Tag: Brenda Redmond

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Narrative

When the Music Stops

Lou Corlin wondered whether he should ask Brenda whether the information had been useful. If he’d erred in his choice of files, he’d really want to know so he could put the matter to rights. At the same time, he knew that she might not be completely comfortable about discussing it, especially since he had gone to some sketchy websites to get those files.

Maybe it would be better if he just let her take the lead. He might be able to drop a hint or two about the matter, but pushing would be most definitely unwise right now.

When he arrived at the station to begin his air shift, the first thing he noticed was Spruance Del Curtin talking with the program director. Lou’s first thought was what did Sprue do this time? Even as the thought came to him, he knew that such a conversation would not take place just outside the door to the program director’s office. No, this was a more neutral conversation.

All the same, it would be bad form to show any interest in it. Best to keep his eyes front and walk purposefully past the station offices and into the studio areas.

Brenda was on the air with a listener right now. From the speed of the back-and-forth, that person was somewhere up here on the Moon, not down on Earth.

Not surprising, if Earth is as bad off as things are sounding.

As the implication hit, Lou stiffened and cast an awkward look around. He’d been in his teens when the Expulsions hit, so he’d been old enough to have made some friends at school who weren’t from the NASA clone creche.

And I never really tried to keep in contact with them after I came up here.

He’d told himself that he really wasn’t all that close with those kids, and a lot of them had parents who weren’t really comfortable with their children being close friends with astronaut clones. So it had been easy to drift apart once he was up here, busy getting oriented and up to speed.

But now he was wondering what had happened to some of those kids. Even if they hadn’t been close enough to borrow stuff from, they’d at least been friendly enough to give him the time of day. And he hadn’t even thought about what might be happening to them back in Houston.

On the air, Brenda was winding up her conversation with the caller. Of course she would need to — it was rapidly getting close to time for her to prepare the next set so they could hand off without creating any dead air.

Now that the ON AIR light had gone off, he needed to put aside his curiosity as to the situation on Earth, with people he’d lost contact with years ago. Right now he needed to concentrate on his professional duties as a DJ.

Brenda stepped out of the DJ booth, greeted him and began the standard rundown of where everything stood at the end of her show. And then, as she was about to hand it off to him, she leaned over to whisper into his ear, “I gave Autumn a copy of the files. I want her to look over them before I try to send them to Drew.”

Although it caught Lou by surprise, he was able to maintain enough control over his expression that he didn’t show it. He just gave her a quick nod as he acknowledged the hand-over.

Yet as he closed the door of the DJ booth behind him, her words still nagged at him. Of course Autumn would understand about protecting sources — she might not have even asked Brenda where or how she’d come about those files. But depending on how far Autumn took it, there would be a possibility that they would end up in the hands of someone who had the necessary expertise to track them back to him.

No use worrying about it. He had a show to run, and the seconds were ticking down to when he needed to do his first station identification.

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Narrative

High Anxiety

Brenda Redmond wasn’t sure whether she felt better or worse after giving the news director a copy of Lou’s little treasure trove of information. She’d been careful not to leave anything on it that could trace it back to Lou, so she shouldn’t be putting him at risk. On the other hand, Lou had gotten it specifically because Drew was wanting the information, not so she could pass it around.

Except giving Autumn Belfontaine a copy wasn’t exactly “passing it around.” Autumn was a professional, and part of being a reporter was knowing when to be discreet. She’d even commented on the issue of needing to protect one’s sources, which made it plain she recognized the issue.

For that matter, maybe Autumn could give her some pointers on how to get it to Drew without attracting attention. Right now she could certainly use some advice, since her ever-so-carefully worded hints had apparently zoomed right past him.

Today the kids were eating lunch with their classes. Normally she would’ve been happy not to have to keep them corralled in the dining commons, but right now she really could’ve used the distraction to get her mind off her worries.

Maybe she could meet up with a colleague or two, talk shop…

And then she saw Cindy Margrave, looking very alone and very worried. Sometimes lending a listening ear to someone with worse problems helped take your mind off your own.

“Want some company?”

Cindy gestured toward the seat beside her. “Go ahead. I don’t know why everybody’s decided I’m toxic all of a sudden. I mean, sure I’ve got Constitution test coming up, but it’s not like I’m going to jinx everyone else.”

Brenda quick suppressed the urge to laugh at the notion. Until Cindy could laugh at her own fears, it would sound too much like ridicule. “I know, it’s scary because it’s make or break. They’re always warning you that you have to pass to graduate, but it’s not nearly as hard as they make it sound.”

“That’s what everybody tells us, but Colonel Hearne gives us really tough quizzes.”

Brenda leaned over to Cindy and kept her voice low. “I’ll let you in on a secret. The actual test you have to pass is standardized, from the state department of education. That means it’s going to cover the basics, not whatever esoteric matters of interpretation. They’re trying to measure our ability to be good citizens, not constitutional lawyers.”

That was just absurd enough to get a laugh. Not a nervous giggle, but an actual laugh. “I sure hope you’re right.”

“Actually, your biggest danger is going to be trying to overthink the questions, especially if you’re used to having to watch out for traps. If it’s the same test I took, all the questions are straightforward. Use your common sense and you’ll do fine.”

Seeing Cindy’s relief, Brenda guided the conversation to more neutral topics.

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Narrative

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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Narrative

Dirty Little Secrets

Brenda turned the USB stick over and over in her hand, trying to decide whether she wanted to go through with this. On one hand, Lou Corlin had put himself at significant risk to go poking around some of those places he was talking about. On the other, if his skills at checking and cleaning those files wasn’t as good as he thought they were, she could manage to corrupt her entire laptop, perhaps even any networks it might be connected with.

It would be so much simpler if she had a spare computer with no network connections at all. A computer she could take chances with, without risking all her data, or even other computers here in Shepardsport.

But she wasn’t in a position to have that kind of luxury. Things had been tight up here ever since the Expulsions, which meant there was no such thing as surplussed equipment. You kept things running until they wore out, and then you sent them back to IT to be used in repairing other computers.

On the other hand, Lou did know what he was doing, and he was meticulous about getting the job done right. And if he’d been prowling around the dark side of the ‘Net, he had taken a pretty serious risk on her behalf. To refuse to look at what he’d dug up would be to disrespect his effort.

However, it didn’t mean she needed to take stupid chances. Carefully sitting Lou’s USB stick where she wouldn’t lose track of it, she retrieved one of her own and made a backup of everything on her laptop.

Only when she knew that all her data was backed up and the backup USB stick safely back in her bag did she finally mount Lou’s USB stick on her desktop. As she began to look through the folders, all neatly organized, she realized just how far Lou had gone for her.

Someone, somewhere, had gotten into a bunch of Chicago Police Department databases and dumped it somewhere on the darknet. Some of this stuff was video straight from cop dash cams and body cams. There was no way in heck any law enforcement agency would ever allow it out in the wild uncut like this.

Not to mention the 911 audio files and transcripts. Some of them could easily have serious privacy issues, depending on exactly what was on them. However, she was pretty confident that she was looking at the facts behind the rumor Drew had heard about warlords in the sketchier parts of the south side of Chicago.

And that was just the first few folders she’d gone through. If she was right, at least some of it would relate to the situation over at Schirrasburg.

Which meant she now had the problem of figuring out how to get this material to Drew without raising questions for which there could be no acceptable answers. A direct handoff would be ideal — but could she figure out a way to pass a physical object to Drew, given the quarantine measures that separated pilots from their families even during so-called personal visits?

First she needed to contact him, and carefully drop the hints that she had some seriously hot information. Then they could work out the particulars.

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Narrative

An Awkward Discussion

Although Lou Corlin didn’t really feel comfortable about what he was doing, he felt a level of obligation toward Brenda Redmond which wouldn’t let him give up after the easy routes were exhausted. All the same, the USB stick in his pocket had a weight far beyond its mass.

He wasn’t sure if the walk to Brenda’s apartment would’ve been easier or harder if the corridors had been busy. On one hand, being alone made it easier to dwell on his uneasiness. On the other, he didn’t have to worry about his discomfort being so obvious to everyone else that they wondered what he was up to.

When he got through the airlock into Brenda’s module, she was sitting by the far wall, supervising her children while doing something on a laptop. Lou paused, taking the measure of the situation.

Finally Brenda looked up, met his gaze. Yes, she could spare the time to speak to him.

Why did he feel the need to tiptoe across the module lounge? By conscious will he forced himself to walk normally, the light, bouncy stride of someone accustomed to lunar gravity and comfortable with it.

Brenda kept her voice low. “This is a surprise.”

“Sorry, but some of this stuff is rather sensitive. It’s not exactly the sort of thing you want to talk about in a phone call or a text.”

Yes, Brenda understood. “Give me a minute to get the kids to bed.”

Lou took a seat while Brenda led her children back to their apartment. He’d been here long enough to remember when Brenda was very much the teenage daughter of the Chief Engineer, still not very sure about the idea of being whisked away from her high-school friends in Houston for life up here on the High Frontier.

But then we’ve all done a lot of fast growing up these past few years. If things had gone normally, we’d just be starting to assume adult roles by now. And even when you’re taking an engineering degree and doing ROTC, college isn’t quite the same as actually being out in the working world.

And then Brenda was back, taking a seat close enough they could keep their voices low enough that the ventilation fans would mask their voices, but not so close that anyone running the video tapes would think they were cooking up a fling — and in a public area, anyone with suitable authority could access them. “So what is it?”

“You know what I mean when I talk about darkboards?”

Definite recognition in her expression, mixed with a little alarm. “Aren’t they dangerous?”

“They can be, if you’re not careful. Some of them are a good way to pick up a nasty virus on your computer. But they can also be a good place to find information the government doesn’t want people knowing. And IT does have the tools to sequester data while you’re making sure that it’s clean.”

He was glad he’d taken the opportunity to get the USB stick out of his pocket while he was waiting. There was a trick to pulling out something innocuous at the same time, then palming what you didn’t want seen. Now he just had to pass it to Brenda without being obvious.

She must’ve had classmates who passed notes in class, because she handled it with the deftness of an expert. Lou had never pegged her as someone who’d get into that sort of thing. Given her dour father, he would’ve expected her to be the sort of straight-arrow everyone always thought his geneset was.

Now that the hand-off was done, he couldn’t very well take off right away. Better to carry on a little small talk, keeping their voices down as if it were just out of consideration for the hour. Once they’d made this meeting completely unremarkable, he could head off to his own quarters for the night.

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Narrative

A Follow-Up

For the last several days Drew’s e-mails and texts had been brief to the point of curtness. Brenda had resolved not to take their shortness as a personal slight. Given the situation, he probably had a lot more stuff on his plate than she did, and right now she had a heck of a lot.

So she was surprised when her phone chimed incoming text, and not only was it from Drew, but it was also long enough that only the first two lines were displayed on the lock screen. Just wondering whether you’d had a chance to find out anything about….

Which was just enough that she had to swipe to open, and everything else could just wait.

Just wondering whether you’d had a chance to find out anything about what’s going on down at Schirrasburg. We’re getting a new round of rumors around here.

Brenda moistened her lip, considered whether to tell her husband about her and Lou’s abortive efforts. Might as well give him the gist, but leave out some of the awkward details. A friend and I took a look at Schirrasburg’s Internet activity. We were hoping we might be able to find out something, but everything’s encrypted super-tight. The only thing we do know is that the patterns of data transfer are atypical for them.

Not surprising. These days, most everything goes over encrypted connections, even if it’s not actually confidential material, just to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.

We’ve talked about that at the station. Especially with the political situation, it’s completely plausible that someone would create a fake radio station and redirect traffic to them.

When Drew didn’t respond, she wondered if he was trying to decide how to respond without casting shade on the Commander-in-Chief. Maybe better shift the conversation away from the awkward area.

So what are you hearing over there? Or can you tell me?

Don’t spread it around, but we’re hearing that it was diablovirus, and it went through the whole settlement in spite of their going on strict lockdown. Everybody confined to quarters, everything delivered by robot, no interpersonal contact at all.

Brenda considered that information. Of course if it was just a rumor, it might not indicate anything at all. But if there were facts under it…

How well is the air filtered over there? If there are straight-line connections between rooms in the HVAC ducts, confining everyone to quarters wouldn’t make any difference, especially if the virus is airborne. The life-support systems would just blow it right from one room to another.

You’d have to ask Engineering, and right now communications are official channels only. But from the times I’ve visited there, they have the standard modularized design, so it’s not like they’ve got the air blowing through the whole settlement. But if there’s not filters at every room, I could see how a virus could blow from one apartment to another in a residential module. Which does not bode well if the rumor is true that nothing would stop it until it burned itself out.

Brenda shivered as if caught in a sudden breeze. It took a moment to get her hands to stop trembling so she could type.

No wonder they’re keeping such a firm lid on it. No way do you want to have that kind of thing circulating.

She started to write more, then thought better of it and backspaced, then started again. Maybe we’d better wind this conversation up.

Probably. I still have a report I need to write, and it’s not getting any earlier. Take care, and keep your eyes and ears open.

Will do. Brenda closed her messenger app, intending to get back to the work she was supposed to be doing. Five minutes later she realized she was still sitting and stewing.

By conscious effort of will she put away her phone and turned her attention back to her laptop.

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Narrative

An Obstacle

Sometimes two heads really were better than one. In spite of all her efforts, Brenda Redmond had been getting nowhere with Drew’s request to find out something about the situation in Schirrasburg, even after he’d followed up. Much as she hated to tell him she had hit a wall, she was coming to realize that she was avoiding texting him because she didn’t want to have to admit it. And there was no way to have a conversation without the subject coming up, and once it did, no way to talk around the issue without it being obvious that she was dodging it.

And then Lou had seen her slipping into the newsroom to check their computers while everyone else was away. There’d been no way to evade the question without being rude, and the DJ’s were supposed to be a team.

So here she was down in IT with Lou, doing some searches on web traffic. It wasn’t exactly hacking, but it was just enough of a gray area she was surprised he’d be delving into it. So far most of what they were seeing was routine stuff, completely unremarkable data transfers. A lot of personal e-mail and texts going back and forth, a lot of web searches, all private stuff that they couldn’t look at, but strongly suggesting a community of people confined to quarters when not working on survival-essential activities, trying to distract themselves from their worries.

However, there did seem to be a fair amount of traffic on some official channels. Given the sudden spike in the data, it looked like they were probably sending files back and forth.

“Which could mean any of a number of things,” Lou averred. “We can only see what’s changing, not what’s in in the files that are going back and forth.”

“But there’s definitely something going on. And you’re pretty sure it started about the same time as the rumors about someone with the diablovirus at Schirrasburg.”

“Roughly. It’s hard to pin a date on the basis of a rumor, but I think we can be confident that things are most definitely not normal at Schirrasburg. However, it’s still not enough information to say for definite whether it involves a patient with the diablovirus, let alone whether any such individual has recovered or died from it.”

Lou was about to say more when a youthful voice called out, “Oooh-la-la.”

Brenda looked up just as a teenage Shep walked in, lips curled upward in a grin of amusement. As she realized what he was assuming, her cheeks grew warm.

However, Lou’s expression showed no embarrassment, only anger. He leaped out of his chair and across the distance, grabbing the young Shep by the shirt and slamming him up against the wall. “You’d better watch your mouth, buddy.”

The Shep squirmed in a desperate struggle to break Lou’s hold. Once the kid got his full growth, he’d tower over a Chaffee, but Sheps were always smaller than normal when they were younger. Drew had talked about being one of the shortest kids in his class all the way until he got into high school and finally got those last couple of growth spurts. Even then, he didn’t fill out until he was in his mid-twenties, never mind doing a regular astronaut workout every day after he got shipped up here.

The kid was babbling something about not meaning any harm, and it just being a joke. However, Lou wasn’t having any of it.

“You know as well as I do that Brenda’s dad is a Grissom. That makes her family, so you’d better not be going around insinuating that she and I are doing something disgusting together. Or do you want me to get him involved, especially considering you work in Engineering too?”

Now the kid knew he’d gotten in way over his head. He was fighting the urge to blubber in fear, but his eyes were still wide enough the whites were showing top and bottom, more than even a Shep’s naturally buggy eyes.

Another man might’ve humiliated him, made him beg and plead to be set free. But Lou just let him go and pointed toward the corridor leading back out. “Now get out of here. And don’t let me find out you’ve been going around blabbing.”

The kid just nodded, then fled. Lou brushed his hands off, then returned to the computer. “Now that’s settled, let’s get back to work.”

Let’s just hope it really is settled. Brenda knew how hyper-competitive Sheps could be, and how vindictive. She really didn’t want to see this incident rebounding back on Lou, especially when he was just trying to help her answer a question.

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Narrative

A Much-Welcome Connection

Brenda Redmond had just gotten to the dining commons and was looking for a table for herself and her children when her phone chimed a text alert. She reached for her phone, then checked herself. No, right now she needed to get the children settled in for their meal. The last thing she needed was for them to get bored while she was looking at her phone and go running all over the place.

Tonight seemed to be unusually busy. Some days she’d welcome sitting with friends, but right now she really wanted to find a table where she and the kids were by themselves. Especially if that text were important, she wanted to be able to take care of it right away.

Technically, you weren’t supposed to be texting in the dining hall unless it was an emergency. But right now there was a lot more gray area around the definition of “emergency,” and people tended to assume you were following the rules unless you were being an ass about it.

And the beginning of the text would come up on the lock screen when she woke it to scan the QR code at her seat to sign in. Which meant she was more than a little surprised to see that it had come from Drew. Wanting to know if she knew about something, from what she could see.

As soon as she had the kids settled in at their places and there was nothing to do but wait for the serverbot to deliver their meals, she pulled the text up.

Wondering if you’ve heard anything new about the situation at Schirrasburg. We’ve got rumors going around here that either the guy recovered and never had the diablovirus at all, or that he died but it’s being kept secret to prevent panic.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I haven’t heard much of anything. Command and senior staff’s really been stepping on gossip hard lately, and to be honest, I can’t blame them. Especially how young this community trends, we can’t let people’s fears run wild.

Understood. I was just hoping you might’ve come across some information at the station.

The news department’s been a lot more careful about information of late. Autumn’s told all the reporters that they are to watch their mouths, and what they read in the newsroom is suppose to stay in the newsroom unless she gives them the go-ahead.

Probably a wise idea. But it’d help if you could keep an eye out and let me know if you see anything about it.

I’ll try, but I can’t promise anything.

Brenda would’ve said more, but the serverbot had just arrived, and it was time to eat and free up the seats for someone else.

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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

Keeping Mum

All the previous day, Brenda Redmond had waited, wondering when she’d hear anything further from Autumn Belfontaine, but not wanting to ask. As alarmed as Autumn had been about Drew’s news, it did not sound like a good idea to say or do anything that might draw attention to their private meeting.

Equally, she wasn’t sure if it was wise to try to contact Drew to find out if he’d learned anything further. The more she thought about it, the more she could see that satisfying her curiosity wasn’t worth the risk. Especially given that he was stationed over at Slayton Field, and Grissom City was under the command of a man who regarded Captain Waite as being out of line.

The worst problem was how the kids picked up on her tension. She was trying to act as if everything was completely ordinary — as if there’d been such a thing as an ordinary day since this whole mess started — but they’d kept peppering her with a bazillion questions. Not quite what’s going on? but stuff like when they’d get to see Daddy again and why couldn’t they pull up their favorite TV program any more, all stuff they’d asked dozens of times.The answers weren’t changing, and she knew that they weren’t getting any more satisfying for children so young that next week was an eternity away.

Just getting them to bed and quiet had been hard enough that she was exhausted by the time she got to sleep. At least they slept through the night, so she didn’t have to go through endless repetitions of the process.

But all the same, she was glad now that she had dropped them off at their classes and gotten to work. Being a DJ was a high-energy job, but at least it was an adult job, which involved talking to grown-ups at a grown-up level.

And in her case, there was also the chance that Autumn might just have some new information for her. Except she couldn’t be too obvious about hoping. Even when Autumn came in to deliver the morning news reports, Brenda had to act as if everything were normal and unremarkable.

Midway through her air shift, Brenda put up a long set so she could get out for a little stretch. As she was walking down the corridor past the station offices, she heard the programming director talking on the phone. “…can bring it by any time. As long as we’re broadcasting on the location rig, we should be able to install and test without any disruption.”

Dad’s got the new main board finished. It’ll be so good to have it back again.

Except she also knew she couldn’t let on that she had overheard. Heck, she’d probably better show some surprise if her father came over here to supervise the installation.