Tag: Brenda Redmond

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Narrative

Closer to the Heart

The module lounge was quiet this evening, which suited Lou Corlin just fine. Normally he would call Emiko, maybe even FaceTime if they both felt up to it. But with Shepardsport’s data connections with the rest of the universe being in disarray, that wasn’t going to be possible.

Earlier today they’d been texting back and forth. Now even SMS was bouncing, which suggested that the problem had becoming worse.

His phone chimed mail. A quick check of his mail revealed several new messages, including one from Emiko.

When he opened it, he realized from the context that she must’ve sent it several hours earlier. Which meant it had taken this long for the store-and-forward mailservers to get it from Grissom City to Shepardsport.

At least everything she had to say was routine, the usual work, training, and teaching responsibility. Given what was happening down on Earth, and the fact that Slayton Field was the Moon’s busiest port of entry, it was hard not to fear the worst when he didn’t hear from her at all.

A sound from behind him attracted his attention, and he looked up to find Brenda Redmond giving him a worried look. “Hi, Lou. You mind if I join you?”

Lou was about to balk, then remembered that Brenda’s husband was also over at Grissom City. As a pilot-astronaut, he’d be living in the Roosa Barracks, right where everyone was coming and going.

Lou moved the bag with his laptop and graphics tablet to free some space on the sofa. “Go right ahead. We’re both in the same fix right now. I just got the e-mail that Emiko sent me about four hours ago.”

“At least you got it.” Brenda paused, as if considering what to say next. “About ten minutes ago, I got an e-mail from Drew, but when I tried to pull it up, the mail app said the message had no content.”

“Strange.” Lou considered the information, wished he knew a lot more about e-mail protocols. Almost all his work for IT had been with the big number-crunchers the science departments used. “Maybe we’d better check it out, especially if it would help get a handle on whatever’s blocking our connections with Earth. I can ask some of the people I know down in IT from my work there.”

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Narrative

Pondering the Implications

When Lou Corlin arrived at the station to start his air shift, he was surprised to see half a dozen people from IT in the offices, their laptops connected to the station computers via Ethernet cable. He hadn’t noticed any problems with the stream when his alarm went off.

One of the IT people was talking to Cindy, so asking her what was going on wasn’t an option. And all the other IT people looked far too busy to interrupt.

Nothing to do at this point but focus on doing his own job. Back in the creche you learned that principle early, from plenty of examples out of the history of America’s early space program.

And his job was to get ready to do his air shift, and then DJ the Rising Sun J-Pop Show to the best of his ability. Not a difficult task, but one in which mistakes could have definite consequences. All the DJ’s had taken their drubbings for leaving dead air because they hadn’t adequately planned their lineup for a moment away from the broadcast booth.

While he was waiting for Brenda Redmond to emerge from the DJ booth, Lou listened to the livestream playing on the stereo behind the receptionist’s desk. The audio quality on “Blackbird” sounded fine, including the blackbird singing.

However, it wouldn’t be as good an indicator of transmission quality as it would be on a station that was transmitting via actual radio waves. With Internet radio streaming, it just meant that the stereo was getting a good feed from the streaming server, which meant only two or three routers to hop. There simply wasn’t any good way for an Internet radio station to be sure how its stream was propagating over the millions of routers across the Earth-Moon system.

And then the door opened and out stepped Brenda, looking worried. “Good morning, Lou. I see you’ve noticed the IT people up here. I don’t know if you’ve been on the Web any this morning, but Shepardsport seems to be having trouble communicating with the rest of the Internet this morning.”

Lou realized his mind was beginning to race with alarm and quickly curbed it. “What kind of problems?”

“That’s what IT’s trying to figure out right now. Stephanie Roderick thought it was a DDOS attack, but now she’s saying there’s no sign of net traffic overage. At the moment, all we can do is keep broadcasting for the local audience and hope IT doesn’t have to reboot all the servers and routers.”

“Now that would be a major piece of downtime.” Lou looked over Brenda’s air-shift notes, checking for anything he should be aware of.

Then it was time to take over the DJ booth and line up his first set of the day. As he prepared to deliver the top-of-the-hour station identification, he wondered if this were some new kind of cyber attack. They’d weathered several DDOS attacks before, until IT had put in new software to foil the software that turned improperly secured comptuers into “zombie machines” sending spurrious requests to the target servers. But information security was always an arms race between the hackers and the sysops.

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Narrative

Seeking Connection

It’s really sad when you’re listening to a disreputable Internet radio station just to hear your wife’s voice in one of the canned announcements. Drew Reinholt fiddled with his vTuner settings yet again, hoping yet again that it would connect with the Shepardsport Pirate Radio livestream. And it’s even sadder when you can’t.

Strictly speaking, there was no prohibition on the Slayton Field pilots listening to Shepardsport Pirate Radio, even in their offices when they were at work on their secondary astronaut specialties. But then Colonel Dyer knew better than give an order he knew would not be obeyed.

He pulled up the computer’s terminal and began doing some basic network tests. Although Drew wasn’t an IT specialist, or even an electrical engineer, he’d learned some basic network troubleshooting techniques over the years, especially back in the days when he was roaming the lunar surface with Dr. Schwartz.

He was able to ping the server, but only intermittently, which suggested that something was interfering with the transmission of packets. If there had been physical damage to the cables that ran alongside the ice train’s tracks, down to Coopersville and back north on Farside, it should’ve resulted in every IP address associated with Shepardsport simply disappearing from the Internet.

He recalled a long-ago leadership lecture about “rewarding intermittently” as a means of motivation. If someone were deliberately sabotaging Shepardsport’s connectivity, say with some kind of malware, might they allow just enough packets to go through to keep people trying to get through? Drew could think of several possible ways to create such an effect, although he knew he couldn’t describe them in sufficient detail to get IT to pay attention to him.

A tap on the door of his office brought him out of his ruminations. Drew looked up from his computer to find Peter Caudell standing there. “Hey, Drew, I know you’ve got family over at Shepardsport. Have you been having trouble making connections with them?”

“Damn skippy I have.” Drew knew he was being sharper than was politic with someone so senior, who’d done a hitch up here back in the days when the Roosa Barracks was just the moonbase. “Just this morning Brenda and I were going to FaceTime before she went on her air shift. Then it broke up and I wasn’t able to connect with her. I was hoping I could at least try to text her when we got back down, but by that time I couldn’t even get through on SMS.”

Peter nodded, concern drawing a furrow between his eyebrows. Even at his age he still had Scott Carpenter’s good looks — that was a geneset that aged well. “One of my clone-brothers over there has been having some problems. I’ve been checking in with him pretty regularly, trying to buck him up when things get particularly bad. Our last check-in should’ve been about four hours ago, and I haven’t been able to raise him at all.”

Drew nodded toward his computer with vTuner up. “Right now all I know is I can’t connect with Shepardsport Pirate Radio’s streaming service. I’ve been hesitant to contact IT about it because I don’t want to advertise that I listen to them. But I’m thinking it’s a lot more than just the digital radio stream getting cut off.” He looked straight into Peter’s eyes. “Maybe your word would have more weight than anything I could say.”

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Narrative

Keep On Keeping On

All the way to the station, Brenda couldn’t stop thinking about the FaceTime call that had gone garbled and broke up. Not so much that she was worried about Drew’s safety, but what it meant for digital communications between Shepardsport and the rest of the three worlds.

And then she arrived at the front office and knew something very serious was going on. It wasn’t unusual to find a tech or two from IT working on something around here. Just about everything they were using was old stuff, and a lot of it had been repurposed in quirky ways to adapt it for audio streaming.

But to find the Head of Information Technology and two of her senior department heads in here — no, this was not a good sign. Especially the way they were talking among themselves in low voices.

Which raised the question of whether she should greet them as she came in, or just hurry past as quietly as possible so she didn’t disturb their concentration. Cindy wasn’t in yet, but given the situation with Kitty and her friend Amy down on Earth, it was possible she was otherwise occupied. Autumn had made it clear that Cindy was to be excused if Amy or her siblings needed an advocate.

And if that friend of hers is getting static from the child welfare people, she may end up needing a lot more advocacy than a teenager can provide. Heck, I’m not sure how serious they’d take me. Sure, I’m married and have two kids, but I’m still young compared to the average Houston mom. We grow up early here on the High Frontier.

Even as she was considering what to do, Steffi noticed her. “Hello, Brenda. Since you’re a little early for your air shift,” a significant glance at the clock behind the receptionist’s desk, “could you hold on for a moment?”

“Sure. What seems to be the problem?” Although Brenda was trying to keep her voice firm and professional, she couldn’t entirely suppress a little nervous quaver. That old fear that she would be in trouble for something.

“We’re having some network issues. I know your husband is posted at Slayton Field, so I was wondering if you could try to contact him.”

“I have.” Brenda explained about their attempt to FaceTime. “At first it seemed to be connecting fine, but all of a sudden it got really super-slow, like you get when you’re trying to talk with someone on a spacecraft that’s heading off to Mars. And then everything broke up, and I couldn’t connect again.”

All three IT people exchanged glances, nods of agreement. But there was nothing happy about their expressions, which meant they were recognizing that something very serious was going on.

Hardly surprising, after the cyber attack on the landers at Slayton Field. Drew had never talked much about it, which was unusual for a Shep, and suggested that it had been a particularly traumatic experience for him.

A bit of quick conferring with colleagues, and Steffi turned back to Brenda. “We’ve been thinking this was some kind of DDOS attack, since it seems to be blocking traffic with Earth. However, I’m starting to wonder if we’re dealing with a worm.”

Brenda had a basic idea of network security — everybody did, for the simple reason that everyone was at risk from having their critical accounts hacked by one or another kind of scammer. However, she wasn’t necessarily all that strong on the finer details of what distinguished different types of malware and cyber-attacks.

On the other hand, she did have a good sense of what might affect her air shift, which was rapidly coming up. “Then we’re going to be having trouble transmitting…” She gestured toward the DJ booth and the studios for pre-recording interviews and similar programs.

“If you’re worried about whether you’ll be able to do your air shift, we still have normal connectivity within Shepardsport,” a nod to the stereo behind the receptionist’s desk, which was playing the current livestream, “and the outlying settlements that are connected by overland cable to it. People here in town are depending on the station, so don’t let them down.”

With the time for hand-off getting close, there was nothing further for Brenda to do but thank Steffi and hurry back to start up Breakfast With the Beatles. Even a cup of coffee would have to wait for her first long set.

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Narrative

Network Trouble

With pilots from other settlements no longer permitted to come up from the spaceport to the residential sector of Shepardsport, Drew had decided there was no real point in trying to get a permanent transfer to the regular run over there. Better to just stay on the orbital missions than to have Brenda and the kids so close but out of reach.

So here he was at Luna Station, waiting for the cargo handling robots to finish loading the lander so he could take it down. Live fish, according to the manifest. Probably one of the big agricorps that ran the South and West Farms was broadening their genetic stock.

Still, it gave him some downtime, and with the current situation he and his pilot weren’t allowed to go aboard Luna Station. Which meant no opportunity to hang out and visit with the pilot-astronauts from the other settlements.

On the other hand, it did give him other opportunities. Even if he couldn’t go visit Brenda and the kids in person, he could spend some FaceTime with them.

Or so he’d thought. He’d texted Brenda to make sure she and the kids were where they could talk, and she’d answered right back that they had a few minutes before she needed to get Randy to class and Leonie to nursery.

But when he tapped the FaceTime icon, it took forever to connect. When it did, the lag time was so bad it was impossible to carry on a conversation. The kids were getting frustrated, so Brenda had suggested they drop the call and try again.

Now it was just ringing and ringing, like it couldn’t connect. He’d tried three or four times, and the window of opportunity was rapidly closing. Not to mention that he’d just gotten a notification that loadout was winding up, so he’d better start prepping for undock and descent back to Slayton Field.

But first he wanted to see if he could find out what was going on. He didn’t usually listen to Shepardsport Pirate Radio while he was on a mission, but right now he wanted to see if they were reporting any kind of network issues.

However, when he entered their web address, he got a 503 error. A second try got a 502, and after a few other assorted errors, he had to conclude that there was something seriously wrong with their network connection.

On the other hand, given that they were now one of the best sources of honest news reportage, if something serious had happened and the Administration was trying to cover it up, it was completely possible that their servers were getting swamped. When he got back to the Roosa Barracks, he’d have to connect with some people in Grissom City’s IT department and see if they had any ideas.

In the meantime, he needed to put those concerns out of his mind and concentrate on getting ready to fly this bird back home. Brenda was a smart cookie and knew how to take care of herself in a pinch.

And she had a top-notch commandant in Reggie Waite. If Drew couldn’t trust his clone-brother to protect his own, who could he?

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Rumors

Spruance Del Curtin awoke to the horrifying realization that he’d forgotten to set his alarm. And here he was supposed to meet Dr. Doorne in her office at 8AM sharp.

Throwing off the covers, he squinted at his phone, realized that he wasn’t so late that he couldn’t at least wash up, and he wouldn’t have to miss breakfast. He wouldn’t be able to linger around the table, but he’d never been one for long breakfasts anyway.

A few minutes later he emerged from his apartment to find the module lounge abuzz with activity. A dozen or so people were sitting and standing around it, all talking at once to the point there was no way he could possibly pick out any one conversation.

Dennis Riordan came over to him. “Do you know what’s going on with Brenda Redmond?”

Of course he’d assume that I’d know, just because we’re both DJ’s at Shepardsport Pirate Radio. Sprue bit back the first response that came to his mind, and instead said. “As a matter of fact, no, I don’t.”

It came out a touch more acid than he’d intended, and Dennis flinched just a little. Sprue decided it might be wise to soften the effect a little. “In fact, it sounds like you probably know more about the situation than me.”

Dennis moistened his lips. “From what I heard, she got a call or a text from someone in another module, so she had Ron-Jon Landis keep an eye on her kids while she went to help them. She ended up being out so late that Ron-Jon started getting worried the kids were going to wake up and be scared their mom wasn’t there.”

“Interesting.” Sprue gave his phone a very deliberate look. “Right now I don’t have time to talk. If I don’t get to the dining commons now, I won’t have time for breakfast before I have a very important meeting.”

Dennis actually had the grace to look a bit taken aback. “Oh, OK. See you later then.”

Sprue strode off to the module’s airlock, already thinking about what he’d just heard. What could’ve happened, that Brenda Redmond would take off to another module and leave her kids under the supervision of someone who’d still be in high school back on Earth?

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The Icy Touch of Fear

Cindy knew all too well how far away Brenda Redmond’s apartment was. Last year her boyfriend had lived in that same module, so she got to know just how long it took to get between them, especially at an hour like this, when the airlocks weren’t likely to be busy.

Except it never felt this long when she was walking back from studying with Ray and his friends. Cindy checked her phone yet again, realized that all of three minutes had gone by — yet it felt like forever.

All the time, Kitty was getting more and more updates from Amy down in Houston. From the tenor of those texts, things were getting worse rapidly. Cindy wondered if she should text Brenda again and ask how far she had gotten.

And then the doorbell chimed. Cindy hit the doorbell app on her phone, saw Brenda waving at the camera.

At least here it was all of three steps from chair to door. Brenda was breathing pretty hard, which suggested she’d taken some of the corridors at a run, pausing to rest only while she cycled through the module airlocks.

Cindy summarized everything that had happened since their last text. Brenda’s expression grew steadily more and more concerned.

“This doesn’t sound good. Have either of them been able to hold down any liquids?”

Kitty typed the question into her phone. After a moment, she looked up. “Amy says they just keep throwing everything back up.”

“Not good at all. I think she’d better call 911. Do you know if she has any other family in the area, or a friend’s place where she could stay?”

More typing, and then Kitty looked up. “Her best friend lives on the other side of the subdivision.”

“Thank heaven for best friends.” Brenda took a deep breath. “Kitty, I need you to have Amy text her friend and and let her know her parents may need to come over and pick up Amy and any siblings. Then I need Amy to call 911 and tell the dispatch operator that both her parents are sick and showing signs of severe dehydration. It’s important she does it in that order, because once she calls 911, the dispatch operator will need her to stay on the line, so she won’t want to have to switch between phone and messaging apps.”

“OK, I’ll tell her that.”

Brenda turned back to Cindy, keeping her voice low. “How are you feeling?”

Cindy took stock of her own emotional state. “OK, I guess.”

“You guess? If you’re not sure, I can stay here as long as you two need me.”

“Thanks.”

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The Ties that Bind

Brenda Redmond was just putting the kids to bed when her phone chimed incoming text. She pulled it out to check, saw the message was from Cindy Margrave. We’ve got a problem.

What’s wrong? was Brenda’s first thought, followed by Why’s she texting me? Other than working at the station, they really didn’t have that much in common. Certainly not enough to be turning to her for help like this.

But Cindy was also a level-headed young woman, not the sort to panic and send random texts off to people with only tenuous ties. If she had a problem, she’d probably already considered and discarded all the closer possibilities of people she could turn to. Her uncle was a pilot-astronaut, and if he wasn’t out on a mission, he was probably busy with things down at the spaceport, while her aunt was head of Safety and Security. With the current situation, Betty Margrave would be far too busy to deal with anything but a serious emergency at home.

And Carl Dalton was a Shep, which meant that Cindy had lineage-right to call upon the wife of another clone of Alan Shepard for help. Although Brenda had grown up knowing her father was a clone of Gus Grissom, it was only after their family came up here to Shepardsport and she was living regularly with the creche-raised clones that she’d really come to appreciate the importance of lineage ties as their method of creating family.

And if she wanted to maintain their respect, she’d damned well better honor the tie between her and Cindy, however indirect. She texted back: What’s happened?

Immediately the three dots icon appeared under her message, indicating that Cindy was typing. Which meant that either she was struggling to organize her thoughts, or she had a lot to say.

My sister Kitty just got a text from one of her friends from Houston. Amy says her parents are both badly sick. Reading between the lines, it looks like Amy’s really scared and doesn’t know what to do. I’m not sure whether it’s serious enough that I should tell her to call 911, or just try to nurse them herself.

Ouch, that was a tough one. Kitty was twelve, and while kids that age up here on the Moon regularly worked at responsible positions, back on Earth a twelve-year-old was barely considered old enough to stay by herself for an hour or so after school. If Amy called 911 and the paramedics decided her parents needed to be transported, there’d better be a friend or family member nearby who could take in her and any siblings or they’d have to go into the care of the Texas Child Protective Services system. And Brenda had heard more than a few stories about the problems with CPS foster homes, especially the emergency ones.

Better ask some clarifying questions before suggesting any course of action. Did she say anything about what kind of symptoms they were having?

This time there was a long pause before the three-dots icon came up. Probably Cindy was asking her sister, who might well be needing to text her friend for the information. If Amy was having to deal with her parents’ illnesses, and maybe even a younger sibling or two in distress about the situation, she might not even be where she could answer her text.

But it was also time that allowed the worry hamster to get going. Brenda looked over at the nook which functioned as her children’s bedroom. Everything looked so difference now that she had the responsibility for those two young lives.

Now I understand why Mom always worried so much about us kids.

And then the text arrived, a lengthy description of gastrointestinal symptoms similar to the nasty Volcanic Two-Step that had been going around a few years ago. Except that it didn’t also make people delirious and combative, or include respiratory symptoms.

This sounded a lot more complicated than she’d expected. Brenda tried to remember which module the Dalton-Margrave family lived in. Dunwich Sector was a lot larger than it had been when her family first came up here.

I think we’d better talk face-to-face. Are you and Kitty where you can come over here?

It took a few moments before Cindy answered. I don’t think we’d better be away this late. If Aunt Betty comes back and we’re not here, she’s not going to be happy having to run us down.

Brenda looked over at the clock, realized just how close to midnight it was getting. Spencer Dawes would be winding down the Disco Ball and signing off for the night soon.

The kids would probably stay asleep, but it would be better to have someone keeping an eye on them while she was gone. She stepped out of her apartment, noticed one of the younger Grissoms in the lounge, studying.

“Ron-Jon, could you keep an eye on my kids? One of my co-workers at the station has had a family emergency come up, and I need to go down and sort things out.”

Ron-Jon looked up from his tablet. “Sure thing, Miz Brenda. You need me to go into your apartment?”

“That shouldn’t be necessary. Just stay where you can hear if they call for me. You’ve got my number, don’t you?”

At his affirmative, she thanked him and headed for the module airlock. Let’s hope it wouldn’t take too long.

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The Least of These

By the time Cindy Margrave got back from the gym after her daily mandatory exercise session, she just wanted to get to bed. However, tomorrow she had a test in her chemistry course, and while she had done some studying, she really needed to review everything one last time.

At least the module lounge was quiet at this hour. Although her aunt and uncle had been able to secure a larger apartment, it was still crowded enough that it wasn’t exactly conducive to study. And she really didn’t want to go all the way up to Miskatonic Sector to use the study carrels in the library.

She settled into the chair in the furthest corner, glad that the two guys were keeping their voices low. From the looks of it, they were playing Space Race, although she couldn’t get a good enough view of the cards to be certain.

She was almost through with the aldehyde series when she felt a tug on the sleeve of her tracksuit. She looked up from her tablet to the wide eyes of her younger sister. Who’s supposed to be in bed already.

“What’s wrong, Kitty?”

“Amy just PMed me. Both her folks are sick, bad.”

Amy? Cindy tried to place the name. Kitty was such a social butterfly, there was just no keeping track of all her friends, even in a community as small as Shepardsport. Not to mention all Kitty’s online friends, with whom she spent about as much time as anyone up here.

Better just ask. Especially with whatever was going on back on Earth, any sickness in a community in as tight of quarters as everyone lived up here would be disastrous.

“She’s still in Houston. We were classmates, remember?”

Cindy didn’t want to admit that she honestly didn’t remember many of her sister’s classmates. It would sound too much like she didn’t care. Kitty had been just old enough to be distressed by the abrupt break from their old life when Uncle Carl and Aunt Betty took them in after Mom and Dad’s accident, and getting sent up here had been a second uprooting just as she was finally beginning to trust that her life would be stable.

“Sort of, but it’s been a long time, and I was pretty busy.” Hoping that would suffice to comfort her sister, she asked a few clarifying questions.

Kitty was a little shaky on details, but probably because Amy hadn’t been very clear on them. Up here, everybody got trained in remaining calm in a crisis and being able to deliver a coherent, organized report on one’s situation. Cindy knew she wouldn’t have been able to perform much better if she’d been called upon to report their parents’ accident to a 911 operator.

However, Cindy wasn’t sure if telling Amy to call 911 would be the best advice. It didn’t sound like they were in immediate danger, and when you were a kid, illnesses that weren’t actually that dangerous could be scary if both your folks came down with them at once.

Cindy wished there were someone she could talk to right now. However, Uncle Carl was out of town on a mission, taking supplies to some of the outlying scientific outposts, and Aunt Betty was spending more time up at the Safety and Security offices in Arkham Sector than she did here.

Who else could she turn to? Maybe some of her co-workers from the station? While Spruance Del Curtin would probably love to get any tidbits of information he could find, there was no way on Earth, the Moon or Mars that she was going to tell him about this.

On the other hand, what about Brenda Redmond? She was just enough older to be taken seriously, but young enough to still remember what it was like to be a kid, even if she was married and had two kids of her own.

Better text her first and see if she was where she could talk.

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Ill Wind Rising

Someone already had the stereo on when Spruance Del Curtin arrived at the lounge of his residence module. The Tea Time crew was just signing off for the evening, setting up one last Rolling Stones song before Spencer Dawes signed on and got the Disco Ball spinning.

Wonder what he’s going to be playing tonight? Although it might not be easy to hear over the hubbub of multiple conversations going at once. Sprue looked around the room, already crowded. From the looks of it, a bunch of people had brought folding chairs out of their apartments to supplement the furniture usually in the lounge.

He could retreat to his apartment, since his roommate had mandatory exercise time in the gym, and then work responsibility down at Aquaculture. However, right now Sprue really wasn’t excited about trying to study in an apartment not much bigger than most walk-in closets back on Earth.

Over in the far corner, Brenda and her kids were all huddled around a tablet. From the sound of it, they were doing a FaceTime conversation with Drew. With the new rules going into force, it didn’t matter whether he was still back in the Roosa Barracks or had flown in, it was all the contact Brenda and the kids were going to get with him for a long time.

She glanced up at Sprue, but didn’t say anything. However, the tension at the corners of her mouth suggested she did not approve of his being here.

Maybe it would be just as well if he did find somewhere else to study tonight. Given how many people around here were not residents of this module, it might be just as well to go see if any of the neighboring modules had a sufficiently quiet lounge that he could study without disruption.

As he was approaching the module airlock, his phone dinged: incoming text. He pulled it out to see a text from Dr. Doorne on the lock screen: I need to talk to you.

Not a good sign. If she just needed to confer with him about a project for class, she’d probably have texted with you. To you suggested annoyance, even a bawling-0ut in the offing, never mind that current events had superseded any information embargo that may have been in place.

But there was no use trying to avoid the situation. He texted back how soon?

He’d halfway hoped she’d take her time answering. Instead, her reply came right back: Tomorrow, 0800 at my office.

His first thought was annoyance at just how she knew when he was available. Then he remembered that she’d had everyone give her their schedules along with their phone numbers and e-mail addresses the first day of class.

Which made it impossible to pretend that he had another obligation at that time and would need to reschedule, or beg off entirely. Nothing to do but text back that he’d be there.

And in the meantime, he’d better be prepared to the nines. Which made it essential to find someplace where he could actually go over the material. Particularly the statistical information on the station’s listenership that he’d downloaded this afternoon.