Tag: Spruance Del Curtin

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Narrative

Is This a Promotion or a Punishment?

Spruance Del Curtin had been scared when he reported to Dr. Doorne, although he wasn’t going to let anyone see it. Now, knowing that he wouldn’t be fired, he should’ve been relieved.

Except he wasn’t. Dr. Doorne was presenting this new assignment as a promotion: he was going to get to participate in the actual analysis of the data, right along with the actual scientists. While the rest of his class was working with old data sets with known answers, he was actually going to get to see and participate in science in progress. Which meant that Dr. Doorne was serious about that co-authorship.

Except everything about it left him feeling very strange. In particular, this business of liaisoning with IT, which sounded very much like he was going to be working down there at least part of the time. Just how was it going to be arranged? Was he going to be Dr. Doorne’s representative when she needed something out of IT, or was he going to be working down there as well as in her office?

If it was the latter, he could find himself with two bosses on the same project. He had some experience with that, especially when Shepardsport Pirate Radio had first been set up and the lines of command weren’t as clear as they’d become. It wasn’t exactly a situation he was eager to repeat — but neither was he eager to blow what could be a very good chance to get noticed in a good way by higher-ups.

Definitely he was going to have to keep an eye on things.

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Narrative

We Must Do Lunch Sometime

Brenda Redmond found it strange to be coming up to the dining commons without the children in tow. Almost as if she were naked.

But both of them were having lunch with their training groups today. It wasn’t an every-day occurrence that lessons ran over and they had to have a meal sent to their classrooms, but it was rare that both her children would on the same day.

No use worrying about it. She’d gone to lunch alone a lot of times when she was single. Even if she did still live with her folks, both of them had jobs that tended to make it difficult to eat lunch as a family. Heck, half the time Dad had been so busy he couldn’t even get away from Engineering for supper.

Things had settled down as the settlement had expanded its life-support capacity to handle all the Expulsees with a comfortable margin of error. But by then she’d married Drew and tended to sit with the other pilots’ families, and once the kids came along, she’d gotten used to eating as a family, reminding the kids of their table manners when they’d rather play with their food and goof off instead of eating and freeing up the seats for the next person.

As she was walking through the dining commons in search of a free seat, she heard a familiar voice calling her name. She walked over to join Lou Corlin. “You must’ve made good time up here.”

“The Timeline Brothers showed up early, so we got most of the handoff done before it was actually time to sign off. That and I got lucky at all my airlocks.” Lou helped her into her seat, a gallantry that seemed like something out of a movie. “So how did it go?”

“Gym went fine. I think we’re finally getting a handle on the wear and tear on the equipment, especially now that the new gym has room for three times the amount of machines. Right after the the first wave of Expulsions, Dad was complaining that Fitness shouldn’t be so astonished they were having constant problems when their machines didn’t even get any down time for preventative maintenance.”

Lou lowered his voice. “Actually, I was wondering whether you learned anything at Medlab.”

“Yeah, right.” The words came out awkwardly and Brenda could feel her cheeks grow warm. “I talked with Dr. Gorman, and he did seem to take me seriously. But he said he’d have to pass it to someone with more authority, so right now I’m playing the waiting game.”

Lou commiserated. “Do you want me to let Toni know now, or would it be better to stand pat until we actually know something?”

Brenda considered that question. “Maybe tell her we’re hitting some delays, but don’t make a big deal of it. She’s pretty high in the IT hierarchy over at Grissom City, so she’s probably got a lot of stuff to keep her occupied as it is.”

Lou allowed that she was probably right, and shifted the conversation to something more neutral. The table was starting to fill up, and it was inappropriate to carry on a conversation about private matters in front of others.

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Narrative

A Change of Assignment

All the way to the Astronomy Department, Spruance Del Curtin battled a sense of dread. Last night’s confrontation had been unpleasant, particularly since he’d had to choose between discussing how he’d been noticing patterns in the data for this project and admitting that he’d listened in on his boss’s phone conversation with her husband. If he’d thought about the possibility earlier, he could’ve prepared a plausible reason to be using the newsroom computer at that hour. But he’d never expected the commandant and head of IT to pick right then to meet Autumn Belfontaine in the newsroom. And once Captain Waite was bearing down on him, trying to think one up would only ensure he got suspected of lying.

Which meant that now he was going to have to face Dr. Doorne with the admission that he’d allowed his curiosity about the patterns in the data to get the better of him. She’d been quite clear on the importance that he not know what the data represented, so that he could approach it purely as numbers and avoid inserting his own biases into it.

He did not like the thought of being kicked off the project. This was real science, as real and important as his work as a DJ for Shepardsport Pirate Radio. If he’d been able to stay out of trouble, he would’ve had the recommendation of a major figure in the field, someone whose talents and skillsets were sufficiently unusual that it was considered worthwhile to actually bring her up her to do hands-on work with the telescopes, not just handle the data once it got down to Earth.

But there could be no avoiding the issue. Even if Captain Waite hadn’t told her about last night, it was only a matter of time before he did. In the meantime, Sprue needed to be on that data. Worst case, Dr. Doorne would decide those data sets needed to be re-sanitized by someone else. If he didn’t show up at all, there’d be no escaping a serious blot on his permanent record.

As usual, the Astronomy Department was quiet at this hour. But then it was relatively small, since almost all astronomy these days was data. The days of glass photographic plates was long gone — even optical telescopes used imaging technology to digitize the starfields for transmission and analysis. Anyone who was actually up here either was doing essential hands-on work like Dr. Doorne, who was also an electrical engineer, or was married to someone with a Writ of Expulsion against them.

Sprue had expected to find her in her office. Instead, she was in the main office, talking to her son. “Daddy’s going to be OK, Rusty. Now it’s time to go with Miz Lizzy.”

Some times it was hard to remember the kid was only four years old. But kids up here grew up fast. A four-year-0ld was already old enough to help the older kids with simple jobs like wrangling floorbots, and to help teach the twos and threes basic skills.

With her son handed off, Dr. Doorne turned to face Sprue. “Ah, Mr. Del Curtin, we need to talk. Come with me to my office.”

Sprue’s guts clenched, but he kept his face expressionless as he walked beside her. At least this way you get it over and done with.

The computer on which he’d been working for the last several days was now pushed against the wall. He took the indicated seat and prepared for the dressing-down.

But Dr. Doorne didn’t loom over him and yell, just sat down at her desk and looked straight into his eyes. “Captain Waite has told me about your independent investigations. While your initiative would otherwise be commendable, it puts me into an awkward position. Obviously, I can no longer have you doing this job now that you’ve noticed patterns in the data and took it upon yourself to find out what they mean.”

She paused to let him stew. How badly would it hurt him to get dismissed? Would it put his regular work in danger, or his future training units? More importantly, would it imperil his position at Shepardsport Pirate Radio?

Just when he wondered if he was expected to say something on his own behalf, Dr. Doorne’s stern expression softened. “On the other hand, your independent research shows that you are definitely ready to participate in the next stage of this project. I do have two other students of mine beginning the data sanitization and verification process, and they can double-check your work for the last few days just in case your interest in its meaning introduced any unconscious bias.”

By force of will Sprue kept his mouth from falling agape like a fish out of water. He wasn’t being fired, or even disciplined. Instead, he was getting a promotion.

More importantly, why did he have this gut feeling that it was not necessarily a good thing?

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Narrative

An Unwelcome Surprise

Spruance Del Curtin was winding up his search when he heard voices in the front office of the radio station. For a moment he wondered if it was just some of the late-night people from Engineering walking past, but no, they’d definitely come in.

And from what he could overhear, they were talking about whatever was going on in Schirrasburg. Yes, that was definitely Autumn Belfontaine. He’d recognize her voice anywhere.

He glanced around the newsroom in search of somewhere to hide, then realized that it would only make him look even more suspicious. Better to just have something innocuous up on the monitor and pretend that he was just preparing for tomorrow’s air shift.

And then the overhead lights came on, catching him completely by surprise. He blinked, his cheeks warming with the embarrassment of being caught by surprise.

“Now this is a surprise.” Reginald Waite looked down at Sprue. “I hadn’t expected you to be putting in extra hours tonight.”

Whatever line he’d been planning to say went straight out of Sprue’s head. He probably could’ve fast-talked his way past anyone else, even Ken Redmond, but Waite knew exactly what buttons to push.

“Just doing some research.” Damn if that didn’t sound defensive.

“Would it have anything to do with your recent communications with Chandler Armitage?” Reggie leaned forward a little. “I’m hearing that you’ve been texting him quite a bit about some data you’ve been working on.”

That rat! Sprue had to fight down an upwelling of incandescent rage at the thought of being betrayed by a brother.

Except Chandler was a Navy officer, an Academy graduate — and thus would have a lot more in common with Reggie. Small wonder he’d decide that the big Shep should know that little brother was nosing around.

“Um, not exactly.” Technically true, since it wasn’t actually part of the data he’d been asking Chandler about, but he would’ve never overheard Dr. Doorne talking to her husband otherwise.

“But it’s still something you’re just a little too curious about.” Reggie’s lips curled upward in a smile that seemed to belong better on a shark. “Very well. Since you seem to be determined to get into matters above your pay grade, you’re going to be accepting the responsibility that comes with that knowledge. I’m officially adding you to this meeting, and we’ll determine how that will change your role here at Shepardsport Pirate Radio.”

Somehow trying to find out what the heck was going on no longer sounded like so much fun. No, it looked like a lot more work, and a lot less he could brag about at the dining commons to impress his buddies.

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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

New Alarms

Spruance Del Curtin didn’t like getting caught by surprise. And he certainly didn’t expect to get caught by surprise by his boss.

On reflection, he knew he’d made a mistake when he’d assumed that Dr. Doorne was talking with someone else in the Astronomy department, but the other person just wasn’t speaking loudly enough for him to hear. So he’d assumed that, as long as he could hear her talking, he didn’t have to worry about her popping in on him.

And then she came walking in, still talking on the phone. And no, things did not sound good.

Sprue realized he was looking up from his computer and very deliberately returned his gaze to the monitor. One of the the most important bits of lunar courtesy was maintaining the pretense that one was not hearing conversations that one was not a part of. Even if he could hear, even if he was listening, he mustn’t be obvious about it. And he was not to acknowledge what he’d heard in any way.

Yes, there were gossips — it was something that could never be completely eradicated from the human psyche — but they tended to be on the margins, not in the center of cliques like back on Earth. And the more successful ones tended to be more discrete about what information they passed around, and how they claimed to have come by it.

From the sound of what he had overheard, Dr. Doorne was talking to her husband. Tanner was a pilot, although Air Force rather than Navy like Sprue’s ur-brother. He was currently based over in Schirrasburg, although before the outbreak he’d flown in to Shepardsport pretty regularly to visit his family here.

From the sound of her halfalogue, something had gone bad over there. An accident? Some kind of a breach, but it could be a pressure breach or a security breach.

Realizing Dr. Doorne was looking his way, Sprue determinedly readdressed himself to his work. However, he resolved to do a little research of his own once he was on his own time again. He’d picked up a few tricks for getting information feeds from the other settlements, above and beyond what was publicly available.

In the meantime, he needed to look like a good and diligent worker. Give Dr. Doorne nothing to complain about, nothing to make her think he might be up to something.

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Narrative

A Dangerous Mystery

Chandler Armitage was really wondering whether he’d made a mistake in not telling Spruance Del Curtin to find someone back at home to get his ass out of whatever bear trap it had gotten caught in. But Sprue was his clone-brother, which made it harder to refuse.

A little texting back and forth had enabled Chandler to determine that Sprue was dealing with some statistical material that had really upset him. However, it was also becoming obvious that Sprue was acting almost entirely on intuition. He had no idea what the numbers in front of him were actually representing — and reading between the lines, it sounded very much like he wasn’t supposed to know.

Are you sure you really ought to be discussing this with me?

Probably not, but I know Dr. D won’t answer any questions. And you’re the only other person I know with a strong background in data processing and statistical analysis.

True. Are you where I could call you? I think this is something we may need to discuss in realtime.

Right now I’m in Dr. D’s office. I can hear her talking with someone in the department office, but she could come back here any time.

Now that definitely complicated matters. How long does she usually stay in the departmental offices?

Totally depends. Earlier today she was down at FSOT, dealing with some problem with their imaging systems. Apparently she had to spend the whole trip suited up so she wouldn’t have any contact with the commander and pilot of the suborbital hopper.

That’s getting pretty much standard. OTOH, if this isn’t super-urgent, it might be better to wait until I get back to SP tomorrow. Even if we have to talk through a moonglass window, it may be better to discuss this face to face.

I’ll see what I can manage.

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Narrative

To Correlate the Contents of Our Consciousness

Spruance Del Curtin checked the life-support monitor, reassuring himself that the temperature in the room had not dropped, that oxygen and carbon dioxide levels remained nominal. Intellectually he knew that it was just nerves, yet he couldn’t shake the sense that the temperature in the room had dropped suddenly.

For the first time since he’d begun this project, he was genuinely frightened by what he was seeing. And while he knew he really ought to tell Dr. Doorne, he was hesitant to do so. Not so much because she would be angry with him as that she would be disappointed in him.

So he’d decided to text Chandler Armitage for advice. Although Chandler was a pilot-astronaut, and normally off-limits for non-pilots to initiate interaction with, Sprue had two good reasons to call upon him. Not only were they both clones of Alan Shepard, but there was also the matter of Chandler’s secondary astronaut specialty being data processing. And familiarity with handling the enormous amount of data involved in astronautics would help with just about any kind of data analysis.

Like the data sets he’d been sanitizing and preparing for analysis every day for the last how many days? Sometimes it felt like it was just yesterday Dr. Doorne had called him into her office for that special meeting, and at other times it seemed like he’d been at this chore forever and a day.

One thing was for certain — it had been long enough for his subconscious mind to start picking up patterns in the data. Correlations that were leaving him profoundly uncomfortable.

Although he wasn’t supposed to look back at old data, or to look ahead, he’d decided to take a quick peek and see if it confirmed the sense he was developing. If anything, what he saw was even worse.

There were three basic types of data coming through. Although he had no idea what exactly it represented — that was important in his ability to do this work, so he would not introduce unconscious bias into the data by paying more attention to material that fit his expectations — he noticed that all of a certain type tended to change together. Not necessarily in lockstep, but certainly the trends would graph as pretty much the same kinds of curves.

Until recently, those curves had been showing pretty steady slopes. But now every last one of them was showing rapid sharp changes. One kind of data was suddenly shooting upward, while another was plummeting like it were falling down a black hole, and the third was fluctuating wildly.

Whatever that data represented, it looked very much as if the system was destabilizing rapidly. And he would never have noticed it if he had been looking at datasets in isolation. It made him think about that quote from HP Lovecraft on that plaque at the entrance to the IT department, about the inability to correlate the contents of one’s mind. Sprue had always thought it was there because Reggie Waite was such a huge fan of Lovecraft and liked to put HPL mementos everywhere. But now Sprue was wondering if it was meant as a warning about the peril of how Big Data could bring together disparate facts to reveal dangerous truths about a system.

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Narrative

Fighting Like Brothers

Spruance Del Curtin didn’t like the feeling of being in over his head. He’d only come down here because Brenda Redmond had asked him to, and he had an obligation to her.

But right now he was feeling very much like a fifth wheel. It wasn’t like he was any great whiz in IT Sure, he’d recognized the signs that most everyone down there was on the wrong track and growing more obsessively persistent about it — but once he’d made the necessary connections with people who would actually listen, he had been pretty much peripheral to the actual process of detecting, identifying and eliminating the malware that had infested the servers that managed Shepardsport’s connections with the outside universe.

And when Brenda had called him, she’d been thinking in terms of sorting out that garbled text Kitty Margrave had received from her friend dirtside. That was a puzzle that might have benefited from his connections with Dr. Doorne, who was an expert in signals processing, among other things.

But now that it had been followed by a very disturbing text that looked as if someone were trying very hard to convince everyone that nothing sinister was going on, he was pretty much surplus. However, until it got time that he actually needed to go somewhere, it would be hard for him to leave without looking like he was abandoning everyone.

However, from what he could hear of Betty Margrave’s conversation with Steffi Roderick down in IT, he might be getting a reprieve really soon. Soon they’d have someone up here who was pretty clearly a specialist in getting into other people’s systems without leaving obvious tracks, getting the information they needed, and getting back out without raising alarms. Then he could quietly excuse himself and head off to something that would nominally be something he was more adept at.

And then the door opened. “Hey, Sprue, what did you do to get sent down here this time?”

Sprue had to look up to see which of his clone-brothers had just arrived and was ribbing him. It would be Eli Mallory.

“So you’re the only hacker Steffi was able to scrounge up?” Not his best comeback, but better than nothing.

Betty Margrave looked up. “That’s enough, guys. If the two of you can’t manage to work together peaceably, figure out which one of you will leave.”

Which was the excuse Sprue needed to finally get out of here. “As it just happens, I need to get going if I’m going to get lunch before my air shift.”

Not as sharp as he would’ve liked it, but at least it got him out of here. Let Eli play hacker today. Sprue had other things to do.

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Narrative

Further Searchers

Brenda didn’t like running late on important things, like classes or her mandatory exercise hours. However, she wasn’t going to abandon Kitty to her own devices, not when the girl was clearly terrified for her friend on Earth.

At least Linnea at the gym was understanding. She’d lost her husband a few years ago in the cyber-attack on Slayton Field, and knew the terror of incomplete information in a bad situation. However, Brenda’s senior teacher was not as likely to be flexible — but then, they were trying to teach basic literacy skills to a bunch of little kids, which meant they needed consistency.

I just wish Sprue would get his butt over here. I know he’s got that new project he’s keeping so mum about, but surely it doesn’t take that long to touch base with the principal researcher, or whoever’s his main contact.

Brenda reached for her phone, then checked herself. The last thing Sprue needed was for his phone to chime incoming text right while he was talking with his boss. Sure, SMS was an asynchronous means of communication, but the urge to grab one’s phone and check could be difficult to resist.

Instead, she looked at Kitty’s messenger app yet again, as if this time would suddenly give her the ability to sort some sense from the garbled mess of alphanumeric characters. It really looked as if the packets had become corrupted as they passed through one or another server on the way between Earth and the Moon.

She’d seen some text spam that looked like that — supposedly there were ways to hijack some phones’ OS and turn them into zombie machines for DDOS attacks. She wished Lou Corlin could be here, since he worked for IT. However, this was his air shift, and she was not going to take Kitty down to the station just to talk to Lou.

And then the module airlock cycled, and in walked Spruance Del Curtin. “Sorry I’m late, but I wanted to talk to Dr. Doorne. You do realize she’s a specialist in signals processing. I was hoping she might have some suggestions.”

“So did she?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Brenda realized just how snarky she sounded.

“A few possibilities, but they may require seeing if the message is still on the server, or if it was erased there as soon as it was downloaded to the phone.”

At that moment Kitty’s phone chimed. There was another message from Amy — or at least her telephone number. However, it didn’t look anything like the last several messages, which had been increasingly fretful. Instead, it was relentlessly upbeat, and had a feeling of having been dictated to her: We have been moved to a new guardian. Do not worry about me. I am healthy and safe, and am keeping up with my schoolwork. Be careful, and keep studying.

When Brenda was younger, before she’d had kids, she’d gone through a period of reading a lot of true-crime. There’d been several cases in which people were kidnapped and forced by their kidnappers to make phone calls or send texts claiming that they were going somewhere for a while, in order to delay suspicion.

She showed the text to Sprue. “What do you think?”

“How old is she supposed to be? This doesn’t look like something a middle-school kid would write.”

He looked straight at Kitty. “I think we’d better take this to your Aunt Betty. If something fishy is going on, she’s a lot better equipped to handle it.”