The plan backfired. Instead of a being awash in that delicious wave of endorphins known as a "runner's high," I was left sweaty and exhausted. With no small effort I convinced myself that the endorphins were just stuck in a pituitary gland still shaking off the effects of coldsleep; they'd be along presently. Lazily I bounced myself down the tube towards the head for a refreshing shower. Actually a sponge down, of course, nobody really showers in zero-g.
As always, I got homesick when I "showered" in space. It was just one of those things that always triggers a strong memory for me. Heather waking up earlier than we'd ever have set an alarm - which we hadn't set since she was born, really, anyway - and Francine going to get her a bottle. Me trying to squeeze another ten minutes of sleep in a warm bed before Heather stamped her way into my room for a hug and to watch her favourite vids. Francine coming back from her shower and me going off to the bathroom for mine. The pull of the memory, the yearning for it, was strong and accented with the painful knowledge that it was firmly in the past. I'd return soon, but Heather would be older and we'd have to build a new routine, a new set of memories to yearn after.
My slate chimed a second time since I'd started my run, indicating that another block of sail had been checked, the data ready for my review. I pulled on a fresh jumpsuit and made my way back to the control center in the bow, figuring that I might as well use the large display. No change to the progress rates or overall estimate of completion, so I figured I might as well whittle some time away by setting myself a bit of a challenge. I'd run my latest iteration of a fork of Sophie's automated anysis code on the data while I did my usual manual analysis, then compare results. For added excitement, I'd run it against Sophie's latest code, too.
I realize why I don't get invited to many parties.
With a few flourished gestures I packaged off the relevant data, called up the two automated analysis programs and started them running. The actual processing power required for the check itself is almost entirely run by firmware embedded in the various cell processors dotting the rigid frame of the heliosail, so I wasn't worried about it making my long night even longer.
There were some interesting challenges in the data. Some dust particles had conspired to arrange themselves in such a way that it blocked the transverse magnetoconduction flow, and also aligned with some natural ionic eddies. Together it looked alarmingly like a microtear flapping and threatening to do more damage. I'd seen that sort of thing before and known not to panic, cross referencing not only the transverse electron flow but also the longitudinal as well. I'd be interested to see how the algorithms handled it.
There was also some odd harmonization of particulate forming a pattern that while aesthetically pleasing was ultimately dangerous. I knew that was the sort of thing that the automatic processing would never see, and that was the main problem with them. Detecting destructive harmonization patterns could be done automatically, and was critical in order to prevent sail collapses. Only the first order patterns though, the ones that were imminently dangerous. Second or third order patterns which could themselves collapse down to first order patterns were a computational problem that hadn't yet been solved. I could spot them, though. That meant that I could also trim the sails to correct them, ensuring that they didn't collapse while I was in a coldsleep cycle. That's how haulers most often met their doom. Waking to alarms of an all-too-late detection of a failure harmonic pattern, realizing that they were outside of a rescue horizon. Knowing that the best they could hope for was a slow, multiyear journey back home under unaccelerated backup sail. Wondering who would be there to greet them those long years later when they finally arrived, assuming no critical coldsleep systems failed. It would be a few years yet before we knew if the most recent haulers had survived their sail collapses. Every time my mind bent to the reality of that situation, it snapped back refusing to believe the horrible uncertainty of it all.
As I said before, I didn't really trust the automated systems. That's why I was shocked to see that my fork of Sophie's latest code caught the third order harmonic that I'd spotted in my manual analysis. I wasn't as surprised to see that Sophie's own code has missed it, since higher order harmonic detection was the entire purpose of my fork. Still, my code had indeed caught it, and that was damned impressive.
Potentially career changingly impressive.
============================================================
From: ben@portsmouth.deephaul.sol
To: sophie@dartmouth.deephaul.sol
Re: Forked you
Sophie!
My latest iteration on your autochecker caught a TRIAD! Holy shit, right? When you're up you should really pull it down and run it alongside your next analysis and see if it catches any other high orders. Speaking of which, when is your next wake cycle?
- Ben
=============================================================
After trimming the sail to collapse the harmonic, I marked the blocks for ablation and cleaned up my dataspace, returning the countdown to front and center: 14 Hours, 18 Minutes remaining. It would be a while for the analysis on the next block, which was bigger than the last two combined. I was flipping through the vids (why had I forgotten to request the update burst before my run?), all of which I'd seen, when Sophie's message arrived.
============================================================
From: sophie@dartmouth.deephaul.sol
To: ben@potsmouth.deephaul.sol
Re: Forked you
Holy flippin' hell. A triad? No way. Of course I'll pull that code. Hell, if you're so confident in it, maybe I'll skip my next check cycle and just let the Dartmouth wake me if it needs something trimmed!
No new vids? You absolute sucker. I bet you're hoping that a run will keep you awake, eh? Well, I'm throwing up a high five as we pass each other on this transit. Will our schedules ever be in sync again, I wonder. Off to start my check. At least we got that timing right!
Miss you, B.
xoxo S.
=============================================================
Why didn't I see it then?
Why didn't I write her back sooner?
YOU ARE READING
The Diagnostician
Science FictionBen is the lone inhabitant aboard the Deep Haul Corporation's Portsmouth, carrying resources from the main asteroid belt back to Earth. He's periodically woken from the stasis-like sleep that helps him pass the months of travel time to and from the...
