Morning coffee, standing by Val’s cubicle and laughing.
Sal was the primary (an inside joke) communication engineer who told semi-funny jokes nonstop like a machine gun.
I laughed at the barely funny jokes and responded by playing the recording of Joyce’s voice from my cell phone; she had only retired the week before but had left a few priceless sarcastic recordings.
“Sal? Am I bothering you? Am I bothering you?” came Joyce’s familiar words over my phone.
We were interrupted by the Lead Technician, Mike V.
“I need some help,” said Mike.
When Steve retired, Mike took over as the primary troubleshooter for communication problems, just as I had to take over for Joyce.
We both had enormous, if not impossible, tasks by following in the footsteps of those two space center giants.
“I need some help,” said Mike, “This lady is driving me crazy with imaginary troubles.”
Mike was carrying a yellow fluke test set and looked frazzled.
“This lady is a CEO’s Secretary or something and is driving me nuts with her issues. She keeps turning in trouble tickets, and there is nothing wrong with her phone or nothing that I can find anyway.”
“Is her phone tapped, maybe? That always causes sneaky problems,” I asked, ever the eternal smartass.
“Intermittent problems are always a bitch,” I said, thinking about the cretin Mildew who had retired when his jaundiced complexion had scared even the KSC doctors.
Mildew had been a magician in troubleshooting, but technology had evolved to digital equipment and voice-over-internet protocol, and new repair magicians were required in the Artemis-Orion age.
“Could I get one of you to look at her problem?” asked Mike. He looked desperate.
“Maybe I’m missing something easy,” said Mike. I could tell he was also embarrassed to have asked for help.
Sal and I looked at each other.
“Take a ride?” I asked my engineer.
“Let’s see what’s wrong with her circuits,” said Sal.
We took the elevator up to the OSB-2 fifth floor and walked down the grand hallway with the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked upon the giant VAB and the Launch Control Center.
The OSB-2 fourth-floor balcony was the best location on the space center to watch the Artemis-2 launch, but this area would be VIP only, rock stars and ambassadors, maybe a Senator or two if they begged.
We stepped into a mahogany-lined office to meet the Secretary. She was a middle-aged woman with immaculate hair and nails, wearing a bright smile, except when she glanced at Mike V.
The smile did not fool me. The CEO assistants were always as shark-like as their bosses- that was in their job description.
Yet she seemed to be the nicest person you could ever meet, and she had taped posters of Artemis/Orion-2 over the Mahogany walls around her office. Her wall calendar was a photo of the James Webb telescope. Like the space shuttles, the Hubble telescope was now old news, and she was apparently into the new space race.
No SpaceX or Blue Origin posters could be found on the walls. They were competitors, it would seem.
The name on her desk read Jasmine.
“Hello Jasmine, I’m the primary comm engineer,” said Sal, introducing himself. “We came up to see if we could help Mike find your problem.”
A brief look of disgust crossed her face when she looked in Mike’s direction; however, she blushed involuntarily at Sal.
“Thank you for coming. I’m having gamma-ray issues on my phone; sometimes the computer glitches, sometimes even the fax,” she said.
Jasmine pulled back perfect curls to expose Orion spaceship earrings.
“We’re here to help,” I said, not completing the sentence, “We’re from the government.”
She ignored me because Sal gave her a big smile.
“Let us see what we can find with the fluke test set,” said Sal.
Being more of a fiber optics troubleshooter, so I watched while Sal and Mike tested all the equipment in her office.
Gamma Rays? Gamma Ray bursts? I wondered. Are gamma rays the next culprit for errors in the new electronics age, where chips die from static electric shock or even dust mites?
On a polished cherry wood table with a jar of wrapped chocolates was a magazine with the headlines:
“Brightest gamma-ray burst ever seen since ten thousand years of human civilization.”
Had we been civilized for that long, I wondered? And opened the magazine for a quick look at the article:
“The shocking extragalactic Gamma-ray burst pummeled the solar system last fall with an intensity seventy times brighter than any GRB observed.”
I recalled reading about the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 capturing images of the infrared afterglow of the GRB and tried to remember the date. Maybe the autumn of 22?
The GRB flooded gamma-ray detectors on the orbiting space telescopes but with minimal damage to equipment on Earth.
At Kennedy Space Center, I recalled only one equipment failure possibly related to GRBs, it was a Flashwave Packet Optical Networking Platform and it had been returned to the manufacturer in Japan for testing. NASA could not afford launch delays due to faulty equipment.
When the manufacturer could discover no problems, they issued a report that gamma rays had caused an intermittent defect-determined by not finding any other cause of the failure.
We found the response so comical that the report was posted on cubical walls in the SSPF building.
So, across the varied tech landscape of KSC, there was only one piece of equipment that “Maybe” had been affected by gamma rays.
I looked at Jasmine. The odds that gamma rays damaged her digital phone and modem were what? The same as ten lightning strikes at the same spot.
No, this was Kennedy Space Center in central Florida, and ten lightning strikes in the exact location were not uncommon.
Mike and Sal were looking unsure; I knew the look, “No problem found,”
intermittent troubles were a bitch to locate or fix.
I scooped up Jasmine’s magazine and said, “Let’s check out the equipment in the comm room.”
“We will be right back,” said Sal. “We have to make sure a circuit board hasn’t gotten zapped. “Good help is hard to get after the pandemic.”
Sal nodded in Mike’s direction with a half wink.
Jasmine smiled, “Thank you,” she said while reaching for a foil-wrapped chocolate. She squinted her eyes, searching for her magazine.
In the hallway, Mike hissed, “See, I couldn’t find any problems either. I think she is crazy.”
We opened the door to the communications room of blinking lights and hum of optical switches, power over ethernet, and test modems.
“Look what she has been reading,” I said, holding up the magazine with an artist’s conception of a Gamma-ray burst shooting out of a dying sun.
“Gamma rays? That is what she said to start with, right?” said Sal.
“She’s a looney toon,” said Mike.
“She’s a nice lady,” said Sal. “Corporate secretaries are no dummies.”
Sal scooped a section of cross-connect wire from an overflowing trash can and stretched out a strip of wire about ten inches long.
“Let’s go back to her office. She just needs a Gamma-ray corrector.”
“What is that a Gamma-ray corrector?” asked Mike.
I held my hands up to Mike, shrugged, and mouthed the letters WTF.
“Yep, yep, that is all she needs, and I bet she’s looking for this.”
Sal handed me the magazine.
Sal knocked on the door, and we entered the mahogany-lined office.
Jasmine stood near a worn FireFly poster, sifting through a pile of tech magazines.
“Jasmine? Well, we have tested everything except the computer terminal under your desk. I will check that, but have you heard about some of the equipment failing across the space center because of wild gamma rays?”
Sal removed his jacket, and I swore I saw Jasmine’s nostrils flare.
That shaved head and suit jacket never failed to attract the ladies.
“Yes!” said Jasmine, “I have heard of the failures from gamma rays. I even told this young man so.”
Mike flushed in embarrassment or rage.
“I found the computer jack over here,” I said. “Behind her space heater.”
Sal wiggled under Jasmine’s desk to the terminal jack and then held out a hand from under the desk.
I knew what he wanted and handed him my multi-tool with the Phillips screwdriver already folded out.
“That’s a grievance,” I said as he unscrewed the face plate cover.
“Jerk,” he grunted.
In the poor light under the desk, I watched him wrap the wire tightly around a pencil, creating a row of coils.
Sal didn’t even connect the two ends of the wire to anything but just snapped the cover on the terminal faceplate, locking the two ends of the curly wire in place and replacing the screws. He spread the homemade coil neatly across the top of the terminal.
What the hell? I thought.
Sal crawled out from under the desk, and I thought Jasmine was watching him a little too carefully as he put on his jacket.
Sal smiled at her and pointed at the coil under her desk, “This is what has been working around the space center for gamma-ray protection.”
Jasmine looked under the desk, and I thought Sal was going to slap her backside.
“Don’t….” I said; Jasmine and Sal looked at me.
“Please don’t lose my multi-tool knife,” I managed to say.
“Jasmine,” said Sal, “Perhaps you were aware of that big gamma-ray burst that hit us not long ago?”
Jasmine actually blushed, ‘Yes! I have read about it.”
“I have had to place this same type of coil all over Orlando Airport, and it keeps planes from being delayed. The coil acts as a gamma-ray interrupter. Amazing how well it works. You will not have any more problems from the GRBs.”
Jasmine gave Sal a huge smile and handed him a handful of foil-wrapped chocolates from the jar on the table.
“Thank you so much, Sal! Don’t be a stranger. Come up during a launch, and I can get you out on the VIP balcony.”
She saw that her space magazine had been returned to the table and shot Mike a murderous glance but did not say anything.
In the elevator, I said, “Interrupter works every time? Damnit, man.”
Sal handed Mike and me a chocolate.
“Works every time.”
I clicked the play button on my phone, “Sal? Am I bothering you? Am I bothering you?” came Joyce’s familiar words.
I was going to miss her sarcasm.
