Tag: Kennard Redmond

Categories
Narrative

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.

Categories
Narrative

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.

Categories
Narrative

A Tidbit of Good News

“Some of the dirtside solar astronomers are thinking this CME is just the first of several, based on some satellite data on the Sun’s magnetic field behavior. I spoke to Dr. Doorne this morning and she doesn’t think any subsequent ones are likely to hit the Earth-Moon system. However, she added the caveat that she is a radio astronomer specializing in deep-space objects.” Ken Redmond looked from Brenda to Autumn. “I wish I could offer you ladies something more solid, but right now that’s all we have to go on. Which means that we’re going to have to remain prepared for the possibility of additional solar storms, maybe for the next two to three weeks. I’ve already ordered conservation measures to stretch supplies of consumables that we can’t produce locally, against the possibility of a complete shutdown of spacelift capacity for the duration.”

“A wise precaution,” Autumn averred. “If you think I should make some kind of general announcement–“

Ken gestured for her to hold. “I’d want to run that by the skipper first. The radio station’s getting to be our public face to the whole solar system, and as messed-up as things are getting down on Earth, we need to be careful how we present things.”

Autumn might have a good professional voice, but her skills at controlling her expression weren’t nearly at the level she’d need if she were doing video as well as audio. No, she wasn’t happy about getting told that Captain Waite should approve of any public announcement.

However, Brenda could definitely see it as a sensible measure. Her dad was right about Shepardsport Pirate Radio being the settlement’s public face to three worlds. And he’d been an Air Force officer back during the Energy Wars, so he’d be thinking in terms of opsec, of not giving the other side any information about one’s weak points. Brenda had grown up with her dad’s war stories, while Autumn had grown up with a black-matted photo on the mantle and a name on the Wall of Honor. Not to diminish Lucien Belfontaine’s sacrifice during the NASA Massacre, but it just didn’t give her the same perspective.

No, Autumn didn’t like the feeling that she’d just had her wings clipped, but she had to be aware that a goodly segment of the population around here put great store in astronaut lineages. She couldn’t very well be seen to disrespect the most senior member of the her father’s lineage in the settlement. For starters, she needed to maintain Spruance Del Curtin’s respect, and she couldn’t help but be aware that Brenda had married into the Shepard lineage.

Brenda was glad she wasn’t the one having to make a statement of agreement on the subject. Not that she was goingt to try to buck her father in his own domain, but it was still a very awkward position to be in.

After that, it was just a matter of winding down the conversation, a few parting pleasantries and taking their leave. The Chief of Engineering still had a lot of things he needed to take care of before that CME actually arrived and drenched the Moon in charged particles.

As Brenda walked back through the corridors of the Engineering department, she pulled out her phone and was surprised to find several texts from Drew. They must’ve all come while they were talking, and she hadn’t even noticed her text chime.

Unless one or another app had screwed up the audio again and she needed to reboot. However, from the worried tone of those last couple texts, it would probably be better to respond first and reboot only if Drew wanted to do an actual voice conversation.

Sorry, sweetheart, but I was talking with Dad about the CME that’s coming in. What’s going on?

Drew must’ve had his phone right beside him, because the text went from “delivered” to “read” in a few seconds. Moments later the “writing response” icon came up.

I wish you’d let me know you needed a neutral party to contact a friend dirtside. I know half a dozen people up here who wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow from the worst clone-phobes, and who’d be glad to do me a favor.

As soon as Brenda read that, she realized she should’ve thought of asking her husband. As a pilot-astronaut and an Air Force officer, he had a lot of connections.

Sorry, I guess I just didn’t want to bother you with my worries. You’ve got a lot on your plate already.

And you’ve got reason to be concerned that an old friend is in a dangerous situation. Just send me her e-mail address, her phone number, whatever contact information you have on her, and I’ll see if some of my friends can get things happening.

Categories
Narrative

Of Memory and Time

At this hour, Ken Redmond’s office was a quiet place to get a little privacy. Although Engineering was a department that ran 24/7, most of the routine work was done during normal daytime hours. That meant the evening staff was fairly small and he wasn’t apt to be interrupted.

Right now he was looking over the latest data from the SOLARIS solar observatory satellite system. The solar astronomers were still in disagreement right now on what exactly the data represented, but all of them concurred that space weather would be unsettled and quite possibly dangerous for the next several days.

It was bringing back memories he hadn’t thought about in years, of being in first grade and riding home on the bus, listening to some of the older kids talking about the strange heavy feel to the air, how they were certain a bad storm was brewing. He’d gone home and turned on the TV to watch his usual after-school shows, and hadn’t thought anything about it until the power went out.

Only later had he discovered that over a hundred tornadoes had swept through the Midwest. His own home town of French Lick had been lucky, but there had been a period that day when the entire state of Indiana was under a tornado warning because the weather forecasters simply couldn’t keep up with all the incoming reports. In the weeks and months that followed, he’d read a lot of accounts of what came to be called the Super Outbreak.

It had been another time, frightening mostly because it was the first time he became truly aware of what a big and potentially dangerous world he lived in. Only a few months the Watergate scandal had been the first political event to impinge upon his awareness.

And wasn’t that about the same time as everyone was so concerned about the Swine Flu, or was that a few years later?

It was odd, how time and memory could play tricks with the mind. Sometimes all of that seemed like another lifetime ago, and at other times he could remember a day, an event as if it had happened just yesterday. The bus making its way down that long, lonely country road, up and down the limestone hills of Southern Indiana, the windows opened to let in a bit of breeze to relieve the hot, muggy atmosphere electric with tension.

But then he’d been just a little kid whose biggest worry was being one of the smallest kids in his class, and how he kept getting picked on by the bigger kids. Now he had the responsibilities of being a father, a grandfather, and of holding one of the senior leadership positions of this settlement.

And right now there’s not a lot we can do about our situation except keep our heads down and hang on.

Which was why he hadn’t wanted to talk more than he had to about the situation with Brenda while they were in the gym. The current situation was precarious enough without people worrying about further solar storms, possibly requiring intermittent shutdowns of surface activity over the next week or more.

At least he knew he could discuss the matter with her in private and be confident she wouldn’t go spreading a confused version of it all over the settlement. She would never have stayed a DJ with Shepardsport Pirate Radio if she couldn’t be relied upon to handle such information responsibly.

Categories
Narrative

The Calm Before the Storm

Brenda Redmond recognized the quiet tension that had taken over Shepardsport, the hushed voices and watchful looks. She’d seen it during hurricane watches back in Houston, and the tornado watches when she’d stayed with her grandparents in Indiana one summer. That awareness of elevated risk, balanced with a knowledge that life had to go on in the meantime, and necessary work would not wait.

It had hung over her all afternoon, as she did her best to keep her mind on class, on her teaching responsibility. Keeping a tight focus on the task at hand had enabled her to push the worry out of her mind, but now that it was exercise time, all those thoughts were crowding back in.

Maybe she would’ve had an easier time if she’d been assigned one of the machines where you were supposed to count your reps. Instead, she drew a stationary bicycle, which was purely timed exercise.

By the time she finished her cool-down and changed back into her regular clothes, she was trying to decide whether she should sit with her radio friends or with the other pilots’ families. And then she heard a familiar voice call her name.

“Hi, Dad. Don’t you usually have a later exercise slot?”

Ken Redmond’s lips quirked upward. “I switched with Harlan. I want to be on deck when that CME goes through the Earth-Moon system.”

No matter how busy you might be with work or training, mandatory exercise hours were non-negotiable. If you needed to, you could swap time slots, but unless illness or injury had you incapacitated, you made your exercise hours.

“How bad is it going to be?” As soon as Brenda said it, she realized just how shaky her voice sounded. Not exactly the professional voice of the DJ.

“Right now it looks like we should just barely catch the outer edges of it. We’ll probably have to power down surface equipment, but otherwise it should be business as usual down here.”

Except his voice suggested a but at the end of that superficially confident statement. Brenda looked closely at her father. She wasn’t that strong on solar astronomy or engineering, but she was pretty good at reading people. Maybe not as sharp as Autumn Belfontaine or the rest of the news team, but with someone she knew as well as her dad, she could pick up the unspoken stuff.

However, now was probably not the best time to come straight out and challenge him on it. Especially if he was downplaying real concerns in order to keep from alarming people, he’d want a little more privacy than the settlement gymnasium to discuss it.

“Would there be a better place to discuss this?” She cast a meaningful look around at the people sweating away.

Her dad got that little thought-furrow between his eyebrows. “Can you come down to my office after supper?”

“I’ll need to make sure I have someone to watch the kids, but I think I can swing it.”

Categories
Narrative

As If Things Aren’t Bad Enough

Spruance Del Curtin looked up at the big analog clock on the wall of the DJ booth. He still had half an hour left before he could sign off and head down to Innsmouth Sector. He was really tempted to play Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher,” just to hear the line about the clock being slow.

On second thought, he did not need to draw attention to the fact that he was clock-watching right now, and especially not with that song. He hadn’t forgotten the time he’d ended up with one of the pilot-astronauts after his hide over an on-air wisecrack about his teacher before playing it. And I didn’t even know Sid was sweet on her until Ken Redmond hauled my ass down to his office and bawled me out.

And it seemed like Ken would never quite let him back off the naughty list. If anything, this new assignment that had him doing liaison work between Engineering and IT seemed to make it worse, since now he had two bosses he needed to watch his step around.

That was when he noticed a commotion outside. Yes, it was Ken, coming down the corridor at a fair clip, and from the look of things, something was very wrong.

And then the door was opening and Ken was stuffing a piece of paper in his hand. Actual paper, not a text message.

As soon as Sprue saw the NOAA headers on the message, he had to take a deep breath and recover his composure. No wonder Ken had torn it right off the printer and run it over here. Up here on the Moon, solar storms were one of the biggest dangers, right there with explosive decompression and hypercapnia.

Just a few days ago the Sun had “tossed a hairball,” pilot slang for a Coronal Mass Ejection. At least that one had been on a part of the Sun away from the Earth-Moon system, so it shot harmlessly into deep space. Which was a good thing, considering it was an X-class, close to the Carrington Event in power.

Thankfully the latest one was much weaker. However, it was aimed almost directly at them, and would soon be bathing Farside in dangerous hard X-rays and charged particles. Which meant that they had to get the warning out now to all the outlying habitats to suspend all EVA’s and re-route all travelers to shelter.

Now the big question would be whether everyone here in Shepardsport would need to retreat to the solar storm shelters under the settlement’s water reservoirs. Not only would it disrupt all work in progress except essential life-support activities, it would also mean the pilots and spaceport personnel who were avoiding contact with the rest of the settlement’s population could not maintain their quarantine.

What would that mean for everyone?

Maybe we’ll be lucky and the energy levels will be low enough that we won’t have to take shelter. But even as that thought came to him, Sprue knew he was whistling in the dark.

Categories
Narrative

A Quick Conference

“Reggie, we’ve got to step on that kid, hard.” Even over the phone, Ken Redmond’s voice had that gruff-Gus growl that brought back nostalgic memories. “I’ve seen this kind of shit again and again. He thinks the rules don’t apply to him.”

“He’s a Shep, Ken.” Reggie Waite didn’t like to belabor the obvious, but he could tell Ken was thinking in terms of the average difficult kid. “Punishing him will only make him focus on avoiding getting caught in the future.”

“And you’re just going to let him break rules and get away with it? What happens when someone gets hurt because of him?”

Reggie could see Ken’s point. The Moon wasn’t a safe place, could never be a safe place — but so were a lot of places on Earth. On the other hand, he was thinking like a Grissom, not a Shepard.

“Ken, I know he works for you down in Engineering. Has he ever broken any rules that have actual safety consequences? As opposed to administrative rules?”

“Goddammit, Reggie, it’s the principle of the thing.” Ken paused, took a deep breath, then started again. “You’re a military man. You understand why the military trains new recruits the way we do in boot camp. It’s not just the specific skills we’re trying to instill in them. It’s the habit of obedience, of attention to detail, of following procedure even when you don’t know why it’s important. That kid’s the very model of the barracks-room lawyer, and if we don’t step on him, hard, we’re going to have no end of trouble with him. And damn likely, half the other Sheps in this place.”

Yes, Ken was riled up. He’d completely forgotten he was talking to a clone of Alan Shepard right now.

But remarking upon that fact wasn’t going to be productive. “But he’s not a recruit at boot camp. Making him do busywork as punishment is just going to reinforce the problem instead of resolving it. And the real problem is that he’s not being challenged. Most of his work is so easy it just occupies his time, not his mind. I’d be ready to bet money that he does absolutely no studying in that stats class he’s taking right now. Just reads through the text, then plugs and chugs on whatever stats package Dr. Doorne’s got them using, and still gets A’s. And how much actual problem-solving is he doing in his work for you, and how much rote work?”

No, Ken didn’t like to have to admit that he’d decided to punish Sprue’s attitude issues by keeping him on very basic work, the stuff that wasn’t done by a robot only because it needed just a little more executive function than could be programmed into one. For most genesets it would have brought about the desired change in attitude, but a Shep would just see it as the boss having it out for him.

“We’re going to have to find something that actually makes him work hard, not just busy. Something that actually makes him have to stretch to meet the mark, instead of just mailing it in. Until then, he’s going to view the rules as a technical challenge instead of boundaries he needs to respect.”

“Reggie, you can’t reward this shit of his. He’s got to be punished.”

No, Ken wasn’t getting it. He was a top-notch engineer, and a great organizer, but he just didn’t get Sheps. “Ken, how about we just plain take him out of Engineering. If he likes playing hacker so much, maybe it’s time we move him to IT. Or if that doesn’t work, I’ll take him on myself.” Although that could be risky, since Sheps tend to set each other off.

Ken grumbled, but he agreed that his approach wasn’t working. Maybe it was time for some kind of interdisciplinary approach — give him work that bridged several different departments. Especially if they could get Dr. Doorne on board, since they might be able to involve whatever project she was having him do on the side.

Categories
Narrative

Of Distance and Difficulty

Autumn Belfontaine had plenty of experience in doing interviews. One of her very first assignments as a reporter at the U of Minnesota student radio station had been to get man-on-the-street interviews at a political rally.

However, she was used to being able to talk with her interviewee face to face. Sure, radio was an audio-only medium, so the listeners weren’t losing anything. But as an interviewer, she really liked to be able to see the other person, gauge their reactions to her questions in a way she couldn’t when she had nothing but a voice on the other end of a telephone line. And no, videoconferencing technology didn’t really substitute for being in the same room with a person and being able to look them in the eyes.

Having it be someone she knew should’ve made it easier, but somehow she was finding it much harder. It didn’t help that she and Chandler Armitage had a rather complicated relationship. Genetically speaking, he was her uncle, since he was her father’s clone-brother. But they were so close in age that he felt more like the brother she never had.

Which is no excuse. You’re a professional, so act like it.

Still, there was no denying that things simply weren’t clicking, and it wasn’t just because the assignment had been sprung on her with almost no time to prepare. She was supposed to be getting his insights on the situation from his experience as a pilot flying to various settlements, but all his responses sounded stiff, even canned.

At least this is a recorded interview, not something we’re doing live. With luck, he’ll loosen up. Worst case, we 86 the whole thing.

Autumn was so tightly focused on it that she almost didn’t hear the tapping on the door. When she did, she turned to see who could be interrupting her. At least coming in on a recorded interview wasn’t like barging into the DJ booth while the DJ was on air — they could edit out such interruptions.

To her surprise, it wasn’t the music director, or the sales director, or even the general manager, but Ken Redmond himself. When the Chief of Engineering shows up at your door, you’d better answer, ASAP.

“Commander Armitage, we’re going to need to wind this up.”

At least he was understanding, but it still felt awkward to cut things short. And even more awkward after the call was completed, to go out there and see what Ken needed.

Categories
Narrative

Hello Goodbye

The worst part about having a commuter marriage isn’t the times you spend apart. It’s when you finally get to see each other, and then you had to say good-bye again.

Brenda Redmond drew herself a cup of coffee from the coffeemaker in the music library, which doubled as a meeting room and staff lounge. At least these days you could get actual coffee up here, thanks to the expansion of the greenhouse farms to produce a wider variety of agricultural products.

Drew had flown in last night, right after supper, and by the time he’d gotten through with all the paperwork, it was almost time for bed. They’d hardly had time to talk before they both started nodding off to sleep, and the next thing Brenda knew, the alarm was going off to get her down here in time for her air shift.

By the time she’d be off the air, Drew would already be back down to the spaceport facilities, overseeing the loading of his lander with cargo to take back to Grissom City. Nothing to do but give him a quick good-bye kiss and hurry off.

And he got this flight only because someone else needed the time off. Then it’s back to his regular run, up to Luna Station and back down again.

Brenda tried to tell herself she should be grateful that at least he wasn’t getting assigned to the Scott, or worse, one of the Aldrin cycler spacecraft going back and forth between the Earth-Moon system and Mars. This way he could pick up flights over here now and then, even if he couldn’t get a regular assignment. Apparently the big bosses preferred having him on the more difficult orbital missions ever since his performance during the malware attack on flights inbound to Slayton Field.

Brenda was still mulling it over when a voice called her name. She looked up to see Cindy standing in the entrance.

“Hi, Cindy. What is it?”

Cindy joined Brenda on the sofa. “Any idea what’s with Sprue?” Her lowered voice suggested this was not a discussion for general consumption.

“What about him?” Although Brenda had a fair idea, especially after her father had taken her aside for a talking-to, she didn’t want to open that conversation only to discover Cindy was asking about something completely innocuous.

“He’d been dropping hints and asking questions for the past several days, and then bang, just like that, he stopped.” Cindy looked Brenda up and down. “I was just wondering if you had any idea what was going on.”

“I have a few ideas, but I’m not sure how much we want to be heard talking about them.” Brenda cast a significant look at the clock. “Right now it’s almost time for my air shift, so I need to be ready to be on.”

“Gotcha.” Cindy retreated back to her desk, leaving Brenda free to get to the DJ booth.

Yes, she’d picked up the hint that it might be possible to discuss matters later. Assuming of course something didn’t happen to knock everything sideways, like Autumn Belfontaine coming in here with breaking news that blew everyone’s speculations right out of orbit.

Categories
Narrative

Teasing Out Answers

There was a trick to chatting up girls without crossing the line to actually hitting on them. It had taken Sprue some time to learn it, mostly because in his younger days he’d rarely had any need of the skill. If he was interested in a girl, he was going to want to hit on her, not just chat her up.

But right now the last thing he wanted was to have anyone thinking he was trying to hit on Cindy Margrave. Technically she was Betty Margrave and Carl Dalton’s niece, not their daughter, and had inherited none of the Shepard geneset. But Betty had taken in Cindy and her sister Kitty after their parents died in a freak accident, rather like Alan and Louise Shepard had taken in a niece, Alice. Because the girls had come up here as a part of Carl Dalton’s household, everyone was treating Cindy and Kitty as if they were members of the Shepard lineage, just like their cousins.

The first thing he had to have solid was his pretext for being at the station offices so early. It would’ve been so much easier if he could’ve switched air shifts with Brenda Redmond or Lou Corlin. However, neither of them had pressing business any time in the near future that would necessitate such a trade, and neither did he.

So here he was, getting copies of some logs, supposedly for his statistics class. “I don’t know why they’ve got Dr. Doorne teaching it, especially considering that she’s a radio astronomer and electrical engineer. You’d think they’d have her teaching actual astronomy, or maybe signal processing.”

Cindy set her tablet back down. “A lot of astronomy these days involves statistical analysis. Especially radio astronomy, since it’s almost entirely sorting through massive amounts of data and picking out the significant signals from a metric butt-ton of random noise. Or at least that’s what I learned in the astronomy overview class I took a few training cycles back. And down in IT we do a lot of work with astronomical data.”

Sprue considered how to steer the conversation towards a broader discussion of data, and then medical data in particular. Or at least interesting bits of data coming in from Earth, stuff that didn’t seem to fit with the pattern.

“Good morning, Mr. Del Curtin.” The deep, gruff voice could only belong to Ken Redmond, Chief of Engineering.

Sprue turned to face the older man. “Um, good morning.”

Ken stayed just far enough back that he didn’t obviously have to look up at Sprue’s greater height. “I believe you have some other place to be this early in the morning.”

Sprue recognized the warning in those words. Although Ken Redmond was not their direct supervisor, the station was considered to be part of Engineering for administrative purposes, and thus he had disciplinary authority over all its personnel. And Sprue had not forgotten what had happened when he ran afoul of Redmond in the past.

“As it happens, I really need to get this data sorted through in time for class tomorrow.” He turned back to Cindy. “I guess I’ll have to talk to you later.”