Prodromal: Incident In Mbandaka

By R. Laurenz

It is 2052. Space is thriving. There have been settlements on Luna for 30 years, bases on Mars for close to 20 years. There are two large orbital hotels. There are multiple daily launches delivering people and supplies to Low Earth Orbit. There are weekly transits between Terra and Luna. Every two years a Flotilla of cruisers make the transit from Terra to Mars. In 2052 the largest Flotilla to date is launching for Mars.

Terra has begun to go into decline. A break-in at a covert microbiology lab in central Africa may have released an experimental pathogen with catastrophic potential. The nature of the pathogen makes it almost impossible to track and control, placing the people of both Terra and Luna at risk.

Within this context, Luna faces the need for a transition of leadership to a young Lunar born population untrained in the skills of government; and young people on Terra face the prospect of being permanently exiled to space to ‘save’ them from the potential pandemic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781365528279

Book preview

Prodromal: Incident In Mbandaka

The Moon Colony Simulation Project

A series of novels about colonizing the moon

SET IV: Sunset Earth

Volume 1

Prodromal:

Incident in Mbandaka

By

R. Laurenz

Copyright

Published by R. Laurenz Publishing, Inc.

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Copyright © 2015 Robert L. Zimmermann

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this book.

ISBN for e-pub format: 978-1-365-52827-9

Version 1: for distribution in e-pub format.

*Since e-pub is a variation of HTML, and is designed for display on a wide range of devices with different screen sizes and different default fonts, this version does not display text in the specific way that the author intended, possibly using different fonts and spacing than are used in the printed paperback or in the PDF version available on Lulu.

Version 2: for distribution in print.

* Version 2 is published in PDF format, printed as a trade paperback, and distributed via Lulu. Fonts, margins, and pagination are as the author intended. With the exception of a few minor corrections, the text is the same in both versions.

Preface

The Moon Colony Simulation Project is a series of novels chronicling the people who establish the first permanent settlement on the Lunar surface, starting the migration of humanity into space. The whole series includes some 20 to 25 volumes, though it is likely that many of them will not be completed. Since they are being published in the order in which they are finished rather than in the temporal order in which the events occurred, there is a great deal of backstory implicit in the chronologically later volumes. The story begins with the birth of Joanna Collins in 1958 and ends in 2052 with the series of volumes called Sunset Earth. This volume is the first of that latter series.

Each volume is intended to be complete in itself, but since a core set of characters have been working together for a quarter of a century, there is inevitably a significant amount of backstory. To present it in detail would unnecessarily bog down the plots, not to mention causing a huge burden of replication, if the whole series is ever published. The Introduction presents a brief synopsis of the backstory leading up to the present volume. A synopsis of all the volumes in the Moon Colony Simulation Project has been placed on our website:

MoonColonySimulationProjectNovels.com

We are also placing on the website backstory for specific characters who are in the current series, and who also appear in chronologically earlier, but as yet unpublished, volumes. The list of characters included is incomplete, but we are working on it. Some of the characters in the current volume appear in ‘Last Rites’, at the time when they first joined the Lunar Simulation Project.

We have published two previous volumes: ‘The Puzzle’ and ‘Last Rites’. While they present events that mostly occur earlier in the overall story, it is not necessary to read either of them in order to follow the story in the present volume. Our website provides instructions for purchasing those volumes, either as e-books or as paperbacks.

We anticipate publishing three more volumes in the Sunset Earth Series: ‘Kendra’, ‘Now or Never’, and ‘The Equatorial Lion’. These will be published in that order, hopefully at six month intervals. Following those volumes will likely be the first volume in the life of Joanna Collins, the prime mover behind the Moon Colony Simulation Project. We will try to produce additional volumes at the rate of one every year or so until we run out of time. Whatever is incomplete at that time will likely be made available on the website for anyone who might be interested.

I am grateful to McKayla Boelter for the final edit of this volume. McKayla also helped design the cover and format the volume for publication as an e-book and a paperback. McKayla created and executed the website, as well. Readers will likely notice the absence of her editing in successive volumes. I will certainly miss her invaluable assistance. The image for the front cover was created by Conrad Trevis.

R. Laurenz is the pen name for Robert L. Zimmermann. I have my own website

RobertLZimmermann.com

That site was, of course, also produced by McKayla Boelter.

Introduction and Back Story

The Moon Colony Simulation Project began around the beginning of the 21st century. There were two basic ideas behind the Project. The first was that all the technology needed for a Lunar site had been developed, including reliable launch services and functional living environments, referred to as CELSS (Controlled Enclosed Life Support Systems). However, little work had been done on the social and psychological impacts of permanent exile to life in a dome on an alien plant, and especially not with a group large enough to form a functional colony. So the Project set up a simulation of an off world colony at a site situated in a remote region of the Canadian Arctic. They recruited 240 people with the skills and temperament suited to living in such a colony. The proto-colonists were required to remain at the site for six years, 24/7. 

The second assumption was that any such colony would need to be a free, self-governing entity, and be economically viable. Self-governing implied that it would not be a military base, a government research program, or controlled by a corporation. Moreover, the individuals at any permanent site in space should be free to determine their own life style, within the constraints imposed by the CELSS. Economic viability meant that even if such a site remained dependent on earth for basic organics and for a number of high end technologies, the site still needed to have a positive balance of trade with earth (or other planetary bodies). A number of critical breakthrough technologies helped to make a Lunar colony economically feasible, including: low cost launch facilities developed by the private sector; 3D printing; computer controlled machine tools; robotics; thorium nuclear reactors; genetically modified plants and microorganisms; maglev transport and launch facilities; fault tolerant computer design; and a number of other modern technologies. It addition, the intention was to utilize in situ resources to produce energy, rocket fuel, and structural components for the site, since the primary cost in going to space was that of lifting supplies out of the Terran gravity well.

The group behind the Project was led by Joanna Collins, whose childhood ambition to be the first female astronaut in the NASA program was aborted by a tragic accident that left her legs paralyzed. The backers, while well-funded, did not have the money to place a colony on the Lunar surface. Their plan was to use the Artic simulation to establish credibility and demonstrate the feasibility of such a colony. After six years the Project intended have a working site as a model and 240 people trained to live in and manage a Lunar site.

Those recruited to the simulation challenged the Project plan, contending that the primary drivers that would give purpose and cohesiveness to such a life style would be that their survival, and that of their posterity, was dependent on their efforts. Since the simulation had a safety net that protected their lives and Project rules forbid them to have children, the prime motivations that should have forced them to work together were missing. In reaction to this criticism, plans were made to place a rudimentary manned base on the Lunar surface.

Subsidized in part by ArianeSpace, which had developed a reusable man-rated launch vehicle and a second company that had developed an inflatable space habitation unit, the Project was able to establish a small base on the Lunar surface and was proceeding cautiously, within its budget, to expand the site. Then, in 2024, one of the people on the Lunar surface, Michelle DesRoches, defied the Project rules and evaded its careful physicals to become pregnant while on the Lunar surface. The Project was faced with the choice of forcing an abortion, risking the child’s life by trying to return it to earth, or creating a permanent colony on the Lunar surface in which the child could survive and hopefully thrive. The people within the simulation were so vehemently in favor of the latter option, in spite of the clear long term risks they would face, that the choice was effectively to either terminate the Project or attempt to place a permanent colony on the Lunar surface. As it happened, the publicity surrounding MykHail, the ‘space baby’, allowed the Project to raise the capital needed to construct the first permanent dome on the Lunar surface.

As the operations on the Lunar surface expanded, functional control of the Project passed from the backers led by Joanna Collins to those living permanently on the Lunar surface. In particular, the leadership fell to the Lunar Council, headed by Kay Cummings, who had been mentored by Joanna Collins.

At the beginning of the 21st century, space infrastructure already accounted for an immense portion of the world’s economy. By 2020, the annual cost of producing and placing satellites in orbit exceeded the Gross Domestic Product of all but the 10 largest countries. By 2050, if the all space operations were combined, their commercial value would make them the fourth largest economy in the world.

From the earliest days of space programs, Terra (the name for earth in the Lunar colonies) has maintained a more or less continual manned presence in space. The Russian Salyut space stations were in orbit from 1971 to 1986, followed by Mir from 1986 to 2001. NASA occupied Skylab intermittently in the mid-70s. Construction on the ISS (International Space Station) began in 1998, and it was occupied continuously from 2000 through 2025. The Simulation Project began a permanent presence on the Lunar surface in 2022.

Not long after the Project established a permanent presence on the Lunar surface, construction began independently on two major commercial orbital stations, one in an inclined orbit and the other in an equatorial orbit. The stations were continuously occupied after 2028. The stations initially were devoted primarily to space research, but by the fourth decade of the decade of the 21st century their major focus was high end tourism. By 2052, each station had more than 1,000 people in residence, though, unlike on Luna, none of them were permanent residents.

In the later part of the 20th century, NASA had begun to formulate plans for a space travel infrastructure. The idea was to leave components in space and reuse them rather than being burdened with the exorbitant costs of re-launching the component for every mission. And, of course, some space infrastructure components, such as the ISS and the orbital stations, were too large to be launched intact, and so had to be constructed in space.

From 2030 on, all human space travel beyond LEO (Low Earth Orbit) utilized increasingly sophisticated versions of the space infrastructure. Reusable multi-stage launch vehicles carried people to and from the stations in LEO. Those going beyond LEO to Luna, Mars or the NEOs (Near Earth Objects such as asteroids) would travel by shuttle to the L1 station (the station at the first Lunar/Terran Lagrangian or libration point). From L1 they would either drop down to the Lunar surface or head out to Mars or the NEOs. The shuttles remained in orbit, cycling back and forth between the Equatorial LEO station and L1. Periodic maintenance was performed at L1.

In 2052, Terra controlled the surface launch sites, the launch services to LEO, and the stations in LEO. Luna ran the shuttle service from LEO to L1 as well as the L1 station. All manned space ships and most cargo ships that went beyond LEO were manufactured on the Lunar surface and managed by Luna, primarily because of the exorbitant costs of lifting construction materials out of the Terran gravity well.

By 2052 there were 20 to 25 weekly passenger launch flights carrying over 500 passengers to LEO each week. Fifty of those passengers went on to Luna each week on the TerraLuna shuttle. Beginning in 2034, whenever Terra and Mars were in alignment for a Hohmann transfer orbit (roughly every two years), a fleet of space cruisers would leave from L1 bound for Mars. In 2052, the largest fleet to that time, consisting of four manned cruisers and three transport ships, was slated to leave for Mars. There would be 64 passengers, along with the supplies needed to support the Martian settlements.

Beginning with 240 Project fellows in 2024, Luna grew to over 5,000 residents by 2052. In addition to the original 240, there were another 750 immigrants from Terra, 2,800 Lunies (Lunar born citizens), and around 1,500 temporary residents (contract workers, consultants, scientists, students, and tourists.) There were 250 people resident on Mars in 2052.

The Lunar settlement had started in 2022 as a connected cluster of Spacehabs in Arzachel crater on the Lunar nearside. An area was marked off as a landing pad, and a simple Laser guidance beam was installed. Energy for the site was supplied by solar arrays, supplemented by batteries and chemical-nuclear reactors over the long Lunar nights. There was the start of a primitive strip mining operation, and the Project was constructing its first refinery.

Construction of the first integrated dome with a CELSS was begun in 2025 on the ridge between Thebit crater and Thebit A, about 75 kilometers WSW of Arzachel. The site provided spectacular views of both craters. Thebit A, to the north, was an almost perfect bowl 20 kilometers across and 2.7 kilometers deep. Terra hung perpetually over the crater in the northeastern sky. The site was designed to attract high end Terran tourists. A thorium nuclear reactor was constructed in Thebit L, just to the west of Thebit A. An integrated dome was then also constructed at the original site in Arzachel crater.

By 2052 another three domes had been constructed, maintaining a distance of 75 to 100 kilometers between them. There was also a small Chinese dome site about 150 kilometers west of Thebit A in the Mare Nubium. There were mines in the Oceanus Procellarum where the Lunar regolith had an especially high concentration of Thorium and the rare earths used in computers and solar panels. In the heavily cratered Southern Highlands, Luna was mining the remains of meteorites. At the Lunar South Pole, there was an experimental water extraction site. On the Lunar Farside a number of large telescopes were under construction, taking advantage of the absence of atmospheric distortion and the radio shielding provided by Luna. The third dome had been constructed in a tiny crater on the floor of Purbach crater. This was the first dome designed primarily for living, and it became a model dome. It gradually became the administrative center of Luna, effectively the capital.

Initially, domes were connected by monorails, but they proved too slow and too difficult to maintain. In 2052, the five domes and the Chinese dome are connected by maglev rail lines, a mode of transportation that is much more efficient on the Lunar surface than on Terra because of the markedly lower gravity and the absence of wind resistance. The space port near Dome 1 now has a maglev mass driver for launching supplies and equipment to orbit. Outlying sites are connected to primary domes via the LunaHop, basically a manned ballistic missile launched from a mass driver. A similar service, called the L1ft, transfers people and supplies the 40,000 kilometers ‘up’ to and ‘down’ from L1.

By 2052, the majority of the people involved in backing the original Project are dead. Only three of them immigrated to Luna, including Jacqueline Bonet, one of the Project leaders, and a sometimes critic of Joanna Collins. Jacqueline argued strongly for a democratic government on Luna, regarding Joanna Collins, and her successor, Kay Cummings, as too authoritarian.

From the beginning of the Project, Luna maintained a business office in Strasbourg, France. This eventually came to be regarded as the Lunar Embassy to Terra. The site was initially managed by Marilyn Hermann, a long-time friend of Joanna Collins. Marilyn became the first Lunar Ambassador to Terra. While Marilyn is still alive in 2052, her daughter Hilda Hermann-Hartmann is now the Ambassador.       

In 2025, the fellows resident on the Luna surface had begun to start families, but they did not as yet have all the infrastructure in place for family living, and the skills of the women were needed as much as those of the men, so the women could not devote a large portion of their time to raising their children. Until Dome 3 was completed, the first children had been cared for in a nursery, referred to as the crèche. After MykHail, the next two children born were Alana and Kendra, both of whom play prominent roles in the ensuing novels, along with Briana, who is half-sister to Alana through Kay Cummings, and half-sister to Kendra through Brian McDougal. These three, along with Lauran Aitkens, are the most prominent Lunar borns in the succeeding stories.

Those inducted into the original Project through the site in the Canadian Arctic were often referred to as the ‘Founding Fathers’. By 2052, 25 have died on the Lunar surface, primarily of cancer or accidents. Those still alive are in their 50s and 60s TY (Terran years.) Most have leadership positions. A number play prominent roles in the Sunset Earth series. These include:

Kay Cummings, Chair of the Lunar Council, Chair of the Executive Committee, and CEO of LunaCorp. She is the mother of Alana Edgerton through an arrangement with a powerful early backer of the Project, and she is the mother of Briana MacDougal, whose father is Brian. Kay is currently in a relationship with Yuan, the leader of the Chinese contingent on Luna. Kay is also Director of Terran relations, and has a number of covert contacts in Terran governments and military establishments.

Myoko O’Hara, the Associate Chair of the Council and Director of the CELSS. She is married to Sean O’Hara. Myoko is a close friend and confidant of Kay.

Brian MacDougal, Director of Energy Resources and Chief of Strategic Planning. He is a close friend and confidant of Kay, and they were lovers very early in the Project. Brain is currently married to Monique, who is Sub-director for Communication and Encryption. Their oldest daughter is Kendra (Kendra Monica McDougal). Brian is also the father of Briana, who was raised in his family unit. Brian and Monique lead a group of people working to digitize and archive as much as possible of the literary and artistic heritage of Terra.  

Kevin Aitkens, the Chief Clinical Officer and Surgeon. Early in the Project he paired with Eleanor Scott, but his ex-wife Laura joined the Project in the third wave of recruits. Kevin almost died in a mini-epidemic shortly after Laura joined the Project, and as he recovered he and Laura recognized that they still loved each other. Laura is a systems analyst and computer designer. Their oldest son, Lauran, plays a prominent role in the Sunset Earth series. Their second child is Cobina (Bena). Kevin has collaborated over the years with Dr. Constance Volkmann, a senior epidemiologist at the WHO. Lauran has corresponded for years with the oldest daughter of Dr. Volkmann, Trudy, who wants to travel to Luna.

Eleanor Scott, the Director of Health Services on Luna. She is more interested in research than in clinical practice. She is recognized on both Terra and Luna as the authority on the impact of reduced gravity on physiology and anatomy and on the developmental anatomy of the Lunar born. After her break-up with Kevin she paired with Klaus Staumetz, who was Director of Metallurgy at the site. Klaus died of cancer in 2045. Eleanor is also a close friend of Kay Cummings.

Brad Jones, Sub-Director for Space Transportation. He has supervised the designing and building of all the space craft used by Luna. He is married to Marya Mettaire, who is Director of C4 (command, control, computers, communications). Both are members of the Executive Committee.

Joyce Cooper, Director of Human Services, and a clinical psychologist. She is paired with Kendall Webster, the other clinical psychologist. Kendra chose to live with them rather than with her birth parents.

The Terran sites primarily referenced in the novel include Strasburg and its surroundings, the region around Geneva, and Kourou in French Guiana. At the Lunar Embassy in Strasbourg, Hilda Hermann-Hartmann is Ambassador. She has three children, Ludwig, Wilhelm, and Erica. In Geneva, Dr. Constance Volkmann has worked as an epidemiologist for over 25 years at the WHO. She has corresponded with Dr. Kevin Aitkens on Luna since she served as a consultant on a question in 2025. She has two daughters: Trudy, who attends the International Space University in Strasbourg and wants to visit Luna, and Marlena, who is attending the Sorbonne in Paris.

Kourou has been the primary launching platform for the EU for over 60 years. ArianeSpace makes the launch vehicles, owns the launch facilities, and manages the infrastructure on the station in Equatorial LEO. Orbital Services manages all the passenger facilities at Kourou as well as the Grand Equatorial Lion Hotel at the station in LEO. Orbital Services also provides food and housing for all the staff at the station in LEO.

The current action begins in 2052. Luna is thriving. The 300 project fellows that were trained in the simulation site on Ellesmere Island formed the nucleus of a Lunar settlement. An additional 700 people have immigrated from Terra to Luna over the years. These settlers have born 2300 children, the first generation of Lunar Born. The oldest of the Lunar born are now having families of their own, and there are now close to 500 second generation Lunar born. In addition to these citizens of Luna, there are approximately 1,500 Terran citizens present on Luna. These include: Tourists, 200; Students, 200; Business representatives and diplomatic personnel, 100; Long term aliens, 500; research personnel, 300; temporary consultants, 200. In addition, there are 200 Chinese resident in the settlement maintained by the Chinese space agency.

Prodromal: Incident in Mbandaka

Prodromal:Relating to prodrome or the initial stage of a disease

Prodrome:  An early or premonitory symptom of a disease

Stedman’s Medical Dictionary

Premonitory: Giving premonition; serving to warn beforehand

Premonition: 1. A feeling of anticipation of or anxiety over a future event…

2. A forewarning

Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language

Day Zero, Noon: 2052

Noon on Terra

Friday, May 24, 2052, 12:00 UTC

(Thursday, Lune 394:26, 3:32 LT)

Noon on Luna

Thursday, Lune 394:26, 12:00 LT

(Friday, May 24, 2052, 20:37 UTC)

Status of the pandemic as of this date based on the model developed by Dr. Constance Volkmann and revised as of week 10. Total cases worldwide:

Stage 1, Latent chimera: 0

Stage 2, Infectious chimera: 0

Stage 3, Latent Ebola: 0

Stage 4, Symptomatic Ebola: 0

Stage 4, Symptomatic Ebola, documented by WHO: 0

Stage 5, Deaths due to Ebola: 0

Stage 5, Deaths due to Ebola, documented by WHO: 0

Note: Each section, except this first section, recounts the events of the novel for one week of Terran time, beginning with Friday, May 24, 2052, 12:00 UTC. The time is presented as both Lunar day and date (LT) and Terran day and date. The ‘incident’ in Mbandaka occurs on the night following Day Zero.

Each chapter has a subheading that includes the principle locus of action, the local day, date, and time at that site (and/or UTC, if the site is on Terra), and the day, date, and time on the other planetary body.

All times are presented with a 24:00 clock. Terran dates are expressed using the Gregorian calendar. Lunar dates are expressed in lunes. Each lune is equal to one mean Solar day on the surface of Luna. There are four standard weeks in each lune, followed by one leap day at the end of the lune. Days of the lune are numbered from 1 to 29. Dates are presented in the form of Lune 394:1, which would be Sunday, the first day of Lune 394. Lune 1:1 has been set to midnight at the start of the first lune after the first wave of the Lunar Colony Simulation Project arrived at the simulation site on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic.

Lunar seconds, minutes, hours, days and weeks are approximately 1.8% longer than the equivalent Terran units. Because of this difference, as well as the Lunal Leap Day, the Lunar days and times rarely conform to any Terran time zone. For an explanation of the rationale for Lunar time, and for the way it is computed, consult our website MoonColonySimulationProjectNovels.Com.

The days of the week on Luna are called by the corresponding English names. Day 29 is a holiday, and is named Terraday. Terraday and the Sunday that follows it are referred to as TerraLight, a two-day holiday at the time of peak Terralight. A full Terra shining on the surface of Luna is about 40 times as bright as a full moon on the surface of Terra on a clear night. Terran seasons and years have little relevance to life on Luna. A decalune (deca) is the Lunal equivalent of a year, and is roughly equal to ten months. A centalune (centa) is the Lunal equivalent of a decade, being about eight Terran years in duration.

Chapter 1: Reflections on Friday

War Room, WHO, Geneva, Switzerland, Terra

‘This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.’

The thought often passed through Connie’s mind as she sat before the wall charts in the War Room. The quotation was obsessively familiar, yet the refrain only intruded on her when she sat, alone, in this room. She could display the same charts on the ample screen of her office computer without the annoying repetition. She would meet again in this room on Monday morning in a staff conference without the litany as counterpoint. But sitting alone in this room, before the computer display of maps and charts that stretched from wall to wall and from the ceiling almost to the floor, was, for Connie, the closest approximation to a religious experience, and that canticle was her liturgy. 

She could not remember when she had first run across the line... actually, four lines in the original, since This is the way the world ends was repeated three times. Connie did not read much literature, especially not poetry, certainly not English poetry, and in this instance, rather old English poetry, likely written over a century ago, long before she was born. Connie was firmly grounded in the present, far more into numbers than words, and her native languages were German and French. She was only passing fluent in English.

It was Eliot... T. S. Eliot... though she could not remember the name of the poem it was from. She had looked the phrase up once on a Wiki. The context of the phrase had vaguely disappointed her, as had the phrase disappointed Eliot, apparently, in retrospect. When asked later in life if he would still write that line, he had replied a terse No. In her college years, when she had first become aware of the lines, she had imagined the ‘bang’ to be something like a nuclear holocaust and the ‘whimper’ to be something slow and insidious like global warming. But those could not have been the original referents for Eliot, since the poem was most likely written before the Hiroshima bombing and way before anyone worried about CO2 emissions. The lines actually referred to Guy Fawkes, with the ‘bang’ presumably being his failed attempt to blow up the British parliament and the ‘whimper’ referencing his pitiful end: first tortured, then burned to death.

Connie assumed those were symbols or allegories of something. As real events, they meant very little to her, certainly not what they meant to Eliot. She now imbued the phrase with a more personal meaning, one connected with the charts arrayed in front of her. This room, called the ‘War Room’ by Connie and her colleagues, was actually a room in which the incidences of diseases could be projected onto maps of the world. One wall was an immense digital computer screen, really a number of separate monitors seamlessly joined to give the impression of one huge screen.

Connie, Dr. Constance Volkmann, was an epidemiologist. The screens presented a succinct summary of the data she dealt with on a daily basis. She was one of the senior epidemiologists at the WHO, the World Health Organization. Her specialty was in the detection and control of emergent diseases. She also sat in on the strategic committees dealing with programs to control all the major pathogens that afflicted humanity in the 21st century. Her seniority allowed her to reserve the War Room all to herself for one hour per week, each Friday at 14:00 European Daylight Saving Time, 12:00 UTC, the reference time zone for the charts, since they covered all of Terra.

Connie was what might be called a ‘gray eminence’, though she would have resented the implication of age, having only recently turned 50. Yet with close to 25 years at the WHO, she was one of the senior employees in terms of tenure. And as for the eminence, she was regarded as one of the preeminent experts in the modelling of the spread of pathogens and of the impact of measures to interdict that spread. This was especially true of her area of sub-specialization. She was without peer in modeling the emergence and control of Level 4 pathogens, those which were the most likely to erupt into pandemics. These were also the pathogens that were believed to have the most potential for use as bioweapons or in bioterrorism.

There was a distinction made between pandemic and endemic diseases, though Connie often wondered about the utility of such a dichotomy. Pandemics were diseases that had the potential to spread rapidly and kill quickly. Endemics simmered in the population, always present but changing only slowly over time. Pandemics were feared, endemics tolerated, at least by the developed world. It likely mattered little to those in the undeveloped world whether they died of TB or Ebola.

For the developed world, especially those above a certain socioeconomic status, endemics were of relatively minor concern. TB, malaria, dengue fever, AIDs, schistosomiasis (snail fever), infant diarrhea were almost entirely confined to the lower classes and the undeveloped world. No matter that they killed far more people than did the Level 4 pathogens such as small pox, Ebola, Marburg, the plague, or even influenza. Endemic deaths occurred out of sight of the comfortable people in the developed world.

Level 4 pathogens, on the other hand, had a frightening unpredictability about them. They could turn up anywhere, arrive on an airline from Indonesia, piggyback on the fruit flown in from South America. Every cough in the subway, the concert hall, or the classroom could contaminate a dozen people nearby. Even the office water cooler or coffee room was suspect.

And that unpredictability affected life in a number of ways. Endemic diseases, alongside cancer, heart disease, senility, and malnutrition, were an aspect of the steady state of a region, part of the ecology, you might say. They could be factored in. They reduced the standard of living in the undeveloped world, but they did not cause swings in the stock market like even the threat of a pandemic could.

So, when Connie sat by herself in this room, which had the capability of displaying graphically any trend or pattern related to diseases, the factors causing them, and their combined impact on the health and survival of the human race, she sometimes wondered how it would all end, in those timespans out beyond the point at which her models pleaded insufficient data, when the war between humans and microbes finally resolved itself in favor of the microbes. Would it end in a ‘bang’, a massive pandemic that would wipe out civilization as we know it, or would it be a ‘whimper’, a gradual decline in our adaptive capacity as the burden of parasites and pathogens slowly dragged us down.

Since the Level 4 pathogens in which she specialized were given that classification because they carried the potential to cause a pandemic, it was her job to prevent a microbial ‘bang’. In her darker moods, she sometimes wondered if the only thing her efforts achieved was to validate Eliot’s thesis, to ensure a whimpering end by protecting the human race from pandemics.

Connie rarely ‘did’ anything during her hour alone in the War Room, at least nothing objectively discernable by anyone who might have observed her. She took no notes, wrote no summaries, sent no emails. In fact, she did not even bring her computer interface with her, and both her cell phone and her pager were turned off. Connie simply manipulated the displays, played on the control panel like a master musician on a synesthetic synthesizer, evoking visual symphonies from the databases that documented the incidence of disease across time.

The charts held a fascination for anyone as experienced in their use as Connie was. She could overlay the incidences of one or more diseases on a world map, then watch how they changed across time, with incidence or prevalence displayed as gradations in intensity or shade of color. An emerging epidemic might appear as a stain, spreading across the landscape, following routes of transportation, then leaping to another spot that was connected via an airline or a shipping route, depending on the means of communication of the pathogen.

She could zero in on the eruption of a pathogen, follow on a day-to-day basis the occurrence of new cases, with the distance from existing cases immediately obvious. She could even induce the computer to extrapolate to tomorrow’s new cases, or next week’s cases, based on what was currently known of the parameters of the pathogen.

Her current division manager, KaiLynne, had initially been interested in what Connie did in the War Room on Friday afternoons. Everyone who attended Connie’s Monday morning presentations, including KaiLynne, was impressed with Connie’s grasp of the factors involved in the spread of diseases at population scales. The sessions were used as a basis for weekly planning by a number of departments. KaiLynne recognized from the start that Connie was regarded as outstanding in her field.

KaiLynne was young, bright, and ambitious. She had been born and raised in southern China on the island of Hainan, but her training in epidemiology included a doctorate from Cambridge University. She was hired into a middle management position and felt somewhat threatened by Connie’s reputation. She thought it would be useful to understand what Connie did in the War Room. She first asked to see Connie’s notes from her Friday sessions, and when Connie informed her that she made no notes, KaiLynne pressured Connie into allowing her to observe Connie’s methods at the Friday sessions. KaiLynne came armed with her computer to take her own notes, but Connie flipped through sequences of charts and maps with such alacrity that KaiLynne found it impossible to document what Connie was doing.

To be fair, nobody would have been able to follow what Connie was doing. She was generally running sequences she had run many times before, so she had no need for labeling. In fact, she found text labels often interfered with the gestalt, her overall perception of the patterns and flow of the charts. Off and on during the session, KaiLynne would interrupt with a question regarding the meaning of a sequence of maps or charts. Connie might answer something like: I was documenting that the reduction in cases of polio over the last decade in Northern Nigeria did not reflect a decrease in the relative incidence of polio, but rather a decrease in the number of at-risk individuals. Or again, after another sequence, I was just making sure that the summer swing of flu cases into the southern hemisphere that we are seeing this year is within the range noted over the past decade.

KaiLynne certainly understood the relevance of Connie’s observations. She presumed a detailed analysis of the data would back Connie up, but that Connie could, in a few minutes, pull up a sequence of maps and interpret them on the fly with enough confidence to make statements like that was very impressive. At one point KaiLynne asked, I presume you have written a set of computer macros or routines that produce the sequences you have been displaying. KaiLynne could not believe anyone could elicit the smoothly evolving scenarios with such seemingly spontaneous fluency.

Connie smiled at her naiveté. I’m an epidemiologist, not a computer programmer. What we see here is the product of hundreds, possibly thousands of programmers… here at the WHO, at the CDC in Atlanta, at universities around the world… accumulated over the last half century or so. I do, at times, perform reality checks on the raw data, or as close to the raw data as I can get. But on Friday afternoons, I am just pulling up routines written by others. It requires a thorough knowledge of what is available, and a certain fluency with the console, and I am good at that. But where I really excel, in my personal opinion, is in my ability to recognize and interpret patterns.

At the end of the third weekly Friday session that KaiLynne had sat through, KaiLynne asked So, what is the bottom line in what you observed in the charts today? If you were to state one conclusion, what would it be?

Connie did not even pause to formulate her answer. That nothing of critical significance occurred over the past week.

Connie could see from KaiLynne’s face that KaiLynne felt they had each just wasted an hour of the department’s tight budget. But Connie had phrased her answer very precisely. Connie could have said "I observed nothing of critical significance occurring over the past week," which would, of course, also be correct, and possibly a scientifically more precise statement. But anyone could have correctly averred the latter, even someone who sat through the whole hour with their eyes closed. The former statement, that nothing of significance had occurred, could properly be made only by someone with Connie’s expertise, stating with reasonable assurance that because she hadn’t seen it, it was not there. If Connie was wrong in her assessment, the world health community could lose a week or more in preparing its response, and the delay could cost hundreds or thousands of lives.

Of course, Connie was not the only person in the world with the requisite training, experience, and native ability to perform the analytic functions she performed. However, most of the others were limited by their institutional connections, which meant that they often dealt with restricted data sets, had vested or conflicted interests, or were constrained by their institutional agendas and hierarchies.

Connie had her constraints as well. Some were implicit, some explicit. Her weekly reports were available only to the Monday morning debriefing sessions. Someone much higher in the organization would determine what information could be released to the public or even to other agencies. Someone else would decide if any actions should be taken. Nor were such decisions always objective. There were powerful directorates and divisions within the WHO, managing billion-euro budgets, who were sometimes threatened by Connie’s acerbic reports on the cost effectiveness of their programs. And any decisions regarding potential epidemics could have massive economic and political impacts.

Between mid-afternoon on Friday and midmorning on the following Monday, Connie had two items on her agenda. One was to prepare a series of reports based on her observations in the War Room, her supporting review of the data, and her communications with epidemiologists around the world. The other was to have a Sunday brunch or dinner with her closest friend and longtime colleague at the WHO, Dr. Geraldine Duquesne, Geri to everybody who wasn’t hung up on credentials.

Generally, Connie uncovered nothing of critical importance in her weekly reviews, which she found reassuring, but which annoyed KaiLynne, who tended to put more emphasis on annual budgets and biennial performance reviews than on global health. ‘Nothing’ was hard to leverage, either for the departmental budget or for her personal ambitions. Yet even Connie’s solace was only of a muted nature, the relief of one living on the slopes of a volcano, the inevitable eruption put off for another week.

The status quo, whether dull or dire, had one advantage... it made her weekly reports easier to write. She had been doing the reports weekly for years. Much of the report was automated, with weekly updates loaded directly from the relevant data files. Connie only commented on the exceptions, and she dismissed most of those as being chance deviations without any practical significance. There were times when she was inclined to agree with KaiLynne that much of what she did was a waste of time.

However, those critical times when her reports uncovered a potential threat reconfirmed the value of what she was doing. Even then, however, there was a paradoxical aspect to her work. The better she did her job, the less important it seemed. It was only when something slipped by her for a week or two that her work and her position received much notice. On those thankfully rare occasions, there would be a serious epidemic underway before the world’s health agencies focused on preventing the spread of the pathogen.

In addition to her weekly in-house epidemiological summaries and her blog, once a month Connie sent a review to Dr. Kevin Aitkens. He was one of the physicians on Luna. She had been corresponding with him for almost as long as she had been at the WHO. While Kevin had access to her weekly blog, most of that had little direct relevance to Luna. Her monthly note to Dr. Aitkens was intended to highlight issues of special relevance to him. She typically sent her email to Kevin on the last Saturday of every month. Her note was due tomorrow.

Kevin,

As you will have noted, if you read my blogs, there is nothing of particular relevance to Luna going on right now. You should be sure that anyone who has been to central Africa or the Indian subcontinent has proof of vaccination against polio, but I presume that is part of your standard protocol. I imagine that can present difficulties because vaccination is no longer required in many developed countries. The problem is that the world is so mobile. If someone from northern Europe, who has not been vaccinated, travels to northern Nigeria or to northern India or Pakistan in the weeks before taking a vacation on the Lunar surface, the virus could conceivably be carried to Luna. That would not be good. Granted, it is unlikely, but the consequences would be one huge hassle for you. Lacking firm documentation of vaccination, I would recommend a serological test on anyone who has been to the endemic areas in the previous two months, with results available before they start their pre-launch training and quarantine in Kourou.

The issues I raise with malaria, yellow fever, chikungunya, and the dengue fevers should not concern you since the requisite vectors are presumably absent from the domes of Luna.

My month-long diatribe on the economic impact on health has little relevance for you. Very few of the people who can afford to go to Luna are affected by such issues. Economic models are not my forte, but the models I have been furnished indicate that the global population on Terra is about to begin to decrease and that GDP likely peaked a decade or two ago for all but a few countries. Most models suggest that economic factors will play an increasing role in disease, beginning to reverse the trend of the past few centuries.

The fact that malaria, dengue, and yellow fever have become established along the gulf and south Atlantic coasts in the USA is a result not only of global warming but of economic impacts on mosquito control. Conversely, the economy will be increasingly vulnerable to disease outbreaks. At some point, I would think, that might impact space programs and thus Luna. But I presume you have people who are analyzing such factors. You have mentioned someone by the name of Brian a number of times in this regard.

In my next series, I am going to get back to basics, to the field where my personal expertise lies. Emerging diseases have for some time been my specialty, but I am becoming increasingly concerned that we are at-risk for a major outbreak. I won’t get into the details because they will be available in my next three or four reports. Theoretically, Luna is at less risk of the direct effects of emerging diseases than is, say, the EU. Both could well lack herd immunity, but Luna is more easily quarantined, and in general, has a healthier ecosystem.

On a more personal note, it is beginning to seem a bit more likely that Trudy will visit Luna. She is becoming quite insistent. I am resigned to the fact that this is not some passing fantasy of hers that she is likely to grow out of. She now has decided she wants to do her Master’s thesis on the Lunar surface. And I thought tuition was expensive. She clearly cannot afford it on her own and it will stretch my budget to the breaking point, but what else in my life is of any real worth to me, other than Trudy and Marlena? They have done surprisingly well, given how badly I have screwed up the whole marriage bit. If I can possibly manage it, I will get Trudy to Luna.

Better warn Lauran that she seems quite serious about it this time.

Connie

Trudy and Marlena were Connie’s daughters. Lauran was Kevin’s oldest son. Trudy had been corresponding with Lauran since she was in middle school and had become fascinated with the Lunar settlements. She was currently completing a Master’s degree at the International