Tag: Stephanie Roderick

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Narrative

So Near and So Far Away

Steffi Roderick looked over the tangle of equipment they had worked so hard to relocate so quickly. “So it’s ended up going far enough to the side that we just got a didn’t get any worse electromagnetic effects than a typical lunar sunrise.”

Dr. Doorne’s lips tweaked into a wan little smile. “More or less. Of course we’re talking in layman’s terms, using analogies of terrestrial weather and geography, for the complexities of orbital mechanics.”

“Of course.” Steffi knew her own smile was a little forced, that the astronomer was trying very hard not to sound condescending, and now doing nearly as well as she thought for the simple reason that it was so obviously effortful. “It’s the language we’d use in an announcement for general consumption. Just like the average user doesn’t need to know the ins and outs of the quantum behavior of electrons to understand that they’ve got a glitchy system that throws unpredictable errors in certain circumstances.”

She paused, looking back at all their hard work. “But it still leaves me feeling like we did all this for nothing.”

“It’s not wasted, Steffi. All the current data is indicating an extended period of unsettled solar magnetic activity. Solar astronomy is most definitely not my specialty, but I’ve been in touch with all the big names, and while they disagree profoundly on the particulars, they’re pretty much agreeing that something serious is going on in the solar magnetic field.” This smile was a wry one. “As an astronomer, I’m feeling like a kid waiting for Christmas, going oh goodie, we’re going to be learning a whole bunch of fascinating things about how the Sun works, and by extension, how stars work. But as an electrical engineer, I’m going oh crap, this could be really, really bad.

“In other words, fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a wild ride.”

“That’s about the size of it. If we’re lucky, the bigger flares and CME’s will pass far enough away that we’ll just have great seats for the show, and I’ll have so much data it’ll have to be sent on physical media so it doesn’t choke our downlinks to Earth. If we’re not, everyone up her had better use this interval to harden all their vital electrical and electronic equipment, or we’re going to be in a world of hurt. Especially since we’re pretty much on our own for the duration.”

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Narrative

Routes Forward

As soon as Brenda Redmond received the text from Dr. Thuc, she could tell it had to be bad news. I need to talk to you, stat. was not a good sign.

Could she be in trouble, just for asking whether it was possible for anyone in Medlab to check on Robbie’s location? Although she hadn’t considered her inquiry unreasonable, old memories lingered from childhood. She’d caught two teachers in a row who were very close to retirement, and who had rather old-fashioned notions about the proper bounds of children’s curiosity. Both of them also considered public humiliation an excellent aid to memory.

But there was no time to dwell upon the past, not when she needed to focus on the present situation. Which meant finding the necessary fortitude to present herself at Medlab, mentally prepared for whatever response she received.

At least this message hadn’t come through in the middle of her air shift at Shepardsport Pirate Radio. However, receiving it while she was supposed to be helping teach a class was awkward in its own way. No, her senior teacher was not pleased that she should be summoned away, and clearly considered it to be something she’d brought down upon herself.

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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

An Unexpected Summons

Autumn Belfontaine had planned to head back to her apartment and turn in for the night when she got finished with her shift at the Testing Center. It had been an easy night, not surprising when one considered they were at the beginning of the current training cycle. Within a couple of weeks that would change, but this evening she’d been able to catch up on a lot of other responsibilities, including a refresher course she was taking on broadcast practices and procedures.

So she was more than a little surprised when her phone chimed incoming text and she found a message from Stephanie Roderick down in IT. We’ve got a problem. I think we should meet in the newsroom.

Unease tingled in Autumn’s nervous system. Why not down in IT? They had a perfectly adequate meeting room, and it was normal for a department head to host the meeting in her own area.

But now was not the time to ask questions. Those could wait until they were face to face. OK. Right now I’m still working at the Testing Center. My relief should be here in five minutes.

Good. We’ll meet you there.

Autumn considered that information — “we,” not “I,” which suggested this problem involved other people. Someone else in IT? Someone in another department? Was that why Steffi wanted the meeting held in the newsroom — because the radio station was neutral territory?

All of it would be answered in due time. Right now she needed to get things wound up so she could leave as soon as her relief showed up — and hope he wasn’t late.

Although lunar culture ran on the military attitude that early was on time, on time was late, and late was unacceptable, it didn’t always work like it was supposed to. People got held over in one obligation when they had another responsibility immediately afterward, creating a domino effect. Usually they’d text to allow the other person to make alternative arrangements, but there were times even that was impossible.

The clock was counting down the seconds when Ted burst in, looking harried for all he was trying to present a professional appearance. “Chem lab had a spill, and I had to stay over to clean up. I tried to get here as fast as I could, but it just took too long.”

Autumn recalled that he had managed to draw an unusually late chemistry class, which had created awkwardness before. She was going to have to talk to Deena and see if they could get him shifted to a different shift — and herself shifted to a different work responsibility, one that gave her greater flexibility when things like this came up.

Right now she needed to hand off the Testing Center, not that she even had anyone taking practice tests, let alone actual exams. But the formalities had to be completed before she headed off to the station to meet with Steffi and whoever else was involved in this problem.

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Narrative

Some Awkward Questions

Steffi Roderick was just getting ready for bed when she heard her phone’s incoming text chime. Curious, she picked it up and was surprised to see a note from Toni Hargreaves: Cather’s got a computer problem. Are you where you can talk?

What’s wrong?

One of his clone-brothers is worried about the safety of a young woman dirtside who was sent back home from college. Apparently she had some kind of breach with her parents and they weren’t on speaking terms, and he has reason to worry that home is not a good place for her to go right now.

Steffi was unsurprised that Toni would be willing to help someone in that kind of situation. She had some painful history, which had been exacerbated by the destruction of her home town when the Chinese government completely botched the deorbit of the Flying Junkyard.

What kind of help are you looking for?

He’s trying to locate her, find out whether she is actually at her folks’ place or she’s found some other place to stay. If her parents are as controlling as they sound like, it may not be safe for any of us up here to try to communicate with her. But he can’t get metadata from her phone without a warrant.

Steffi considered the problem. So you want some suggestions on what other ways we could determine whether she’s in a safe place, or if she’s stuck in a seriously dysfunctional family?

Especially ones that don’t require jumping through legal hoops. If she were from the LA Basin, Cather and I know a bunch of people who don’t have awkward ties and could contact her to make sure she’s OK. But she’s in the Houston area. I know you were at Johnson for several years before they sent you up here, so I was hoping you’d still be in contact with some of your old friends and neighbors dirtside.

Steffi hated to disappoint her old friend from her JPL days, but it had been over a decade since the Angry Astronaut Affair. As busy as she was with family and the IT department, there hadn’t been a lot of time to maintain friendships with people she’d never see again. The occasional note when someone hit a major life milestone, e-cards at various holidays, but that was about it.

It’s been a long time, so I don’t want to promise anything, but I’ll see what I can manage.

Just as she was winding up the conversation, the door opened. She looked up just as Reggie walked in, looking unutterably weary.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

Reggie retrieved a slingback chair and sank into it, looking completely unmilitary. “They’re trying to keep it quiet, so don’t go spreading the news around, but Dr. Thuc just reported to me that they’ve got someone ill over at Schirrasburg. Right now there’s still a possibility that it’s just an ordinary bug, maybe a cold or a norovirus, but they’re concerned enough they’ve completely shut down their spaceport and quarantined the entire settlement. No one goes in or out until they’re sure they’re in the clear.”

A cold lump of dread formed in Steffi’s stomach. If the diablovirus had gotten up here to the Moon, it would’ve had to have passed through Luna Station. Which meant that everyone’s pilots would be exposed.

And trying to keep it quiet was like shutting the barn door after the horse was down the road, and the cattle and the pigs running after him. She knew several people here in Shepardsport who had family in Schirrasburg, who’d be in regular communication with them.

Maybe it was time to have a talk with Autumn Belfontaine, try to decide whether they should go ahead and break the news, or run some “don’t repeat gossip” PSA’s first.

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A Matter of Digital Security

It had taken Jack all day to get Steffi’s phone set back up. Given how important one’s phone was in a lunar settlement — it was your wallet, your dining commons pass, your gym card, your keychain — being without it was a real pain in the keister. But with evidence that it had been hacked and someone had access to her contacts file, there wasn’t much else to do but reset it to factory settings. Then there was the problem of determining when the intrusion had occurred and finding a backup that predated it.

At least she’d been able to use her desktop computer in her office to call in lunch. The deliverybot had dropped it just outside her door, so having her phone down for the count didn’t mean having to go hungry. But it still left her more than a little shaken. If she, the head of IT, could have something as vital as her phone hacked, what did it say about security on everyone else’s devices?

Maybe she ought to look into the situation. Make some time to talk to Betty Margrave about a settlement-wide security assessment.

Now that Jack finally had her phone up and running, Steffi had to make final tweaks on all those things that never quite restored from a cloud backup.

As they were talking, she noticed a computer sitting on the counter. Not one of the big tower workstations the scientists used for number crunching when they didn’t need the real heavy iron down here. Just a little desktop box you might find in an administrative office.

“Where did that one come from?”

Jack looked it over. “Lou Corlin brought it down from the radio station offices. Said it picked up some particularly nasty malware from an e-mail, and he didn’t think he was up to cleaning it out.”

It took Steffi a moment to place the name, but as soon as she did, she remembered the dark-haired young man at the counter when she had brought the phone for Jack to look at. The kid was getting old enough that the distinctive thick eyebrows of a Chaffee were really getting noticeable.

The Admiral had already gone completely gray by the time Steffi met him, but she’d seen plenty of pictures of his younger days. And she’d hung out with Toni enough to be acquainted with Cather, even if he spent a lot more of his time with his buddies in EMS than with the JPL people.

Come to think of it, Lou’s expression had brightened noticeably when she’d mentioned Toni. Like he’d suddenly realized something important.

Maybe she’d better check in with Toni. Not necessarily mention Lou or anything, but just see what might be going on.

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Document

Back of the Beyond

One of the advantages of being on Farside is its isolation. Particularly in the early days of the settlement of the Solar System, Farside was almost completely shielded from human electromagnetic activity, making it a perfect location for telescopes intended to peer into deep space, and thus deep time. Although both the Far Side Optical Telescope (FSOT) and Far Side Radio Array (FSRA) have since been surpassed by telescopes that use the gravitic lensing effect of various celestial bodies, including the Sun itself, in their heyday they were the source of many career-making discoveries.

But Farside was distant in other ways. For those who were born on Earth, the fact that it was forever cut off from sight of the Mother World made it psychologically distant in a way that even Mars could not be, for all that Mars was much further away. This feature made it a place of exile, originally for those who’d displeased senior officials, but later for the astronaut clones who were no longer welcome in a society that was coming to reject its Cold War experiments.

And during the Great Outbreak, this isolation would play out in a multitude of ways, great and small. It was a form of safety, to be so far away from what was now sources of contagion. But it was also danger, to be so far away from help if something were to go wrong.

—- V. N. Petrov, The Psychology of Isolation, Grissom City: St. Selene Digital Press, 2088.

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We’ve Got Trouble

It didn’t take Lou Corlin long to decide that he’d made a mistake carrying Autumn Belfontaine’s computer down to Jack Lang’s work area. If Jack took one look at it and told Lou it was within his skills and fix it himself, Lou was not going to enjoy carrying it back.

However, he found Jack in a chatty mood for a change. He was a little unhappy about getting information fourth hand, and was seriously considering calling up to the newsroom to get Autumn’s first-hand description of events. On consideration, he decided that she was probably busy enough already, and it would be better if he only contact her if he couldn’t figure it out on his own.

Lou was about to go back to his own work when Steffi Roderick walked in. “Got a good one for you this time, Jack.”

She described the cryptic text she’d just gotten from an old friend over at Grissom City. “It’s not like Toni to send weird stuff like that. She’s a straightforward sort.”

She’s talking about Toni Hargreaves. Lou had to suppress an urge to smack his forehead. Why hadn’t he thought of her? Especially since she was considered one of the greatest white-hat hackers of all time, and was married to one of his clone-brothers.

Sure, she didn’t live steeped in the creche traditions of lineage-right the way everyone over here in Shepardsport did. But she was aware of it, and wouldn’t look askance at his approaching her.

On the other hand, any method he used to contact her would leave a record. Which meant he would need to be very careful how he phrased anything.

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The Digital Dungeon

A single computer’s cooling fan wasn’t that loud, but the big fans that cooled the rack servers produced a curtain of white noise. Here in the main Shepardsport server farm, surrounded by rank after rank of rack servers, someone could be talking a few feet away and Steffi might not even hear them.

Even the click of the KVM switch was muffled as she worked her way down the rack of blade servers. Normally this sort of thing would be handled by someone much lower than the head of IT. However, after the trouble they’d been having, the possibility that malware had gotten through their security systems again was alarming enough that she wanted to check things herself.

She was almost done with the rack when the text chime sounded on her phone. She started to reach for it, then checked herself. SMS was asynchronous and could wait until she got this rack of servers checked.

Finished with the task, she took a look at her messaging app. What was with this cryptic message from Toni Hargreaves? It wasn’t like her to write such an evasive message

Or was it from Toni? They’d been having some problems with spoofed texts of late. It wouldn’t be impossible to get someone’s contacts list and make it look like a message came from a trusted friend.

Steffi decided she’d better ask Jack. He was one of her best security guys, and would be able to tell if her phone had been compromised, or if the settlement’s SMS servers had been hacked.

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Of Family and Fear

Steffi Roderick was at the settlement’s small library, talking with one of the resource specialists. Although as an IT specialist, she would normally do her own searches, today she wanted to touch base with someone who would have a different perspective — and some specialized knowledge.

She was just winding up the conversation when she realized that her son had come into the room. Although Howie was staying along the periphery of the room, quietly looking at one of the databases, she could tell he was looking for her. Call it a mother’s intuition.

Finished with her business here, she walked over to him. “Are you looking for someone, Howie?”

As he looked up at her, she was struck afresh by just how much he was looking like his dad as he grew older. Although he’d inherited her red hair, he was definitely showing that long Shepard face, the long-lipped mouth capable of a big grin.

“Just wondering what’s up with Dad. He seemed kinda upset when I saw him.”

“It’s hard to say.” Steffi knew she was temporizing, since she had a good idea of what had probably upset him. “He’s carrying a pretty heavy load right now, and that kind of stress brings out the Icy Commander.”

Sheps all seemed to share their ur-brother’s peculiar temperament, which Big Al’s contemporaries had called “mercurial,” but which she preferred to term bimodal. It alternated between two basic modes, “Smilin’ Al,” a sunny side famous for that big grin, and “The Icy Commander,” grim and always on the verge of flaring that notorious temper that Gordon Cooper had written about.

Right now, Steffi knew that her own people had been entering a lot of dirtside databases, trying to find out just how bad things were going on down there. And while they were working under command authority, it didn’t necessarily mean that the agencies whose systems they’d entered would approve of it.

Ever since the Kitty Hawk Massacre, Reggie had been doing his best to fight this battle as a military officer sworn to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America from all enemies, foreign and domestic.” No matter how carefully he sought to balance things, there would always be those who saw him as a rebel for demanding accountability from the Administration.

Now Shepardsport was beginning to take on local and state agencies who were either grossly incompetent in the handling of the crisis, or were using it as a way to consolidate power and settle old scores. Which may well have just made the settlement and its commandant even more enemies.