Category: Narrative

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Narrative

One Thing Accomplished

Lou Corlin wasn’t sure what he’d find when he got down to IT for his work shift. Given that he was troubleshooting for the hardware help desk, a day could start so quiet you were expected to find work for yourself to do, and then become so busy that you literally couldn’t keep up with the caseload pouring in. In fact, he tended to dread shifts that started too quiet. They’d come to feel too much like a setup for something unpleasant.

However, he hadn’t expected to find Juss Forsythe waiting for him. No, correct that — he hadn’t expected to find Juss just standing there waiting, as opposed to delivering some balky piece of hardware from one or another department.

“Hi, Juss. Don’t you have something to do?”

Juss knew him well enough to recognize it was a joke rather than an implied reprimand. “Thought I’d let you know Sprue seems to be getting the hint.”

“That’s good. Especially right now, poking your nose into matters that don’t concern you are not exactly conducive to good health and safety.”

“You sound like you’re actually worried about him.”

“Hey, he’s a Shep. A pain in the keister most of the time, because he’s got this drive to show everybody he’s the smartest guy in the room, and make sure you can’t miss it. But when things really get hairy, he’ll pitch right in and do his level best, with none of the shenanigans.”

“Yeah, that’s a Shep for you. Like a male version of the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead.”

Lou recognized that nursery rhyme, although he wasn’t sure where he’d heard it. “I just wish he didn’t take a hint of information that’s not for general release as a challenge to his personal skills in social engineering. If he’s not careful, one of these days he’s going to poke his nose into something that’s a whole lot bigger than he realizes, and he’s going to get into more trouble than he can get back out of.”

“You think so?”

“There’s a lot going on right now, and I’m getting the feeling that some of it is being kept under wraps for very good reasons.” Lou shot a quick glance over his shoulder. “Right now we’re in a very precarious position on a number of fronts. I’m hearing rumors of a major breakthrough related to the diablovirus, which suggests there’s just enough uncertainty that official announcements are being delayed until they’re sure they’re not just raising false hopes. And there’s been a huge spike in communications traffic lately, especially from two or three departments up in Sciences. Any of them could be big enough that someone who got caught poking his nose into it would not be trusted to keep quiet without measures being taken.”

That quieted Juss’s usual cheerful expression. “Yeah. Anyway, I’m supposed to be picking up a couple of items, so I shouldn’t stand around visiting.” He retrieved his phone, pulled up a message with the work order numbers.

“Let me go get them. They shouldn’t be too hard to find, if the overnight crew filed them properly.”

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Narrative

It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over

Dr. Doorne wasn’t surprised to see Spruance Del Curtin in her office so early. He’d been doing it ever since things fell behind when they were dealing with the breakdown of the main board at Shepardsport Pirate Radio.

However, today he seemed oddly subdued, yet at the same time unusually intense — like he were really excited about something, but didn’t want to show it to all and sundry. Given he was a Shep, that could mean any of a dozen things, some good, others not so good. If he were cooking up a gotcha, she could only hope that he’d unleash it somewhere else, and it wouldn’t be too obnoxious.

On the other hand, if he’d suddenly caught fire on some project, that could be quite good. The kid was smart — anyone could see it — but he was most definitely not in any danger of becoming a people pleaser.

However, now was probably not the time to go looking over his shoulder. From what she could see, it looked as if he was hard at work on the latest group of data sets. Eventually he was going to need to be moved to more involved statistical analysis activities, because it was only a matter of time before he got bored with this level of work. But at the moment it was still a challenge to him.

Later she’d check the logs on that computer to make sure he wasn’t using its higher level of access to look at materials that weren’t generally available. Right now she had work of her own, and she needed to get onto it.

She went onto her computer expecting the usual stuff: notifications from IT on various jobs she’d sent to their heavy iron, alerts on pre-prints and various astronomical shop talk, the sort of thing earlier generations of scientists had to go to conferences to hear. But not an alert that Israel’s latest Mercury probe was picking up anomalous behavior on the other side of the Sun, where it couldn’t be observed from the Earth-Moon system.

And wouldn’t you know, Mars isn’t in the right position to get good observations either, not to mention their being twice as far out as we are.

The probe was there to do basic science, not space weather observation and forecasting, so it wouldn’t be able to provide near the level of detail as the system of satellites that monitored space weather in the Earth-Moon system. But it was closer in, which meant that its smaller sensors could pick up signals that would require a much larger sensor out here. On the other hand, everything it transmitted had to be relayed through another satellite.

And all anyone knew right now was that the data did not follow the expected patterns. Which meant it could be anything from an instrument malfunction to something that was going to change everyone’s understanding of how the Sun — and by extension, similar stars — function.

Right now, the first thing to do was take a good look at the data and make sure it wasn’t faulty. Right about the time she was doing her graduate work in astronomy, there’d been a number of very prestigious papers withdrawn when it was discovered that there was a problem with one of the early orbiting X-ray observatories. Yes, several of them were revised and resubmitted once the issues with its sensor suite were corrected, but it had been a huge amount of egg on the faces of some very senior scientists.

If it was a faulty sensor, the sooner it was caught, the better. Faulty data was worse than none at all. And if it wasn’t a fault in the sensor, everybody had better get cracking on understanding what it meant. Because if it was as anomalous as it looked, a huge chunk of space weather was no longer “in the family,” and space operations all over the Solar System could be in grave danger.

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Narrative

Keep Looking

Something was going on that someone wanted to keep under wraps. Spruance Del Curtin had known it as soon as Autumn Belfontaine had gotten that message and immediately took off without any explanation. She was gone the better part of an hour, and when she got back, she was really closed-mouthed about everything. Went straight into the newsroom and started doing searches.

However, there’d been no way Sprue could ask her what was going on. Sure, he could push the limits a long way, but there were still points beyond which it was a hard no-go. And even if Autumn was family, pressuring her about whatever was going on was one of those points.

So he’d have to find out by other means. It was especially difficult since he had no idea what it even was about.

There were ways of finding out where Autumn had gone, which would give him a good idea of what this business was about. However, most of them would get him into even deeper trouble than straight-out asking. Getting crosswise with the head of IT was not wise, especially given that she also happened to be married to the settlement’s commandant.

Which left him having to put out cautious feelers. His clone-brothers were as apt to screw him over with a particularly obnoxious gotcha as to help him. However, there were a number of clones of the astronauts who’d flown with Big Al on his lunar mission.

Except none of them knew squat about Autumn’s mysterious errand, and most of them had no idea of how to go about finding out or connecting with someone who could. Spencer Dawes might be able to turn something up — it helped that he was DJ of the disco show — but he allowed it might take some time.

So here Sprue was in the residential modules, looking for Brenda Redmond. She’d been rather close with Autumn of late, asking her to find things out, so it was possible she’d know something.

As it happened, he found her with her kids, all gathered around a tablet. From the looks of it, they were all doing FaceTime, probably with her husband.

Maybe he could catch her after they got done and she put the kids to bed. In the meantime, better look like he had something productive to do and wasn’t just hanging around waiting. At least up here on the Moon, you always had plenty of studying to do.

After a while, Brenda did call it quits and lead the kids back to their apartment. Sprue figured it might take her half an hour or so to get the kids settled down and into bed.

An hour later, she still hadn’t come back out. Had she decided to turn in early, maybe because she needed to do something else before her air shift tomorrow?

And then he realized he wasn’t alone. He looked up to meet the gaze of Lou Corlin.

“Just wanted to pass the word that you might want to watch where you poke your nose. You’ve gotten in trouble for this already, and people are starting to notice.”

“Thanks.” Sprue bit the word off without any effort to hide his annoyance at the Chaffee. Probably running Ken Redmond’s errands for him.

We’ll see if I get called into his office for a bawling-out tomorrow, or if he decides to just let it dangle.

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Narrative

Hope and Horror

Autumn Belfontaine had been watching Ken Redmond’s people install the new main board when she got the message from Medlab. Part of her wanted to call and ask what the heck was going on, but the message was plain: report to Dr. Thuc’s office.

So here she was, hoping she was ready for whatever she was about to find out. Given that it was Dr. Thuc, it was most likely news rather than something about her own personal medical situation. Not that it made it any easier.

And then the door opened and Dr. Thuc stepped out. “Thank you for coming down here so quickly. I hadn’t expected you until later.”

“I’d just finished my last news segment of the morning, so I was watching the installation of some new equipment. I shouldn’t need to be back for at least an hour, so there’s time to talk.”

“That’s good to know. Please come in and sit down.”

As Autumn took a seat, she noticed Dr. Thuc closing the door behind her. Whatever they were going to be talking about was confidential.

“I just got some news that Captain Waite thinks you should know. There’s been a discovery at an old hunting lodge in the Alps which suggests the diablovirus is probably artificial.”

“OK.” Autumn recalled the earlier statements to the opposite effect. “I thought it was a natural mutation because several key proteins would’ve been arranged more efficiently if it were artificial.”

“That’s what everyone thought, because we were all assuming that genetic engineering would be done by professionals, to best standards. Instead, we think we’re looking at an amateur job by eco-fanatics. We aren’t even sure if the building was burning because they were careless with their equipment, or they decided it was time to commit suicide.”

“Good Lord.” Autumn recalled a couple of the groups who’d been active at U of Minnesota a decade ago — and while they were fringe, they weren’t completely out there, for the simple reason that the university didn’t tolerate any student group that promoted violence or other criminal activity. “The sort of people who believe humanity is a plague upon the Earth. It’s a sort of secular Calvinism, absolute depravity without irresistable grace.”

“I’m afraid I’m not overly well versed on the theology of Protestant denominations, but calling them a cult is probably not too far off the mark. At this point, our best hope is to try to recover enough information from their computers and paper files to get a working model of the diablovirus. If Voronsky is as good as people say, we can hope we’ll have it under control in a few months.”

“Then we can start to rebuild.” Why did that not sound nearly as hopeful as Autumn really wanted it to. “Which raises the question of just how much we can rebuild. From some stuff I’ve heard, there are areas where whole communities have been wiped out, and a lot of places where civil society has broken down altogether, even in the US. And even in the places that are holding together, do we have enough people to rebuild back to the same place we were, or are we going to have to allow some areas to slip backward? At least up here we’ve dodged the bullet, so personally we shouldn’t be worrying about losing any critical technologies. But I’m thinking it’s going to be a lot rougher than people anticipate.”

“That may very well be. Right now almost everyone I’m in contact with is focusing on trying to keep the health care system reasonably functional, even in the face of inadequate supplies and often inadequate staff. So I really don’t have that much of the big picture.”

“But even what you’ve given me will help. I’m going to see what I can find out about it, and whether we’re going to want to start broadcasting about it, or we want to hang onto it for a more opportune time.”

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Narrative

A Piece of the Puzzle

Reggie Waite had been working his way through some documentation — supposedly from NASA HQ, although he had good reason to think most of the updates were from someone over at Grissom City. The bureaucratic gobbletygook was just thick enough that his eyes were glazing over when his phone rang.

Who was calling at this hour? Had the materials he was reading been more engrossing, he would’ve been tempted to just let it go to voicemail. Right now, the distraction was actually welcome.

As soon as he answered, he was glad he had, because it was Barbie Thuc down at Medlab. “I just got some news. Apparently we’ve been wrong about the diablovirus being natural.”

He recalled the presentation, way back when this whole mess started. “So what happened to all those inefficient gene-complexes a lab wouldn’t have used?”

“Everyone in the field assumed a whole lot more competence on the part of the people doing the work. The information is pretty sketchy right now, but we may have found the laboratory where that thing was put together. Or at least what’s left of it after the fire that drew the authorities’ attention in the first place.”

“Crap.” Reggie could see some pretty bad implications. Especially if they still had live cultures in there… “Any information on who or where?”

“As I said, we’re still working on sketchy information. But we do know it was a cabin up in the Alps, an old royal hunting box from back before World War I that had apparently been abandoned for a while because it was just historical enough that no one wanted to tear it down, but not historical enough to get maintained. From what I’ve heard, it’s in an area where there’ve been a lot of the really crazy deep-ecology types, the sort who regard humanity as a plague upon the Earth, inherently destructive, that sort.”

“Ayup, I remember the business with that one cult that had all holed up and all got found dead. Was there ever a definite decision on whether they thought they were going to be the sole survivors but ended up dead because they couldn’t operate a wood stove properly, or if they were trying to commit suicide to go to some perfect evergreen paradise?”

“That’s been a long time, and I was busy enough that I really didn’t read up on the literature. But you’re right, that’s the same area, so it’s possible we’re dealing with an offshoot from that apocalyptic cult. Right now I’m hearing that the local police, or what’s left of them, are trying to find someone with the authority to deal with it. Personally, I’m thinking they ought to get hold of Voronsky. He’s the man with the chops to understand whatever can be recovered from the computers and hardcopy files, but I could see how it could be touchy diplomatic going to get the Russians involved in Central Europe.”

“Very true.” Reggie was old enough to remember the Cold War, when it looked like Europe would always be divided by the Iron Curtain. “Keep me posted as this thing develops. And put Autumn Belfontaine in the loop. This may be something we want to get out, especially if anyone up here would have the background to be of any use.”

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Narrative

Finding a Way to Fix It

Normally Lou Corlin did his troubleshooting in the room right behind IT’s hardware help desk. He wasn’t an actual bench tech, although he wouldn’t be surprised if he’d get tabbed to train for it. But today he’d gotten nabbed and brought down to work on some equipment deeper in the IT department, where only authorized people were supposed to be going.

At least he was working directly under one of the senior repair techs, which meant getting told stuff like “hold this wire” or “hand me the #0.0 Torx screwdriver.” Stuff that was well within his present capabilities, even if he’d rather be doing any of several other tasks up front.

But he’d been the one called down here, probably because they knew a Chaffee wouldn’t argue or give them any static. He recalled Juss Forsythe telling him about being given the task of sorting out an entire tool kit that had been returned from an EVA dumped into three buckets coated in moondust. Juss was pretty sure Ken had given him that task for pretty much the same reason: he was an agreeable sort of guy who would do the job and do it right.

They were just winding up whatever they were supposed to be accomplishing and closing the machine back up for tests when Steffi Roderick walked in. “Looks like you’re coming right along there. At least we’re not trying to repair a forty-year-old line printer that’s been out of production so long you can’t even find spares.”

Before he could even consider whether he might be speaking out of turn, Lou said, “That sounds like an interesting one.”

“Oh yes, it was interesting all right, in the sense of the proverbial curse.” Steffi’s mouth quirked into a wry grin. “I was a junior by that time, and I was working in the computer rooms. We all wondered why Purdue was still running that thing, considering this was well before eBay, so you couldn’t just do a quick search and find a used part someone halfway across the country was selling. But that thing was still printing up jobs for several of the mainframes, which was where a lot of the science and engineering stuff was being done. And that meant we’d have some senior professors seriously unhappy with us when they’d come in and discover their printouts weren’t available because the line printer was down again.

“I can imagine. I’ve had to deal with people from the science departments here when their equipment was down. Some of them can be really, really cranky, especially when you tell them it’s going to take a few days and they’re trying to beat a deadline on paper submissions for a big conference.”

“Oh, yeah. If anything, it was even worse, because they sort of understood when their equipment wasn’t working properly, but they expected the university’s stuff to just work. The last year I was working there, we were getting pretty creative working out solutions to hold it together and coax a little more work out of it. A couple years later, someone told me that they got rid of it right after I graduated.”

“Figures. Just figures.”

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Narrative

Evaluating the Data

By the time Cather Hargreaves got home for the evening, he was exhausted. Which was strange, since Grissom City was extraordinarily quiet right now, with all the tourists evacuated, and movement between sectors being kept at a minimum for safety reasons. He’d spent most of his workday sitting at his desk, going over reports or talking to security personnel elsewhere. Things had even been so boring for a while that he’d decided to get some extra exercise in and pulled out a set of resistance springs.

When he opened the door to their apartment, he found Toni hunched over her laptop, examining data. Best to tread lightly as he walked over to see what she was doing. At least the Moon’s lighter gravity helped with that.

What he saw was completely different that the sort of thing he was used to. Along the left side of the screen, one window had very dense data that had a lot of IP octets in it. The rest of the screen was occupied by some kind of visual presentation. Not exactly a map, but some kind of graphic.

Toni looked up from her work. “Steffi wanted me to take a look at Internet connectivity and how it correlated with other indicators of strain on the infrastructure as a result of the pandemic. I sent her some initial data, but what I’m finding interesting is how it changes over time. In particular, which nodes are staying down, and which are coming back up. And how long it takes before a given node is brought back up.”

Cather considered the possible implications. Not just the obvious security issues, but broader ones. “Which would give you at least some idea of whether a given area is losing a lot of their technical people to this pandemic.”

“And how comfortable people in any given area are about doing their own work on equipment. I mean, there are some places where a hotel desk clerk or an administrative assistant in an office isn’t even allowed to reboot a router or WiFi hotspot that’s gotten wedged. No, they have to get the official network technician to come up and flip the switch, and if that person can’t be found, the network remains unavailable.”

Cather recognized Toni’s tendency to be cavalier about formal rules. “And there may be good reasons for restrictions like that–“

“In a hospital or a secure military installation, sure. But I’m talking your typical business setup, where you’ve got a router perched on top of a file cabinet or behind a desk, wherever it’s closest to the cable or phone line. It says a lot about a culture, whether people who aren’t technical specialists feel comfortable about working on equipment.”

Cather recalled a story his ur-brother had told him when he was young. “Which was why American military units have been so flexible. Every soldier has enough experience as a shade-tree mechanic to do at least some basic repairs on a jeep or a truck.”

“Exactly. A lot of the nodes that are bouncing right back up are in the US. But what’s interesting is how it varies within the US. Some regions seem to have a lot more people who feel comfortable doing their own network maintenance. It may also indicate where there are more businesses that are heavily micromanaged, where ordinary workers are strongly discouraged from showing initiative. But I’m thinking that this data may be very predictive of how well different regions recover once this pandemic finally burns itself out.”

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Narrative

Assessing the Damage

Steffi Roderick wasn’t sure when exactly she started becoming alarmed about the reports coming in from Earth — or the lack of reports from some areas. Not just the news reports, or the various confidential reports from various government agencies, but the reports that were logged on the various network devices in the process of managing the flow of information on the Internet.

Dropped packets were such a common phenomenon that it was hardly worth the bother to log them. Especially on radio links, there were so many forms of interference that you just built a certain amount of capacity into your systems to resend dropped packets.

Of more concern were the logs of e-mail bounces, 404 errors on websites and the like. You always had a certain amount, although a lot less than when she’d been working in one of Purdue’s computer rooms. Back in those days, almost every e-mail provider and webhosting service had hard limits on the resources you could use. She still remembered what a big thing it had been when several of the big commercial e-mail providers had upped their mailbox limits from 10 megabytes to 100. Suddenly she wasn’t constantly dealing with kids all upset because important e-mails kept bouncing.

And now she was getting more failure messages in a day than she typically got in a month. Some of it was mailboxes or URLs not responding, but an astonishing amount of those messages were one or another version on “too many hops.” Which meant that the routers were having a lot more trouble making connections, to the point they hit limits that were intended to prevent infinite loops.

Yes, a lot of them were in countries where Internet connectivity had always been thin on the ground. But it wasn’t just the remote village where Internet connectivity meant the bus that came through every day, which had a WiFi hotspot and some basic store-and-forward capacity, or maybe even actual broadband equipment to provide a brief moment of live Internet. No, some of these problems were cropping up in areas where industrial civilization was old. Parts of Europe, for instance.

So she’d contacted Toni Hargreaves. They’d talked about the possibilities, and worked out a way to do an assessment of connectivity issues in the global Internet.

The data, both visual and numerical, that Toni had just sent over was not reassuring. Yes, the Internet was continuing to route around damage — it was originally designed to degrade gracefully and maintain as much connectivity as possible in the case of a nuclear war between the US and the old Soviet Union — but there was an awful lot of damage out there. Just what was going on that it had become that severe?

Was the toll of the diablovirus bad enough that there weren’t enough technical people to maintain the Internet backbone in some areas? Or were other things going on that she wasn’t hearing about, that were being brushed under the rug, even forcibly censored. She’d heard rumors of fighting over food, over medicines, over gasoline, but so far she’d never gotten any definite reports — and no, she didn’t consider fragmentary video from Third World countries to be definite reports.

Which meant she now needed to give some really hard consideration to finding out just what the situation was on the ground. Who could she even contact, who would be able to give her straight answers if the government were putting a cone of silence on things?

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Narrative

A Quick Visit

Things had gone more smoothly than usual this morning, and Lou Corlin got down to the station with almost half an hour to spare. Since there wasn’t really any use sitting around the front office waiting for Brenda to wind up her air shift, he decided to drop in on an old friend in the robotics shop.

Spencer Dawes was hard at work on a basic robotic arm, small enough that it could be brought down here instead of needing to be repaired in situ. Parts were arranged across the workbench, presumably in the order they had been removed.

But Ken Redmond was always adamant about keeping an orderly workspace as the best way of avoiding stupid mistakes. More than once the Chief of Engineering had bawled people out for returning tool boxes in disarray, especially if they also needed cleaning.

Of course he had good reason to, especially with the team that brought their tools back after an EVA in three buckets and coated with moondust. That stuff’s dangerous.

As Lou approached, Spence looked up from his work. “What brings you down here so early?”

“Just one of those days when things actually go right for a change. Hit every airlock when it was ready, that sort of thing.” Lou made a point of looking at the clock on the far wall. “So I figured I’d see how things are going down here.”

“Pretty well, all things told. How much are you doing on the programming side of things any more?”

“Not as much as I’d really like, but right now Steffi’s got me doing hardware troubleshooting for help desk. It’s always interesting, mostly because of how we’re having to keep stuff running that we’d just replace if things were more normal.”

“Tell me about it.” Spence gestured to the disassembled robot. “I’ve got half a dozen pieces that would normally be replaced, but we have only so many spares, so it’s going to be a repair job.” He paused, then looked over his shoulder in the direction of the Engineering office. “By the way, I hear Ken Redmond’s getting the new main board ready to be installed at the station.”

“Then I’d better get over there, just in case he wants me helping.”

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Dance of Avoidance

At first Autumn Belfontaine wasn’t sure whether Brenda Redmond was avoiding her, or if it was just her imagination. By the second newscast, she was certain of it.

Yes, Brenda was unfailingly polite and professional in her every interaction. But there was also a certain closedness about her manner that made it clear that no, she wasn’t looking for casual conversation.

And just yesterday she specifically wanted to talk to me about what her husband had told her.

Even as Autumn recalled their conversation, she realized that might be the reason Brenda was so tense and closed-in today. Maybe she really wanted to know what Autumn had found out, but didn’t want to ask and put her in an awkward spot.

Having been raised in Minnesota, Autumn could appreciate that reticence. And given what information Brenda had entrusted her with, Autumn could understand the eagerness for news.

Which I don’t have at the moment. Autumn had sent some cautiously worded e-mails and texts to old friends dirtside, but so far she hadn’t gotten any responses. Given the chaotic situation down there, it was quite possible that the recipients simply weren’t able to reply, for any of a various number of reasons.

Especially if someone is descending a cone of silence over the whole affair, whether for opsec reasons or to shield agencies from embarrassment for letting part of Chicago effectively become a miniature failed state.

Sitting at her desk in the newsroom, Autumn considered who else she might be able to ask. There was a certain amount of risk involved in discussing these sorts of things, given that one had to assume that any e-mail or text might be read, any voice communications might be recorded. Although she felt reasonably confident that she was on good terms with command and Security, she certainly didn’t want to do anything that could get Drew Reinholt into trouble. Especially considering that he was over at Slayton Field, and Grissom City’s commandant was tight with the Flannigan Administration.

The door opened and in walked the program director. “Just got some good news from Engineering. They’ve got the main board completely rebuilt, and they’re bringing it over now.”

“That’s wonderful.” Even as the word were out of Autumn’s mouth, she wondered if she would wind up sounding sarcastic instead of excited. “How long has it been now that we’ve been making do with the remote broadcasting setup?”

“Long enough that I’ve stopped wincing every time I hear the DJ’s come on. I’d never realized just how much lower the sound quality was on that thing.”

“And according to what Ken said when this whole thing started, they’ll have to go over it with a fine tooth comb as soon as the new main board is back online. The remote broadcast system was never designed for continuous use, and we don’t want to discover that it needs a major overhaul just when we want to use it for an important event.”