Tag: Justin Forsythe

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Narrative

Of Zeerust and Enjoyment

Cindy usually didn’t come over to this module to study, but tonight there was something about sitting in a recliner chair by a fireplace that made the task all the more pleasant. Even if the recliner wasn’t much more than a fabric sling on a reclining frame, and the fireplace was electric with digital sound effects, they created an atmosphere of cozy warmth that made her reading assignment more enjoyable.

Literature classes up here were always interesting. Unlike back on Earth, her teachers didn’t automatically dismiss science fiction as “escapist trash.” Far from it, several of them explicitly included sf books in their curriculum, using them to show how the Literature of the Possible created sufficient interest in spaceflight and other advanced technologies that a whole generation would work to make it actually happen. She’d found it especially amusing when one of her teachers gave the class excerpts from several early astronauts’ memoirs in which they mentioned reading or watching science fiction about space travel in their younger days.

On the other hand, there was the down side: namely, that reading for class was always different from reading for fun. You had to pay closer attention to the text, especially if it was something new to you, and that could actually take away from being able to immerse yourself in the story and the world and just be there.

Which was probably why she noticed Juss Forsythe puttering around at something behind her. Deciding it was a perfect excuse for a break, she looked up. “Hi, Juss.”

His solemn expression was washed away by one of those big grins his geneset was famous for. “How’s it going, Cindy?”

“OK, I guess. I mean, I’d always heard about Frank Herbert and the Dune books, but I never actually got around to reading them until we got assigned them for lit class. Well, at least the first one, and the first four if we can manage it. Our teacher doesn’t think much of the rest of them.”

“So how are you liking them?”

“It’s pretty heavy reading. Some of the language is a little old-fashioned, and I thought there was some kind of experiment that proved that true precognition couldn’t exist.”

“You’re talking about the Chang-Mendolssen Experiments, aren’t you?”

“I think that’s the names I heard. Something about superdeterminism.”

She could tell she’d hit the right answer when he gave her a vigorous nod. “Although I’ve heard some arguments that Herbert’s interpretation of prescience is based on the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics rather than superdeterminism. Basically, the whole business about being able to see into the future freezing the future in that form suggests that prescience causes the wave front to collapse. But these days there’s more and more evidence for the Many Worlds Interpretation, which completely disallows the possibility of foreseeing a definite future, only a manifold of possible worlds.”

“Wow, that’s fascinating. Maybe I ought to write my essay on the quantum mechanical underpinnings of his portrayal of prescience.”

“If you have Jenny Taylor as your teacher, she really likes getting essays that dig into the science under the fiction. And if you want, I can help you track down sources.”

“Thanks. That’d be great.” Cindy shot a pointed glance at the life support monitor on the wall, with the clock readout above the standard indicators for partial pressures of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. “Right now, I’ve got another thirty percent of this book I need to get to get read before I go to bed.”

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Narrative

One Thing Accomplished

Lou Corlin wasn’t sure what he’d find when he got down to IT for his work shift. Given that he was troubleshooting for the hardware help desk, a day could start so quiet you were expected to find work for yourself to do, and then become so busy that you literally couldn’t keep up with the caseload pouring in. In fact, he tended to dread shifts that started too quiet. They’d come to feel too much like a setup for something unpleasant.

However, he hadn’t expected to find Juss Forsythe waiting for him. No, correct that — he hadn’t expected to find Juss just standing there waiting, as opposed to delivering some balky piece of hardware from one or another department.

“Hi, Juss. Don’t you have something to do?”

Juss knew him well enough to recognize it was a joke rather than an implied reprimand. “Thought I’d let you know Sprue seems to be getting the hint.”

“That’s good. Especially right now, poking your nose into matters that don’t concern you are not exactly conducive to good health and safety.”

“You sound like you’re actually worried about him.”

“Hey, he’s a Shep. A pain in the keister most of the time, because he’s got this drive to show everybody he’s the smartest guy in the room, and make sure you can’t miss it. But when things really get hairy, he’ll pitch right in and do his level best, with none of the shenanigans.”

“Yeah, that’s a Shep for you. Like a male version of the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead.”

Lou recognized that nursery rhyme, although he wasn’t sure where he’d heard it. “I just wish he didn’t take a hint of information that’s not for general release as a challenge to his personal skills in social engineering. If he’s not careful, one of these days he’s going to poke his nose into something that’s a whole lot bigger than he realizes, and he’s going to get into more trouble than he can get back out of.”

“You think so?”

“There’s a lot going on right now, and I’m getting the feeling that some of it is being kept under wraps for very good reasons.” Lou shot a quick glance over his shoulder. “Right now we’re in a very precarious position on a number of fronts. I’m hearing rumors of a major breakthrough related to the diablovirus, which suggests there’s just enough uncertainty that official announcements are being delayed until they’re sure they’re not just raising false hopes. And there’s been a huge spike in communications traffic lately, especially from two or three departments up in Sciences. Any of them could be big enough that someone who got caught poking his nose into it would not be trusted to keep quiet without measures being taken.”

That quieted Juss’s usual cheerful expression. “Yeah. Anyway, I’m supposed to be picking up a couple of items, so I shouldn’t stand around visiting.” He retrieved his phone, pulled up a message with the work order numbers.

“Let me go get them. They shouldn’t be too hard to find, if the overnight crew filed them properly.”

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Trying Not to Worry

Lou Corlin was relieved that Eli hadn’t been too obnoxious about getting criticized. Whether he’d take it to heart and stop showing off what he knew in front of the younger kids, only time would tell. In the meantime, there was no use worrying about it when he had work to do.

He was surprised to discover some bench work already waiting for him. From the look of it, most of it would be routine. Check out a hard drive that was acting flaky, run memory checks on a printer that kept choking on larger print jobs, the usual.

While he was doing basic continuity tests on three mice from the testing center, Juss Forsythe came in. “How closely have you been keeping track of stuff going on down on Earth?”

“Not all that closely,” Lou admitted. “Things have been pretty busy lately, so most of what I know is from friends who are in communication with people dirtside. What’s on your mind.”

“This.” Juss set a tablet on the desk. “These are composite images taken from Freedom Station. The first was about six months ago, and the second was last week.”

Lou was familiar with images of the Earth’s night side, of the bright lights of cities trailing off into suburbs and exurbs, connected by the strings of pinpoints that were small towns along the major highways. He could pick out most of the major cities of the US, as well as those of Europe, Asia and Australia.

But looking at that second one, the one showing the situation only a week ago, was alarming. Whole regions had gone dark. While it might be unsurprising in Africa and parts of Asia, it was alarming to see dark patches scattered here and there across Europe, like mold on a loaf of bread. Could things have broken down that bad, that they couldn’t even manage to keep the lights on? What did that mean for other basic things like clean water and sanitation?

At least on Earth they didn’t have to worry about breathable atmosphere. But everything else that made civilization possible depended upon an infrastructure that had to be maintained — and if it wasn’t, how long would the cities remain liveable? How bad could things get before they broke down altogether?

“I’d heard some rumors about rolling blackouts in some areas, but I hadn’t wanted to give too much credence to rumors. You know how that goes.”

“Completely understood. I’ve had to get after a few of the younger kids myself. But this isn’t rumors. This is photographic evidence.”

“And the worst thing is, there’s not a whole lot we can do about it. Maybe give advice — but we’re not a normal broadcast station. We’re an Internet streaming service, so people can listen to us only if they can get Internet where they are, and there’s enough bandwidth to support audio streaming.”

“I know. I just wish I had some better ideas.”

“But maybe we know someone else who has better ideas than we do.”

“Let’s hope.” Juss cast a significant glance at the clock. “Right now I need to get going.”

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The Uneasy Balance

Lou Corlin had planned to do some studying for the digital logic course he was taking for this unit. However, he hadn’t been expecting a call from Juss Forsythe, asking for some help with a pump controller.

It would be something he’d know just enough about that he could actually be useful, so he couldn’t very well beg off on lack of background. And given the closeness between their respective ur-brothers, he couldn’t very well refuse on any lesser grounds. Yes, he needed to study, but he could fit the time in later in the day.

So here he was, heading down to the deep service levels under the greenhouse farms. Areas a lot of people didn’t even realize existed — but if you gave any real thought to the mechanics of operating a greenhouse, you’d know they had to be down there. Areas where all the pipes and tubing gave things a certain visceral look.

And there was Juss, his auburn hair bright in the harsh industrial lighting, kneeling beside a tall pump. Lou hurried over to join him.

“So how’s it going?”

“Not well.” Juss looked up from his work. “It’s looking like defective irrigation tubing wasn’t our only problem. We’d just finished getting it all set up, and the next morning we’ve got leaks. Not huge ones, but it’s pretty clear that water is pushing out at all the connectors.”

“Sounds like a pressure issue.”

“My thought too. Which is why I’m checking the pressure on all the irrigation pumps. With luck, it’s just an issue with the controllers and we can fix them ourselves. I’d really prefer not to have to take any of these things to Engineering.”

Lou could understand the sentiment. However, if it was necessary, trying to get by with half measures was apt to bite you in the butt down the road. And with the current situation, they couldn’t count on being able to get food shipped in to make up for losses.

“Do you get the feeling like everything’s balanced on a knife edge, and anything could send it teetering?”

“Yeah, all the time.” Juss wiped his hands with a rag that wasn’t a whole lot cleaner. “But all you and I can do is fix the problems in front of us, and hope the guys at the higher pay grades do their jobs.”

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Bigger Than We’d Expected

Ken Redmond had called a halt on their efforts to repair the main mixing board shortly before midnight, right before Spencer Dawes would wind down the Disco Ball and sign off. It was becoming increasingly obvious that everyone was tired enough to affect judgement, and given that the midnight-to-six segment was run by a software robot that selected songs and could make basic announcements, it made far more sense to send everyone home for a good night’s rest and start over in the morning.

Now that morning was here, Ken was no longer feeling quite so sanguine about the ease of repairs on this issue. It didn’t help that he couldn’t go straight to the studios of Shepardsport Pirate Radio, since there were a number of other issues around the settlement that he needed to follow up on first. Not that Juss Forsythe was a bad tech, but he was still young enough that he simply didn’t have the years and decades of experience that often allowed an old hand like Ken to make intuitive leaps on fragmentary information.

By the time Ken finally had his docket cleared enough that he could even consider going over to look into matters personally, Brenda was winding up Breakfast With The Beatles and getting ready to hand things over to Lou Corlin. They were both experienced enough with dong remote broadcasts to be able to use that system to its best advantage, but there was no mistaking it for the full studio system.

On the other hand, the network traffic reports he’d gotten from IT were showing that the lowered transmission quality hadn’t led to a significant drop in listenership. In fact, it looked like connections from outside the lunar Internet had actually picked up, which made him wonder. Could it be a case of people trying to connect multiple devices in hope that one would have better reception?

From some things that Autumn Belfontaine had said, it was sounding like a lot of dirtside radio stations were resorting to various makeshifts just to be able to broadcast at all. Some of them were sharing transmitters, running simulcasts, even going all Internet when their ability to broadcast over the airwaves was lost. So it was possible that a lot of people were getting used to making do with whatever they could find.

It must be getting really bad down there. It made him realize just how little connection he had with family on Earth. Both his parents were deceased, and Jenn was estranged from her mother. He had a couple of siblings, but they’d drifted apart, to the point they rarely corresponded other than at the holidays. No hard rupture like Jenn’s break with her mother, just an ever-growing lack of common points of reference that made it hard to communicate.

As Ken walked into the offices of Shepardsport Pirate Radio, he encountered Juss walking out. The younger man had a worried expression. “I was just looking for you. We’ve got a major problem. I’m thinking we’re going to have to tear that mixing board down and rewire about half of it.”

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If It’s Not One Thing

Ken Redmond had been reading the latest reports on solar activity from Astronomy when Juss Forsythe came in, letting him know that there was a problem at the station. “From the sound of it, there’s a problem in the mixing board. When Spencer Dawes was trying to use the intro to his next number as a bed for the final announcements he needed to read, it was coming through almost unintelligible.”

Ken set down the tablet with the files Dr. Doorne had sent over. “That is not a good sign.”

It didn’t help that they’d had to jury-rig a lot of the equipment for the station. IT had been able to do a lot of it with software, but there had been some things which simply had to be fabricated as physical objects — and some significant parts of the mixing boards fell into that category.

At least they did have the remote setup to fall back on, so it wasn’t like they couldn’t keep broadcasting. But it couldn’t provide the same level of finished, professional sound during announcements. The microphones weren’t up to the same level, and there wasn’t the capacity to layer voice over a soundbed. When you were doing a location broadcast, the roughness added a sense of authenticity, of immediacy. Ken remembered listening to broadcasts from the Persimmon Festival over in Mitchell when he was growing up, and how the hint of crowd noise in the background really made the broadcast.

But for a routine studio show, it would make everything sound sloppy. Not so much the music sets, such as the one that was winding up as he and Juss entered the station offices. But as soon as Spence came on to do station identification and announce the next set of songs, that rough, crackly feel made it sound like some kid running an Internet radio station off a laptop in the bedroom. You halfway expected to hear a parental voice yelling about bedtime.

As soon as Spence was finished and the music was playing again, Ken slipped past the remote setup to take a look at their studio mixing board. “Now our big problem is figuring out whether this is hardware or software.”

Juss pulled out his phone. “I’ve already called Lou and he’s coming down.”

Ken recalled that Lou Corlin worked down at IT, and did a lot of troubleshooting. “Good.”

All the same, there was no use waiting for him to show up. Might as well get a multimeter and start checking the circuitry. Given how they’d put it together, and how much use it had seen in the past several years, there was always the possibility that a connection had worked loose somewhere.

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Bad News

Ken Redmond had sent Juss Forsythe down to talk with Alice Murchison in Agriculture, thinking they were dealing with yet another irritating little problem. The sort of problem they’d been dealing with whack-a-mole fashion ever since the Expulsions. Way too many of the new greenhouses had been thrown together as fast as they could and maintain an acceptable standard of safety.

Instead, Juss had just texted him with the message that the leak was not just a bad fitting, like most of the leaks they’d been chasing down and fixing over the past several years. Instead, he was looking at several thousand meters of substandard plastic tubing that was breaking down. While there were some obvious leaks, complete with water spraying across the area, far more were a matter of slow seepage, which could easily be mistaken for condensation — and probably had been, given that most of them were in the greenhouses that were run with high levels of carbon dioxide to encourage more rapid plant growth.

Which goes to show just how much we need to increase the number of people around here who have the necessary certifications to work in those areas. As long as we’re really understaffed in those areas, it’s way too easy to hurry through the standard maintenance procedures, and not really look at everything. We’re damned lucky that it was “just” a bunch of irrigation lines.

However, all that was long-term. Right now, he had two problems he needed to deal with. First, he needed to find out how quickly his people could fabricate replacement tubing for the material that was immediately defective. Second, he needed to determine whether the tubing in question had been fabricated locally or brought in, and if the latter, where any additional tubing from that source had been used. If they’d gotten a bad batch of tubing from somewhere, they could have a ticking time bomb on their hands, and they might not find out about it until they had an accident on the level of the disaster back in ’96 that had left a whole section of the Roosa Barracks permanently sealed off.

Which meant he’d better start making some phone calls.

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The Information Race

Lou Corlin usually did an afternoon bench tech shift, after his air shift at Shepardsport Pirate Radio. Today, he’d switched with someone on the early morning shift who needed some extra time to study for an important exam. It meant he had to have his breakfast sent down here, but it would give him a head start on sounding out some people about the problem of locating Brenda’s friend without breaking any data security rules.

Except he’d no more than clocked in when he heard a familiar voice calling his name. There was Juss Forsythe, tool satchel over one shoulder and a computer under the other arm, walking along like he wasn’t even burdened. Maybe it wasn’t one of the big tower workstations, but Juss was carrying a desktop box like it was a cheap laptop.

“So what’ve you got today, Juss?” Lou hoped he didn’t sound too irritated.

“Apparently the news department’s getting a lot of hate mail, and someone’s getting pretty serious about it.” Juss set the computer on Lou’s workbench. “Autumn was cleaning out her inbox, and she accidentally opened an e-mail she shouldn’t have. It had an attachment that was apparently some kind of auto-running malware.”

Lou sucked in his breath, not caring that it made a whistle loud enough that the other guys would be able to hear it. “That’s bad. Especially considering that a modern e-mail client is supposed to block that sort of stuff.”

“We got it powered down before whatever it was running could infect the whole network. But I’d suggest you pull its WiFi antenna before you try to do any diagnostics.”

Lou looked down at the computer, then back to Juss. “Which assumes that I’m even going to try to do it myself. From what you’re talking about, I’m thinking I could get in over my head real fast.”

And kicking this problem upstairs would also give me an opportunity to talk to some of the senior techs about just what latitude I’d have in locating Brenda’s friend before I’d have to take the matter to Betty Margrave.

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The Hornet Nest

Autumn Belfontaine was no stranger to controversy. The whole point of creating Shepardsport Pirate Radio had been to confront the Flannigan Administration on its various malfeasances.

However, she had not expected such an intense response to her report on the removal of children from impromptu fostering arrangements in the homes of friends, to be placed in makeshift group homes in converted school buildings. To read some of the hate mail that was pouring into the station’s mailservers, one would think that she’d gone on-air claiming that the various state child protection agencies were carrying on satanic rituals at the stroke of midnight, not just carrying out an ill-conceived bureaucratic mandate.

At least there was one advantage to being on the Far Side of the Moon — threats had very little impact. Had she still been on Earth, working on a dirtside radio station, some of those death threats would’ve been truly frightening. Instead, she rather doubted there was any real chance of them making a launch any time soon. Even threats to dox her held little power, given that Shepardsport was a tight-knit community steeped in the astronaut tradition, and since the Kitty Hawk Massacre, everyone’s financial records were carefully locked down, so even publishing her Social Security number and her bank accounts wouldn’t enable anyone to upend her life.

She was about halfway through her inbox when she heard voices out in the corridor. She looked up, out the newsroom door, to see Spencer Dawes and Juss Forsythe talking. Juss had a big tool satchel slung over his shoulder, which suggested he was in here for some kind of maintenance. On the other hand, what Autumn could hear of their conversation did not exactly sound technical.

However, she wasn’t their supervisor, so their personal conversation was not her business. She returned her attention to cleaning out her e-mail, but not closely enough to realize the screen was refreshing just as she clicked.

She realized just what she’d hit. “Crap. That’s got a payload.”

Before she could force the browser to quit, the whole screen turned into a chaos of colors and symbols. From within the computer’s guts came a high-pitched whine. Whatever was in that attached file, it must’ve been a doozie.

“Quick, crash it.” That was Juss, who’d jumped clear across the newsroom like his ur-brother jumping over a fence.

Autumn wasn’t sure which one of them hit the power button, but it worked. The screen went black and the whining sound ceased.

“That thing could’ve infected the whole network.” Juss’s voice remained matter-of-fact, with no blaming.

“What do we do now?” Autumn looked at her computer. At least this wasn’t the computer she used for writing up news stories, or any of the other important stuff she couldn’t afford to lose. But being without her e-mail computer would mean needing to read it on a computer she considered less expendable.

“Not much we can do.” Juss unplugged the computer and began disconnecting the peripherals. “I’ll have to run it down to IT so they can clean out whatever malware was in that e-mail.”

Damn, Aunt Steffi’s going to be so pissed.

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Deep Thoughts

This early in the morning, the tunnels to Shepardsport’s solar storm shelters were quiet. Later in the day, cleaning robots would come through to sweep and generally make sure the tunnels were always ready to be used at a moment’s notice. But right now they were a perfect place for Justin Forsythe to run.

And a perfect place to relax his barriers and open his mind to his psi talent. Down here, there wasn’t the continual din of other minds to make it overwhelming, even with his Institute training.

Normally the geneset of Ed White wasn’t used for genetic experiments. However, a clerical error — a simple reversal of two digits in a catalog number that tracked embryos — he had received a gene graft intended to give him precognition.

Or at least that was the plan. The people at Appleton might understand genetics, but they didn’t understand quantum mechanics. True classical precognition — the ability to see what would happen in the future — would require superdeterminism. And the Chang-Mendolssen experiments had pretty well discredited superdeterminism as a plausible subset of quantum theory.

Instead, Juss got a weird sort of precognition in which he saw a multitude of possible futures fanning out before him. As events foreclosed various possible futures, they fell away to become alternate worlds.

What worried him right now was just how dark those futures were becoming. Fewer and fewer of them held much in the way of hope.

Everything was going to depend on whether the diablovirus could be kept away from the Moon. The Martian settlements were safe, thanks to the long travel times between Mars and the Earth-Moon system — but that distance also meant they could offer little help in the subsequent rebuilding. Only the lunar settlements were just isolated enough that their populations could be protected from infection, but could also offer material aid in any meaningful quantity.

But even a little slip-up would be enough to introduce the virus. They’d already had one close call, and as a result the Japanese lunar ferry Sakura was unavailable for the three weeks’ quarantine it would require to ensure not only that none of the Indian astronauts came down with the diablovirus, but also that none of the crew had picked it up from anyone with such a light case that it was fairly indetectable.

No, it was just too painful to observe. Juss simply didn’t have the authority to act upon these visions in any meaningful way. He was just a troubleshooter, not a decision-maker.

Better to barrier himself against his precognition and concentrate on the things he could do to put Shepardsport in a better position once he went up to Engineering and reported for today’s shift.