The Victor Project (8 page)

     The most intriguing aspect of I-ball was that the software had been perfected so well over the years that the visuals were as real as watching humans execute the plays you called.  There were thousands of fans in the stadium watching the event, all of which also seemed real.  A couple of years ago on one of his zone visits, he met a guy in the department who mentioned that the game might be a nice way to overcome the boredom of the trips.  The guy was right, once he got comfortable, the time flew by. 

     Over the course of his two year I-ball career, Rick had met two other casual players who seemed to enjoy the game for the same pure entertainment level as he.  One of them went by the name of THEEGYPTION.ZOL.  The other went by the name PROFILEDY.ZO3, which at first scared Rick because ProfileDY was the name given to the savage microbe that caused the epidemic of the twenty-third century.  Over the course of a few games, Rick discovered that the ProfileDy’s real name was Kevin and he was totally unaware of the true history surrounding his address.

     Both PROFILEDY and THEEGYPTION were worthy enough opponents to enable the contests to be interesting, but at the same time each injected there own comical presence that at times made the game hilarious.  Rick had thrown in a couple of the same ridiculous plays against one of the hard-core players and the game ended somewhat abruptly.  PROFILEDY replied within minutes of Rick’s challenge and a few minutes later the game began.

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     At some point around the fifty-minute mark into the game, Kevin was called away due to a negligible but noisy collision of his small child and a kitchen table.  Kevin had never spoke of his family and until this minute, Rick had just assumed that he was some homely computer geek that never left the house.  At least his wife allowed him a little playtime here and there.

     In between the execution of the plays, Rick had again taken note of how light the traffic seemed to be on the road.  Frequently, he would pass no less than forty or fifty trucks on a travel.  Today he had seen at most four.  It wasn’t because of the lateness of the day
.  He had seen just as many government vehicles around this same time.  Actually, this trip wasn’t the first time he had noticed the lull in the action.  Traffic had seemed to be light for the last three weeks.

     There was still close to an hour before arriving at the overnight post, so Rick worked his way toward the back of the vehicle and into a comfortable position on the bed.  Even though the day’s tasks were fairly easy, he still felt a little worn down.  A short nap wouldn’t hurt.  Rick glanced at the holograph switch on the front dash of the vehicle.  Turning it on would allow the assistant to wake him when he arrived at the post, but working his way off the bed and back toward the front of the vehicle was out of the question.

     Closing his eyes, he began to reflect on what Frank had said about protecting the people who prefer the safety of the zones.  Frank was right.  It was a no-win situation for the government.  Being locked in a zone like an animal wasn’t true freedom, but if people were given a choice, would they stand firm and cling to freedom when the epidemics returned or would they lay siege on the zones when death stared them in the face.  It was easy for some to criticize norm, especially a generation that couldn’t recall the horrors of the plagues that once rocked the world.  Val was one of them.

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     Ben entered the office just as Sherman was hanging up the phone.  Sherman had detected the footsteps of  the intruder marching up the hall and with a glance at his watch, he knew it was Ben, punctual as ever.  Being that it was nine-thirty at night, everyone else on the floor had left hours ago, most likely the entire building was empty.  Sherman could tell by the look on Ben’s face that the conversation in the room on this night would be strictly business, so he felt compelled to oblige him.

     “Everyone gone out there?” asked
Sherman.

     “Not a soul,” replied Ben.

     “So you want a progress report.”

     “You act like I’m here to pull your fingernails out, Sherm,” said Ben.

     “You might as well, because so far we got zilch.  All the inside security checks have been completed and everyone’s clean.  Kruck’s men are on the streets, but no one is talking.  I think that’s because no one knows anything.  These guys are pros.”

     “What about our web surveillance?” asked Ben.

     “Zip,” replied Sherman.

     “What about hack attempts?”

     “Zip,” replied Sherman.

     “Through all three departments?”

     “Zero on all fronts.  It’s like they vanished,” answered Sherman.

     “No, it’s the exact same thing that we do when something’s going down, something big.  I think they are getting ready to make their move and don’t want anything to tip their hat.”

     “You think they’re on to us?  You think that there
is
someone on the inside that is tipping them off?” asked Sherman.

     “Hell, I don’t know.  What I do know is that they can jeopardize the entire migration schedule.  All it would take is for them to leak the wrong information to the masses.”

     “We’d have total anarchy,” Sherman interrupted.

     “We’d probably all be shot, that’s what would happen,” said Ben.

     “One way or another we’d be dead anyway.  So what’s next?” asked Sherman.

     “We can’t just sit back and wait.  We’re going to have to do this the hard way.  We pick our five top suspects from each department and do complete checks on them, bank accounts, tax audits, organizations, the works.  I want to know who they hang out with, who they eat with, who they sleep with and then do a check on those people.  After that we start with the next five suspects,” said Ben.

      “We’ll start tomorrow,” said Sherman.

      “We have to find out what they know.  Phase one starts in ten days,” said Ben.

     “By Friday I should have some of the preliminary checks completed,” said Sherman. 

CHAPTER 5

     Today was one of the biggest days for the C-Orbit station and her staff of engineers.  When the Galaxy Exploration Program was established, one of the clauses of its formation was to accept complete control of its direction by a board of eighteen delegated members.  This board oversaw all projects allocated to the GEP and made sure the people of the world got their money’s worth.  Given that the GEP piggy bank was kept fat by nine different countries, each wanted to make sure that it continued to progress with each of their interests in mind.  Each of the nine countries delegated two representatives as members of this governing board.  Typically the group was a combination of politicians and ex-GEP executives, which were cut from the same mold as politicians.  John didn’t really care if they were aliens, the fact was that all eighteen were scheduled to arrive today.

     The agenda for their visit had been clearly communicated to all of the C-Orbit staff.  It had been six months since their last inspection and during that period, the board had been given updates and progress reports on a bi-weekly basis.  When inspection time came, they wanted to physically see the picture that the reports had been painting.  Anything not matching the reports was a big black check-mark for the Functional Services Committee (FSC).  Big black check-marks meant an ass-chewing of the senior engineers.  The FSC had let it be known that zero-tolerance was the benchmark.  In so many words, if zero-tolerance was not met, the FSC had the power to jettison you out the trash door of  Q Module.

     The outcome of last inspection by the board was a great success by engineering standards.  Only two black marks originated from that inspection and officially logged.  One screw up was that a solar panel had failed to come online, even though the reports had stated clearly that it was functioning to full capacity.  Luckily, it was fully capable of living up to the written reports, it had just kicked off-line only two days prior due to an overload in a faulty circuit.  It was remedied before the board left the station.  The other bad mark was the result of some insignificant deck identification markings that had not yet been posted.  That oversight had also been corrected before the board departed.

     John was particularly proud of the limited criticism, then again, six months ago there was a lot less of C-Orbit station to inspect.  At that time, construction on P Module had begun, but it was physically impossible to enter the structure.  The board’s inspection was limited to viewing its shell through a piece of glass.  Module S was over fifty percent complete, but only half of it was accessible to humans not wearing atmospheric suits.  Although RAS had been completed years ago, it too was floating along side the station and was fortunately unavailable for physical review.

     None of that mattered to the FSC.  They took the news of the two black marks as if the board had called their sister a whore.  As a result, some heads rolled, the deck identification symbols were properly displayed and an additional dozen or so protocols were established and another dozen or so were changed.  Due to one of those procedure changes, John had spent the last two weeks in meetings with FSC geeks reviewing the past statuses that had been submitted to the board.  When meeting number six closed its books, it had given a green light to the current readiness of C-Orbit.

     To John, the meetings were time consuming and a supreme execution of bureaucracy in all its glory, but what he hated worst of all was being asked to hide some of the current problems that were popping up.  The committee had even mandated that today, there were to be no FSC engineering staff working on even so much as a light bulb on C-Orbit, if it hadn’t already been submitted as a work order.  Even worse, the FSC forbade any work orders to be written as of 10:00pm last night unless the problem was “clearly discernible and/or a fatal error to C-Orbit functionality and/or threatening to C-Orbit personnel”.  Overlooking any life-threatening problems for the board’s visit posed no problem, there hadn’t been a level 5 incident on C-Orbit in almost a year.

     What the FSC had in the back of their minds was something like the incident that occurred eighteen months earlier.  An SPS engineer was working to bring B-deck to one of its final online stages.  The particular step in that process was pressurizing the deck.  From what John could remember from that procedure book, protocol states at least fifteen steps to complete module pressurization.  The SPS engineer evidently skipped keying in a minor command sequence and subsequently overrode the error that followed, thinking it was a bogus message.

     Skipping the command was a mistake, there was no doubt about that, but part of the bigger fault lay in the fact that the system gave no other alerts or formal command requests.  It simply allowed the process to continue.  As a result, one of the fourteen pressure release valves on B-deck, which could be used to equalize pressure in the module, remained open.  When the connecting ports opened to C-Orbit, B-deck drained pressure from the main portion of C-Orbit.  Fortunately, other safety mechanisms throughout C-Orbit kicked in and sealed off B-deck, saving countless lives.  That was the biggest scare John had seen since his station tour.

     Disregarding the “discernible” station problems was somewhat more difficult.  What was discernible at one moment might be extremely noticeable an hour later.  Even more so, a problem that would seem quite visible to him, might be easily overlooked by some civilian pencil pushers.  For now, each discernible problem would have to be dealt with as it arose.  Luckily, the morning had been moving along smoothly without any obstacles. 

     He was to rendezvous with the board members on RAS at 9:30am sharp, which gave him thirty more minutes to meet with his engineering staff and make sure everyone walked the line the entire day.  Nine o’clock was the regular time schedule of their daily staff meeting, so attendance should not be a problem.  He was hoping that Robin wouldn’t break her routine of having a hot cup of coffee waiting for him when he walked in the door.

     John could hear the chatter coming from the meeting room as soon as he turned down corridor O-4.  As he stepped into the room, everyone quieted down and began to take a seat.  His engineers weren’t always this disciplined when it came to a meeting called by him, it was just that everyone knew the seriousness of a board visit.  A hot cup of coffee was sitting on the front desk. 

     “As I can see, everyone got my memo about clean uniforms today,” he said.

     “Kroil even wore clean underwear for you chief,” joked Stiller.

     “How do you know Stiller, you got your nose up his ass?” said Tommy Voltin.

     “That was good Tommy,” said Kroil.

     “All right guys.  Let’s keep crap like that quiet on the decks today.  I’ve only got thirty minutes, so let’s go over some things quickly.  First, three months ago we reset the alert systems to be ridiculously sensitive so that we would be more on top of problems before they became problems.  I don’t want any alerts today.  Jennifer, I want you to work with SPS and dial all the alert systems to their normal settings.  I want that done within ten minutes of you leaving this meeting.   When the board leaves, we’ll set them back to our levels.  Second, I don’t want anyone hailing me for the next two hours unless we’re dropping out of orbit.  I’m going to be with these people and I don’t want it to look like things are falling apart.  Third, as I had dictated yesterday, no new work orders are to be written until I give the go ahead.  No doubt one of these freaks will go through the logs, so if they don’t see anything they might just go back to earth with a smile on their face.  Fourth, the board probably won’t come across any of you given where you’ll be working, but if they do, please assist them with anything they ask,”

     “Stiller and I will assist the women in any way that we can,” said Kroil.

     “I’m going to make sure the board doesn’t find either of you.  You’re pulling WO37228,” said John glancing at his chart.

     “What’s that?” asked Stiller.

     “That’s shoveling cow shit on RAS,” joked Jennifer.

     “Any questions?” asked John.

     “Don’t let them eat the food on B or they’ll shut us down for sure,” said Tom.

     “And don’t let them go in Tom’s living quarters.  It’s a shithole,” said Pam.

     “You guys should quit engineering and all become comedians.  Now I want some serious questions,” said John.

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     John picked up his pace after exiting the main elevator onto S Module.  His comedy cast of engineers settled in after a few minutes and had successfully utilized the remaining minutes of the status meeting for more constructive matters.  His watch showed 9:25am, but he would need all of those five minutes to get to the rendezvous.  The FSC would have the board standing in the doorway of the Chief of Agriculture’s office 9:30am as scheduled, if they weren’t already there waiting on him.

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     Everything had gone smoothly over the past two hours.  So far the board had seen RAS, along with Q and S Modules and had now decided to head up to B deck for a lunch break.  John didn’t have a clue where they were going after that.  All in all they had been pretty hush-hush when it came to discussing things with him.  There had been a lot of whispering between themselves and the two FSC ambassadors, but the extent of his duties up to this point were merely acting as a tour guide. 

     The FSC could have gotten anyone to show these pencil-pushers around, why they chose to waste his time he couldn’t figure out.  No doubt someone thought that using a Senior Engineer to explain the progress would have more of a confidence impact that some committee member.  A Senior Level Engineer could at least find his way around the space station.  What he had noticed was a lot of head nodding over the past two hours, but along with that there had been very little note taking, which seemed like a good thing.  Best of all there had been no alerts and none of his flunkies had paged him.

     When the group arrived onto B-deck, one of the FSC ambassadors Benny Kerns, took the lead for the tour.  John guessed that Kerns must have felt that since he was a B-deck resident, he had become an expert on its functions.  John was pretty sure the guy had become an expert on B-deck dining.  He was easily tipping the scales at two-hundred fifty.  Kerns was so large, John imagined that if C-Orbit’s gravitational system failed, his weight would keep him firmly planted on the ground.  Besides being the master B-deck connoisseur, the one other thing Kerns had mastered was speaking in public.  His voice had a rather soothing tone that almost made you want to hand him money or let him kiss your baby.

     “Ladies and Gentlemen I must excuse myself and check in on my staff,” said John.

     “Are any of your people working on the launch module?” asked one of the members.

     “There is no scheduled maintenance for that module.  Why do you ask?” said John.

     “I hadn’t seen the results of the docking scenarios from last week,” she said.

     “My group is finalizing those test results at this moment, Ms. Krulzink.  If I have them on your desk when you return to earth, would that suffice?” said Kerns.

     “That would be fine,” she replied.

     “I will meet back with everyone in an hour,” said John.

     Kerns spoke up as John turned to head back down the corridor.

     “John, can I speak with you a minute?  Excuse me everyone,” he said to the board.

     Kerns’ entire mass jiggled as he shifted his legs back and forth to catch up with John.

     “John, did everything go OK with the launch testing?”

     “Fine, everything went fine,” he replied.

     “Good, nothing bad has happened since last night I take it,” said Kerns.

     “Everything is running smoothly.  Don’t worry,” said John.

     “Good, Good.  Can you do me a favor?”

     “Sure, what is it?” said John.

     “Can you smile a little more for the rest of the tour?  You look as though you are worrying about something and I’m afraid that’s providing a negative perception.”

     “I can do that,” said John with puzzlement.

     “Just a positive note from time to time about the station would be nice.  Remember what they think could be worse than what they see.”

     “I’ll try to remember that,” said John as he headed back down the corridor.

     Kerns was a piece of work
.  That was for sure.  How could any of them see him smile with his nose so far up their asses.  Now, because of Kerns’ subtle request, he had to think of something nice to say about C-Orbit without putting his foot in his mouth, all for the sake of a positive attitude.  That group was so somber that a bout of food poisoning from B-deck would seem like a New Year’s Eve and a Christmas party rolled into one.

     What concerned John was that one of the board had questioned launch testing results.  Eight days ago his crew had tested twenty-five sequential Brandon Transport dockings, all thirty minutes apart.  In coordination with the GEP, he simply utilized three Transports and rotated them in a circle, docking them as their turn came about.  Without twenty-five transports to test with, that was the best he could do.  Twenty-five transports probably represented the entire fleet that was easily scattered around the galaxy.