NIH Chpt 9

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==Not Invented HereChapter 9 - A Stroke of the Pen==
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"Dammit, Daffigun, I told you not to piss off Mech-City Hall! You're not even supposed to be on-duty after the UrbanNun Incident!""Chief Hunch, I'm about this close to telling them where they could stick their opinion, and adding an AC/20 coda! Anyway, you never trust an UrbanMech, everyone knows they're in constant communication with the Capek Confederation. I stopped them before they could brainwash the entire city.""They were leading a public prayer service for the OrthoBot Church!"- MechWorld: Atlas Daffigun: P.D., Ep. 3 "Loose Autocannon", Fantasy-Minded Broadcasting, 2966
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===Part 1===
Administration Office, Militia Base - Wynn's Roost, Outworlds Wastes
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Phoning out was a more involved matter than Ferguson thought. For one, he didn't know the number to the Mayoral office. Two, the commander's office was kind of, sort of not supposed to be active; they had to find another line that could dial out, which took valuable time. Genoveva told him it was round about one in the afternoon.
 
Eventually they found a line in the machine shop's office. Genoveva went off to tell the techs to stop working for a bit, and to chase up a telephone book. Ferguson could feel the jittery panic he'd only experienced at times of extreme stress, like finals. ComStar had very high standards for their field agents. Whom they then sent off to the deepest, blackest, most out-of-the-Sphere Space-Australia.
 
He wasn't bitter.
 
Sooner than he expected, he had a number in front and receiver in hand, ready to make another difficult call.
 
"So you were called up to the office of the Mayor of Turnerville herself," stated Devolo. "Ye kept that quiet."
 
"I had zero intention of going back to Mayor Herron anytime soon. Now that I need her, I'll use her. Whatever it takes."
 
Genoveva was watching, arms crossed, with an unreadable expression. Ferguson tried to decipher it but mingled jubilation and nervousness and... something else was all he could puzzle out. "You're a cold little carbon, Ferguson." Hostility? What? Where did he antagonize her? Never mind, power through and explain before the opinion sets.
 
"She all but offered me the key to the city on my first day. I wasn't willing to accept the strings attached, but I am - we are - desperate."
 
She huffed, but accepted the point.
 
A radio was playing some hot new tune he'd last heard when on Alpheratz. The HPG packets of information and media must have only arrived here, as that was months ago. FTL travel plus transmission delays made "recent" a fuzzy concept. ...and he was stalling. Still.
 
Every choice is a statement of intent, he told himself. He wasn't looking forward to another authority digging their hooks into him, but he had chosen to commit, and what kind of start-up project would it be if their chief engineer turned back at the first real hurdle?
 
He dialed the number.
 
(("Hello, Turnerville Town Hall here, how may I help?"))
 
"This is James Ferguson, the new fusion tech at Innovations Inc. I was told to call Mayor Ana Herron if I ever wanted to discuss... my immigration."
 
It took her a minute to place the name before - as he suspected - she brightened up like a lottery winner. (("Mister Ferguson, yes, I remember! Ms. Herron is currently in a meeting, but she'll be with you as soon as it ends. Please hold while I notify her.")) He was 70% sure 'meeting' was code for 'thinking time' but either way, he was left listening to a scratchy rendition of "The Four Seasons".
 
The eyebrows on Genoveva had unfurrowed somewhat as soon as he'd said "immigration". Good. Perhaps she was realizing what was happening; he would be a lucre-tech no longer, for their sake. He'd be searching for a loophole in the contract every moment of his spare time, but for now, he'd show them he was on the Wynning side, like he'd already said he was. (Diego had made that joke more than a few times. Sidelining it almost made up for him signing his life away.)
 
The distorted strings in his ear cut off. (("Mr. Ferguson, what a pleasant surprise.")) Mayor Herron was as pleased as he'd feared. (("I understand you're looking to make your stay more permanent?"))
 
"Yes, I and my employer wish to set up a native, high-technology LLC to assist the local militia, but they cannot be wholly owned by a non-native." Might as well come out with it as she seemed to appreciate straight-dealing. "Circumstances force us to ask if, in exchange for technology exchange and my settling, the paperwork might be expedited?"
 
(("Mr. Ferguson, what kind of timeline are you talking about?")) she asked
 
He took a deep breath. "...the end of business hours today."
 
(("You...")) She rallied well, but her pointed tone all but said how much this was going to suck for both of them. (("That is absurd. It might have been possible years ago, but there is no-one alive today who could navigate the Records Center systems that quickly. It takes days - minimum."))
 
What kind of planet was this, anyway? "I could. Lycomb-Davion has been making great strides in foundtech." Now he was writing cheques his skill might not cash, but dammit, what else could he do? Star League CompSci had been decades ago, and it was only one 'here's what outsourcing to other specialized planets did' module.
 
There was a long, sweat-inducing pause.
 
(("It is... 13:36 right now. How soon can you be at the Records Center?")) she asked
 
Ferguson covered the receiver and asked, "How far away are we from the Records Center, boss?"
 
"At least an hour."
 
He turned back to the phone. "We'll be there in 50 minutes, Mayor."
 
He slammed down the receiver and took off for the door. The chase was on.
 
The machinists watched Genoveva and the older man chase after the hotshot engineer, one chuckling at how they were trying to punch him while running. But they soon turned back to their work. The lathes and drills restarted, and the air filled with the whine and chatter of drilling metal, turned-up radio fighting to be heard against the din.
As the brassy trumpets of the ComStar News Bureau announced the segment of month-old interstellar news, the one who would have cared was not there to pay attention: This is CNB, and we are your line to the Inner Sphere. Terran date March 17th, 2994. As always, please sync your calendars. Today's top story: Yin Takami, ComStar's beloved Primus, has... perished in a JumpShip accident. The hitch in the smooth diction went unnoticed, and the radio continued to lay out Ferguson's newest complication.
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===Part 2===
On the road, outskirts of Tumberville - Wynn's Roost, Outworlds Wastes
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In certain contexts Ferguson loathed clichés. He'd use them, even note them in other people, but when they happened to him they chafed. It also made the people around him act in entirely predictable yet incomprehensible ways, as if they had had a script loaded into their heads; he tried to break clichés before they happened, stop those pre-programmed responses and get people to think, but sometimes there was no avoiding the fucking things.
 
Right now he was in a 'race against time'. Not one of the cool holo-thriller ones: no, this was a comedic, keep-to-the-speed-limit-even-though-we're-late race. All the fun of a stressful family holiday, but with people he didn't know and were berating him for that necessary deadline. Just to complete the image, he was currently in the back seat, both 'parents' in the front simmering with stress.
 
"What the fuck-" the car hit a bump and went flying, "-were you fuckin' thinkin' Ferguson?" said Devolo angrily, voice raised, only for Genoveva's modified car to land back down on the one-lane road and cut off any response for a second.
 
Of course, the speed limit only counted if they caught you, which is why they were hurtling down a narrow strip of asphalt in an effort to get to the Center on time.
 
"Devolo, where next?" yelled Genoveva.
 
He peered ahead, thinking fast. "Second left, next to that blackvine field!"
 
Ferguson, clutching a strap, tried to explain himself, and found that he couldn't. He'd... just wanted to show his commitment. People were angry at him for that, so he had to think of something softer and more acceptable. His mouth opened on its own and he blurted out, "I wanted to show I was serious!" What the hell, brain? Well, there it was, so he braced himself.
 
"Well your heart was in the right place! But ye put the pressure on me-Umph!" he groaned as the car hit another bump, "-and I think we're going to be late anyway."
 
Double what the hell? Devolo wasn't angry at him for admitting he just did that for selfish, cowardly reasons? Yet, he was angry and frustrated at him for his honesty before. Even with all his study of books and holos he really didn't get people sometimes. Mental note: Devolo values emotional honesty.
 
The car near-skidded around the turn down another lane, swerving around a tractor coming the other way; a Deere-Massey-Ferguson, his analytical side noted. It took a few seconds for that to penetrate the worry and anxiety before he realized: assigned identity. Agricultural equipment brand.
 
With rising fury, he made the connection: his entire existence here was a joke about the Outworlds Alliance. Why would you send a brand new Ferguson to the farmers? Because they didn't have proper ones.
Right, that's it, ComStar. They wanted a war... he mentally trailed off, jolting ignored, as other inconsistencies revealed themselves. All other times he'd received an electronic communication to inform him of the change in orders. That time, it was not only in paper, but in person and by someone he'd known - one of his lecturers in military history. The leaflet was also about religious fanaticism and prophecy. He wasn't a particularly well-placed agent, but he did know of the writings of Toyama and had made his criticisms clear. Software was *not* holy, and anyone who called it thus was mad or lying.
 
Was it a warning about the more religious members of ROM? Had a non-religious faction sent him here because they didn't have 'tractors' of their own? Was he, in short, an off-the-books asset in an upcoming schism? Was he even the only pebble scattered such? Or was this simple arrogance on their part, and a vain hope he hadn't been burned?
 
This was becoming a habit. Soon he might have all his Terra-shattering realizations while driving.
 
Instead of trying to process all this annoyingly unsure stuff, he instead said, "I'm sorry I did this, but the more time we have, the better. How long do we have left?"
 
"Twenty-three minutes!" said Devolo. "Is that clock right?"
 
"Unfortunately. Are we heading through Greysteel?" asked Genoveva. "And you are going to pay me for fixing my car," she said to Ferguson. It was not a question.
 
"Every single Winner."
 
She concentrated on the road as they roared through a small hamlet's thankfully deserted main street. "I shouldn't have said we could take my car," she muttered. "This'd better be worth it..."
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===Part 3===
Records Center, Turnerville - Wynn's Roost, Outworlds Wastes
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14:40, a battered, dusty 4-door coupé screeched to a halt outside the hulking Records Center, administrative centre and document storage for the entire Trader's Domain, both in the time of the Star League and the Domain's secession at the start of the Second Succession War.
 
Ninety-odd years after Wynn's Roost had faded from the maps, the building was deserted: only barely lit at what would be prime business hours, with just the reception showing signs of life.
 
14:41, three engineers piled into the reception, one demanding they call the Mayor of Turnerville.
 
It took minutes too long to search through the phone book for the mayor's office, call and wait to be put through. Ferguson really missed personal communicators. Hell, he'd take a mil-surplus walkie-talkie held by the Mayor, it's not like he knew anyone else.
 
"Ferguson, you're there? Good. Let me talk to the receptionist."
 
Once the receptionist had been appraised of the situation, he looked at Ferguson with something approaching awe. Or maybe of someone with a rat problem meeting an exterminator.
 
With the saw-edge of panic backed away from his neck, he realised the receptionist was leading them to an open-plan 'room' of bank upon bank of silent terminals. Further in, signs long faded to blue pointed to offices (understaffed), meeting rooms (deserted) and the archives, stacks of microfiche and paper that any records office was stuffed with.
 
He had to work with this. No, different stress on the words, work on that arrogance. He *had* to work with this.
 
Further and deeper in, signs of life began to appear. A technician was sat in front of one of the terminals with three other gutted spares on a fold-up table. The paperwork began to pile up in the cubicles and there were, finally, a set of working terminals with harried operators typing away, snowed in by forms. Five percent of the former work was, it seems, being given to one percent of the former staff.
 
Almost all of the operators had glasses. Seeing them turned towards the newcomers brought up an inappropriate thought that, like one of the cartoons he still watched, they were being stared down by owls, which was such a ridiculous stereotype he didn't even know; why brain.
 
These were people, though. Messy, prickly, incomprehensible and above all, vital not to piss off. They probably knew every single way to make the nascent Lightspeed Ltd.'s operations difficult if he gave the wrong impression. His stress began to creep up once more. Really hope they didn't ask him to pitch in, too. His time was spoken for.
 
Oh. All his time was spoken for. Hell.
 
Ferguson resisted the urge to clap to gain their attention. The books suggested varying your mannerisms so as not to have easily recognisable tells. He just didn't want to have a cliche embedded in Devolo and Genoveva's memory. Instead the receptionist greeted one pale, balding middle-aged man in particular sat at a terminal with a laser-printed "Turnerville/Planetary" taped to the desk.
 
He got up from his desk. "Hi, I'm Andre, senior data entry sec and software monkey for half the damn place." He shook the fusion engineer's hand. Firm, but perfunctory. Either he didn't shake hands much or wanted to be back at work. "Robert tells me you have a mission from the mayor, of all things? Can you really make this hackjob of a system work that quickly?"
 
Project confidence. "I can. If I may?"
 
"Oh, yes, yes of course", he said as Ferguson sat down. "I was just updating the 2993 census results. Here, let me save my work." Andre tapped in a key combination instead of using the GUI and seemed content to sit back and wait. After about thirty seconds, Ferguson glanced at a clock on another operator's desk and began timing.
 
Twenty-four more seconds later, the console finally unfroze and began accepting input.
 
Now he noticed the clatter of keyboards restarting as everyone else's consoles unfroze too.
 
The fuck.
 
He turned back to stare up at Andre in disbelief, before he remembered he was supposed to be friendly and approachable.
 
Andre sighed. "Yes, yes it is that bad. It's two things really. Director Kamya, god rest him, rewrote the interface to be simpler because he could see how much the drain from Mackenzie was affecting the office pool. We... don't get many applicants for a "dead-end office." Direct quote from one of our interviews, by the way. Secondly, he didn't provide as much functionality or documentation as he liked before he had to retire."
 
Andre lifted his glasses and rubbed his face wearily. "Long story short, no-one alive knows how to rebuild a three-core, distributed, full-uptime planetary administration database without breaking something vital, including me. The only mercy is that we still have the fusion plant online, so we haven't lost power for centuries."
 
Ferguson ignored his first instinct, which was to blow all this and busy himself with the fusion reactor to see what Star League unobtanium it was made of that it was still working.
 
He ignored his second instinct, which was to scream in frustration at the deepening tarpit he'd dropped himself in.
 
He obeyed his third instinct, which was to ask the local what to do. He was Lord Chesterton here, and there were many reasons why he shouldn't remove gates in the road... like his cover. Data and signals intelligence were ComStar's specialty, and he should expect one plant at least in the admin centre of the entire planet. Andre could be the plant. On the other hand, if local, they would have a more relaxed attitude to making their job easier. Either way, this was yet another risk; that report would have to be written yesterday before someone reported him to the compound.
 
"What should I avoid doing?"
 
"Uh. Well, you should avoid any commits larger than district-level unless you absolutely can. We lose half a day as it tries to reorganise it. It's OK," he hurriedly explained to the LosTech software engineer from the Inner Sphere, "there's no absolute gotchas, the system's stable, it's just slug-slow, and even if we knew how, we don't have the space to rebuild it."
 
"How do you switch to the command-line?"
 
Andre looked hesitant. "Um, it's AltGr-Shift-12, but we have to reboot the terminal to get it back to loading the GUI, and sometimes it takes a couple of tries."
 
"Finally, and most importantly, do you have administrator access?"
 
Now he looked really unsure. "I'll need to log out and log in again. If you'll excuse me..." Ferguson closed his eyes as Andre leaned over. Because he was who he was, he kept the eyelids open just a slit to watch. The mouse was moved, clicked and the "Log Off" chosen from the menu. Thankfully, the terminal/mainframe architecture meant that this was only a 20 second wait.
 
Mentally filing the password for future use, Ferguson watched the GUI grind into life.
 
"You finished?"
 
"Yes. Do what ever it is you're going to do." said Andre. "Just... be careful."
Message received. Performing the magical three-finger gesture of transformation switched the terminal into stark black and white text with a flashing cursor.
 
Mentally crossing fingers, he input a command he remembered from the oldest versions of industrial control software.
 
> admin: osver -lastupdate
 
Ferguson didn't hesitate to hit enter, because it'd work, or it wouldn't.
 
> Maxix OS 15.105
> Updated 0300 12/12/2855 UTTC
Phew. Okay., he wasn't flying completely blind. The Star League's obsession with standardisation and common codebases was working in his favor.
 
He really had not been lying when he told Devolo that he was a supervisor on a production line. What the CV had left out was that he had been one of many coaxing the Hellcat lines into continued functionality. Certainly not an expert - some of the code written by the senior engineers had been beautiful, Lycomb-Davion hired the best of New Avalon - just the code equivalent of a mechanic with a diagnostic noteputer.
He might, just might, have the tools to slim down whatever bloated horror was lurking in the system's storage.
 
> admin: diskst -vcfH
> Disk volume 14.4 Petabytes
> Disk used 9.1 Petabytes
 
Case in point. If that was combined storage and whatever database used was distributed, he was sunk. If the original installer was lazy, and this was the default Star League database configuration, this would be one binary blob of data, and the trick would hold.
 
Ferguson went hunting for a very specific directory.
 
> admin: list ?nirasakisoft
> 0 results found
 
Good. It wasn't there. This was not one of the expensive expert systems sometimes installed as fancy databases. Nirasaki Computer Systems had created the near-sentient control software that controlled the robotic Space Defense System. The company had been stripped and shipped to Terra by Stephan Amaris. Any sign that a working system still existed was grounds for a Rho-administered, Karpov-level 'upgrade'. Given the stakes, Ferguson considered his paranoia justifiable.
> admin: list -sH ?datasoft,debase,directbase
> 1 result found
> /disk/st1/pr/datasoft xoxx 8.7 Petabytes
 
He felt his shoulders slump in relief. One monolithic partition holding the entire database, run on the cheaper DataSoft DEbase. The redundant computer cores were duplicating its index every time a write was performed, and the swapping into RAM soft-locked the mainframe's CPUs down to the terminal control software. While he'd never worked on datasets this massive, there were options that worked regardless of size. Only the length of time it took to execute them changed.
 
He looked back at the clock. 15:05. Less than two hours before he had to call it a day.
 
While the LDI techs had indeed showed him several tricks to tame an unruly database, they hadn't specified when to use them. Further, he didn't know which of the fixes would be quick.
 
Why was he doing this anyway? All he really wanted was to add a row of data that registered Lightspeed as a LLC, he wasn't here to mend the lives of everyone he met.
 
The other side of the coin was that these commands were a) not lostech in the slightest, just obscure b) this would massively speed any administration for their new business in the future.
 
The edge of the coin was digging into the obsessive wrinkles in his brain, refusing to let this shambolic situation stand. It had to be fixed, and damn ComStar and their plant.
 
It pained him to admit it, but he couldn't do everything. A trained database engineer he was not. Ctrl-AltGr-5 dropped him back into the GUI.
 
"How did you do that?"
Ferguson started a little. He'd forgotten Andre was next to him. Damn hyperfocus.
 
"Switching run-levels. The GUI is still running, but switching back to the runlevel with the graphical service reloads the entire shell and restarts the GUI."
 
"Whoa. I never knew."
 
Ferguson left the chair. "Could you first add me as a temporary citizen, then bring up the section of registered businesses and add a new entry?" He rattled off the details of Lightspeed Ltd., pulling most of them from whole cloth but giving Devolo's farm as the office address. "...and finally, I'd like to register it as an interstellar LLC."
 
Now Andre really looked at him. "How... no, I suppose you'd contact your old employer for a reference for ComStar, but you need an account with them in the first place..." Ferguson pulled out his wallet to flash his credit chit, "...no problem, then. However, Form 85.5CS must be filled-in and filed with the ComStar compound."
 
All the chickens were coming home to fucking roost today.
 
"That can wait, though, uh, sir. And... almost done. There is one more matter. Once you've filled in Form 100A it must include your company's logo."
 
That brought Ferguson up short. A logo? He wasn't creative, he was an operator and tweaker. Still, he thought about the Plan, and the perfect low-effort logo came to mind.
 
Tearing off a bit of an envelope, he dug out a black pen from behind the stack of paper work on the desk. Block letters slanted forward. A line drawn above it ending in a dot surrounded by a 'spray' of five lines at near-equal angles to each other, suggesting a cutting beam.
"Will this do?"
"Of course." He typed the final query and after another agonizing wait, "There. Lightspeed Limited is now a legal entity. After you fill in the forms, of course, but it may technically do business today. Probably a record."
 
Once they were finally done and the 100A form sent off, logo and all, to be photocopied for the physical records and for them, it was 16:13. Had it really taken that long? He still had to offer himself up on a platter to ComStar, convince them that the planet was mostly harmless and explain that he really needed a whole new company as cover. And drive back to the base with the new details to finalise the new arrangement. And, finally, do the equivalent of juggling live hand grenades in taking a ton of AC ammo of dubious origin back to a farm.
 
When the shit would this day end?
 
As Ferguson gave Andre a quick primer on the commands used to remove extraneous whitespace from the index before rebuilding, he braced himself for the worst task of all: Asking Genoveva to drive them back.
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