Tag: Autumn Belfontaine

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Narrative

New Reasons to Worry

Autumn Belfontaine had just started sounding out some of her contacts in Engineering, trying to find out who had the strongest background in backup and emergency power generation, when she got a text from Betty Margrave. No explanation, just a request to come by Security.

So here she was, cooling her heels in the reception area. At least she could surf local news websites on her phone while she waited, and not look like she was indulging in nerves. As news director for Shepardsport Pirate Radio, she was just doing her job.

And then her name was called, and now she was inside the office of the Chief of Security. Was it her imagination, or did Betty Margrave look like she’d aged several years in the last few weeks?

Certainly the woman looked exhausted, with dark circles under her eyes. Her hair looked brittle and lifeless, another sign that she was pushing herself to exhaustion.

Does Dr. Thuc realize just how bad off she’s getting? Even as the thought came to Autumn’s mind, she realized Shepardsport’s chief flight surgeon probably had as much work, if not more, down at Medlab.

And there was no time to ponder it, because Betty was talking. “…need to know where this information is coming from. Having rumors running around the place is bad enough when they’re false and we can offer facts to the contrary. But there are just enough facts here that they can be spun into something that can result in panic.”

Autumn’s cheeks warmed with embarrassment as she realized she’d started listening only after Betty had directly referred to whatever rumors she was concerned about. And given the current situation, it could be any of half a dozen things that someone could come across by surfing onto the blog or social media page of someone who knew a little bit about the situation. And there was no way to ask without admitting that her mind had been elsewhere when she should’ve been listening.

Might as well just brazen it out. “Absolutely. That’s why there are a number of subjects that will be covered on-air only after we’ve run it past the appropriate authorities, specifically so we don’t spread rumors or dangerously inaccurate information. Right now a lot of it’s medical, and sometimes the embargo has to last longer than I’d like because Medstaff is so busy right now. But there are some sensitive political items that I always run past command, just in case there are reason Captain Waite needs something kept quiet for some length of time.”

“That’s good.” Betty actually seemed pleased, although her expression remained weary. Maybe she was tired enough that the signs of Autumn’s lapse had slipped right past her. “Especially when we’re looking at the possibility of having to enact much more stringent isolation measures here in Shepardsport, depending on what news we get from Schirrasburg Medlab.”

Autumn’s nerves tingled with alarm. Schirrasburg had had a close call earlier, but that individual had turned out to have an ordinary respiratory illness of the sort that periodically swept through lunar habitats in spite of every space operator’s pre-launch quarantine rules. But if they had a second potential case…

“What kinds of measures would we be talking about?”

“At the moment things are still under discussion, and it doesn’t help that so many of the people at Johnson are indefinitely out of the office.” Read that as sick, likely with the diablovirus, maybe even deceased. “But if there’s any strong reason to believe that any of our people was in contact with the infected individual, we’d be talking about a lot tighter controls on interpersonal contact. We’d definitely have to shut down the dining commons and have all meals sent via deliverybot, although right now that would be difficult for the simple reason that we don’t have enough bots to do it. And we couldn’t have people hanging out together in the lounges of residential modules, or in department offices up in Miskatonic Sector. It’s going to make group study hard, and it’s going to play hobs with our physical fitness program, but this thing is a killer. Not as bad in areas where people have good general health — we’ve known that ever since it started — but still bad enough that it could very easily sweep through a lunar settlement. And unlike dirtside cities, we cannot afford to have a significant number of our critical workers laid up with this thing.”

“Completely agreed. I’ll sound out the reporters and the dj’s, see if one of them is the source of the leak. But to be completely honest, we’ve got a lot of people with ties to Schirrasburg. So it’s completely possible it started with a private e-mail or text message that someone else saw. We may never know for sure where it came from.”

“Well, do what you can. With luck we can avoid having to make an official matter of it.”

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Narrative

Things Fall Apart

Autumn Belfontaine was in the middle of putting together the morning news program when her phone chimed incoming text. She was fully expecting it to be one of her news team, or perhaps someone in one or another department that wanted to submit news.

Instead it was her old friend Dan from her student radio days. Are you where you can talk?

I’m getting ready to go on the air in fifteen minutes. If it’s something you can tell me quick, OK. Otherwise, it may be best to wait until I have some time, and I contact you.

OK. Just wondering if you had any ideas about how to deal with intermittent power. We’re having random rolling blackouts around here, and with all the trouble we’re having getting fuel for our backup generator, we’re having to go off the air if they last too long.

Honestly, I’m not that strong on the engineering side of stuff. However, I’ve got a fairly good rapport with the people in Engineering, so I’m sure I could pick some brains around here.

Thanks. I’ll let you go now. Looks like I’m going to have some more work to do out at the transmitter.

Bye.

As Autumn put her phone back away, she considered the news. She’d heard about places having trouble maintaining electrical generation and distribution, but most of them were in countries where technology had been thin on the ground from the beginning, or in extremely backwoods parts of the US, like some parts of Alaska or remote valleys up in the Rockies or odd places in the Mojave. But while people from the big cities might think of rural Minnesota as the middle of nowhere, it was not exactly the sort of place where civilization was stretched thin.

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Narrative

A Change of Program

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thanks. That makes a lot of sense.”

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Narrative

Keeping On Keeping On

With technical people coming and going pretty much constantly, Autumn Belfontaine was glad that she’d learned early in her broadcast career how to work in chaotic circumstances. Some lines of work, you could count on a nice quiet office to retreat into, but broadcast journalism wasn’t exactly one of them.

At least this set of problems hadn’t disrupted Shepardsport’s connections with Earth. She could still do her usual checks of various TV and radio stations’ websites, searching for patterns of events that someone seemed to be trying to put a cone of silence on at the national and international level.

Not to mention the help that her old colleague Dan was giving her. He seemed to be pretty well plugged into the rumor mill wherever he was, and had picked up some really interesting bits of information. In particular, he’d been a bit of a CB enthusiast long before he decided on radio as a profession, and he still kept a base station at home, albeit only to listen to the truckers on nearby highways.

Autumn had to agree that listening to radio chatter could be interesting — more than a few times she’d gone to websites that allowed a person to listen in on air traffic and space traffic control channels. If nothing else, the jargon was fascinating.

However, Dan’s interest was less in the lingo that had developed over the decades since CB had originally become popular. Instead, he was more interested in what the truckers had to say to one another about travel conditions. These men and women drove thousands of miles every week, crossing the country to deliver critical goods, something that couldn’t be suspended.

Everywhere they were reporting a eerie pall over the cities and towns through which they passed. Stores were closed, even many that should’ve been essential like gas stations and grocery stores. Even where businesses were open, people would keep their distance, as if afraid to get too close to a stranger. Shipments had to be dropped on loading docks and left, and all bills of lading had to be handled in digital format.

The latter was reminiscent of the protocols that had been developed up here to supply the various outlying settlements, especially the small research habitats. The biggest difference was the simple fact that most terresetrial businesses couldn’t just send out a robot to collect what the pilots had dropped off, typically using one of the lander’s robots.

But then again, terrestrial businesses wouldn’t have the additional layer of protection that was provided by the lunar surface environment. If the diablovirus could survive on surfaces, packages dropped off on a loading dock could remain a source of contagion for hours, even days.

Even more concerning was the increasing difficulty truckers were reporting in meeting their basic hygiene needs. Truck stops might be open for them to pump gas, since pay-at-the-pump had been common back when Autumn was still a girl. But more than a few had closed their stores, and with them access to restrooms and showers.

If the truckers were having to resort to makeshift hygiene solutions, how long would it be before those took a toll on their health? Even if they could avoid the diablovirus, getting ill from fecal-borne illnesses or succumbing to skin infections from being unable to shower could take them off the road just as thoroughly. And if too many truckers began falling ill, what would happen to supply chains already strained to the breaking point from the closure of the production facilities?

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Narrative

Above and Below

Autumn Belfontaine had just finished typing out an e-mail on her laptop when her phone chimed incoming text. She looked over, fully expecting to see yet another text from Dan.

Instead, it was Juss. We’ve got a problem at the station.

What a crazy coincidence. But she knew where her priorities had to lie. Hit send on the e-mail, then text Juss to find out what was wrong while she grabbed up her stuff and headed down there.

And here she’d thought she’d actually have a quiet evening for a change. A time to study for an upcoming exam, or to prepare lesson plans for the broadcast standards and practices class she was teaching this session.

Nope, she had just enough technical background that she might actually be able to fix a problem with the equipment, so she was needed down at the station. At least she wasn’t dangerously behind on anything, so it wouldn’t be a disaster, but given how crazy things had been of late around here, she really could’ve used the rest.

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Narrative

Word from an Old Friend

Autumn Belfontaine had just finished copying the files from Steffi Roderick’s USB stick onto her own computer and was about to take a look at the data when her phone chimed incoming text. Surprised, she retrieved the phone, wondering if Steffi had arranged for one of the data analysis people to reach out to her in case she needed help.

Instead, the message was from an old friend from her Radio K days. Dan had been on the Engineering side of stuff rather than an on-air personality, but she’d been interested enough in the technical aspects of radio that they’d talked a lot. As a result, they frequently worked together at remote events. They’d gone their separate ways after graduation, but they’d tried to keep in contact, until their diverging lives led too far away.

From the sound of his message, Dan was still in the radio business, but somewhere in the Southwest, a long way from Minnesota. And he was having some trouble keeping his station running, what with power becoming increasingly intermittent and the difficulties of replacing malfunctioning or damaged equipment.

Doesn’t that last one sound familiar. We’d be in a pile of trouble if Ken Redmond and his people hadn’t gotten so adept at jury-rigging things and fabricating parts when they needed them.

After a moment’s consideration, she wrote back to Dan, telling him that if he could e-mail her a full description of what he was having trouble with, she could talk to some people up here. Even if they couldn’t help directly, at least having some additional ideas was always useful.

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Narrative

Of Resilience and Antifragility

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Narrative

Network Degradation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Narrative

Rumint Isn’t News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Is something wrong?”

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

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

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

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

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Narrative

The Unwinding

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

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

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

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

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

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

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