Tag: Ursula Doorne

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.

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.

All the way to Miskatonic Sector and Dr. Doorne’s office, Spruance Del Curtin kept thinking about his discussion with Cindy. He’d never really thought about societies that way. Back in Houston, they’d studied about the history of government, from the early god-kings of Egypt and Mesopotamia to Greek democracy and the Roman republic, and how both Greece and Rome had been models for the Founding Fathers. But their teachers had never really dug into the whys and wherefores of how the different forms of government related to how people within their societies related to one another.

Now a lot of stuff made sense — like why all the nation-building in certain parts of the world kept failing and countries kept descending into warlordism just as soon as the troops left. He recalled an image he’d seen recently on the newsroom TV, of Israeli soldiers trying to distribute emergency food packages to a crowd of people who were all pushing and shoving to get to the front and grab something. Even with a number of the soldiers pushing back, trying to make sure everyone had a fair crack at the food, it was clear that some people were grabbing several and others were being pushed aside, if not outright trampled underfoot.

Other than Israel, the Middle East had been a mess long before the Energy Wars. And now that mess made a lot more sense in terms of a lack of basic trust beyond the family unit, the clan, the tribe.

Which raised the next question — how did it relate to all those data sets he was doing for Dr. Doorne? Were they so different because they were data from different countries with different levels of social cohesion?

Except he couldn’t come right out and ask her, not as long as there were still data sets needing sanitized. If he knew what he was working with, it would compromise his ability to do an unbiased job.

On the other hand, there might be other ways of approaching the problem. The data had to come from somewhere, and likely he knew someone who would know.

Even as he was contemplating that problem, his phone chimed. He pulled it out to find a message from Brenda Redmond. We’ve got a problem. I’m going to need some help.

Sprue felt a rising annoyance at her assumption that he’d jump right in. Then he remembered her husband was a Shep, so she had just as much lineage-right as Autumn Belfontaine. Better deal with it, so that he didn’t have to deal with Drew’s wrath when the restrictions were lifted and pilots could visit family again.

What’s wrong?

Kitty just got a garbled message from a friend dirtside, and now she’s on the edge of panic. We need to figure out what’s going on, and right now her aunt’s dealing with some kind of mess down at the port facility.

It took a moment for Sprue to realize what she was talking about. Yes, Cindy’s little sister Kitty had been worried this morning. She kept sneaking peeks at her phone at breakfast, even though you weren’t supposed to be using your phone in the dining commons. Hadn’t Brenda gone over to their apartment last week or so, some kind of thing about a friend in Houston having an emergency and needing an adult to sort things out?

Right now I need to meet with my new boss. But as soon as we’re done talking, I’ll see what I can do to help.

OK. TTYL

When Spruance Del Curtin had agreed to work on Dr. Doorne’s project, he’d been under the impression that he’d be getting to do something interesting and extraordinary. He’d been at it for three days now, and so far all he was doing was checking the validity of datasets. Talk about tedious.

He looked up at the ceiling and rolled his eyes, wishing he could Instagram it. But Dr. Doorne had been quite clear about the matter — one whisper about this project, and he was out. No questions asked, no excuses accepted, just a quick boot to the behind.

And speaking of Dr. Doorne, she would have to pick that moment to walk into her office. “Good morning, Mr. Del Curtin.” Although she kept her tone conversational, Sprue could tell she was not pleased.

Still, he’d best show no sign of annoyance, nothing that could appear “defensive.” A polite greeting, a pleasant question about how things were going for her.

But she was not going to be deflected by the outward gestures of politeness. “You seem rather unenthusiastic today. I had been under the impression that you were excited about this project.”

“Well, I was.” Sprue studied her, trying not to narrow his eyes too much in the process and look disreputable. “But I thought it was going to be something a lot more interesting than going through reams and reams of data. I mean, I know data sanitization is important, but does it have to be so boring?”

Dr. Doorne pulled out the second chair and sat down. “A lot of things that are worth doing are boring. For instance, Tycho Brahe spent years accumulating celestial observations that were as accurate as he could make them with the instruments available to him. I would imagine that meant a lot of boring nights in a chilly observatory. And when Johannes Kepler used Tycho’s data to work out the elliptical nature of orbits, I can assure you that meant hours upon hours of tedious hand calculations, every one of which needed to be done perfectly, which would mean doing them multiple times and making sure they matched.”

Sprue understood that concept — modern statistical packages made heavy use of such processes as regressions to minimize error when it couldn’t be eliminated. It was also why you kept backups, and worked only on copies of your data, not the original.

“OK, got that. But why are you having me go through all this data,” he gestured at the columns of figures on the monitor in front of him, “with no idea of what any of it is about? That’s what’s making it super-tedious.”

Was that a smile curling Dr. Doorne’s lips ever so slightly. “Remember what we talked about in our first class about bias and lying with statistics?”

Sprue had not forgotten that day. Dr. Doorne had given them what seemed like a dozen examples of statistics done badly, with dire warnings about the fate that would befall any professional scientist who committed those statistical sins.

“Then you understand why we need to be careful that we don’t end up cherry-picking what fits our hypothesis, or otherwise seeing what we expect to find.”

Sprue considered the concept. “So it’s kind of like double-blind tests in medicine?”

Yes, that was a definite smile. “Exactly. We want the data verified and sanitized by someone who understands the general principles of the process, but not enough about the purpose of this specific dataset to bias the process.”

Which meant this was something super-important. Now all he could do was get the job done as best he could and hope he’d be let in on what was going on as things progressed.

All the way to Miskatonic Sector and the Astronomy Department, Spruance Del Curtin wondered just what Dr. Doorne was going to say. She’d been so upset when he offered a pandemic as an example of exponential growth, yet had refused to explain it any further. Like it was such a horrible trespass that it couldn’t even be discussed, the way some of the older people around here talked about getting their mouths washed out with soap because they’d asked about a puzzling scene in a book, and only years later figured out that they’d stumbled onto a sex scene.

Except the more he thought about it, the more certain he became that it had something to do with whatever was going on down on Earth. The reports kept coming through about sudden bouts of sickness, usually gastrointestinal, but sometimes respiratory, hitting a whole group of people at once. And then, as quickly as they came up, they disappeared from the news.

Almost as if someone doesn’t want it talked about.

Had he stumbled across some kind of dangerous secret? Was that why so many people kept making these passive-aggressive remarks about the danger of excessive inquisitivity, but refusing to explain what he’d done that upset them? Part of him wanted to find some way to beg off this meeting, especially considering that his stomach was not overly settled right now. However, he knew it would only postpone the problem, not make it go away.

As Sprue arrived at the Astronomy Department, the department secretary looked up at him, nodded, and went straight back to her work. Which meant he was expected and should go straight back to Dr. Doorne’s office.

The Astronomy Department was laid out pretty much like any of the other science departments, with a front office that included a conference room, and a series of individual offices for the scientists to work and hold office hours for their classes. Some of the smaller departments shared a module, while some of the larger ones filled a module so completely that all but the most senior scientists had to double up.

Sprue kept his pace brisk as he walked past one door after another, some open, others closed. Astronomy was not as big as one might expect given the importance of the big optical and radio telescopes on Farside — most of the work up here was primary data collection, since all modern telescopes, whether optical or radio, had digital receiver technology. As a result, most of the astronomers actually up here either had additional degrees in engineering or had ties with an astronaut clone. And when they were in their offices, they were either busy analyzing data to determine what was worth sending down to universities on Earth or they were meeting with students.

Dr. Doorne was reading something on her tablet when Sprue arrived. However, she wasn’t so engrossed in it that he needed to knock on the doorframe to get her attention. Instead she just set it aside and retrieved a folded slingback chair from a cubbyhole behind her desk.

“Have a seat, Mr. Del Curtin.”

Still the title and surname address. Just how deep of trouble was he in? Sprue thanked her, putting a little more emphasis than usual on her academic title.

If she thought he was mocking her, she made no remark on it, just went straight to business. “Since you’re so interested in the statistical implications of the spread of a pandemic, I’ve requested your assistance with a special project I’m doing in partnership with Medstaff. If this ends up being something we write up for the scientific journals, you will be listed as a junior co-author.”

Co-authorship. Publishing credits were the currency of the academic world, and every youngster up here dreamed of having their contributions as research assistants translate into one.

All Sprue could manage to get out was, “Wow.”

“Good. I’m glad you’re excited about this project.” Dr. Doorne narrowed her eyes. “However, I want you to understand that this project is under a strict information embargo. That means you are not to breathe a word about it to anyone. Not at the radio station, not during your gym hours or at the dining hall, not in class or at work, not hanging out with your friends at your module lounge. Not a word to anyone Dr. Thuc or I have not personally cleared you to discuss it with. One leak, and you are off this project. Do you understand?”

Whatever this was, it was serious. “Y-yes, ma’am.”