Tag: Spruance Del Curtin

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Narrative

Indecision

Spruance Del Curtin looked at his phone, trying to decide what to do. So Drew wanted him to get answers about the situation in Schirrasburg, right when he was getting told that Command was taking notice of his curiosity, and not in a good way.

Should he contact Autumn Belfontaine, express interest in taking her up on that offer to put him on the news team? Except he really didn’t like the idea of having to give up being a DJ.

Who else could he talk to? A lot of times he’d ask Brenda, but she was Drew’s wife and Ken Redmond’s daughter, and Sprue wouldn’t be surprised if she told both of them that he’d asked her. Drew might be amused at having his own question come full circle, but Sprue was pretty sure that Ken was the one that sent Lou Corlin to make those passive-aggressive remarks last night.

However, Sprue did have a reasonably good rapport with Chandler Armitage. Not close, given that they were both Sheps and there was always a certain edge of competitiveness in any interaction between them. But if Sprue played his cards right, Chandler might just take the question as a challenge and plunge right into the search for the answer with all the determination of a terrier digging out its prey.

On the other hand, did he really want to discuss it over an insecure channel like SMS when it was clear that very senior people were taking an interest in his activities, and not in a good way? In normal times he might’ve found an excuse to go down to Flight Ops and see if Chandler was in his office. When you had lineage rights, there were plenty of ways to make the connection without catching flack about it.

Maybe sent a carefully worded text, to avoid making it too clear why he wanted to talk, and see if Chandler was at least in town. In the meantime, he had studying to do, and at least the latest lesson packet in his statistical analysis class would keep his mind too busy to fret.

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Narrative

Considerations

All through his air shift, Spruance Del Curtin’s thoughts kept going back to Autumn’s offer. Did he want to formally become a reporter? He liked being a DJ, and he doubted that they’d let him do both.

But it wasn’t really possible to have a conversation about the subject right now, since even a long set wouldn’t necessarily be enough to cover this sort of discussion. And once he handed it over to the Tea Time crew, he needed to get straight to the classroom for his teaching responsibility. It wasn’t quite as bad as when he had a basic geology class right before his air shift, but it still made things cramped and put dinner later than he would’ve liked.

As it turned out, it wouldn’t have mattered if he hadn’t had somewhere he needed to get to. Autumn had already left for the day and the newsroom was dark.

As he was making his way to Miskatonic Sector and the classroom where his students and senior instructor were waiting for him, his cell phone chimed incoming text.

Dang, what was it this time? Dr. Courland knew that he was coming straight off his air shift, and it took time to get between the station offices and the classrooms.

Sprue pulled out his phone to discover a message from Drew Reinholt: Have you heard anything solid about the situation down in Schirrasburg? We’re getting conflicting information. Some people say the guy’s recovered and never had the diablovirus in the first place, and other people are saying that he died and NASA’s covering it up to prevent panic.

Not something I’ve heard about right now. I’m on my way to a class I teach right now, but I could ask Autumn tomorrow. Or maybe you can ask her yourself.

As soon as he hit send, Sprue realized that might not be the best tone to take with a pilot-astronaut, especially not the husband of one of his colleagues at the station. But it was too late to recall it now, and probably Drew would understand that people get short when they’re being interrupted on the way to something they need to get to.

On the other hand, maybe it would be profitable to sound out Dr. Courland. Maybe he’d heard something through a different channel than the one the pilots used. After all, scientists had to communicate their findings to one another, and it was likely they’d talk about other stuff too.

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Narrative

Watch Yourself

Ever since Lou Corlin had delivered his little warning (presumably from Ken Redmond), Spruance Del Curtin had been feeling on edge. Not just that fluttery feeling of unease before an important exam, or the uncertainty of dealing with a situation that could go either way. Instead, he was feeling very much as if he were being watched.

He’d tried to tell himself not to be paranoid. Of course there were cameras and microphones in all the public areas. That was pretty much a given in a lunar settlement, just like it was on a spacecraft or in a space station. There were procedures for accessing the recordings, which ensured that they couldn’t be used for inappropriate purposes, whether that be idle curiosity on the part of neighbors or vindictive spite on the part of authority figures.

But it wasn’t just knowing that the public areas of the settlement were monitored. No, he was struggling with a feeling that he was being watched by people, not just the ever-present machines. That someone, or more likely several someones, were monitoring his activities because someone in authority had decided that he’d crossed a line that couldn’t be ignored.

It would be so much easier if it had been just an issue of hitting on girls. Say, he’d paid a little too much attention to someone whose parents objected, whether because they thought he was too old for their daughter or because they just didn’t like Sheps in general. But he was getting a real feeling that it was a whole lot bigger than that, especially since he really had been too busy lately to spend much time on what would often be one of his favorite pastimes.

Lou’s comment might well have been oblique, but it strongly suggested that someone was not pleased about his interest in something. But what would be the subject that they were so determined to shut him out of that they’d be sending one of his colleagues from the station to warn him off in such vague ways that it verged on the passive-aggressive?

All the way to the station offices, Sprue mulled over those thoughts. Who could he even approach to try to figure out what was such a closely guarded line of inquiry that his curiosity was so unwelcome?

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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

Catching Up

Now that Ken Redmond had given up on fixing the main board for Shepardsport Pirate Radio and was having his electrical people rebuild it from the ground up, Spruance Del Curtin had some time again. Except he also had a bunch of catching up to do because of the time he’d lost.

The biggest problem was all that data for Dr. Doorne. This was something he couldn’t skate through, or make look done. Every data set needed individual attention, and it all had to be right. Let something slip through, and the heavy iron down at IT might well choke on it — especially if it was a malformed argument, or data incorrectly recorded so that it looked like a command. Of course everything was done on copies, not the original data, but it still wasted time on some of the most powerful — and expensive — computers up here.

So Sprue had decided to come up here early and get started just as soon as he could get into the Astronomy department. It meant having his breakfast sent up here, and he couldn’t hang out with the guys or hit on girls, but at least he was making reasonable headway on clearing the backlog. And even if his scrambled eggs were cold, he could reheat them in the department microwave.

But he was making good headway on the backlog, to the point the end was in sight. Not just the light at the end of the tunnel, which might be an oncoming train, but actually getting the last of those datasets ready for the next step in processing. With a little luck, he might well have them done before he needed to head off for his teaching responsibility.

He was so focused on his work that he almost didn’t notice Dr. Doorne coming into the office, never mind that she was talking on the phone to someone. At least she wasn’t one of those people who considered it an important courtesy for student assistants to rise and greet her when she entered the room. But then she was from somewhere out West — not California, maybe Arizona or Nevada? — and had a laid-back attitude about those kinds of formalities.

On the other hand, he was just as glad he didn’t have to interrupt her phone conversation by formally greeting her. Talk about a double-bind…

Better to just keep busy with the data. Although it was hard not to overhear tantalizing bits and pieces of halfalogue. Something about being in grade school “then,” and about always being ready to help, but not sure how useful something would be right now. Whatever it was, it sounded like it might be interesting, or it might be unutterably boring, depending on what the other person wanted.

Not that it mattered, since he wasn’t part of the conversation, and by lunar social conventions, he wasn’t even supposed to acknowledge the existence of the conversation in his presence. In any case, Dr. Doorne was winding it up.

“Good morning, Mr. Del Curtin.” Was that use of formal address a warning that she was aware he was listening in, even just a little bit? “You’re certainly here early.”

“There was a lot to catch up.” Sprue gestured toward the data on the monitor. “Especially since we’re going to have some extra work down at the station once the rebuilt main board is ready to go in, I wanted to get on top of it.”

“That’s a good idea, because we’ve got a new batch of data coming in, and I’m going to have you heading up a team three other student assistants.”

Wow, that sounds big. Sprue hoped his face didn’t betray his astonishment at so much responsibility, so fast. He was a Shep, and it was important to maintain that Shep cool. “Thanks, Dr. Doorne. I’m glad you have confidence in me.”

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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 Change of Plans

Spruance Del Curtin was on his way to the Astronomy Department when his phone chimed incoming text. What would it be now?

It was Dr. Doorne: Meet me at the station.

So whatever was going on with broadcast quality, she was involved in it. On second thought, he probably shouldn’t have been surprised, given that signals processing was her engineering specialty.

He wasn’t sure whether to be happy or disappointed that he wasn’t going to be going through data today. Quite honestly, it was getting tedious, even if he did like being someone’s special student, trusted with actual research material.

All the same, he knew he was going to get some questions when he turned around and headed back the other way. There were enough people up here in Miskatonic Sector who knew he was doing data work for Dr. Doorne every morning, and would want to know why he was heading the “wrong” way.

Except that, given most people around here did listen to Shepardsport Pirate Radio at least some, even if only on their alarm clock, they’d be aware that something was wrong down there.

As it turned out, he actually managed to arrive at the station offices before his mentor. Then again, she might not know some of the back ways through the service passages that he did. He’d worked for Engineering long enough that he’d learned quite a few shortcuts that weren’t strictly approved, but could shave off a few minutes when seconds counted.

As he’d expected, the place was already crowded. Not just the usual station staff, but half a dozen people from Engineering, including the big boss himself. And no, Ken Redmond did not look pleased today.

Make that double when he looked at Sprue. “So what brings you down’ here today?”

“Sir, Dr. Doorne just texted me to come down here.”

Ken narrowed his eyes. “How convenient–“

At that moment a familiar voice joined the fray. “Major Redmond, if you will listen to me for a moment.”

Dr. Doorne spoke with sufficient authority that Ken Redmond turned to face her. She continued in the same firm tone. “I requested Mr. Del Curtin to meet me here because I believe the skills he’s learned with me will be of use in this problem. Now, if we can take a look at the equipment we are dealing with.”

With that settled, Ken Redmond led them back to the main mixing board. Dr. Doorne set out a bag of equipment and they set to work.

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Rumint Isn’t News

Autumn Belfontaine was trying very hard not to listen in on the sales director’s halfalogue from the next room. Tempted as she was to close the newsroom door, it would be simply too obvious a message of I don’t want to hear you, and in its own way as rude as blatant eavesdropping.

By effort of will she readdressed herself to the wire service feeds. These days they were getting awfully spotty, and worse, she was a lot less confident in their accuracy. Once she’d been able to recognize all the major correspondents’ names at a glance, but more and more of them had disappeared in the last few weeks. Several times she’d realized it had been some time since she’d seen a single story filed by one or another big-name correspondent, and she’d end up losing an hour or more searching backward for the last time that person’s byline had shown up.

Even more worrying was how many completely new names were showing up. A lot of their writing seemed really shaky, not just in their composition skills, but in the depth and diligence of their research. More than once, she had a bad feeling that they were taking friend-of-a-friend stories and treating them like actual reporting.

Quite honestly, a lot of it sounds like it’s on the level of me and Brenda Redmond talking this morning about how she overheard her folks talking about a problem down in Agriculture with some of the irrigation systems. If she heard her dad right, it could wipe out a big chunk of our soybean crop, which would mean a big hit on our protein supply.

But second-hand reports like those were leads, not news. Autumn considered whether she wanted to call down to Agriculture for confirmation. Even as she was weighing the pros and cons, a familiar voice called her name.

She looked up to find Spruance Del Curtin standing at the door. He was a bit early for his air shift, but right now he didn’t have a class or any other obligation right beforehand.

“Hi, Sprue. What are you looking for?”

Sprue sauntered across the newsroom. If he’d been approaching one of her reporters, Autumn would’ve been ready to intervene. The kid had a reputation for hitting on girls every chance he got. However, he was well aware that Autumn was family, the daughter of one of his clone-brothers, and therefore off-limits for amatory adventures.

He cast an uneasy glance around the room. “I need to talk to you.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Maybe. Right now, I don’t have a whole lot of data to go on. But while I was up at the Astronomy department, I overheard a couple of the solar people talking about a new CME. They’re pretty sure it’ll miss the Moon, but it’s possible its outer edges could graze Earth’s magnetosphere.”

“Which could affect electric transmissions and electronics.” At least where they still even have electricity. From some of the reports she was getting, it sounded like some areas had come apart so badly that they couldn’t even keep power plants running. “If you think there’s a big risk, I can try to contact the solar astronomers directly and see what they’re actually looking at.” As soon as she noticed the first hints of alarm in Sprue’s expression, she added, “Don’t worry, I won’t mention your name. They should understand that journalists sometimes need to protect their sources.”

“Thanks.” Sprue’s voice still sounded tighter than his usual confident tone. “Maybe it’s nothing, but if there is a danger, at least this way you can find out what’s going on.”

“You’re welcome.” Autumn cast a significant look at the clock on the other side of the room. “And you’d better start getting ready for your air shift.”

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Narrative

When It Rains, It Pours

Spruance Del Curtin had come to the Astronomy Department a little early today in hopes of touching base with Dr. Doorne, not just about his ongoing work for her, but also about the statistics class which had been in a state of suspension ever since the first serious CME threat. However, he arrived to find the entire department in what could only be described as a situation of organized chaos.

People were coming and going, about half of them talking on their phones. From the halfalogues he could hear, it sounded like most of them were talking to colleagues elsewhere in the Earth-Moon system. Whatever it was, it clearly had them worried, but most of what they were saying was way too technical for him to make heads or tales of. A lot of numbers, terms that made him think of the engineering side of radio broadcasting, all of which soon became such an intense information overflow that there was no way he could even hope to follow it.

And then here was Dr. Doorne, breaking off a conversation with someone on the other end of a phone connection. “Sprue, I have a new data set I need you to sanitize ASAP. You’ll find it in the usual folder.” She rattled off a file name that was an alphanumeric string.

There was nothing to do but say, “Yes, ma’am” and hurry over to the computer. Already Dr. Doorne was heading off to confer with someone else about whatever she was getting from her colleague elsewhere.

As soon as Sprue logged on and pulled up the data file, he had a good idea what it probably was. However, Dr. Doorne’s tone made it pretty clear that he was not to ask any questions or or otherwise do anything that would compromise his ability to get the data ready for whatever she was planning to do with it. Whatever it represented, it was so critical that there was no time to risk introducing bias because he just had to find out what he was looking at.

And if he was right and it did involve solar activity data, it might well be a matter of life and death for people in space and some of the smaller lunar habitats that weren’t nearly as well shielded as a big settlement like Shepardsport.

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The Children’s Hour

The classroom was a clamor of children’s voices, fairly bouncing off every surface. Once again Spruance Del Curtin wondered how he’d managed to get roped into this particular duty.

He knew all too well why — the kids were supposed to be going to the observatory for a basic science class. And kids this young were going to need more than just one or even two adults to keep them in good order on the trip up and back. So as Dr. Doorne’s special protege, he’d gotten roped into the task — and he sure couldn’t very well refuse, not when he really needed to keep on her good side.

However, the observatory was a geodesic dome of moonglass — one of the few surface features of the settlement to be part of its pressurized volume. With the Sun in such an unsettled state, even the solar filters were rather flimsy protection from radiation, especially for young children who were still growing.

So they were going to have a planetarium lesson instead, in the biggest room the science department had. Except for one big problem — the projector was still somewhere in the Astronomy Department’s storage rooms, thanks to a miscommunication, probably related to the change of plans.

It would’ve been so much easier if the teacher had just sent him up to the departmental offices to retrieve it. He actually knew his way around the Astronomy Department, unlike Ms. Cartwright, who just had some general science background and had been assigned the class because she was good with kids.

So here he was, stuck minding a bunch of little kids who were bored out of their minds. Worse, he’d had to arrange for one of the other guys to cover his air shift, and he was really missing it right now.

Especially considering that he was having to do this job with Rand Littleton. That kid was such an apple-polisher, and everyone favored him because he was a survivor of the ordeal in the downed lander. Never mind that it had been how many years now since the destruction of the old Luna Station, those kids always got cut slack on everything.

And Rand had been “one of the little kids” back then. The biggest reason he’d gotten so much responsibility was that one of the geologists had made him her protege.

And I don’t dare complain too much about it because her husband’s one of my clone-brothers. Sprue still remembered how Doyle had dressed him down. No, he had no desire for a repetition, and just because the pilots were all quarantined down at Flight Ops for now didn’t mean they would be forever.

And we Sheps have long memories.

At least keeping the kids corralled didn’t leave much time for anything else, so he didn’t have to make conversation with Rand. And quite honestly, Rand was a whole lot better with kids than he was. Rand always had that knack for finding ways to amuse little kids.

And here came Ms. Cartwright, projector in hand. At least she had a good idea that Sprue would know how to set it up, so he didn’t have to sit there trying to keep the kids quiet while she fumbled her way through the process.