Tag: Louis Corlin

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Narrative

Family Matters

Cather Hargreaves wasn’t sure whether he was glad to be getting home for the evening. On one hand, he was glad that he’d been assigned to the main Safety and Security station here in Grissom City proper, which meant he was able to go home every night. On the other hand, he was all too aware that several other members of the department were stationed out at the Roosa Barracks, monitoring flight operations (such as they were these days), although they lived here in the city. Because of the effort to prevent possible contagion from being brought from the spaceport to the city, they were stuck living in temporary quarters out there, seeing their families only via FaceTime or teleconferencing software.

And how would it benefit anyone if you were to join them, just to lessen your feelings of guilt about their situation?

Those had been Toni’s words when he’d mentioned it to her. And he had to agree that, looking at it from a perspective of efficiency, she was absolutely correct. It was just when you looked at it from a perspective of human social cohesion that he really didn’t like being able to go home every night when some of his people couldn’t.

And it’s more important that you be at your best and able to do your job to the best of your ability.

That too had been a strong argument. Or as Toni was wont to point out, sacrifices aren’t magic and don’t have any supernatural power. But she was a deist, and didn’t view the Creator as the sort of entity to be moved by sacrifices.

As usual, she was already home when he got in. She looked a little weary, but that was hardly surprising when one considered that she was one of the people trying to hold the Internet together while things were falling apart on Earth. Just last night she’d been talking about how many of the really big websites were having momentary outages as one set of servers would drop offline and the routers had to reconnect users to a mirror site somewhere else. Now IT’s big project was trying to make sure everything critical was mirrored up here on the Moon, which meant she was lucky to even get to come home.

When her eyes met his, she pushed the weariness away to look excited for him. “Hi, sweetheart. How did it go, or do I ask?”

“The usual.” Cather hoped he didn’t sound too downhearted. “No major problems, but a heck of a lot of little stuff that sure sounds like people stressing out and not quite having the level of self-control they usually would.’

“Not surprising. We’ve pretty well identified all the critical websites we need to have mirrored up here, in case all their dirtside mirrors go down. Now our biggest problem is figuring out how to expand our server capacity to accommodate that much data. Oh, and I just got an e-mail from one of your clone-brothers over at Shepardsport. Seems he’s trying to track down some rumors about the situation down at Schirrasburg.”

Cather’s guts clenched at the mention. “All I know is that they’ve had someone sick, and they’re worried enough that they stopped all flights in and out until they’re certain it’s not the diablovirus. They should have sufficient supplies to get by for at least another three weeks, although things could get pretty tight by the end of that period.”

“OK.” Toni sounded dubious. “According to what he said, he was hearing two contradictory rumors, one that the guy recovered and the other that he died but someone’s covering it up to prevent panic. And before you tell me about not passing rumors, it looks like he’s involved in trying to quash them with facts, and running short on those. I was just about to see what I could find out when you showed up.”

Cather recalled his wife’s skills as a hacker, that she’d gotten into some measure of trouble when she was younger and not so careful. Of course now she had a lot broader authorization as one of the senior members of Grissom City’s IT team, but there still were limits.

“If you’re going to take a look around, be careful. Not just because of health privacy laws, but because if they’re trying to keep a lid on something serious, they’re going to take information security as seriously as physical and biological security. And considering my own position, they could very well take it as an official action on the part of Grissom City.”

“Got it. Now that you’re home, let’s have supper first.”

“Sounds good. I think there’s some leftover chicken from last night that I can turn into something.”

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Narrative

A Helping Hand

Still annoyed that he should have to deal with such stupid antics from any of that brat-pack of teenage Sheps who’d grown a little feral since arriving as middle-graders, Lou walked alone to the dining commons for supper. Brenda needed to pick up her kids anyway, so it was a perfect excuse to say good-bye instead of walking with her.

However, the question that had originally brought them to sitting side-by-side at a computer in IT was still nagging at Lou’s mind. What exactly was going on at Schirrasburg?

It was probably the smallest of the major American settlements. For various reasons it had never really grown at the rate of Grissom City and Coopersville, and had remained more like a very large scientific outpost than a true city on the Moon. Yes, dependents were allowed to live there, but these days some of the larger commercial mining settlements were allowing the miners to bring their families, so the distinction was really blurring.

Which made it all the more surprising that Schirrasburg should be where the supposed lunar Patient Zero should show up. You’d really think it would be Grissom City, which was the big hub of lunar tourism. Before everything closed down, there were thousands of tourists coming and going, wealthy people who were apt to be lax about pre-flight quarantine procedures for the simple reason they were accustomed to their money insulating them from the consequences of their actions. If anyone was going to bring a bug up here, it was likely to be them.

But no one would go out to Schirrasburg for fun. From everything Lou had heard, the place was boring, boring, boring. All scientific and technical people, all with jobs to do and damned little time left for entertainment. The sort of people who went there took procedures seriously or they didn’t get selected.

Unless it was one of the pilot-astronauts. Things might be tamer than the wild and wooly days of the Mercury Seven, but military pilots were always a cocky and headstrong bunch. As Gordon Cooper was reputed to say, the meek might inherit the Earth, but they would not inherit the sky.

If that were the case, it would certainly explain why NASA was working so hard to keep things quiet. No matter how hard they tried to isolate the pilots from each other and from the settlements they visited, there was always a certain amount of interaction. And no one could afford the mess that would result if every pilot had to be grounded who’d had contact with an infected pilot for the previous ten days, let alone the twenty-five that some were saying was the largest possible window of contagion.

However, Lou doubted that Drew Reinholt would be satisfied with a mere hypothesis like that. No doubt he’d considered it himself, and probably avoided airing it in order to make sure he didn’t lead them down a garden path and make them less likely to consider other possibilities.

Except what other possibilities can we explore? I’m pretty well at the end of my skills, and who else is there to turn to?

Which was when he realized that he’d completely ignored his best resource. One of his clone-brothers was married to a top-notch programmer with a rep as a white-hat hacker. Better send a message off to her, see if she could help.

By the time Lou finished, he was at the landing in front of the dining commons. And gathered around the big double doors was a whole crowd of teenage Sheps. No, they didn’t look like they were hanging around to hit on girls.

Which meant that word had already gotten around, and they were looking for trouble. On the other hand, this was a very public place. How far would they push matters with so many people watching?

Lou squared his shoulders and kept walking as if he owned the place. “OK, guys, are you going to let me through, or am I going to have to Batman my way in?”

For a moment he wondered if the Sheps were going to respond with derision. But then they began to pull back. He decided he didn’t want to know whether it was the knowledge that he shared his ur-brother’s interest in boxing, or the two Security guys behind him, whose reflections were showing in the etched moonglass of the doors.

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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

Some Questions

It hadn’t been ten minutes after the conversation with Juss Forsythe when the boss showed up at the hardware help desk. Not the tech support supervisor, but the head of IT herself.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Corlin.” Although she was smiling, the formal address suggested trouble was in the offing. “I see you and Mr. Forsythe were having a conversation earlier.”

Although she didn’t specifically accuse him of having been caught visiting while he was supposed to be working, why else would she remark on his conversation with Juss? Which meant he would have to watch what he said, make sure he didn’t sound defensive.

Better to make it sound routine and unremarkable. “We were just discussing some problems both our departments are dealing with.” No, better not elaborate. More information might make it sound interesting enough to pursue further.

Steffi just nodded, a curt up-and-down movement. “Is there anything I need to know about these problems?”

Lou’s heart sped up, and he hoped his face hadn’t betrayed that moment of alarm. “We have things taken care of.”

No, she did not look convinced. “If it has to do with a Shep, please don’t think you can’t talk to me about it, just because I’m married into the Shepard lineage.”

Make that definite she probably suspected they were talking about Sprue. However, she was leaving him a face-saving out, rather than making an Issue about it. Which meant he’d better take that opportunity, thank her, and reassure her that he’d let her know if things reached the point she needed to be involved.

Still, once she was gone and definitely out of earshot, Lou breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief.

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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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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

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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Narrative

It Don’t Come Easy

After such a long and difficult day, Spruance Del Curtin didn’t even feel like hanging out with his clone-brothers and scoping girls at the dining commons. Right now he just headed to the table where Brenda Redmond and Lou Corlin were eating supper.

As he approached, both of them looked up. “So what are you doing here?”

“Just wanted to find a quiet place to eat, maybe talk shop a little.”

Lou narrowed his eyes and studied Sprue. “That’s unusual for you. Are you sure you’re feeling OK?”

“No, I’m not coming down with anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Sprue slid into an empty seat and checked himself in. “It’s just been a really long day. First, Dr. Doorne pulls me in on the problems with the main mixing board, never mind I don’t know that much about it. And I only get off that job because I’ve got an air shift to do. I mean, they even ordered my lunch delivered to the station.”

Lou wiped up the last bit of gravy on his plate with a piece of bread. “So how are things coming on it?”

“Apparently some time while I was on the air, she decided that the problems were so complicated we were better off tearing it down all the way and rebuilding it from scratch. So now Ken’s sent it off to someone in Engineering, I’m not sure exactly who’s handling it. But assuming they don’t have any major problems with parts, and there’s not other weirdness in that thing, we should have it back on the air in a couple of days.”

That got a wry grin from Brenda. “Yeah, all we’d need is a case of Moon gremlins.”

Except it wasn’t really a laughing matter. More than once there’d been weird things up here, of the sort that left people wondering about the possibility of incorporeal intelligences, whether mischievous or malicious. And given the very thin margins by which humans survived up here on a world utterly inimical to biological life, those thoughts were not reassuring.

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Narrative

A Welcome Note

Two more airlocks, Brenda told herself. Just two more airlocks and we’ll be to the station offices.

It shouldn’t have been such a big deal, except that a crew was hauling a big piece of equipment down to Flight Ops after Engineering had worked on it. In normal times, transporting it at this hour made perfect sense, since there weren’t that many people moving around. Today it meant she and Lou got stuck waiting a lot longer than they should’ve. Lou had texted ahead so that everyone would know the reason for the delay, but it was still frustrating to have to lose time waiting, especially since there wasn’t a whole lot of ways to catch back up.

Just as they were entering the next to last airlock, her phone chimed incoming text. Wondering if it was her dad, she pulled it out.

No, it was Drew: Just wondering if you’re having trouble with your system over there. Some time in the last hour, sound quality just went to crap.

Better let him know she was aware of the situation. Thanks. Right now I’m on my way down to the station to help sort it out. Rand’s watching the kids.

He’s a good kid. Typical straight-arrow Chaffee, but still a good kid.

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Narrative

Network Degradation

Lou Corlin had arrived at work a little early today, figuring that he could get ahead of the situation for a change. However, he’d no more than started taking stock of the situation when he got a phone call. Not on the official IT department phone, but his personal phone.

He was surprised to discover that it was Autumn Belfontaine. Why would she call his personal line when she knew he would be at work right now?

Still, he was technically three minutes before the beginning of his shift down here, so he could take a personal call without any trouble. “Hello, Autumn. What’s going on?”

“What kind of network analysis software do you have access to?”

“Pretty much everything that’s legal for civilians to have, although some of it is the sort of thing that would get questions raised if I were using it.”

“OK, is it pretty much limited to the local networks here in Shepardsport, or could you run scans on networks elsewhere?”

Lou had to pause a moment to consider how to answer it. “I’ve never had to do any scans that go beyond our own systems, but I’m pretty sure it would be possible. What are you looking at?”

“I’m noticing that an awful lot of the local news websites are either intermittently available or have gone down altogether. I keep wondering if I can’t get to them because the servers have crashed, or if whole segments of the Internet are failing.”

“OK.” Lou considered the implications of that information. “Are there any patterns in the locations that are failing? I know that a lot of companies use webhosting companies in other cities, and the physical servers are often located in rural areas where electricity is cheaper, which are often some distance from the company’s business offices. But if you’ve noticed patterns, it would at least give us a start.”

That got an awkward pause. “Let me do a little looking around and put together a list. Right now it’s more of a hunch, one of those right-brain intuitions that sees a pattern as a whole, the sort that says something’s wrong to a very ancient part of the brain.”

It wasn’t like Autumn to go off half-cocked, which suggested that she hadn’t realized the implications until she was talking with him as an IT person, not an on-air personality for Shepardsport Pirate Radio. But Lou wasn’t going to criticize her — she didn’t have all that much training in IT, and certainly not that much in the operation of online networks. So he let her wind up the conversation and get the necessary data together to send to him.

It was only when the connection terminated that he realized he’d been standing here taking what was fundamentally a business call while he still wasn’t checked in. Which meant that officially he would appear to be late.

Even as he was considering whether it was worth it to ask for his official timesheet to be amended, the door opened and in walked Steffi Roderick. “What’s going on? You’re not the sort of person to be taking personal calls while you’re on the clock.”

“Um, actually it wasn’t a personal call.” Lou explained about Autumn Belfontaine’s query. “Would it be possible to do a general scan of the terrestrial Internet to see what parts are still up, and whether it correlates with reports we’re getting through other channels of whole regions that seem to be shutting down?”

“That’s a pretty ambitious task. Let me do a little research of my own while Autumn puts together her list of news sites that have gone dark. We may just have something important going on here.”