Tag: Autumn Belfontaine

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Narrative

The Spaces Between

Reggie Waite had been a little surprised to get the text from Autumn Belfontaine. Given the situation, he’d granted her pretty much a blank check to use her own judgement in covering the diablovirus pandemic. Which suggested that she’d found something she considered too hot to handle alone.

Which was why he’d told her to come up and talk with him rather than say that she shouldn’t worry about it. Trusting her judgment went both ways. If she said something was bigger than she wanted to handle on her own, it probably was.

So here she was, looking notably uncomfortable. Not nervous like someone being called on the carpet for some shortcoming, but like she had some seriously bad news to report and was trying to figure out whether to break it to him gently or just drop the bomb on him.

Reggie invited her to sit down, offered her coffee, which she politely declined. Now that the courtesies had been satisfied, he could get down to business.

“I understand you have some material you are concerned about releasing.”

Autumn handed him a USB stick, a completely unremarkable black shell of the sort that were cranked out by the million, so cheap they could be used for promotional purposes. “It has a number of video files that the Administration probably would find embarrassing, as well as some data files I believe they are deliberately suppressing.” She paused to consider what to say next. “Given their uncertain provenance, I thought it would be wise to run it past you before I put anything in the public view.”

The careful wording suggested she was protecting a source. Steffi had mentioned that someone had been visiting the dark side of the Internet. She’d been concerned mostly because of the disreputable sorts of porn one could find there, and the high risk that downloads could carry malware.

“I’ll look it over.” Reggie kept one computer specifically for examining questionable materials of this sort. Steffi had set it up specifically to have no connections to any other computer, and with some of the best anti-malware protections that didn’t require a specialist to use. “You might be able to help me sort through the files and identify the most relevant ones.”

It was a little awkward when she leaned over his shoulder to point out some file names, but he reminded himself that genetically she was his niece, the daughter of a clone-brother. Never mind that he and Lucius Belfontaine had never met — Reggie was still flying F-18’s off carriers when Belfontaine had died in the NASA Massacre — the connection was still very real.

Just focus on the material, not the person presenting it.

And Autumn knew those files up, down, sideways and backward. Not surprising for a news reporter. You had to be able to find the right file without a lot of wasted when your got back to the station and needed to file your report. Especially if you were prepping clips to play on air.

By the time Reggie had gone through the relevant material, he was shaken in a way he hadn’t been since the Kitty Hawk Massacre. “This is some pretty hot stuff. I think we’d better talk this over with Betty Margrave before we put any of it on the air. On second thought, let’s also have Dr. Thuc take a look at that epidemiological data.”

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Narrative

On the Scent of a Story

Over the course of her career in radio news, Autumn Belfontaine had been in plenty of sticky situations. Her very first political assignment had been to cover a demonstration that turned into a “police riot.” She’d gotten out mostly because her news director had told her to stay on the periphery and do man-on-the-street interviews, which meant she didn’t have to push her way out of a crowd.

Just coming up here to the Moon had started as a brief visit to cover the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the original Apollo landing. When Captain Waite had discovered she was the daughter of Lucius Belfontaine, he’d invited her over here to Shepardsport for a visit. She hadn’t expected to get the go-ahead to extend her stay — rescheduling a spaceflight wasn’t exactly like changing an airline ticket — and now she wondered whether someone knew the Expulsions were in the works.

However, she’d never expected to be handed a USB stick full of hot video files by one of the DJs. Although Shepardsport Pirate Radio was all about getting the truth out when the Flannigan Administration was trying to suppress it, there were still limits.

Not to mention the problems created by the uncertain provenance of these files. Given Brenda’s evasive answers about how she’d gotten them, Autumn was pretty sure someone had been poking around on the dark side of the Internet. Malware was everyone’s first concern about those iffy parts of the information superhighway, but for someone in the news business, there as also the problem of whether these could be considered reliable sources.

She knew all too well about the stories that had blown up in various reporters’ faces. Some of it was just plain dishonesty, with sources and accounts fabricated out of whole cloth. But there were more than a few cases of reporters who wanted to believe a little too badly, and had failed to do their due diligence on following up.

On the other hand, if she could get confirmation on some of this material from sources she could trust, she had one hell of a story. No, not just a story, but two, which needed to be treated separately.

Time to do some digging. Now that she knew what to look for, things might be getting a whole lot easier to track down.

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Behind the Rumors

Autumn Belfontaine hadn’t like the paucity of information coming out of Schirrasburg ever since they closed up, and the longer things went, the more it bothered her. Something was going on, and if they were keeping it quiet to “prevent panic,” that made it sound all the more frightening.

Although she didn’t have any close friends over there, she did have a few contacts. But texts and e-mails went unanswered, or just plain bounced. Which meant that they’d not only cut off all physical interaction; they’d also descended a cone of silence over Schirrasburg’s Internet connections. Given that Schirrasburg had a much heavier scientific focus than Grissom City or Shepardsport, such stringent measures were downright extreme.

Scientists talked to each other as much as reporters did, if not more. A big part of doing science was reporting your discoveries to your colleagues so they could verify them independently.

Autumn tried to imagine what would happen if Reggie Waite were to announce that Shepardsport was deliberately instituting not only a physical quarantine, but an informational one as well. The scientists had been unhappy enough during the Internet outage, but they’d accepted it as a malfunction, and had endured as best they could while IT worked to resolve it. That best had included a lot of grousing among themselves, and several of her reporters had either teaching responsibilities or work in Science.

Unless there were a damned good reason, like a truly nasty malware spreading through the Internet, the howling would be so intense it would probably register on the seismographs in the science packages at the old Apollo landing sites. There were probably dozens of scientific investigations going on that depended upon daily transmissions of data back and forth between multiple sites, both on the Moon and on Earth. Interrupt that flow of data, and it might set someone back years, even waste millions of dollars if it were something that couldn’t be put on pause while waiting for data.

Which meant that whatever was going on at Schirrasburg was so serious that the scientists were accepting this restriction without any measurable resistance. If it weren’t a diablovirus outbreak, why else would they shut off communications with the outside world under the rubric of preventing panic?

On the other hand, if it was diablovirus, the very fact that it hadn’t spread to any of the other lunar settlements was reassuring. It meant that diablovirus could be identified and contained before even essential travel could spread it.

But she also recognized that all of this was speculation, on far too slender of evidence to go on the air about it. Especially if this might well be an actual legitimate reason to suppress information.

Her thoughts were disturbed by someone calling her name. She looked up to find Brenda Redmond standing just inside the newsroom door. “You need to talk to me?”

Brenda pulled out a USB stick. “I’ve got some files you might want to see.”

Autumn looked over the USB stick. It was pretty basic, the sort that were manufactured in great numbers both here and on Earth, so cheaply that a lot of companies put intro versions of programs on them and handed them out as advertising. “What kind of information, and where did you get it?”

“Most of it’s video about a gang war in Chicago, but there are also a number of files out of Schirrasburg. Apparently someone’s been able to access some subchannels and get information out of there.”

Autumn noted that Brenda had answered only half of her question. “If you need to protect your source, I won’t pry any further. But you might want to talk to that person, because if I do end up running a story on any of this, being able to identify sources will give it extra credibility.”

“Understood. But this stuff looks hot enough that I thought you ought to take a look at it before I showed it to anyone else.”

Autumn accepted the USB drive. “I’ll take a look at it. I trust that this is not your only copy.”

“Don’t worry. I did learn data management procedure. The first thing I did was back up everything on the computer I was going to use to look at it. Then I copied it onto that machine and then onto a fresh USB stick. At least those are easy enough to get, unlike actual computers. So yes, you can keep this copy.”

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Unnerving Developments

Autumn Belfontaine hadn’t really known what to think when Steffi Roderick had called and requested for her to come down to IT as soon as possible. Autumn had been in the middle of preparing afternoon and evening drive time newscasts, and while there was no huge time pressure, she liked to do them in one sitting for better cohesiveness.

But one of the critical skills of a journalist was the ability to be flexible. Breaking news didn’t follow anybody’s schedule, and from the sound of Steffi’s voice, whatever had just happened was both urgent and worrisome.

Now she was waiting while Steffi finished talking with several of her immediate subordinates. From the sound of it, they were talking about fallback options, but exactly what she could not determine.

Finally they wound up their conference and the three of them came filing out. As soon as Steffi came out, she looked directly at Autumn. “Glad you were able to come down so quickly. Come inside so we can talk.”

“As urgent as you sounded, I thought I’d better not delay.”

“It looks like things may be changing rapidly. Right before I called you, I was in a conference call with the IT chiefs of all the major lunar settlements, verifying what we were observing and determining our best strategies for dealing with it.”

“So we’re looking at a major change in our situation?”

“Actually, Earth’s. We’ve been picking up cascades of micro-outages in a number of major websites. E-commerce and social media in particular, but also some major news websites. We think what we are seeing is the Internet shifting to mirror sites in other locations when they lose connectivity to their primary server farms.”

“That doesn’t sound good.” Autumn recalled her old friend who was struggling to keep a radio station on the air, and what little she’d been able to offer him in the way of suggestions. “Especially if they’re losing power. Those places are supposed to have backup generators.”

“Which have finite amounts of fuel, and if they’re not getting replenished, they’ll soon be offline. We’re not seeing as bad of problems as we might, mostly because the most popular websites all are mirrored on servers up here to eliminate light-speed lag. We’re talking about finding ways to duplicate as much functionality as we can manage, but some of it is going to be tricky. We’re talking to legal teams, making sure we don’t violate copyrights in the process, but it’s really concerning that we might suddenly lose critical parts of our information infrastructure. In fact, right after we get done here, I’m going to Engineering and Medlab and making sure that they have all their essential manuals and other documents on local servers.”

“I don’t blame you at all. I’ll work on finding other ways of keeping in contact with my stringers down on Earth, so I can still get news even if all the major news websites and wire services go down.”

“Good. At least we’re used to jerry-rigging our way through things, so this should be just another challenge.”

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A Rather Awkward Position

After all his efforts, Spruance Del Curtin was still at square one on Drew Reinholt’s request. Whatever was going on down there at Schirrasburg, it was buttoned up so tight that no information was getting out at all.

That or people knew but just didn’t want to talk about it. Or had been forbidden to talk about it.

Certainly Autumn Belfontaine’s remarks to him hinted at that. She was almost certainly able to get pretty much any information she wanted that wasn’t outright classified. However, she also was not the boss at Shepardsport Pirate Radio — he still remembered her remark when they were first setting it up, that freedom of the press belonged to those who owned the press.

On the other hand, she’d just made that offer to take him into the news crew. He was still ambivalent about the idea, mostly because he really didn’t want to give up being a DJ. But he was starting to wonder if he ought to talk to her about the possibility of doing some of the back-office work of the news department while keeping his air shift.

Even as he was considering that, his phone chimed incoming text. He found a new text from Cindy Margrave.

How much do you remember the beginning of the Sharp Wars? The Arizona Memorial Incident and all that stuff.

Some, but I was still in grade school, and they kept a pretty close watch on our media access at the NASA clone creches. So we got a very filtered version, what the grown-ups thought we were ready to handle.

And you didn’t try to get around it?

Yep, Cindy knew his rep for viewing those situations as technical challenges. Trying’s one thing. Having the skills is another. So’s having the necessary access to computers and the Internet.

The three dots icon flickered for an unusually long time. Probably Cindy was needing to think about her reply.

Finally it popped up on his screen: That would be a difficulty. Did the older kids have those restrictions too?

Some of them. I think the guys who were in high school had unrestricted TV and Internet access, but they lived in the other dorm across the courtyard from us, and we didn’t have a lot of contact.

Sprue paused, considering how far he wanted to carry it, then decided to take his chances. I’m sure they’re up here, but most of them had left the creche years before the Expulsions. I mean, they started using artificial uterine environments right after the Lanakhidzist Revolution, when we first got the technology from the Soviet labs. You’re talking about more than thirty years since the creches first opened, so those guys would’ve been tracked down and Expelled individually, just like the ones who were gestated the old-fashioned way and grew up in regular families.

He felt oddly naked, talking so frankly about those matters to a young woman who wasn’t even the child of a clone, just a member of Colonel Dalton’s household.

Cindy’s response came more quickly this time. Thanks anyway. I was hoping maybe you could connect me to someone who was old enough to remember, but isn’t too busy to talk to it. Some stuff came up in Constitution class today, and I wanted to find out more on my own.

Maybe you ought to talk to Autumn about that. She was already working as a reporter for the college radio station during the 2012 election, and barely escaped a riot at the Minnesota statehouse.

Thanks. I’ll see if she has the time and wants to talk about it.

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Narrative

Shadows of the Past

Sometimes it was amazing to see what kinds of rumors cropped up on various places on the Internet. Some of them were new, but every now and then old nuggets would pop back up, including wild claims of having seen deceased individuals very much alive. Elvis of course, but also individuals of a more unsavory sort, the dark side of fame.

Autumn Belfontaine was never sure how much credence to give any of them. On one hand, a susceptible mind could spin a chance resemblance into an encounter with an incognito historical figure. On the other hand, the existence of human cloning raised the possibility that someone had in fact seen a clone who had gotten missed during the Expulsions, especially if that clone were about the age the individual in question had been during the period of their fame or notoriety.

All the same, she considered such reports useful mostly as filler, “news of the weird” items that would inject a little levity in news reports that were becoming ever more depressing. People needed something to lighten their moods, but right now the usual forms of humor felt more like mocking matters that ought to be treated with the utmost respect.

A movement at the edge of her field of vision caught her attention. She turned to see Spruance Del Curtin slouching his way down the corridor, looking as if he really wanted to avoid being seen.

What is he up to now?

She cleared her throat to catch his attention. “Aren’t you here early?”

Was that a hint of a flinch? “Just made better time getting down here than I’d expected.”

No, that did not sound the first bit believable. But if she openly called him on the lie, he’d just clam up on her.

“Sprue, if there’s something you want to talk about, we are family.”

Sprue came over to lean against the doorpost, although he didn’t actually enter the newsroom. “Just getting tired of feeling like I’m being watched all the time.”

Autumn considered how to respond to that one. “You do realize that there’s a lot going on right now, and not all of it is for public dissemination. There’s been some concern about just how much you’ve been trying to find out things, especially with you having access to broadcast media.”

Yes, that got his back to stiffen. “Hey, it’s not like I’m going to go blabbing it all over my air shift. But you’ve gotta admit that knowing that there’s information out there but I can’t get at it is something of a challenge.”

“True. Every good reporter has that newshound’s nose. But you’re not on the news team.” Should she make it into a directive to stay in his own lane, or would it be better to extend the offer to let him join? Sprue could be difficult, and she wasn’t sure how she’d handle dealing with him that closely.

It didn’t matter, because the program director picked that moment to come out and want to talk to Sprue about something. Still, Autumn continued to ponder the question as she went back to her own work.

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Reasons to Worry

Autumn Belfontaine swirled the last bit of her coffee around in the bottom of the mug. When she’d first gotten into broadcast journalism, it had seemed like a straightforward occupation. Yes, there were many ways a reporter might use to ferret out information, but it all boiled down to covering the news.

She’d never imagined that being a radio station’s news director could put her in the position of having to locate technical information for old friends who were just trying to stay on the air as best they could amidst infrastructure breakdowns. She’d never imagined that it would involve trying to hold together a team who were becoming increasingly worried about the safety of friends and family at the bottom of a gravity well while sitting at its top with no way to give them material help. And she’d certainly never imagined that she could be watching a civilization-wide catastrophe unfolding 1.5 light-seconds away, hardly an eyeblink in network times, yet a well-nigh unbridgeable distance in physical terms.

But now there was nothing for her to do but deal with the situation as best she could. At least Ken Redmond’s people had managed to put together a new main board, so Shepardsport Pirate Radio once again had a clean, professional sound. Now they had to put the location rig through a full maintenance cycle to ensure it would be ready to go when they could broadcast on location once again.

However, finding good solutions for Dan’s ongoing trouble with keeping his radio station powered up had proven far more elusive. Engineering had offered her several, but every last one of them had presupposed certain elements of the lunar environment that simply wouldn’t be available on Earth.

And then there was the stuff that was just disturbing enough that she really felt that she ought to get the word out, but without independent confirmation, she was hesitant to even put together a story and run it past the appropriate people. Like the business about the eco-fanatic cult whose lair had been found in smoking ruins, who might or might not have some connection with the diablovirus — except that it had first appeared in poverty-stricken villages of Central Asia, not staid and proper Central Europe. Or the rumor Brenda had heard about a gang leader in the south side of Chicago turning warlord and stealing groceries and other vital goods to be distributed to his people.

Not to mention just what Spruance Del Curtin might be up to right now. On the surface, it seemed like he had suddenly become very good, very conscientious, very helpful. Except it really felt like he was trying to hide something.

No, she’d never imagined that a news director could end up bearing so many burdens, all at once. But these were her people, and she couldn’t help but care about them.

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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

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.”

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Touching Base

Autumn Belfontaine had been a little surprised when she got the text from Brenda Redmond, asking for a private meeting. In particular, there was something odd about the insistence that the meeting be private, not in the newsroom, not in either of their module lounges, but somewhere they would not be overheard.

It had taken a little thought to find a place where it would definitely be just the two of them. Shepardsport wasn’t as crowded as it had been right after the Expulsions, but pressurized volume was still at a premium. But she’d finally located a place where they could both speak in confidence.

When Brenda arrived, it was very clear that she was holding her professional face on by force of will. Whatever she wanted to talk about, it had obviously shaken her, even if she was determined not to let it show.

No wonder she was so insistent about a private meeting, especially considering all the problems we’ve been having with rumors.

Autumn was glad she’d brought some snacks, mostly comfort food, so she could offer Brenda something to nibble while they talked. Back when she was still doing radio news reporting dirtside, she’d met more than a few sources at a coffee shop specifically so they could talk over food.

Except Brenda wasn’t all that much in the mood for food. She took one cookie, almost as if she felt obligated to accept a token amount, and immediately launched straight into what she needed to say.

“Drew and I were texting. I’d asked him a few days ago if he could look into some of the rumors I’d been hearing. He’s able to plug into some military grapevines I wouldn’t have access to, and apparently some of them go all the way to some interesting places.”

With that, she described attacks on trucks going to grocery stores in Chicago, apparently by gangbangers. The first attempt had succeeded, but it had alarmed the company enough they’d issued their drivers weapons — Autumn tried to remember what kind of gun control laws Chicago had, since so much had changed since the Energy Wars, when continual terrorist attacks had led many municipalities to decide an armed populace might well be their best defense — and the second attempt had resulted in a firefight. All of which was news to her, and Chicago had definitely been on her list of cities to monitor.

Even if Brenda’s sources were right and the cone of silence was opsec for some kind of Illinois National Guard action against the gangs of the worst neighborhoods in the Windy City, having to delay while they got the proper authorizations was not a good sign. How many people in the proper line of command would have to be out of commission for such an action to get no response when it so clearly called for an overwhelming one?

“You were definitely right to come to me in private.” Autumn looked around the tiny room, glad it had been available at this odd hour. “This is not something we want to go spreading around. In fact, right now I’m torn between keep this under our hats until thing sort out and we’d better take this to someone with authority right away, and quite honestly I’m not sure whether I’d rather take it to Security or straight to command.”

Brenda moistened her lips. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. Because I’m not sure who would be the most likely to actually listen, especially since everything I have is hearsay, and I’m not completely sure whether I want to mention that Drew told me, since I sure don’t want to drag him into something that could get him in trouble.”

“Absolutely. Even if we are all members of the Shepard lineage, whether by birth or by marriage, there’s still a limit to how far family can go to cover for each other. But one thing I can do is put out some feelers. I do know some people from my college radio days who are working in the Chicago market. Even if they can’t report on it yet, they may be able to let me know whether there’s any substance to some rumors I’m getting.”

“That’s probably wise at this point. If you can get it through the news grapevine, we don’t have to expose the military one.”

“In which case, there’s not much point of talking any further, especially when both of us have things we need to get done.”