All Bollixed Up

Posted on Sat 22nd Aug, 2020 @ 5:30pm by

840 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Resolution
Location: Altair Mining Facility Admin HQ
Timeline: One month ago

{Altair Mining Facility Administration HQ, Altair Vii}

In a Lagrangian point between Altair’s asteroid belt and Altair, sat a simple outpost overseeing routine mining. Nobody would see this as a prestigious posting, and Daky`l was not someone with ambition. Bolians were expected to be master engineers, and that reputation had bounced him from one job to the next, far enough apart nobody could ask. This one was just another in a string of jobs he would eventually be fired from. He had four hundred automated mining sites to monitor, and with error rates under .2% this job meant very little drama.

When A.78.1.1 indicated trouble, he was asleep. When the power farm exploded he got an alert to wake up, and saw the drill had gone critical. No miners on the asteroid, no repair crews to send in time, so Daky’l simply logged the incidence. He sent a shutdown command, but local interference had kicked up a particle storm. There were four thousand or so urgent messages from a unit named Peggy, all requesting override authorization to shut it down locally. He thumbed it, but the messages couldn't send through the particle spray. There was not much to do, he hoped nobody would look into it.

He typed quickly, changing the message log to reflect the interference prevented their requests from arriving on time. These drills were hundreds of years old, so he could just made it look like it was anyone else's fault but his. It took a few minutes per message, and Peggy had been persistent with sending a message every second, requiring over 3700 messages to alter.

The program he wrote to accomplish this began its work, but the station computer was not able to do it quickly. There were other worklogs, from servomotors units on the rig, Meany, Nessy, Dopey, and Banshee, which he deleted altogether. There was simply no time to alter them with detail, Peggy’s messages could be altered to look like they were caught up, those had arrived over the last few months.

A designation appeared next to the repair order, highlighting four days time until a crew would be sent. The fires would claim the drill totally in such time, very little scrap left. Daky’l relaxed, reasonably certain his ass was covered. This was the only action he had seen in a year, but he had dropped the ball. That drill would never be replaced. There were so many, the operation would adjust its quotas upwards to accommodate the loss. Alone in a tiny station was just the way he liked it, and it was safe another day. Lowering the light systems, he grabbed a snack on the way back to his personal ward and comfortable chair, with holographic walls to take him away.

Time passed without ceremony when he got another alert, “Incoming message from HQ.” Daky’l bolted to his feet, stripping the blankets and personal effects out of view. He hit the button to open the channel, a stern office manager staring down at him.

“Report? We have a critical overload logged?”

Daky’l didn’t think he was being so monitored, it was not a savory thought, he was a bad employee. This meant he had messed up elsewhere and not covered so well. He tried not to gulp, so he swallowed hard and said, “Looks like the miners didn’t regulate the power farm, it must have exploded, and they lost containment on the drill mid-operation.”

The manager honestly didn’t care, today was a day for the bare minimum effort. “Is the drill lost?”

“Yes sir, we can see what’s left when the repair crews get out there, but the drill is trashed.”

The man looked distressed, but obviously resigned to helplessness. “Just scrap it, whatever's there, any drones, just junk all of it and sell it. And you need to make sure this doesn’t happen again. I want to see PCMC reports on your whole operations.”

The preventative maintenance was done by the miner drones, all he did was check off the logs to make sure nothing got reported to make him look bad. They were also the ones he had just deleted.

“Yes sir, I can send those soon. I just gotta gather them into one place.”

The manager looked incredulous, “They sort themselves if you do it daily son, I expect full logs to be transmitted in one hour.” He cut the signal and left Daky’l sweating.

Rather than even try to cover anything up, he just started the process of packing, knowing it was time to find another job. There would be someone coming here soon, regardless, and they would take him out of here. He didn't give another thought to the peril and tragedy his lapse in awareness had caused. How could he? He wasn’t a computer who could process multiple priorities, track a dozen events, ensure operational success by routine performance of protocols. He was just a breathing bio-unit, who could blame him?

 

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