Tag: Barbie Thuc

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Narrative

Difficult Situations

It’s a good thing we’re still in readiness mode right now, Dr. Barbie Thuc thought as she went through her documents. There’s no way I could deal with the administrative stuff if I were also having to deal with a flood of patients in Medlab’s limited facilities. Which makes it absolutely essential we make sure our quarantine procedures remain rock-solid.

At least Autumn Belfontaine’s question had been easy to deal with. Dr. Thuc had heard some rumint about the Russians making some headway on the genetic front — not surprising, given the huge emphasis the Soviet Union had placed on their secret genetic engineering programs during the Cold War. However, as of now she’d heard nothing about any success in that area.

Best to counsel caution, to suggest that nothing be said publicly until they had information from a source they could rely upon. While maintaining a hopeful attitude was important, raising false hopes could actually do far more harm to morale by ending in a crashing disappointment when they proved unfounded.

Thankfully, Autumn had been in complete agreement. Another person, especially someone with close friends or family back on Earth, might have been more eager to grasp at straws. But Autumn was also a professional news reporter, and had a strong sense of her responsibility to the facts.

On the other hand, Brenda Redmond’s request was not going to be so easy to deal with. Dr. Thuc had to admit her own sympathies in the matter. The e-mail from Brenda’s old high-school friend was alarming. Just reading it left Dr. Thuc with a sense of terror bordering on panic, and the fact that Brenda had received no further contact from Ms. Sandburg was concerning.

However, those facts did not constitute hard evidence that Ms. Sandburg was in danger, to the point that it became licit to seek privacy-covered information about her whereabouts. Not exactly news that Brenda was going to want to hear.

And Brenda had inherited her dad’s scrappy temperament. Just how likely would she be to try to argue her case when told no?

She is the mother of two young children, and the wife of an Air Force officer. If we were dealing with family, there’d be more cause for concern, but I don’t think she’d do anything rash for an old friend she hasn’t spoken with for years.

Still, it would be wise to break the news in person, where she could judge the younger woman’s reaction, rather than via phone or text. And talk to Steffi Roderick down at IT, just in case there were some possibilities she’d overlooked.

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The Peril Grows Closer

Reggie Waite had become accustomed to the daily meetings in Medlab with Dr. Thuc. Sometimes Dr. Doorne would attend and present the latest prognostications of her statistical team, but she did not attend unless she had something new. Not surprising, given that statistical modeling was at best her third specialty, after radio astronomy and signals processing. She had a lot on her plate, especially for a woman with a young child, who’d come to motherhood later in life.

But the meat of their discussion was always the information Barbie Thuc was getting both through NASA and through her various medical sources, both official and unofficial. Again and again their discussion would go back to the curious gaps between the official and unofficial sources, the lacunae in the official accounts.

“They’re trying to keep it quiet, but we’ve had a really close call.” Dr. Thuc’s voice was calm and professional as always, but Reggie knew her well enough to pick up that hint of tension.

“What happened?”

“Apparently one of the tour companies had a client come down sick with this thing, they’re taking to calling it the diablovirus because those two big protein structures resemble a devil’s horns.” Dr. Thuc inclined her head toward the scanning electron micrograph that had become so familiar in these past weeks. “Just someone who was beginning training for spaceflight, not anyone who was set up for a flight. But they’re concerned enough about the possibility of contagion via their own staff that they’ve suspended all their flights for the next month, even the people who are in pre-flight quarantine.”

Reggie could imagine the consternation among those wealthy tourist types, discovering that the vacation they’d spent the last year or two training for was going to be delayed, perhaps indefinitely. But there could be no question of taking the risk, not when lunar settlements were places where a disease would spread like wildfire. Even the common cold, which could never be eradicated for the simple reason that the immune system needed something to keep it busy or it got into trouble, had a tendency to sweep through whole habitats every time it mutated enough that people’s antibodies no longer reacted to it.

“Damn. This mess is making me think of a book I read when I was a kid.” Reggie closed his eyes and could see the red-bound volume in the library at Witchcraft Heights Elementary School, the illustrations within it. “The family was on its way to Mars — it was one of the books that really started my excitement about space, back when America’s cloning program was still a burn-before-reading Cold War secret — and there’d been some kind of problem with the spaceship’s reactor. All the passengers had to huddle in this shelter that was a storeroom at the far end of the ship while the crew took care of the problem. There were these special lights that would turn red in the presence of radiation, and there was a whole row of them in the corridor outside of the shelter. One by one each turns red, and everyone’s starting to watch the one inside their shelter. And then, just as the last one outside is turning red, there’s an announcement that the reactor has been repaired, and the crew is coming to sweep the area of radiation.”

He paused, trying to get his mind back in the headspace of a youngster reading a book that must’ve come out in the 50’s, before the launch of Sputnik, when a lot was believable which had now become so encrusted in Zeerust that it was well-nigh impossible to suspend disbelief. “Of course the description of how radiation works was completely ridiculous, but for me as a kid, it was so scary, and then such a relief when the crewmen in their protective suits showed up with their radiation vacuum cleaners and the lamps stopped glowing read. I loved that book so much I must’ve checked it out and re-read it a dozen times before I left for junior high. And then I’ve never been able to find it again. When my brother Chris was going to school there, we went to parents’ night one time and I slipped into the library to look for it, but I couldn’t find it. And the title never stuck with. me, so I haven’t been able to look it up online, so I’m not even sure if it actually existed, or I’m confusing multiple books into one.”

Dr. Thuc gave him a sympathetic nod on that one. “Isn’t it interesting, how the strangest things will stick with us.”

Just as Reggie was about to say let’s hope this business doesn’t end up being one of them when his phone’s messenger app chimed. He pulled out his phone, and on the lock screen was a notification from his wife: We’ve got a major problem donw here.

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Tete a Tete

Normally Reggie Waite preferred to call his department heads to his office for conferences. Having to come to one’s superior’s bidding and to stand within a space that was clearly his territory had certain desirable psychological effects on those who reported to him.

However, today he needed certain information which, in accordance with Federal privacy mandates, had to remain on certain secured computers. And those computers couldn’t simply be broken down and brought from Medlab to the commandant’s office.

So here Reggie was in Medlab, listening as Dr. Thuc went over an enormous amount of very technical medical information, mostly from the Glorianna, but also from two additional cruise ships that were reporting a fast-spreading illness. Although none of this material seemed to have actual patient names or other obvious identifying information, even this superficially anonymized data contained just enough personal information that sophisticated computers could correlate it to identify individuals, hence the security restrictions.

It made him recall Lovecraft’s words about the inability of the human mind to correlate its contents. Of course Lovecraft was talking about the little glimpses of horrors beyond comprehension, the evidence that humanity was not the first intelligent species to tread the Earth and likely would not be the last, and that far from being the crown of creation, humanity was in fact a very small fish in a very large pond. But it was a good point about how the mind didn’t really appreciate the significance of disparate data points and how modern computing technology could assemble them into a data-portrait of an identifiable individual.

However, what was important right now was the general data landscape created by the data in the aggregate. Of course there were still a lot of uncertainties, given that people got off and got on at various ports of call, and it was not always the same individuals. A lot of the turnover was crew, but these kinds of cruise ships did not run a simple closed-ended trip where everyone embarked at the beginning and disembarked at the end. Instead, they had open-ended cruises built from multiple legs between ports of call, and passengers could buy any number of those legs. It was common for this population of travelers to piece together an extended vacation by flying to one location, then traveling overland, say on a historic train like the Orient Express, then join a cruise at a nearby port of call and visit several other ports before getting off to either go home or continue their travels by other means.

Even with the level of uncertainty, he could see why Barbie Thuc was alarmed enough that she’d want to talk to him. This thing was nasty, and it spread like wildfire once it got into an enclosed space with a crowded population that had limited opportunities for going elsewhere.

Like a spacecraft or a lunar settlement. “However, we should have some degree of protection from the simple fact of distance. It takes three days to get from Earth to the Moon.”

“True, Captain.” It was a mark of the gravity of the situation that Dr. Thuc should switch to his Navy title when they were usually on a first-name basis. “And the risk of spreading disease in the space environment is why all space travelers undergo a fourteen-day quarantine. However, if we look closely at the quarantine process, it’s astonishingly loose, and almost entirely on the honor system. We both know how many astronauts, from the beginnings of the US space program to the present, have seen it as a challenge to slip out undetected for various excursions, typically to eateries and nightspots.”

Reggie’s cheeks grew warm as he remembered some of his own pre-flight extracurricular activities. “And who knows how well the space tourism companies supervise their clients’ quarantine periods. Most of them probably rely on the fact that these people have plunked down a cool million or two for their tour package, including pre-flight training, and will forfeit it if they’re booted for cause. But a lot of the super-wealthy get used to having money insulate them from the consequences of their actions, and let’s face it, a lot of the personnel in those companies aren’t paid so well that they’d laugh off a six- or seven-figure bribe to look the other way.”

“Which means we are going to have to think seriously about not only how this disease will affect our supply lines from Earth, but also what we are going to do to limit our own exposure and that of the smaller habitats that depend on us, once the inevitable happens and someone brings it to the Moon. Maybe someone who slips off the night before launch and doesn’t show symptoms until they’re in Grissom City.”

“Which is everyone’s nightmare.” Reggie pulled out his phone, began texting Betty Margrave. “I think it’s time time to get Safety and Security onboard with this.”

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Just a Friendly Warning

Being the daughter of the settlement’s Chief of Engineering had its perks, but there were also times when it could be difficult. Like when he takes you aside for a “little talk.”

Brenda tried not to avoid her father’s gaze. “Honest, I was just making conversation with Sprue yesterday evening. Especially since we both work at the radio station, I couldn’t exactly ignore him.”

Ken Redmond gave a curt little nod. “We’ve talked about the importance of discretion in your line of work.”

“Dad, please, I know all that.” Brenda hoped she wasn’t coming across as a whiny little kid, but she just wished he’d let it go. Quite honestly, there wasn’t that much she could’ve told Sprue. She was vaguely aware that the news department was seeing a lot of stuff that wasn’t getting passed to the DJ’s, and at least some of it was getting passed up from Medlab. She’d overheard Autumn Belfontaine talking with Dr. Thuc, and that halfalogue did not sound like someone receiving good news.

But how could she tell him without looking like she was telling him gossip? Or worse, looking self-serving?

Maybe it was just as well to promise to be more careful in the future — and to watch and listen a little more closely to what was going on in the news department. Sprue was right — whatever this business was, it was big, and someone was very interested in keeping a lid on it.

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A Meeting of Import

Autumn Belfontaine didn’t know when she’d gotten into the habit of counting the airlocks as she went from one part of Shepardsport to another. However, it had become a useful way of marking her own progress on any journey of significant distance. Go from one sector to another and you went through an airlock. Go between modules within a sector and you went through more airlocks.

From the radio station offices to the commandant’s office was eight airlocks. Since there was no need to wait for pressure to equalize, it didn’t take all that long to go through them, but there’d been trouble with people overriding the safety interlocks to get through faster, never mind it defeated the purpose of having the settlement modularized.

She arrived to find Captain Waite already in conference with Dr. Thuc, Shepardsport’s Chief Flight Surgeon. From the sound of it, telling the kids to keep a lid on it had been the right thing to do.

As a civilian, Autumn didn’t have to formally report to the commandant upon arrival as pilots did. All the same, the various courtesies helped to smooth the difficulties of life in such close quarters.

Reggie gestured for her to take the other seat. “We’ve got a problem on our hands.” He turned to Dr. Thuc. “Barbie?”

“I’ve just received alerts from both Jerusalem and Tokyo about an emergent disease in multiple places in Central and South Central Asia. I’ve queried Star City, and they’re telling me they’re waiting for a report from Academician Voronsky before making any definite announcement.”

A sudden chill gripped Autumn. Nikolai Voronsky was the Russian Empire’s foremost expert in genetic engineering, having learned from his adoptive father, the notorious Vladilen Voronsky. If Star City was getting him involved…

Autumn forced her mind to stay focused, professional, remember what she’d learned about contagious diseases from reporting on that nasty flu during her first full-time job. “What kind of figures are we looking at?”

“Right now information’s pretty spotty. Hardly surprising when a lot of those areas are still held by die-hard fanatics, and the ones that aren’t have governments notorious for corruption and misinformation. But even in the absence of hard data, the anecdotal reports are concerning, in particular the ones of whole villages empty, the goats and chickens wandering freely.”

“That’s not good.” Autumn tried to remember any mention of such things on the news wires. “Why haven’t we heard anything about this until now?”

“Actually, there has been a fair amount of discussion over the past few weeks, if you’ve been following the medical blogs.” Dr. Thuc’s expression darkened. “That’s where I got the stories about abandoned mountain villages. Why none of the official sources have been mentioning these things is hard to say. The local governments may well be covering it up rather than look weak. It may not be considered newsworthy elsewhere, or there may have been a decision to keep quiet rather than risk panic.”

“Understood.” Autumn recalled a journalism ethics class. “The ’76 Swine Flu outbreak was before my time, but we still study the effects of careless reporting on the reaction to it.”

She paused, considering not just the information she’d been given, but the spaces between. “If this is going to be something serious, why isn’t the head of Safety and Security here?”

Reggie jumped in to answer that. “Right now she’s dealing with a problem down in the port facility. As soon as that’s dealt with, we’ll be briefing her. But right now, we need to work out a plan for how we’re going to release information on this situation, so you can lay it out to the rest of the station personnel.”

Autumn fought down an urge to bristle. No, there was no criticism of the professionalism of the DJ’s, just the need to make sure they had a coordinated approach. “Completely understood. The worst thing we can have is contradictory information coming out of different sources. Once people start wondering who’s lying, they lose trust in all sources.”