Tag: Spencer Dawes

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Narrative

A Quick Visit

Things had gone more smoothly than usual this morning, and Lou Corlin got down to the station with almost half an hour to spare. Since there wasn’t really any use sitting around the front office waiting for Brenda to wind up her air shift, he decided to drop in on an old friend in the robotics shop.

Spencer Dawes was hard at work on a basic robotic arm, small enough that it could be brought down here instead of needing to be repaired in situ. Parts were arranged across the workbench, presumably in the order they had been removed.

But Ken Redmond was always adamant about keeping an orderly workspace as the best way of avoiding stupid mistakes. More than once the Chief of Engineering had bawled people out for returning tool boxes in disarray, especially if they also needed cleaning.

Of course he had good reason to, especially with the team that brought their tools back after an EVA in three buckets and coated with moondust. That stuff’s dangerous.

As Lou approached, Spence looked up from his work. “What brings you down here so early?”

“Just one of those days when things actually go right for a change. Hit every airlock when it was ready, that sort of thing.” Lou made a point of looking at the clock on the far wall. “So I figured I’d see how things are going down here.”

“Pretty well, all things told. How much are you doing on the programming side of things any more?”

“Not as much as I’d really like, but right now Steffi’s got me doing hardware troubleshooting for help desk. It’s always interesting, mostly because of how we’re having to keep stuff running that we’d just replace if things were more normal.”

“Tell me about it.” Spence gestured to the disassembled robot. “I’ve got half a dozen pieces that would normally be replaced, but we have only so many spares, so it’s going to be a repair job.” He paused, then looked over his shoulder in the direction of the Engineering office. “By the way, I hear Ken Redmond’s getting the new main board ready to be installed at the station.”

“Then I’d better get over there, just in case he wants me helping.”

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Narrative

The Tension Electric

With things as chaotic as they’d been of late, Autumn Belfontaine had been ordering most of her meals sent to the newsroom. As a result, being able to actually go to the dining commons was something of an Occasion.

As she walked past one after another table, looking for familiar faces, she noted the tension like an electric charge in the air. The stiff postures, the tight gestures, the voices that didn’t quite rise yet were oddly hard. Yes, everyone here was on edge, and who could blame them? Anyone with strong ties to people back on Earth had to be struggling with anxiety about the ever-increasing uncertainty about their safety as communication became more difficult. As if that weren’t enough, now they had the possibility of an extended period of bad space weather, depending on which solar astronomer’s interpretation of the data you believed.

She was so deep in thought she almost didn’t hear the familiar voice calling her name. When she realized that Spencer Dawes had saved a seat for her, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

“Sorry, Spence. I’ve got a lot on my mind right now.”

“No problem. I think everybody’s carrying a pretty heavy burden right now.” Spence looked around the table, which was occupied mostly by his friends. “Right now, let’s concentrate on having a reasonably enjoyable meal.”

Autumn recognized the signal that conversation should be kept to pleasant subjects. Which meant right now she’d just as soon let someone else take the lead.

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Narrative

A Season on Edge

Autumn Belfontaine looked at the coffeepot, considered whether to draw herself a cup. On one hand, she was tired, and didn’t want to literally fall asleep at her desk. On the other hand, she didn’t want to wire herself up so tight that she couldn’t get to sleep when she finished and got back to her apartment.

Considering that made her realize just how many late nights she’d been pulling these last few weeks. In normal times — at least as much as anything since the Expulsions could be considered “normal” — she would do most of her broadcasting in the morning, with the evening news segments left to the more junior members of the news team.

How long had it been since those first reports had come in, the empty villages in Central Asia, the cruise ships making emergency calls to the Navy for medical assistance, the abandoned cars and campers of the homeless that were mentioned only in local news? Of course it didn’t help one’s sense of time that up here on the Moon, morning, noon and night were just numbers on a clock, tied to a diurnal cycle at one’s national space control center rather than anything actually happening on the lunar surface. The artificiality of it soon induced a sense of unreality, no doubt because the brain didn’t get certain subconscious signals, even if the lights in the corridors did dim during the hours when it would be night in Houston.

Now she was having to monitor the development of a new crisis even as she was trying to keep track of the old one. At least a solar storm wasn’t quite as subject to rumors and misinformation, since it involved objective observations of an astronomical phenomenon. Thanks to the astronomy department, she had direct feeds on the key solar observation satellite data, although half the time she had to call someone in the astronomy department to interpret them.

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Narrative

A Risky Venture

At this hour, the offices of Shepardsport Pirate Radio were quiet, and that was exactly the way Spruance Del Curtin liked it. He could have his pick of computers to use, and no one would ask him any awkward questions. Even if Spencer Dawes were to come out of the DJ booth for one or another reason, he was a clone of Alan Shepard’s Lunar Module Pilot, so lineage obligation would keep him from making an aggravation of himself.

Sprue briefly glanced at the receptionist’s desk, but decided against using it. If he did raise any red flags, it could rebound on Cindy Margrave, and she was family. Only she and the afternoon receptionist used that computer, so they would be far more likely to get called in for questioning, if not a disciplinary hearing.

He briefly glanced at the offices of the program director and sales director, but decided against using either of their computers. Although both of them did have assistants, neither of those assistants regularly did work on the computer.

On the other hand, the newsroom had several computers that were used by pretty much everyone on the news team. Heck, some of the DJ’s used those computers, especially if they were looking for filler between sets, or before a group of ads. So many people used those computers that no one would ever be able to trace a particular search to any given individual.

Sprue started to turn on the newsroom lights, then decided it was too likely to attract attention to himself. All he’d need would be Ken Redmond coming down here to check on something and wondering why lights were on in the newsroom. There was enough light from the hallway that he could find his way through, and computer screens were backlit.

According to NASA Data At Rest rules, all computers were supposed to wake to lock screens that required passwords to pass. In theory, each person who used a computer like these was supposed to have a separate password, so that all use could be tracked. Given how many people used them, Autumn had her own password, but all the reporters shared a single password — which was helpfully written on a sticky note adhered to the frame of the monitor.

Not that it wasn’t difficult to remember — the initials of Big Al’s famous first words on the lunar surface and the date. Sprue grinned as he typed it in, imagining what his ur-brother would think to know.

From there, it was just a matter of doing the necessary searches. He’d intended to just use the browser and do a search: Google, Yandex, maybe the Japanese or Israeli sites, although he didn’t know all that much Japanese or Hebrew. But as he looked for the browser icon, he realized one of the advantages of using a newsroom computer: he had access to all the news services, including NASA’s internal ones. From there, it was just a matter of getting on the appropriate one and seeing what he could find out about the situation at Schirrasburg.

He’d expected to find news on some kind of accident, maybe in a lab, or someone doing an EVA. Even after all these years, Schirrasburg was still very much a scientific research station, more like one of the Antarctic bases than Grissom City or Coopersville. Sprue had heard Drew Reinholt tell plenty of tales of his time there, right after he’d been exiled to the Moon for his role in the Angry Astronaut Affair.

Instead, Sprue found a report marked as being for medical personnel only, but for immediate dissemination to all medical facilities off Earth. When he tried to open it, a security notice came up requesting authentication, and warning that all attempts would be logged.

Maybe he’d better not try to guess what passwords Dr. Thuc used, especially since it would be unlikely in the extreme that she would use this computer when she had plenty in Medlab. Especially if it dealt with sensitive patient data, NASA would take any data breaches, successful or attempted, very seriously.

Would there be any way he could get into Medlab and take a whack at one of the computers up there? Sprue tried to think of anyone who worked in Medlab, even as support staff, that he might have enough of a connection to that he could convince them to take a peek.

Even if he couldn’t see the actual document, its very existence was significant. Something had happened over there at Schirrasburg, something significant enough that NASA would be alarmed enough to want their medical personnel everywhere to know about it.

No wonder Dr. Doorne was so upset. Even if Tanner was safe at the moment, that place was small enough that he might well have had some connection with whoever was affected.

And if it was the diablovirus, it meant that the diablovirus was now on the Moon — which raised the question of the mechanism of transmission.

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Narrative

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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Narrative

Seeking Answers

It was really too bad that Lou Corlin had to have the morning airshift. Right now Spruance Del Curtin would’ve really liked to sit him down and talk IT.

Sprue had spent most of the morning in Dr. Doorne’s office, working on yet another dataset that needed sanitizing and verifying before it was analyzed. The further he went on this project, the more patterns he noticed — and the more he wondered just how much that data had to do with current events on Earth.

Why else would she have become so upset when I mentioned the spread of a virgin-field epidemic as an S-curve that initially looks like exponential growth?

It was also making him think of the propagation of certain kinds of malware on a network that lacked adequate defenses. Eventually you simply ran out of computers to infect — but until that happened, the spread would appear explosive.

And then Sprue remembered someone else from the station who worked with computers and networks. Spencer Dawes was working at the robotics shop, and while it was in Engineering, it had its IT aspects. Robots were controlled via WiFi, which meant needing security on those connections to ensure your robots stayed under your control, and didn’t get turned against you in obvious or subtle ways.

Visiting the robotics shop had the added benefit that Harlan Lemont was pretty laid back about discipline, and tended to be just a little overawed by Sheps. As long as Ken Redmond didn’t decide to put in an appearance, Sprue wasn’t likely to get Spence in trouble for slacking.

As it turned out, Spence was doing some pretty routine maintenance, so it wasn’t that hard for Sprue to lend a hand and avoid the issue altogether. “So how familiar are you with network security and malware?”

“Some. I have done some basic setup, especially when we have to replace a bot’s hard drive.” Spence gave him an odd looking over. “What are you looking for?”

“I’ve got a theory about the weird problems we’re having communicating with the outside universe, and especially with Earth.” Sprue considered how to lay it out, given that he wasn’t an IT guy and didn’t have that strong of background in the jargon. “The weirdest thing about this whole thing is how it’s intermittent. Part of the time you can get through, sorta-kinda, especially on low-bandwidth systems like SMS or on store-and-forward systems like e-mail. Other times it locks up completely and you can’t even ping anything outside our own networks.”

“That’s a pretty good description of the situation.” Spencer Dawes retrieved a can of machine oil and applied a few drops to several points on the robot’s joints. “That’s what’s got everybody in IT so sure it’s got to be a new kind of DDOS attack. Instead of continually bombarding our servers with phantom requests, the pwned computers are sending them intermittently, with periods of letup that make it harder to identify the sources and block them.”

Sprue had overheard enough to know how well that was going. “Except everything they do to trace incoming TCP/IP traffic is showing no evidence of unusual patterns of incoming requests. Which suggests there’s something completely different going on, that just looks like a DDOS attack. Suppose someone could create a completely different piece of malware that causes problems that look like a DDOS attack, but is completely local to the affected computers?”

“In theory it might be possible, but I don’t know enough to say. Juss might know, since he’s done some troubleshooting for IT.” Spence cast a significant glance over Sprue’s shoulder, a warning.

Sprue didn’t dare turn to take a look — too obvious. But there was enough metal around here to provide reflective surfaces enough to give him a good idea that Ken Redmond had come in and was talking with Harlan about something. No, Sprue did not want to get crosswise with the big boss right now.

Better wind it up, figure out how he could connect with Juss Forsythe. Although Juss was a clone of Ed White, which meant Sprue didn’t have lineage right to call upon, unlike with Spencer Dawes, who was a clone of Al Shepard’s Lunar Module pilot.

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Narrative

An Alarming Silence

Cindy had been up later than she’d intended the previous night, and now she could tell she was paying for it. Twice already she’d fallen asleep sitting up while trying to eat breakfast. At least Uncle Carl was still off on a mission and Aunt Betty was spending more time at her office than anywhere else, so Cindy didn’t have to deal with their disapproving looks. On the other hand, her cousins were most definitely noticing.

But what was I supposed to do? Especially since it was pretty clear Amy needed to talk, and I didn’t want to just leave Kitty to deal with it by herself.

Which raised another troubling issue — as of yet, Kitty hadn’t been able to contact Amy. She’d promised to text as soon as she got up for school, but there hadn’t been so much as a ping.

You weren’t supposed to be using your phone in the dining commons, since this was supposed to be a place for in-person socializing. But Cindy knew her younger sister had her phone on her lap, positioned just right to be able to see it, and was surreptitiously sending texts every so often.

At least her mandatory exercise hour didn’t start for another half hour, so she could take her time eating. Cindy was already running late for her shift at the receptionist’s desk at Shepardsport Pirate Radio. At least Autumn Belfontaine had given her a pass to run late if she needed to.

On the other hand, there was always the risk the boss would come in and find her absent. Especially the big boss, since Shepardsport Pirate Radio was technically considered part of Engineering, and Ken Redmond was notoriously unsympathetic about personal problems.

Which meant she’d better get going. Cindy leaned over to her sister and whispered, “When I get to the station, I’ll use the desktop computer to try to run some network checks. When I find something out, I’ll text you.”

“Thanks.” Kitty’s voice sounded unsteady, for all she was trying hard to put a good face on things.

As Cindy headed for the door, she wondered if she should just call in to the station and tell Autumn that she was going to take the day off. But with nothing definite to go on, it seemed way too much like self-indulgence to take the day off.

Just past the door, she was aware of someone sidling up to her. Dang it, but the Sheps were supposed to treat her as family, not someone to hit on.

But when she turned to tell him off, her gaze met a round face utterly unlike the long face of a Shep. “Uh, hi, Spence.”

Spencer Dawes smiled, not the big grin of a Shep, just an upward quirk of the lips that actually was more warm and inviting. “It looked like you could use the company. What’s wrong?”

Cindy moistened her lips and considered how much she wanted to say, how much was Kitty’s story to tell. “My sister’s having some trouble contacting an old friend back on Earth.”

That got her a nod of sympathy. “I’m hearing they’re having some communication troubles. If you’d like, I could have Juss see if one of his brothers would be able to stay with your sister.”

“Thanks, but I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”

Spence gave her another reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, it’s no problem. You’ve got lineage right to ask me for help. And I think you could use some company walking to work.”

Much as Cindy wanted to argue, she knew he was right. Spence was a clone of Edgar D. Mitchell, Alan Shepard’s Lunar Module Pilot, and therefore in the Shepard lineage. And right now, having to make small talk with someone would help take her mind off a situation she couldn’t do anything about.

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A Little Less Conversation

Listening to Shepardsport Pirate Radio in your office could be tricky here in the Roosa Barracks, since Grissom City was still trying to stay cozy with the Administration. But Peter Caudell had enough family over there on Farside that he liked to keep it on, even if he had to keep the volume low or listen on headphones. Which was a lot easier these days than it had been back in the days before Bluetooth.

And right now he was just as glad he’d picked the completely private option, because something seriously strange was going on over there. For starters, they were playing way too much Elvis. It would’ve been one thing if this were a Sunday morning, because that was Payton Shaw’s program, the Church of the Blessed Elvis. Two hours of nothing but the Man from Memphis.

But today was a rather ordinary Tuesday. Everything he could see was showing ordinary levels of traffic in cislunar space, and the Sun was behaving itself quite nicely. None of the messy coronal mass ejections that seemed to be characteristic of a solar minimum and could wreck havoc with space activities.

So why did so many songs by Elvis Presley keep showing up on their playlist? Even in the Classic Rock program in the afternoon, Spruance Del Curtin tended to favor acts from the 70s and 80s, but today he’d played half a dozen Elvis songs.

And now that the disco program was on, Spencer Dawes was playing that cover of “A Little Less Conversation.” What was that band’s name? Something-or-other XL, Peter had never paid much attention because disco wasn’t his kind of music. Was it worth the risk to go online to the Shepardsport Pirate Radio website and check their official playlist?

Still, it bothered him just enough to be a persistent itch at the back of his mind. Maybe he ought to make a few discreet inquiries to his clone-brothers over there, see if any of them had heard anything. Too bad none of them had landed a position on the station staff, which was a shame when one considered Scott Carpenter’s fondness for music.

Worst case, there was always Payton Shaw. Sure, he was a Cooper, but the clones of the Mercury Seven did stick together.