It nearly went by without me realizing what day it was. 

Life’s been amazing. Here’s to another 45…

It’s all over the system news feeds. We’re getting transmissions in  (+1.5 hours delay, of course). This just means you now know what we know. CHOIRS Project’s phase 1 is officially complete. Rotation of 0.6992818708006628 RPM was achieved after 17 days of spin-up. The SRBs were jettisoned to be repurposed by retrieval drones. The inner hub is stationary relative to the main structure so there no complications docking the lifeboat modules. All seven modules were successfully attached and all active personnel are onboard.

The place is incredibly spartan, but HUGE compared to the cramped modules where we’ve lived for the past seven years. We have lights, pressure, gravity, fresh air, water, sanitation. We’re moving our greenhouses to the agricultural bloc. Operations is ahead of the game on that front thanks to the Garden Party MRCZ’s work in that field (no pun intended). This place is like an empty warehouse right now. Several empty warehouses — cavernous, echoing chambers. We’ll be working to get our facilities up and running. Estimated time? Four months minimum with seven weeks after that reserved as schedule padding. When Phase II is finished, we’ll be welcoming the next group of settlers – another 3,000 people. Our projected timeline puts this at the end of the next decade. We’re already taking applications for new settlers.

Reactions have been all over the place: crying, laughing, screaming. Some people are on walkers or braces to assist in movement. Some are confined to wheelchairs until their bodies recover. Me? I’m exhilarated to be standing and walking again. My body’s been wrecked by the travel, which was a known risk. I’m using a cane at the moment and Saif is surprised that I can stand, much less walk around. Medical is starting its gravity rehabilitation program by week’s end once things are unpacked. The pods are already unloaded and stacked in the medical bays. Leona and her staff are going through research papers downloaded from Earth detailing recent advances in radiation de-toxification, gene therapy, neural grafting… all technologies that were developed during the mission flight. The clean-room will be the next internal project. With the research done on-flight and back on Earth, she confirms a positive prognosis for those people suffering from ARS.

Quick update.

Restructuring = success. Jürgen is back working in the nanomaterials lab. The MRCZ system seems to be working, although it’s a weirdly hands-off style that I’m not used to. I’m actually working in the “greenhouse” lab with Qiong for the next day or so while Wilma is assisting Saif with the nutritional plans. Neat.

People never fail to surprise me. News of the incident traveled fast throughout the lifeboats. We feared the worst, especially with all the backlash from Earth. Lots of questions, of course… people asking what happened, me trying to dispel rumors. But what’s strange is that nobody openly rebelled against the captains’ authority, nor did they protest Sasha’s arrest. People are just pitching in to help out where they can. Guy took on Sasha’s duties in the communications workgroup as well as his own and Sjon stepped in to volunteer his free time. I hear that a couple others from Operations are helping as well. Sjon calls this meta-workgroup a “micro-national, regional cooperative zone.” Hell, if people are getting their work done they can call it anything they want. They even printed out a “flag” of the CHOIRS mission patch to hang up on the wall.

And now that the initial flood of personal video correspondence to Earth has quieted down, I’ve seen people giving over their relay time to Sasha. I expect her to talk to the media to give statements once she’s released. Guy’s team wrote an app to track the data flow people are donating and it’s now an unofficial part of our intranet. People login to the site using their key and distribute their relay time to specific people. What’s really interesting is that the users of this data flow tracking system don’t give away their personal relay time. The system aggregates unused time on the relay and that’s parceled out as needed, with priority given to the person with the most data flow.

Imagine you’re in a big house, and you can’t leave. And there’s only one phone. What this system does is let users nominate who can use the phone and for how long. If the person with phone privileges isn’t available, then the phone usage rights shifts to the next person on the list.

Users nominate other users and tag their nominations with comments or categorizations. Sasha alone has been nominated for bonus time from several hundred people so she has priority. Most of the tags are related to her incarceration. Since she’s not using her time, it goes back into the system aggregator for others to use but she retains priority for when she does become available.

I was too curious not to check it out and made an account (I had to, just to make sure Guy wasn’t doing anything malicious… due diligence and all) and found out that people aboard the lifeboats had nominated me, despite my part in the Russian Incident. It seems I’m not the bad guy after all, at least in other peoples’ esteem. As of right now, more than half the people aboard are using this new time-sharing system. We’ll see how that works.

Alexandra is currently confined to quarters. Her access privileges are suspended. She refused to return to her workstation and get back to task, we gave her verbal and written warnings. We did as much as we could do using corporate policy and it was by her actions (or should I say inaction) that escalated the situation.

I arranged a meeting with Dr. Henneman and the captains of the Brahmagupta, the Stephen Hawking and the Zeno. The Russian consul general was in attendance but only as a witness because of the delay (we expect to hear the Consulate’s official recommendation soon). Psychological specialists were present and informed us of how to best proceed.

The Universal Conduct Code governing life in transit from Liberty Station to CHOIRS is quite clear as it pertains to insubordination. Our options are limited at this point. The committee decided unanimously that this was not “mutiny” in the strict sense. Nobody was prepared to carry out a capital sentence. Sasha’s behavior has yet to put anyone in jeopardy (including herself) and although she’s angry, she’s perfectly rational and lucid. Everyone likes her, including me, and it hurts us all terribly to watch this unfold. But we can’t have anarchy, especially not at this critical time.

An unpleasant consequence is that I had to convert unused sleeping quarters into a makeshift brig. We de-authorized her personal key implant from being able to access the doors. The engineer in me is screaming about wasted time, energy and space but there’s no alternative, least not until the lifeboat modules are permanently locked into the station’s superstructure. For what it’s worth, she’s got the nicest quarters on ship right now. Certainly the roomiest.

One last thing: you probably saw her tirade about being Saturnian. She really did renounce her Russian citizenship. Qiong told me that her papers were filed with the Minister of Tax and Duties. She’s claiming CHOIRS citizenship. Clever girl, she sent a packet of information down the pipe before her arrest. The media back on Earth is running with it. Of course, none of this solves the basic manpower problem and now it’s even worse, being down one information architect.

I had to discipline someone on the communications team today. This is something I’ve never relished and it’s one of the more bothersome jobs I have as the project lead. When someone on the managerial team comes to me with a problem, I have to do something. Even if I don’t necessarily agree.

Anyway, Peter (the acting communications workgroup manager) floats into my office with some issues, voices some concerns about one of his people. Everyone’s under a lot of stress, and I know there may be some resentment involved. After all, Adelmo is in stasis and we’re not sure if he’s going to recover, which is both depressing and scary, and there’s some griping about his replacement. The team is losing focus when focus is exactly what we need!

The problem is with a specific person. Now, this individual is doing great things, but it’s all peripheral, sometimes even unrelated to the tasks that need to be done. On the one hand, they’re going above and beyond to help people aboard the ships. But I keep looking at their workstation and finding it conspicuously absent, or I find other people there working on other projects. Its taking up non-trivial amounts of time. So, exit Hersh the Friendly Co-Worker, enter Hersh the Bad Guy. The three of us are going to have a sit-down in a few minutes and try and work things out.

Just spoke with Dr. Flores. Adelmo had to be put in the Ripley pods. His vitals were shutting down and we don’t have time to do a transplant, nor do we have a suitable donor in our small pool of possibles. He’s in his sixties. Leona estimates that without a transplant he would die within a week or so, but there’s only a 20% chance of him being able to be revived from cryonics. His wife is beside herself. There’s a cloud hanging over everyone aboard my boat. I hear overall the mood is grim across the other six lifeboats as well.

Progress is made every week on CHOIRS. We’ve reached the halfway mark and will be able to permanently fix the lifeboat modules into the docking hub within the coming month (if all goes well). We continue to suffer from tempering issues with the glass processing plant. We’re using a synthetic fused silica, not the stuff we used terrestrially in windows (that’s soda-lime glass), and due to gravitational interference, temperature fluctuations, programming glitches and the whims of the Universe, the glass is being formed with a high degree of friability. This means when we form the large panels and try to move them into the mirror array, they shatter.

I need to re-program the robotic handlers (ugh) and see if I can make them a bit more delicate. Gregor’s team is going to try adding some chemical additives to the fusing process. Normally this wouldn’t fly for environmental health and safety factors but a) robots are doing the work and b) we’re in space. A few parts per kazillion of chlorine and HCl floating around up here is not going to bother anyone.

With Adelmo’s absence, it falls to Gregor and me to manage that project (despite our already crushing workload). Dr. Begovic agreed to assist on the regolith team, leaving me some time to fix the problem with the foundry robots. Of course, this sets Jürgen back on his own research for at least twenty days while he babysits the excavators and moon-crete production facilities.

BTW, we’re going to open the pipe over the next week or so for transmissions from ‘Del’s family in Argentina and Spain. His wife could use the support if you want to send well-wishes to the Engineering workgroup.

Wish us luck.