Network Upgrades #3

A Station Keeping story, by tycho garen
on 17th November 2008. (commentary)

Welcome to another installment of the Station Keeping story. This installment will be posted in three parts.

Almost before she had begun it seemed, Julia unplugged her gear, and replaced the panel. She stood up, “There, done. With the hardware stuff at least.” She brushed a renegade strand of hair behind her ear, exposing the contact points for a node interface.

David would have mistaken the contact points for jewelry, if not for their number and placement, well, in a way, despite their function, they were jewelry in a certain sense.

“Most of the reinforcement process happens in an algorithm script, actually. But you still have to get the hardware ready for the process. You’ll be up and running by the end of this shift, if that’s ok.”

“That’s certainly fine. We’re not opening till next weekend. You’ll be there I trust?”

“Of course, wouldn’t miss it, particularly not with a reinforced drop like this.” She smiled, wondering why she had said something so silly; everyone knew that she had the best connection on the station. “I guess they don’t call them pleasantries for nothing,” she thought. “Well if you need anything, you know where to reach me.” Then she was gone, almost as quickly as she had come.

Marc stood up and walked toward the door, to meet David who was toggling the lights beside the door. “What did I say?”

“You’re right she is good.” David conceded. “Who else is like that on the crew that you haven’t told me about.”

“Well you could come to staff meetings and find out.” Marc said: he didn’t try to stifle the grin.

David laughed. “Maybe then I could prove your wrong about my doodles.”

“We’ll call it your ‘Post-Late Period: A Revival.”

“Don’t you dare.” David chuckled and playfully elbowed Marc in the ribs as they started to stroll toward their quarters.

permalink • • one comment
tagged: • • • •

Network Upgrades #2

A Station Keeping story, by tycho garen
on 14th November 2008. (commentary)

Welcome to another installment of the Station Keeping story. This installment will be posted in three parts.

“Sorry I’m late,” Julia said as she walked quickly and abruptly into the bar. The lights weren’t on, but the door was unlocked, and David had told her to just walk in incase he was in his office or the store room. “Network drop reinforced, you said?” She asked, not wasting any time on pleasantries.

“Yes. That was the plan.” David said. ” You’re…”

“…Julia, we talked earlier,” she said quickly, unable to come up with a more witty response sooner.

“The tech systems administrator?”

“Aye, Sir.” she said goofily, showing the badge. on her shirt.

It was the first time that anyone on Hanm Centre had called him “sir,” in a situation that didn’t make his skin crawl. realized that she might not realized that he had been Navy. “Aren’t you a bit young for that. There must be 15 people on your staff or something.”

“Well, I have 20, right now, but I’m still looking for a few more. You know any Enhancers that want to clean up?” Julia retorted.

“Not yet, but I’ll keep you out here. Is it big out here? Enhancers, that is.”

“Bigger on Grish, they say, but I haven’t been there in the flesh for,” she paused and thought for a moment obviously counting in her head, “Well lets not try and count that one out. But yeah, there’s some on Hanm, but not enough. The node here is pretty big for the rim, and I just need more people to keep it working well,” Julia said. “I’ll get started?”

“Please do,” he said. He looked at Marc, who had a sly and pleasant grin. The good doctor still looked weary, but at least weary and entertained. Julia immediately found the access panel and plugged in her equipment with

David remained mazed with the speed, authority, and detail in Julia’s speech and behavior: not to mention her deft ability to deflect the conversation away from a topic that she didn’t want to talk about. He realized that despite her appearance, her subjective experience of age, that her chronological age might be a lot less. Relativity and interstellar did strange things to this society.

David found that his hands had gone back to dusting, and Marc had somehow produced a portable computer terminal and looked to be making some sort of notes, although they were both just trying to appear busy to decrease the awkwardness of not really having anything to do while the technology guru worked.

permalink • • zero comments
tagged: • • • •

Network Upgrades #1

A Station Keeping story, by tycho garen
on 13th November 2008. (commentary)

Welcome to another installment of the Station Keeping story. This installment will be posted in three parts.

Marc walked into David’s bar, “Another Round,” as the sign now read. He had just gotten done with a tiring but ultimately uneventful shift and was ready to change into more comfortable clothing. “It looks like you’re almost done here, you’re opening next friday?” Marc hadn’t been by the bar in a week or so, David knew what he was doing, or at least pretended well, and didn’t much need his input. Despite his worldly academic credentials and lengthly service record he was really mostly a homebody.

“Yeah. It’ll be good to have this weekend off, and I’d rather not have to deal with the opening and finishing up all at once.”

“You ready to head home?” He asked pointedly.

“Yeah, I’m done; but I agreed to hang around to let the tech admin come in to reinforce the network connection here, I suspect we’ll need a lot of pull when this place is full.” So mostly I’m just biding my time. He picked up the rag he was dusting with. “You have a good shift?”

“I did, but it was long, the usual run of the mill complaints mostly,” Marc said taking a seat at the bar and holding his head up with his arm. “Which is for the better, I’m afraid of what this closed system will do once we have anything more virulent than a flu, or some such,” he continued, pausing for a moment to remember anything else from the shift.” I’m never quite sure what Doctor Reese is going to do, but she’s effective and people seem to like her. Anyway, I only had one meeting today, and got a chance to work on some research: so not a bad shift just long.” Marc rambled on, for a while and then paused. He checked his time piece, “When did she say she was coming by to do the work?” he asked finally.

“About twenty minutes ago, I think. She said she’d been busy…”

“She’s always busy. The woman doesn’t sleep, it seems to me. You’d like her she’s got ‘personality,’ or something,” Marc said and laughed. “Actually you should see her doodling from our staff meetings, they rival your ‘early period,’” he said, starting to perk up a bit.

“Oh, come on, my later doodles were better, I was just in charge of the meetings during my ‘late period,’ I think I deserve some slack.” David retorted, grinning by now: of all their “canned arguments,” this one might just have been his favorite.

permalink • • zero comments
tagged: • • • •

The Chase, #5

A Knowing Mars story, by tycho garen
on 24th October 2008. (commentary)

I hope you enjoyed the PDFs of the first three chapters of Knowing Mars. As promised this week I have the first scene of Chapter 4. This is the fifth and final part. You can read part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 3 as you wish. Next week, we’ll have a return with the next installment of “Trailing Edge“

“I’m on it Gus don’t worry about it. Should I try and get link up to Mars for a report to Kyp and them when you wake up?”

“Lets wait until we know something more, and lets not rush getting back on-net this time, unless you pick something up on the–” Gus yawned again and gestured generally at the portable.

“Yes, yes, of course. Now to bed with you.” Irena said. She was being uncharacteristically forceful, but the situation seemed to demand that. Also, she wanted Gus asleep so that she could make sure that his mind, or whatever her telepathy would let her see, was still in order.

She thought about contacting Matt, but realized that the real computers were still offline, so that could wait; and she also considered helping Gus walk over to his bed, but thought that there wasn’t much use in making him more worried than he already was.

Irena turned back to the computer for a moment to see if she could coax anything new out of the computer until Gus fell asleep, but it was still crunching through the data: “predictable,” she thought.

permalink • • zero comments
tagged: • •

The Chase, #4

A Knowing Mars story, by tycho garen
on 23rd October 2008. (commentary)

I hope you enjoyed the PDFs of the first three chapters of Knowing Mars. As promised this week I have the first scene of Chapter 4. This is the fourth part, and you can read part 1, part 2, and part 3 as you wish. The remaining part will air tomorrow. Next week, we’ll have a return with the next installment of “Trailing Edge“

Gus reached over to the portable and ran a search on his signature; just to make sure that he hadn’t been flagged anywhere. When they brought the servers back on, he’d set up an auto-check, but he got a bit nervous all of a sudden. After paging through a couple hundred search results, he decided that everything was probably safe, at the moment. He set the portable back down on the desk, and it fell into it’s place a little more clumsily than Gus had intended.

Irena looked over at him, by now she had stopped her reviews and her intent concentration gave way to concern. “Clear for now,” Gus reported, but he could feel himself almost turning white with worry and probably a little bit of exhaustion. He closed his eyes and covered his mouth with his hands as he took a deep breath, while he considered what to do next. “Are you doing alright, or do you need to take a break” he asked, when he opened his eyes.

“I’m fine, really,” Irena said. She didn’t flinch and she definitely didn’t have to say “but you’re not.“

“Good. I think I got hit harder by that then I wanted to. Can you get all the post-mortem stuff running while I go try and sleep it off?” Gus yawned.

permalink • • zero comments
tagged: • •

The Chase, #3

A Knowing Mars story, by tycho garen
on 22nd October 2008. (commentary)

I hope you enjoyed the PDFs of the first three chapters of Knowing Mars. As promised this week I have the first scene of Chapter 4. This is the third part, and you can read part 1 and part 2 as you wish. The remaining two parts will air later this week. Next week, we’ll have a return with the next installment of “Trailing Edge“

“I’m going to see what the spybots intercepted while you look at that,” Gus said.

“Ok, good plan. I’m going line by line; our first sweeps didn’t get anything in the security logs. So if they got anything, they’re not tipping their hand, or they don’t know they have it yet.”

“That’s the great thing about data volume these days.” Gus closed his eyes for a moment while the spybot programs compiled reports. “Busby was in net running support, he checked for Kyp’s signature, again. Good, he’s still working on old data.”

“Nothing of you?”

“I escaped-out that time, and Matt’s kept the data stalled in forensics, so I’m not sure that they know I was there; but I do worry a bit… Enough to check on it.”

“Busby was paying a lot of attention to you.”

“Wait, how? You took lead, and who ever chased after your bot.” Gus said, calling up a view of Irena’s records. “If he was providing support, shouldn’t he have been watching you?”

“Yes.”

“Damn, ok. What can we look at on this one?”

“Not too much, their bot killall took a lot of the endgame data with it, and probably obsoleted a few of our bot designs,” Gus said.

“Nothing these days lasts as long as it used to.”

permalink • • zero comments
tagged: • •

The Chase, #2

A Knowing Mars story, by tycho garen
on 21st October 2008. (commentary)

I hope you enjoyed the PDFs of the first three chapters of Knowing Mars. As promised this week I have the first scene of Chapter 4. This is the second part, and you can read part 1. The remaining 3 parts will air later this week. Next week, we’ll have a return with the next installment of “Trailing Edge“

“Do you think it was Busby?” Irena said after a moment.

“Oh, no, probably not. Busby’s partners have always been the hackers, or whatever the ISA calls them. ‘Support staff.’ He’s not bad on the net, but from what we can tell he always hangs out in the background and runs support. Years and years ago, Kyp and I did a mission for Busby, and even then he didn’t like to go on the net very much. We never run into him, really.”

“And he’s a computer crimes guy, supposedly.”

“Supposedly,” Gus said. ISA didn’t have a psionic division, after all there were no telepaths, as far as anyone knew. ISA had Busby, the unofficial determined demi-genious, and the ISA higher ups pretty much let him operate free range. Well, and they let Matthew Connor get away with a lot, but that was off the clock. ISA didn’t know about Matt’s involvement.

“Looks like the bot, well bots I guess, we left in the database is undetected and active.” Irena reported, referencing a small portable.

Their servers would probably need to be offnet for a day or so, but they kept a couple of portables around connected to a too-complex web of other servers so that they could get up to date information: how the bots were running and doing their job, and if they’d been caught or traced and needed to run.

“Also looks like we got a lot of new data out of the sting.”

“Unexpected, but nice. What’s there?”

“Totally.” Irena paused and entered something in a flurry. “Not sure, running diff now.”

“Good, keep me posted, but de-prioritize it. We need to make sure that we’re not in any trouble, first.” Gus said. “When did I turn into Kyp?,” thought to himself.

“Right; On it.”

permalink • • zero comments
tagged: • •
< Previous Entries •