Incarna

90 - Episode 26: Southerly Buster

Day 13: Early morning, JI Research Centre, Jervis Bay Australia.

Max Parrish looked up from his screen and tried to imagine his dad in their AINGEL as it sped over the Atlantic and AIME prepared for the next aero braking. In theory AIME was the AINGEL and Harold was right, he had to stop thinking of all the AIMEs as female. Having his mum's voice for the AIME didn't help at all, which was why he'd started to tweak the timber of the voice to ease it towards something more neutral gender sounding.

Max had thought of incorporating some of Harry's voice patterns into it but that was getting a bit too close to home for Max. To have their AI's voice a combination of both his parents voices, well no, not a good idea! Any final year Psych learning about it would probably nod sympathetically and make obsequious comments about dominating fathers and disassociated mothers. Oh well.

Massimo had suggested using famous radio announcers as the starting point for the new voice structure, so Max had handed that project over to him and his rapidly expanding team. Max made a mental note to do a family tree of who was who. It would be a good way for he and more so for Harold to keep in contact with the organic nature of JI and not let any particular branch get too big or top heavy, so to speak.

Max watched the auto save send off the multiple copies of the report he'd just finished while talking with Harry then stood up and used his office chair to do his every hour stretching routine. Satisfied with his range of movement, he grabbed a comset and walked out through the glass doors onto his office balcony. It overlooked the northern end of Murrays Beach and across to Point Perpendicular. Numerous small boats were out with the cargoes of enthusiastic fisherman searching for the right spot to catch the change of tide and bring home fresh fish for the week.

Max took in the clear blue sky with the faintest wisps of horsetails as Cirrus clouds announced the later arrival of a storm system and front with strong cold winds coming up from the Southern Ocean. The fishos would be in for a rough trip home if the didn't get to the southern side of the bay before the winds arrived. He called up their Research vessel anchored a kilometre or so out from the entrance where they were laying hr foundation blocks for a new underwater Research Centre.

"Captain Markus Jasper, good morning!" "Good morning Max and yes we have the schedule adjusted already for the approaching Southerly. It's due about 1300 hours so we'll move the Gaia away from the moorings. The swell's not expected to be more than 4 metres, but we'll suspend construction till it settles later this evening!"

"Thank you Markus, I didn't really need the update but thank you." "A pleasure Max, and as your father likes to remind me, I'm a pain in the arse for dotting the Tees and crossing the Ighs." Max chuckled, "that's not why I called, is your AIME booked out today, I want to run some comparison tests between the two models but I don't want to conflict your schedule?" "Mmm the best time would be the couple of hours as the Southerly comes through. We'll still have line of sight with the transmitter at HQ so the ionisation shouldn't be too much of a problem, supposed to be dust in this one after that big storm that came across South Australia and blacked out the Mallee region ..."

"That's what I'll be testing actually, there has been some big changes in the electro magnetics of some of these dust storms and using the two AIME's will give us a chance to test some new analysis programs."

"Ah yes Massimo sent us the protocols for that yesterday I think, ah yes here they are ..." Max could imagine Markus at his station on the bridge calling up the links for everything they were talking about so he knew exactly what was being discussed. "Actually I thought he was going to run this research, ..."

"He was but he's been caught up out at Katithandra analysing the dust storm effects on the Space Port and Research centre there. It really scrambled a some gear apparently so they've asked for an AIME to back everything up and possibly use one permanently to protect their systems."

"Quollwood'll love that then, he hates the desert!" Max chuckled, "does he, well I didn't know that. With all those tours he used to lead around the old Temples!" "He did that to crack onto the chicks!" "Ah right then, well he wasn't too happy to go. But he's hired his new girlfriend as his assistant so the rest of the team were happy to take him onsite!"

"Is that the black singer chick who was in the news over that bankers suicide?" "Yep same one! She has a commerce law degree and is a pretty good systems analyst to boot so Massimo is a very happy boy!" "Quollwood gets all the breaks ... Well if she's got a sister get me an introduction will you. This metal and carbon fibre bitch I live on here has taken up too much of my life, I need to get some humanity back!"

"You and me both Markus, let me know when I can run that link!" "Roger that, out!" Max smirked at Markus and his carry on. It would take some woman to get him off that ship of his. More than likely he was on the look out for someone to share his passion for the ship board life! Now to more pressing matters ...

"AIME!"Max said into his comset. "Yes Max Parrish." "Incarna. World wide situation display. Wall screen please." Max took a deep breath of Jervis Bay air and went back inside his office. He went to his standing work station that was positioned to view the wall screen to its best advantage. Gradually icons and small flickering bar graphs like phone reception icons appeared across the globe. Max wiped the light sweat off his hands on his trousers, time to get down to business!

There was the absolute deluge of data points where dust storms had swept across almost the entire mid latitudes of the planet over the last week and then there were the individual icons for all the documented interventions. There were also the bar graphs that marked possible sightings and unconfirmed interventions with the graph indicating the plausibility rating for each.

Max could see where Harry had been making comments and notations while he had been on the IOS and then sent them down before he'd logged off from there and transferred to the Skylon. Certain icons stood out more than others, and it was here Max let his pattern recognition ability have free reign. Yep Harry had been right!