Dead End

This is a backstory for a book I’m working on. I’m experimenting with different approaches to writing a novel, including presenting it as a screenplay (to get to the point), better scene description, and making the characters sufficiently unique that dialogue tags are unnecessary. This is a first (and only) draft of this story …

DEAD END

Devon looked at the smiling white woman sitting next to him and wanted to take that wad of gum she had stuck to her keyboard and shove it down her throat. Madison was the worst coworker he’d ever had, always smiling and jumping around, never sitting still for more than a minute. She suddenly took the still-wet gum in her fingers and put it in her mouth, before turning to him to unleash another torrent of meaningless words wrapped around a piece of masticated chewing gum.

“You don’t say much, but that’s okay because it’s your first day on the job, trying to get the hang of it, so I’ll explain, although I’ve never had a supervisory position before and, by the way, I’ll write glowing performance reports as long as you don’t screw up.” 

Devon tried not to grimace at the way her mouth twisted into grotesque shapes as she spoke. He nodded and started to answer, but she cut him off.

“I guess I’m supposed to fill you in on our task, right?”

Devon opened his mouth but never got a chance to respond.

“We’re monitoring the Voyager One and Two missions, you know what those are right? Of course you do, so I’ll cut to the chase, we receive a daily signal, it takes that long to receive their telemetry because they are really far away and we don’t send any messages because they are running low on fuel, so we just check their system performance and look for anomalies. Got it?”

“Yeh, I got that part.”

“Great! Once a month we’ll receive a burst of data from their on-board magnetometers, plasma spectrometers, LECP, CRS and PWS systems, which we check for errors and store, letting the PIs know when it’s available. Got it?”

Devon’s head was shaking as he interrupted her train of thought. “What’s an LECP, CRS and PWS? Nobody told me about those instruments.”

Her jaws went into overdrive, chewing the gum for a moment, before it was withdrawn manually from her wide mouth defined by thin lips, and stuck back to the keyboard. He watched this operation in horror until her voice, a blend of hyperactive coke fiend and southern drawl continued with undiminished fervor.

“The LECP measures the energy of ions, electrons and how they change, you are a physicist right? Never mind, you’ll figure it out, the CRS measures cosmic rays in interstellar space, the PWS reports on electromagnetic wave interaction. They’re easy to find in the reports but don’t screw up or I’ll have to give you a poor performance evaluation. Got it?”

The gum disappeared between her yellowish but neatly aligned teeth as she smile-frowned at Devon.

“I know what you’re talking about, Madison. But I don’t have a user name yet. I can’t log on and read the data you’re describing. I’m sure I’ll get it once I can access the system.”

The gum, by now reduced to the consistency of gruel, was suddenly swallowed. “Didn’t the IT guy here at JPL set you up? I don’t control the system you know.”

Devon shook his head. “They said you were responsible for people within your group. I think that means you have to give me limited credentials so that I can perform my tightly constrained task, which apparently is limited to babysitting two aging satellites that have left the solar system.”

Madison laughed and pulled another stick of gum from a pack lying next to her keyboard. “Oh yeh, I forgot. My horoscope predicted that I would meet someone new today and make a mess of it, so I guess it was right again.”

She began typing on her keyboard as the new stick of gum was rapidly broken down by strong molars.

Intrigued, Devon ventured, “You believe in astrology? I wouldn’t have thought a physicist would be so gullible …” 

Devon watched in awe as her fingers continued deftly typing while her jaws focused on the chewing gum as she responded. “Sounds crazy right? But my mom predicted the day of my dad’s death in Afghanistan and she explained how it all worked and I’ve been hooked ever since, even though I know it’s a pseudoscience based on superstition, but it has never failed me but you know it may be a primitive scientific system but who knows, in a thousand years they’ll probably tell jokes about the standard model of physics right?”

Her fingers stopped typing and a login screen appeared on Devon’s monitor. His jaw dropped in surprise as he tried to answer her question while reading the default password she’d written in perfect script on a post-it note and stuck to the side of his monitor without his noticing. 

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about …” He had to look at the keyboard as he clumsily typed the long password. He could hear her jaws chewing the gum, slim fingers typing quickly, until he finally accessed the system, so confused that he didn’t change the password before the Voyager mission tool opened on his monitor. 

“You’ll probably be able to do all this in your sleep by next month, I’ll help you get up to speed.”

She was smiling at him as her fingers continued typing without her attention.

“Thanks,” he stammered.

The wad of gum was removed by her left hand, her right deftly typing, and smashed into her keyboard. Both hands became motionless, her smile transformed into a worried frown as she asked, “Are you Black?”

Devon shook his head in confusion. “What …?”

“I  don’t want to offend you by calling you Black if you’re actually African-American right?”

“I’m not Black if you mean like fried chicken, Pentecostal revival, hip hop, and all that. I think I’m just like you but with different ancestry, so I guess I’m African American. Why does it matter?”

The gum went back into her mouth as she sighed with relief. “Just checking. Believe me when I say that my supervisor asked about it and they were concerned, I don’t know why, that you weren’t … you know …” She grimaced and finished her thought in a hushed and embarrassed tone, “They didn’t want to hire you but you were the most-qualified applicant and I insisted that you would be fine so … well … it’ll be fine, I can tell that you’re a bright guy, by the way, did you enjoy your initial job appraisal?”

“What …?”

Madison pointed a long finger at Devon’s monitor and smiled like a proud mother. “You passed with flying colors, just like my horoscope predicted. I’ll bet your birthday is in early March right?”

Devon looked at the screen filled with rows of numbers, then at Madison’s smiling face, and nodded. “Didn’t you already know that from my personnel file?”

“I didn’t look I swear. See what I mean about ancient pseudoscientific theories?”

Devon relaxed and smiled at her as he nodded. “You’re going to have to tell me more about astrology, Madison.”

Devon tried to focus on the numbers that were reporting the location of Voyager One while she explained the importance of the constellations in their everyday lives. Astrology was the first science and it had been studied rigorously for more than four-thousand years in every civilization. The fact that astrologers from so many cultures used different constellations was proof to her that it was based on more than the apparent relationships between distant celestial objects. She stopped expectantly and waited for Devon to respond.

“If I play the lottery every day and win occasionally, I know it’s because there’s a probability of my winning now and then. But I don’t say it was because the moon was in alignment with Saturn twelve days after my birthday when I lose. See what I mean?”

“That’s an easy one, you don’t know if you are going to win so you use probability to describe your uncertainty because it gives you a nice narrative to explain why you lose most of the time but the fact is that the lottery isn’t deterministic, and neither is our life or the events that influence our decisions or us directly. For example, remember I said that I was going to meet someone today?”

“Sure and you knew you would because it was my first day on the job. That’s nothing but confirmation bias.”

Her head was shaking as her fingers kept typing, the gum waiting expectantly on the keyboard. “I didn’t tell you the entire horoscope. It’s more complicated than that, wanna hear it?”

“Sure.” Devon nodded without looking at her as he focused on the screen, which showed the history of Voyager One telemetry data over the last month.

“I was going to meet a tall, dark stranger – you are African American and over six feet – and he is going to introduce me to my future romantic partner. That’s intriguing isn’t it? Right?”

Devon looked at her in surprise “You got all that from a daily horoscope?”

“Yep but only because I’ve done a detailed work-up based on my entire life, every horoscope compared to subsequent events, and it is going to happen. I can’t wait to meet this guy, I hope it isn’t a woman because I’m not lesbian although I don’t have anything against gay people, I’m just not like that.” 

Her hand suddenly stopped typing and a finger shot towards Devon’s screen, pointing at the table of telemetry data. “Something’s wrong, did you screw up on your first day, Devon? I hope not because I was starting to get used to you.”

“I was going to mention that when you finished explaining how astrology told you about your future romantic life. I didn’t think it was an emergency because, like you said, we can’t do anything except check the data and notify the Voyager project manager. Was I wrong?”

Her finger withdrew and retrieved the chewing gum from the keyboard. “No problem but I’m glad you spotted it. I’ll put it in the daily report, which is usually just a couple of lines about the quality of the transmission, sometimes it gets messed with by cosmic rays or the sun’s magnetic field. This report will get their attention but you need to report it before me to get credit for the discovery because you noticed it first, but next time you see something anomalous report it immediately because NASA can get pretty picky when something goes wrong, looking for scapegoats, right?”

“I don’t know how to report anomalous telemetry data. I’ve only been on the job for an hour and there was no introduction to my job. I know that wasn’t your responsibility –”

Madison grimaced and the wad of gum was relocated to the keyboard. “Actually it was, yep I’m pretty sure I was supposed to have informed you of your responsibilities, we have a standard email for that but I didn’t know I was your supervisor until two-hours ago, but that’s no excuse I could have texted you. I hope they don’t fire me right?” 

Instead of looking concerned, she was grinning. The gum was popped back into her gaping maw and her fingers continued their deft typing as if nothing had happened. Devon searched the app for a tool to report anomalous data and finally located it while Madison continued typing between looking at the screen carefully. The reporting menu was difficult to navigate and required details he had to retrieve from the previous page but he eventually got all the data entered in the correct boxes and typed his summary.

TELEMETRY DATA FROM TODAY SUGGESTS THAT VOYGER ONE IS IN THE SAME LOCATION IT REPORTED YESTERDAY.

His report complete, he turned to Madison, who was working on the same screen he had just closed. He ventured a question since she didn’t seem to have trouble doing two or three things at once. “Did you find an anomaly too? By the way, what are you doing that requires so much work? I thought we were only doing the daily data check.”

The chewing gum wad was deftly removed from her mouth before she answered, never missing a keystroke. “I’m working on the six-month data download, but don’t worry I’ve got it covered. All systems reported anomalous data for the last twenty-four hours. The MAG data suggest that Voyager One has entered some kind of magnetic storm, PLS is off the scale, LECP is dead, CRS is oscillating wildly, and PWS has been constant for more than a day. These data are recorded for a few seconds per day and stored on digital tape before being sent in a burst every six months, that’s what I’ve been doing.”

“So I guess Voyager One has lost power?”

“Not a chance, just look at the battery output, it’s still at ten percent and should last through the mission’s lifetime, another ten years.” She finished typing and turned to Devon, the wad of gum returned to her mouth, being masticated like crazy. “I think Voyager I has flown the coop.”

“What does that mean?”

Her indifferent shrug suggested that her answer wouldn’t be scientific. “This bird has left the solar system and entered interstellar space. We can only speculate about that environment, what kind of cosmic ray soup filled with ions and electrons and maybe even unattached quarks and muons, maybe even some stray Higgs bosons, who knows, right?”

“So you’re saying that the instruments deployed on Voyager One weren’t designed for interstellar space and their operational parameters have been exceeded. That makes sense. What do we do now?”

Madison looked at the clock on her computer, smiled, and stood up. “We’re off the clock. Like you said, we’re just babysitting a couple of aging satellites, and besides it’ll take NASA at least a week to digest what you discovered, so let’s have a drink and get better acquainted.” 

She was at the door, waiting expectantly, so Devon logged off and joined her at the door. “What did you have in mind?

“Since you’re not Black how do you feel about an Irish pub? There’s one just around the corner and I developed a taste for Guinness since I found myself alone in this closet ten hours a week and it’s the closest bar.”

Devon grinned and encouraged her with a wave of his hand. “I’ve never had a Guinness.”

As she stepped into the brightly lit hallway, Madison turned and quipped, “I can’t wait to meet the man I’ve been waiting for all my life.”Devon laughed.