost three days now since I’ve heard anything from Amy.”

“Which means you have no idea what her situation might be.” Cindy cast a look over at the tables where the married pilots and their families sat. “I think a lot of people are worried right now. We know that things are not good on Earth, and we have good reason to believe that the authorities are trying to cover up just how bad things are getting.”

She stopped, realizing she was about to repeat what she’d overheard Uncle Carl and Aunt Betty talking about last night. Not just that Flight Operations was considering quarantining pilots even if they hadn’t had any contact with the crew of Luna Station, but also some very disturbing messages both of them had received from people working at Johnson and some of the other NASA centers around the country.

Except she hadn’t been part of that conversation. She shouldn’t even have been listening in, and sharing that information with Kitty would only compound her lapse of civility.

If Kitty noticed the sudden pause, she made no remark on it. “I just wish I knew what were going on.”

“I do too. But with the problems IT’s been having with our Internet connection, we’re not getting much in the way of news from Earth.” Again Cindy had to pause and think about how much she should say. At the station she’d overheard a lot of stuff, and she had good reason to believe that a lot of it was not for public consumption. “I’ve heard a few people have been able to get e-mail messages through, but that’s mainly because of the way e-mail works.”

Even as Cindy was struggling to remember how Lou had explained the principles of e-mail server operation, a familiar voice asked, “May we join you.”

There stood Brenda Redmond, children in tow. Beyond her, Cindy could see that the other tables were rapidly filling up. With her husband stuck at Slayton Field, Brenda would be looking for familiar faces — and a table that still had three seats available.

“Oh, hi, Brenda.” Cindy hoped she wasn’t blushing too badly. “Sure, have a seat. We were just talking.”

“Thanks.” Brenda got her children seated first, then sat between them. “Have you heard anything more from Amy?”

Cindy and Kitty exchanged those awkward glances, trying to determine who should speak first. Brenda picked it up. “If you’d rather discuss it in private, drop by my apartment about 9PM tonight. I’ll have the kids put to bed, and we can talk about the situation in private.”

“Thanks.” Cindy gladly let Brenda move the conversation to more neutral topics: work, classes, settlement life in general.

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Narrative

Give Me Shelter

Autumn Belfontaine looked at the text message from Brenda Redmond again. I have a problem. Can we talk?

Although Autumn had plenty of work already on her plate, she’d texted back that Brenda should come to the newsroom and they’d find a private place to talk. Brenda wasn’t the sort of person to panic over trifles, or to need her hand held. If she needed to talk, it was something serious.

The newsroom door opened just a hair, and Brenda peeked in. “Are you where you can talk now?”

“As much as I ever will be.” Autumn waved to the multiple monitors surrounding her desk, some showing what few news websites she could manage to reach, but most with reports in various stages of completion, from rough drafts turned in by her junior reporters to polished copy she was ready to read aloud to the mic. “Pull up a chair and sit down.”

“Thanks.” Although Brenda was maintaining her professional voice, she managed to create the impression of breathless anxiety. “Just this morning I got a message from an old friend.”

That ought to be happy news, but I can tell it’s not. However, Autumn didn’t interrupt Brenda, just listened as she told about the e-mail she’d received this morning. Brenda was doing her best to provide a reasonably orderly report, but it sounded like her source material was rather confused.

Perhaps it would be best to take a look at this e-mail herself. “Could you show it to me?”

“OK.” Brenda pulled out her phone, handed it across with a little hesitation that matched the one in her voice.

You’re asking her to show you a private communication. Of course she’s going to be hesitant, wondering if she’s betraying a trust in the process of trying to help.

Autumn read it once quickly to get the gist, then went back and read paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, struggling to sort out just what was happening to the young woman down on Earth. One thing was certain — she had been in a great deal of emotional distress when she’d written it.

“I can certainly understand why you’d be concerned about her situation, especially considering the constraints you’d be facing in any effort to help her.”

“I know.” A hint of bitterness colored Brenda’s voice, for all she tried to hold it professionally neutral, to do herself credit as one of the station’s on-air personalities. “Here I am at the far end of a very skinny data pipe, and I’m not even sure what exactly she told her parents that made them so mad. And I have this awful feeling that if I were to try to contact her parents and intervene, I’d only succeed in making things even worse.”

“That’s always a risk.” Autumn considered what to say. She was a journalist, not a counselor or social worker. “Especially if they consider it a private family matter, they’ll view you as butting in where you have no business, and regard her as a blabbermouth who exposed these things to a stranger.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.” Brenda spoke those words slowly, as if dreading what they might signify. “And if she’s in actual danger, there’s nothing I can do up here. You know as well as I do that the cops aren’t going to intervene on her behalf under her own parents’ roof. If anything, they’re likely to tell her that she’s the problem and needs to be more pleasant and deferential.”

Autumn wished she knew what church Brenda belonged to. She was pretty sure that Ken Redmond had been raised in the Church of Christ like his ur-brother Gus Grissom, but she had no idea what tradition Jen had been brought up in, or whether either of them had brought Brenda up on a faith tradition.

“Brenda, I think it’s probably just as well you came to me rather than trying to do anything on your own. I’m going to try to make connections with some people who might be able to actually make a difference in her situation, rather than ‘help’ by just telling her to chin up and put a smile on her face. Let her know we’re working on things, but don’t tell her anything that might build hopes we can’t follow through on.”

“Got it.” Brenda paused, moistened her lips. “Of course there’s no telling how long it may take for an e-mail to get to her. From the headers I saw, it looks like this one bounced around servers for three or four days before it got up here.”

“At least it got through. That’s the strength and the weakness of store-and-forward systems. In the meantime, let’s hope for the best and concentrate on what we can do up here, not worrying about what we can’t.”

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Narrative

Remembrances

The formal entrance to Shepardsport was quiet today. Not surprising given the current situation, but Payton Shaw wasn’t used to having such complete privacy for his annual observance. Of course there wasn’t complete silence — no shirtsleeve environment on the Moon was ever completely silent, although the various fans and other devices to keep the air breathable could be made extremely quiet.

On the other hand, the place was now clean, with nothing to distract from the significance of this place. Payton remembered when he first arrived up here, when it was still stacked with boxes and bins unless there were a formal ceremony. Now the floor remained clear and polished at all times, the squid emblem of Shepardsport on display for all to see.

Payton approached the Wall of Honor, the three slabs of polished basalt flanked by the US and NASA flags, which was the real focal point of the room. In another place and time, the fallen might be honored by elaborate monuments with sculptures of marble and bronze. Here there was nothing but columns of names engraved in stone, a memorial that reinforced the gravity of what was remembered here in the spartan severity of its presentation.

Often people would touch the names of friends or family members who had given their lives in the pursuit of spaceflight. Although the lunar basalt was regularly shined, Payton could see a few fingerprints, especially on particularly famous names.

However, the name he was looking for was relatively recent. Payton knelt to look more closely at it — his clone-brother, Gavin Etlund.

Sometimes it seemed like yesterday — the growing tension, the horrible row in the dining commons and Gavin racing out after his girlfriend, pleading with her not to do anything rash. Other times it seemed like another lifetime, standing vigil outside Medlab as Dr. Thuc desperately tried to save Gavin’s life, to stabilize him enough that he could survive being transported up to Gagarinsk, where Colonel Grigorenko had arranged for him to receive regeneration.

Gavin was honored here, but only by name. One simply did not speak of the young woman whose life he’d tried to save. Never mind that it was pretty well agreed that Clarissa Munroe had had a bad case of undiagnosed Earth Separation Anxiety Disorder, and that her desperation led her to believe that if she just screwed up badly enough, she could be sent back home, never mind the Writ of Expulsion against her. Her actions had endangered not only herself and Gavin, but potentially the entire settlement, and as a result no sympathy toward her could be tolerated, lest it appear to excuse her actions.

It was a harsh damnato memoria, but uncomfortable as Payton was about it, he knew better than try to buck it. Up here, the margins of survival were too thin.

As he rose, Payton realized he was not alone. He turned to face the gray-haired man with the craggy good looks of Deke Slayton, the “forgotten” Mercury astronaut.

Payton’s mind raced with questions he dared not air in this sacred space. Colonel Hearne? What’re you doing here?

Bill Hearne just gave Payton a stern look, an unmistakable Wait. I want to talk to you.

Payton gave him a polite nod and retreated to the corridor while the older man paid his own respects. He’d come all too close to having his name on that wall himself: the rescue of the crew of the Falcon had been a close-run thing, still talked about in awed tones three decades later.

The longer Payton waited, the more he wondered just what Bill Hearne wanted with him. Was he in trouble? After all, getting down here meant going through the port facilities, and that meant being seen by the pilot-astronauts. And Bill Hearne had been the one to lay down the law that terrible night, using his authority as the last commander of the Falcon.

On the other hand, the name Hearne was looking at was clearly much higher on the wall. Maybe one of his friends who’d died in the NASA Massacre, back in the Energy Wars? He’d been commanding American Eagle that day, doing repairs on a spy satellite, and it had always bothered him that he was above it all while terrorists were rampaging through Johnson Space Center, shooting up offices and murdering astronauts and support staff.

Finally Hearne completed whatever personal memorial he needed to perform and walked back out to join Payton in the corridor. “I’m rather surprised to see you down here tonight, Mr. Shaw. I thought you had quite a bit of work to do these days.”

Payton’s gut twisted in ill-ease. What was with the formal address? And why the indirection?

On the other hand, if he were in trouble, the last thing he wanted to do right now was say or do anything that could look defensive. Keep on his guard, but maintain the appearance that he was taking the greeting and question at face value, as politeness, not accusation.

He chose his words with care, hoping that it wouldn’t make him look deceitful. “I do, sir, but today I needed to honor someone’s memory.”

Hearne nodded, a curt movement of the chin up, then down. “We may soon have a lot more memories to honor.”

Something’s seriously wrong here. Payton studied Col. Hearne’s expression, seeking any hint of what was going on. He decided to take a risk, based on some things Autumn Belfontaine had said at the recent all-hands staff meeting at the station. “It’s pretty bad down there, isn’t it?”

“NASA’s trying to keep it quiet, but that damn bug’s gotten into Johnson, and I’m hearing scuttlebutt that they’re having trouble keeping critical operations staffed.”

Payton considered that information. Why would someone so senior be sharing it with someone as lowly as himself? Might it be a test, to see whether Payton could exercise discretion with a choice bit of RUMINT? “That’s not good.” He spoke those three words with deliberate care, hoping it would convey that he understood both the gravity of the situation being described and the significance of being given the information.

“No, it’s not. You work logistics, so I’ll leave the full implications as an exercise for your edification.”

There was a finality in those words that made it clear the conversation was at a close. Make it definite, this was some kind of test — and Payton had absolutely no idea what.

“Uh, thanks, sir.” Payton hoped he sounded reasonably enthusiastic about being handed this puzzle. He certainly didn’t feel like it.

Conversation completed, Col. Hearne made a sharp turn back to the pilot-astronauts’ offices, leaving Payton to make his own way back to Dunwich Sector and his apartment.

Something’s going on, and I need to find out what, without letting it get noised about that I know just how bad things are getting dirtside.

Damn. He almost wished that Col. Hearne had given his ears a blistering about Clarissa Munroe.

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Narrative

A Message from an Old Friend

This is our second day without decent Internet connectivity. Having completed her sign-off from her air shift, Brenda Redmond logged the last three songs into the playlist, along with the ad blocks she’d run

The guys from the Alternative Lunch didn’t exactly look happy, but it was unsurprising when a big part of their show was live interviews with authors of alternate history, in between their alternative rock. With Internet to the other lunar settlements still patchy and Earth and Mars completely cut off, they were going to have a problem.

But there was no time to discuss it, not when they needed to get ready to sign on. So she stuck to the normal hand-over protocols and wished them well.

Now she needed to grab lunch before her teaching responsibility. There wasn’t time to get up to the dining commons and eat and still get to Miskatonic Sector and her classroom in time, so she always had her lunch sent to her classroom on the days she taught class.

As she went to open the Meals app and put in her request, she discovered she’d left her phone in the mail app. It had just updated with new mail, and she recognized a name she hadn’t seen in ages.

Robbie Sandberg had been Brenda’s best friend all through grade school and into jr. high. Even as anti-clone prejudice mounted and her social circle shrank, Robbie had stuck by her, even at the cost of other friendships, of taunts and cruelties.

And then one day Robbie came with tears in her eyes, explaining that her parents had ordered her to dump the “clonespawn.” Only by begging and pleading had Robbie been able to gain the tiny concession of being allowed to see Brenda one last time and explain the situation rather than simply disappearing from her life.

It had been a painful moment during a stage of life that was already painful because of the havoc puberty wreaked upon young bodies and minds. At the time she’d barely suppressed her anger enough to force out some words about the Fifth Commandment. The only saving grace was it being right about the time her own parents had decided to bring the family up here to the Moon, so she had her own burden of obedience. But looking back, she knew she’d been let far too much snark into her voice as she said she was leaving school to begin her training at Johnson Space Center to join her father in his new posting as Chief of Engineering here at Shepardsport.

Remembering, Brenda felt bad that she had hardly thought of Robbie since then, even after they’d both turned eighteen. However, Brenda had her own life up here on the Moon now, with people who respected her for what she could do, and now she had a family of her own.

As she waited for the sector airlock to cycle so she could pass through into Miskatonic Sector, she opened the e-mail. Whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t the message she got.

The tone was unmistakable panic. It took Brenda several re-reads to sort out the disorganized missive: Robbie was in college, and the administration had just received orders to clear the campus. Everyone had twenty-four hours to vacate the dorms — but Robbie couldn’t move home.

Apparently she had come out to her parents about something and there’d been a horrible row, to the point they had tried to tell her she wouldn’t be going back to school. But all her friends had gone to bat for her, finding her a job, a place to live until the semester started, a replacement laptop and phone for the ones her parents had confiscated on the grounds they’d paid for them.

As deeply religious as her parents were, it would be easy to expect it was her sexuality. Except there was nothing about a girlfriend — or a boyfriend for that matter.

Could she have decided to argue back against their anti-Sharp prejudice? But given the way America under the Flannigan Administration was going, it seemed unlikely that someone who didn’t toe that line would be getting a full-ride scholarship at any major university.

Whatever was going on, one thing was clear — Robbie was being kicked out of the dorm and being told to return to a home where she was not welcome, where she didn’t feel safe. She was desperate — and Brenda was completely helpless to do anything on her behalf.

Right now she had a class she needed to be ready to teach. Fourth-graders might not be as bad as seventh-graders, but she still needed to have her wits about her. Afterward she could look for someone she could trust and talk with them about the situation. Given the timestamp on that e-mail, it had probably been bouncing around the Internet for a while before it found its way up here. A couple more hours wouldn’t make a huge amount of difference.

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Narrative

Seeking Answers

It was really too bad that Lou Corlin had to have the morning airshift. Right now Spruance Del Curtin would’ve really liked to sit him down and talk IT.

Sprue had spent most of the morning in Dr. Doorne’s office, working on yet another dataset that needed sanitizing and verifying before it was analyzed. The further he went on this project, the more patterns he noticed — and the more he wondered just how much that data had to do with current events on Earth.

Why else would she have become so upset when I mentioned the spread of a virgin-field epidemic as an S-curve that initially looks like exponential growth?

It was also making him think of the propagation of certain kinds of malware on a network that lacked adequate defenses. Eventually you simply ran out of computers to infect — but until that happened, the spread would appear explosive.

And then Sprue remembered someone else from the station who worked with computers and networks. Spencer Dawes was working at the robotics shop, and while it was in Engineering, it had its IT aspects. Robots were controlled via WiFi, which meant needing security on those connections to ensure your robots stayed under your control, and didn’t get turned against you in obvious or subtle ways.

Visiting the robotics shop had the added benefit that Harlan Lemont was pretty laid back about discipline, and tended to be just a little overawed by Sheps. As long as Ken Redmond didn’t decide to put in an appearance, Sprue wasn’t likely to get Spence in trouble for slacking.

As it turned out, Spence was doing some pretty routine maintenance, so it wasn’t that hard for Sprue to lend a hand and avoid the issue altogether. “So how familiar are you with network security and malware?”

“Some. I have done some basic setup, especially when we have to replace a bot’s hard drive.” Spence gave him an odd looking over. “What are you looking for?”

“I’ve got a theory about the weird problems we’re having communicating with the outside universe, and especially with Earth.” Sprue considered how to lay it out, given that he wasn’t an IT guy and didn’t have that strong of background in the jargon. “The weirdest thing about this whole thing is how it’s intermittent. Part of the time you can get through, sorta-kinda, especially on low-bandwidth systems like SMS or on store-and-forward systems like e-mail. Other times it locks up completely and you can’t even ping anything outside our own networks.”

“That’s a pretty good description of the situation.” Spencer Dawes retrieved a can of machine oil and applied a few drops to several points on the robot’s joints. “That’s what’s got everybody in IT so sure it’s got to be a new kind of DDOS attack. Instead of continually bombarding our servers with phantom requests, the pwned computers are sending them intermittently, with periods of letup that make it harder to identify the sources and block them.”

Sprue had overheard enough to know how well that was going. “Except everything they do to trace incoming TCP/IP traffic is showing no evidence of unusual patterns of incoming requests. Which suggests there’s something completely different going on, that just looks like a DDOS attack. Suppose someone could create a completely different piece of malware that causes problems that look like a DDOS attack, but is completely local to the affected computers?”

“In theory it might be possible, but I don’t know enough to say. Juss might know, since he’s done some troubleshooting for IT.” Spence cast a significant glance over Sprue’s shoulder, a warning.

Sprue didn’t dare turn to take a look — too obvious. But there was enough metal around here to provide reflective surfaces enough to give him a good idea that Ken Redmond had come in and was talking with Harlan about something. No, Sprue did not want to get crosswise with the big boss right now.

Better wind it up, figure out how he could connect with Juss Forsythe. Although Juss was a clone of Ed White, which meant Sprue didn’t have lineage right to call upon, unlike with Spencer Dawes, who was a clone of Al Shepard’s Lunar Module pilot.

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Narrative

Closer to the Heart

The module lounge was quiet this evening, which suited Lou Corlin just fine. Normally he would call Emiko, maybe even FaceTime if they both felt up to it. But with Shepardsport’s data connections with the rest of the universe being in disarray, that wasn’t going to be possible.

Earlier today they’d been texting back and forth. Now even SMS was bouncing, which suggested that the problem had becoming worse.

His phone chimed mail. A quick check of his mail revealed several new messages, including one from Emiko.

When he opened it, he realized from the context that she must’ve sent it several hours earlier. Which meant it had taken this long for the store-and-forward mailservers to get it from Grissom City to Shepardsport.

At least everything she had to say was routine, the usual work, training, and teaching responsibility. Given what was happening down on Earth, and the fact that Slayton Field was the Moon’s busiest port of entry, it was hard not to fear the worst when he didn’t hear from her at all.

A sound from behind him attracted his attention, and he looked up to find Brenda Redmond giving him a worried look. “Hi, Lou. You mind if I join you?”

Lou was about to balk, then remembered that Brenda’s husband was also over at Grissom City. As a pilot-astronaut, he’d be living in the Roosa Barracks, right where everyone was coming and going.

Lou moved the bag with his laptop and graphics tablet to free some space on the sofa. “Go right ahead. We’re both in the same fix right now. I just got the e-mail that Emiko sent me about four hours ago.”

“At least you got it.” Brenda paused, as if considering what to say next. “About ten minutes ago, I got an e-mail from Drew, but when I tried to pull it up, the mail app said the message had no content.”

“Strange.” Lou considered the information, wished he knew a lot more about e-mail protocols. Almost all his work for IT had been with the big number-crunchers the science departments used. “Maybe we’d better check it out, especially if it would help get a handle on whatever’s blocking our connections with Earth. I can ask some of the people I know down in IT from my work there.”

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Narrative

Dancing in the Dark

All day Autumn Belfontaine had been going from one to another website, trying to find someplace that would give her news from Earth. Yet again and again she got one or another error message — mostly 404 Not Found, but a lot of 500-series errors that related to gateways along the route to the servers where the webpages were stored.

She tried not to listen too closely to the sales director complaining about how he’d been just about to close on a deal with a client who would provide the station with a hefty amount of advertising money, right when the teleconference link went flooey. Yes, it was another data point that might help IT run down whatever was messing up their Internet connectivity, but beyond that it wasn’t really any of her business.

On the other hand, it was something to distract her from the rapidly approaching evening drive-time newscast. Although nobody was sure just how many people tuned in to Shepardsport Pirate Radio via their cars’ mobile Internet or satellite radio, it was still an important part of their audience, and right now the station wouldn’t have it. Worse, she had almost nothing to base her evening newscast on except local events and a few bits that had dribbled through from other lunar settlements.

Autumn looked up at the newsroom clock. Fifteen minutes and she needed to be on the air, delivering the day’s news. What used to be called “world news,” although now it would be covering three worlds, if she could just connect with anything from Earth or Mars. Then the national news, and finally local news.

But right now local was all she had, other than a few incidents in Grissom City and some of the smaller settlements of the Tranquility East region. And even the local news was more on the order of public service announcements and human interest than actual news. People around here were by and large pretty orderly.

On the other hand, there was the Internet outage — but right now she was uncertain how much she should report on it, so long as its cause remained uncertain. And there were valid reasons not to broadcast just how badly they had been affected, especially while they also had no idea who might be behind whatever malware might be behind it.

She picked up her phone. Should she try to contact someone down at IT, see where they were, what level of embargo she should observe on information about the situation?

However, they were probably still busy, if not as overwhelmingly so as when this mess first started. She still remembered overhearing one of the IT people talking about the help desk switchboard being nearly overwhelmed with incoming calls at the beginning.

Better to text her contact at IT. SMS used less bandwidth, and it was asynchronous, so it wouldn’t interrupt someone who was busy with something else.

And then, with the text on its way, it was time to put together her news report for the evening. One with the report on the Internet outage, assuming it was OK to talk about it, and a second with some suitable filler to occupy the necessary airtime. And then it was off to the DJ booth to broadcast.

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Narrative

In the Information Void

There was one good thing of having a work shift right in the middle of a crisis — it kept you so busy you didn’t have time to brood. But now that Cindy had finished her shift as receptionist at Shepardsport Pirate Radio, she found she had altogether too much time to think about the current situation.

You now know just enough about it to worry you, but not nearly enough to help resolve it. On top of that, you don’t know what’s going on with Amy or her parents. The last thing you knew, her mom and dad were both being taken to the hospital, and both of them were in bad shape.

Even as Cindy reached for her phone, she checked herself. No, Kitty had her own responsibilities, and shouldn’t be interrupted. Right now there was nothing either of them could do about Amy’s situation, assuming they could even get through whatever was making communications with other lunar settlements difficult and communications with Earth well-nigh impossible.

As Cindy arrived at the Shepardsport dining commons, she scanned the area, but didn’t see Kitty. Nor did she see any of her cousins. Which meant she could either try to find someone to sit with, or take a seat at an empty table and have whoever chose to sit down with her.

Look on the bright side. At least you don’t have to deal with a dozen or more teenage Sheps all trying to hit on you, like the girls from other lineages have to.

As she was working her way through the maze of tables, someone called her name. She turned to see a blond-haired young man waving to her. “Over here. You can sit with me.”

“Thanks.” As she went to join him, she struggled to recognize him. Not Quinn Merton, although he was definitely an Armstrong.

He must’ve picked up on her struggle, because he introduced himself. “I’m Cory Jannifer. Justin Forsythe asked me to make sure you had someone to sit with at lunch.”

“Um, that’s nice of him.” Cindy winced at how clumsy those words sounded. She’d met Cory a couple of times — he’d been Spruance Del Curtin’s junior TA in a basic science class a couple of years ago, and had come to the station fairly regularly to drop things off. But it had been a while, and Cory was hitting that age when puberty really started transforming a person’s appearance.

“He is concerned about your situation.”

The sudden clench of the spinal muscles caught Cindy by surprise. There was no rational reason that she should be alarmed by what was obviously meant as a courtesy.

Yet there was the inescapable question: just how did he knew he should be concerned? She hadn’t said anything to him about Amy, and as far as she knew, neither had Kitty or Brenda.

She knew he’d spent some time out in California, at the retreat house of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. They were a parapsychological research community, which strongly suggested he possessed some level of telepathy.

There were rumors about experiments that had gone on during the Cold War, attempts to create clone-lines of powerful telepaths by splicing feline DNA into humans. They were common enough to have even become the basis of several manga series, although those were pretty clearly fantastic, with their cute telepathic catboys and catgirls getting into mischief as much feline as human.

Although Cindy wanted to ponder why the idea should bother her so intensely, Cory was already asking her how her classes were going. Nothing intrusive, just the usual making-conversation sort of thing, but she would be remiss if she didn’t respond.

And quite possibly he was supposed to engage her in conversation specifically to take her mind off Amy’s situation.

Categories
Narrative

Pondering the Implications

When Lou Corlin arrived at the station to start his air shift, he was surprised to see half a dozen people from IT in the offices, their laptops connected to the station computers via Ethernet cable. He hadn’t noticed any problems with the stream when his alarm went off.

One of the IT people was talking to Cindy, so asking her what was going on wasn’t an option. And all the other IT people looked far too busy to interrupt.

Nothing to do at this point but focus on doing his own job. Back in the creche you learned that principle early, from plenty of examples out of the history of America’s early space program.

And his job was to get ready to do his air shift, and then DJ the Rising Sun J-Pop Show to the best of his ability. Not a difficult task, but one in which mistakes could have definite consequences. All the DJ’s had taken their drubbings for leaving dead air because they hadn’t adequately planned their lineup for a moment away from the broadcast booth.

While he was waiting for Brenda Redmond to emerge from the DJ booth, Lou listened to the livestream playing on the stereo behind the receptionist’s desk. The audio quality on “Blackbird” sounded fine, including the blackbird singing.

However, it wouldn’t be as good an indicator of transmission quality as it would be on a station that was transmitting via actual radio waves. With Internet radio streaming, it just meant that the stereo was getting a good feed from the streaming server, which meant only two or three routers to hop. There simply wasn’t any good way for an Internet radio station to be sure how its stream was propagating over the millions of routers across the Earth-Moon system.

And then the door opened and out stepped Brenda, looking worried. “Good morning, Lou. I see you’ve noticed the IT people up here. I don’t know if you’ve been on the Web any this morning, but Shepardsport seems to be having trouble communicating with the rest of the Internet this morning.”

Lou realized his mind was beginning to race with alarm and quickly curbed it. “What kind of problems?”

“That’s what IT’s trying to figure out right now. Stephanie Roderick thought it was a DDOS attack, but now she’s saying there’s no sign of net traffic overage. At the moment, all we can do is keep broadcasting for the local audience and hope IT doesn’t have to reboot all the servers and routers.”

“Now that would be a major piece of downtime.” Lou looked over Brenda’s air-shift notes, checking for anything he should be aware of.

Then it was time to take over the DJ booth and line up his first set of the day. As he prepared to deliver the top-of-the-hour station identification, he wondered if this were some new kind of cyber attack. They’d weathered several DDOS attacks before, until IT had put in new software to foil the software that turned improperly secured comptuers into “zombie machines” sending spurrious requests to the target servers. But information security was always an arms race between the hackers and the sysops.