DLR 2022 Part Two: Troubleshooting Emergent Problems During Field Product Testing
enter captain ron, again
remember Captain Ron? the character i created when i saw a cool dog with one eye? and wrote a short story back in 2019 (i think) featuring the character?
well i don’t care, here’s more
this is a story that i promised during the May DLR (called LIGHTNING ROUND: MAY RESURRECTION: THE RETURN: LEGACY OF DECEMBER’S SPIRIT) that i never delivered
so here’s the beginning. it’s got a lot to it. as with the other story, i think i might try to do something with it
As always, Enjoy.
Troubleshooting Emergent Problems During Field Product Testing: A Captain Ron Story, part one of question mark
by Jeffrey C. Brister
“RON!”
The voice was sharp, shocking, and short. The syllable jolted him from his slumber, making him attempt to sit straight up in his bed.
Which was a bad idea, because he was in a bottom coffin bunk, with barely enough clearance to accommodate his nose. He smashed it into the ceiling above him, which made him involuntarily make a pained whine, like a dog being hit.
It chattered for what seemed like forever as he tried to regain his bearings, and piece out what was external noise and internal. Panicked and nervous voices: those were outside, people wondering if he was alright. One person, a human male, knelt down and looked through the viewport of his bunk, mouthing, “are you okay?, while waving to get his attention. Ron nodded yes. Thumbs up, and he climbed back into his coffin.
Also outside: shuffling steps that came to a stop, several shuddering, intentional breaths that came long and slow, and the smell of blood and shit. Not enough to alert the humans, but anyone with advanced senses would be able to pick it up, even through the window.
Ron was a Dogman after all—that’s what the humans called him, at least. He’d never seen an Earth dog in real life, and he was convinced they were an elaborate joke, created specifically for the purpose of pissing him off, and tricking the citizens of the universe to think that his people were nothing more than idiotic pets for humans to command.
That was beyond him. What was inside him, in the radio nestled in his ear canal, connected to his brain through delicate hardware modified with highly illegal open-source code to replace the proprietary operating system, was a voice that he’d not heard since he left for his last job.
A voice that, while welcome, was really fucking annoying sometimes.
Growling, he laid back, staring up at the very close ceiling of his coffin bunk, and took a deep breath. “Dawn, it’s good to hear your voice again.” He was lying, at least a little bit.
“Yes, I saw the uptick in vitals, and the pain receptor feedback. You were asleep, weren’t you?”
“Pretty sure you knew that.”
“I did, and I wanted to piss you off a little bit.”
“Isn’t that how some humans treated their alleged dog pets?”
“We pointlessly antagonize because we love, Ronnie! Now c’mon, dish.”
The line went dead silent for several seconds. Ron closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
“Ron, please?” She asked, in that annoying, pleading baby-voice. “Pleeeease?”
Rolling his eyes, he assented. “Fine. You want to hear about it?”
“Yes!”
“You can read my debriefing report after I submit it. I don’t feel like getting in trouble like last time.” He’d popped the CEO of a firm that the Corp was trying to acquire a few weeks ago, on a backwater planet a bit farther out from his completed job—something about needing the planet as a waystop for supply lines.
(Not as “a planet in orbit around a celestial body”, the literal planet as a physical object. No one wanted to go through the endless paperwork of bidding, procurement, scheduling, intimidation, wetwork, approval, and construction for a large scale permanently staffed docking station. Easier to find a planet nearby that fits the bill, purchase who you can and kill the rest, install a few rockets and short-range jump engines, and get a whole planet there, complete with severely damaged ecosystems that are much easier to repair.)
Ron told Dawn all about it after he was back in range, which found its way to a tech team who lived there, who then went on strike to protest Dorlan’s actions, which led to them getting killed, which set a promising project on post-human ability prediction and reproduction back a few decades. After that reprimand, Ron didn’t tell Dawn anything until he’d filed his after-action report, and he didn’t even say he was planetside until the check had cleared (that was simply because he found her annoying, not for opsec reasons).
“All right then, keep your secrets,” Dawn said, in a weird, affected accent. “Just know that I’m scanning the feeds like a buzzard, and I’ve got flags on your name and about two dozen of your aliases, so the moment you hit ‘send’ I’ll be reading it and ready to gossip when you touch down.”
He groaned. Ron knew in the back of his mind that she had all of her bases covered, he just wanted to believe that she’d missed something by mistake. “So all this time, you’ve been…?”
“I’ve been a good friend and giving you space. Did you think I wouldn’t know when you’ve landed?” She scoffed. “I’m rather offended.”
“Whatever. You’re a good friend, you’re the best, you’re the most important person in my life, and whatever else humans like to say to reassure one another of their connection to one another,” Ron said, and rolled over. “Now let me sleep.”
Dawn breathed a theatrically heavy sigh. “Oh, alright. G’night, Ron.”
“Night.”
He closed his eyes, and drifted off to sleep.
Huntsman sat at his desk, looking down his belly. His buttons were getting dangerously close to bowing out, and his gut was nearly touching the table. He’d need to start working out again. He made a note to start adding exercise time to his calendar.
And then he looked up to his desk, and saw the mountains of papers, all set in neat, straight stacks. He’d need to get through these before he’d have any chance to get back in shape.
It was an endless procession of nonsense, it was: complaints, bills, requests for favors, maintenance requests, birth registrations, past due bills of all kinds, legal documents of the civil and criminal variety. All of it here, all of it demanding his attention and mental energy. Just bullshit, day in and day out, all so he could…what? “See the stars?” “Experience all of what the Universe has to offer?” “Sail the famous highways of explorers past?”
No. It was all bullshit. All he did was grab forms, look at them, file them away in the right spot, make the right phone calls, send someone to threaten the right people or airlock them, get yelled at by the boss, go home, and then do it all again. Just a gray monotony of the same bullshit every single day, for nothing more than the chance to do it again and again and again.
He wanted to scream, but that would wake the boss, which would result in a dock in his pay, so his anguish seethed, flushing him red and sweaty, fogging his glasses with its intensity.
At the moment when he felt like he was clenching his jaw so hard he might break his teeth, his desk phone rang.
Time to put on that customer service face, he thought. Time to do the job. He breathed out as much of the anger as he could, and then gingerly picked up the phone. “Bernard Moretti’s office, this is Alex Huntsman speaking. How may I help you?” Every time he said it, he could feel a little bit more of his humanity slip away from him. He was expecting someone infuriated with some crap Moretti had pulled, or a penitent voice trying to eke out an extension or a favor, or a sultry voice trying to trade their bodies for something.
This person was none of those things. “Hello, Mr. Huntsman. I’m not at liberty to give you my name, but Mr. Moretti is expecting us. Is there a way you could put me through?” Calm. Collected. Unhurried.
Huntsman hesitated. The boss was sleeping. He didn’t like interruptions. “I’m sorry, but Mr. Moretti is in a meeting, and he prefers not to be interrupted.”
“I understand, but my colleagues and I are operating on a rather strict schedule, and we need access to Mr. Moretti in order to get things moving. Could you please see if he’s available?”
The man’s chilling voice had less of an effect on Huntsman than the mounting anxiety of waking the boss up. “Let me see what I can do. Can you provide me with a name?”
“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to provide that information. He will know.”
“Alright, thank you. Please hold.” He put the caller on hold, and pressed the red “DO NOT PRESS” button.
One ring, heard in the next room, a snarl, and then, “What the fuck do you want?”
“Yes, Mr. Moretti sir—“
“This is coming out of your pay!”
Huntsman winced at that. “I understand, sir. My apologies, sir. It’s just that I have someone on the line, and they need to speak with you immediately.”
“Who the fuck doesn’t? Who is it? Is it that shithead from Starry Pete’s? I told him, I’m not buying him a new oven! He knew my boys like to cause a ruckus—“
“Actually, sir, it’s not that. He wouldn’t give me his name. He said that he’s on a schedule, and that he needed to talk with you to ‘get things going’.”
Moretti’s tone changed quickly. “Fuck. Shit. Put him on. Go home. Don’t tell anyone. This is big.” His voice was quiet now. If Huntsman didn’t know any better, he’d say scared.
“Sir?”
“What the fuck did I just say?” Back to his old self. “Patch him through. And take the rest of the day off. You’ll be compensated.”
“Um. Yes, sir.” Huntsman hit a couple of buttons to transfer the call, and he heard Moretti greet his caller more amiably than he had in his entire time working on this dump. “Yes, sir, I have the list ready for you. Is a digital copy alright, or do you need it on paper? I can do either, yes sir.”
Gobsmacked at the extra time on his hands, Alex decided to take a winding path home. The doctor had been telling him for weeks to try to get more exercise, and how he had the perfect opportunity to add a little movement to his day. It was the middle of the workday, almost lunch, so maybe a little people watching would be good for him, too. He needed some sort of interaction beyond getting yelled at from both ends.
He walked past the Starry Pete’s shop. It felt like it had always been there, even though he and everyone else knew it was a recent addition to the ship. Part of that was its abruptness—it was like one day Moretti was yelling at a very put together, severe brunette wearing the sharpest black pantsuit he’d ever seen, and then moments later the sign was up in the little corner of the concourse, the blue six-pointed star and STARRY PETE’S in yellow text shooting out from its center, PIZZA PARLOR written under it in a semi-circle. Right now, it was closed, as it had been for weeks now.
Everything started when the spot opened up. Moretti didn’t like the place—bad atmosphere, bad food, poorly run, terrible graphic design, unreasonably mean staff—and tried to squeeze the place to make things tough, which was his procedure for places that didn’t bribe him or allow some part of his vast network of illicit trade to pass through unnoticed. Higher rents, more “random” inspections than other places, personal visits from enforcers posing as simple bill collectors, planting drugs, planting bodies, planting extremely illegal Pre-Bang tech (it was little more than a paperweight, but Moretti had an actually very real certificate of authenticity of its carbon dating, and pegged it as fifteen seconds before the Big Bang), but nothing stuck. The sole employee somehow got the money together, kept an uncannily spotless restaurant, broke a few fingers and got the meathead to admit he was extorting, moved the drugs and caught the dealers, conducted independent investigations to bring the real killer to justice, or brought wider media attention to a brand-new piece of Pre-Universal history. Nothing stuck, and it had Moretti fuming. Things went quiet for a few weeks, and Alex was sent on what looked like a pointless mission through the Confederation’s legal library, to find a set of precedents and data points that didn’t seem to be related at all.
Once that was done, Moretti had had enough. The landlord’s goons went in for a “pizza party” that left the place trashed, and Moretti, through clever contracts and borderline unethical legal wrangling via a specific sequence of hiring and firing and rehiring, had managed to wiggle out of liability for the damage done to the establishment. The sole employee fumed and yelled and filed complaints in every possible direction, but each time was defeated by Moretti’s startlingly strong web of red tape and legalese—which Alex had located and sent over. Nobody else knew, but there it was. He could avoid the place, but he felt the need to walk by and feel his stomach clench and drop.
Alex then realized that, even though the Starry Pete’s employee had been here for the better part of six months, but he didn’t know their name. Or what they looked like. Or their gender. Or anything that might help identify them at all. He’d gone in pretty regularly for food, and had looked them in the eye, but nothing stuck. Wait, Alex thought, I hadn’t even seen their name on the manifest or any of the documentation for the establishment. No, that was a lie, their name was there, everywhere it needed to be, it just wasn’t coming to him at the moment.
Were they a postie? That would explain a lot, but there was no extra paperwork indicating that, and all of the testing (done to be extra-sure and catch anyone who might be on the run or just useful, and to prevent accidents from unstable individuals) confirmed them to be negative. Just another person on the ship, hazy and unidentifiable.
Weird.
wow, that sure was a fragment of a story that i would like to finish and use as the basis of a continuing, franchise-like series
more next week
Love you, take care, stay safe.