'23kpc' Chapters 25-26: Call and Response

Puzzles upon puzzles clamor for our protagonists'' attention...

[A floor plan, unremarkable at first glance — except for a single element in the southwest quadrant. Many thanks to the subscriber who helped out with software, professional skills, and related discussion — without having read a word of this installment!]

In last week’s installment…

We finally met Orono “Orrie” Jones: head of the engineering department (and, not incidentally, the late Tyler Morton’s supervisor). Orrie is a physically imposing communications engineer, but seems to be a really nice guy, with a Pooch (named Lolly) on whom he apparently dotes. He’d been in some kind of off-schedule dorming cycle until recently, and — making him even harder to locate — his dorming cylinder itself wasn’t in his living quarters, but down on Deck E-for-Engineering.

Early on, Orrie lets slip that he had his v-com with him while he was unconscious. Said v-com is sitting right there on the desk, so Guy picks it up and examines it. It seems to be a standard device used by the Tascheter’s crew, except for one feature: a bright blue unlabeled button on one edge. (All the other buttons are plain black.) Orrie confirms that it’s just the button to pull up his list of shipboard contacts.

Well, okay. But as Missy asks: Why is it blue?

Guy continues…:

Chapter 25: Switches Are Flipped

No matter how charming the questioner, Orrie looks less than comfortable that Missy has asked the real question again, more pointedly.

“Just a decoration. An ornamental touch,” he says after a beat.

Looking down at the v-com, I wonder about that. The explanation feels off to me. If I wanted to personalize a little device like this with something I thought of as an “ornament” — a “decoration” — I wouldn’t put a single dot of color on one of the tiny buttons. I’d paint the whole case, or overlay it with stickers, or get it engraved. In contrast, this bright-blue droplet would be easier to understand as a mistake than as an improvement.

Thinking to close the contact list, but unfamiliar with the specific features of this model, I press the blue button again. The contact list, to my surprise, remains on-screen.

But elsewhere in the room, two things happen:

Orrie’s Pooch, Lolly, disconnects from Durwood. It drops straight down and then zips over to Orrie’s side at about elbow height — although, granted, Orrie’s elbows are about where my shoulders are. Hanging in mid-air, with its face turned in my direction, Lolly bobs slightly up and down, forward and back. From momentum, probably. Or impatience, maybe.

The other thing that happens right away: Orrie holds out his hand. “You know, Guy,” he says, “I sort of wish you wouldn’t go pushing random buttons, that thing has a custom setup—”

I remind myself that just because one or two things happen after something else, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the something-else caused them to happen. Lolly and Durwood could have just coincidentally wrapped up their, uh, their digital congress at the moment I pushed the button the second time. And yes, if I were in Orrie’s shoes I probably wouldn’t want strangers messing about with my sensitive tools, either.

All of that is true. But it doesn’t really explain one more thing that happened at the second button-press: the brief flash of the green LED which even I know means, on any v-com, Packet of wireless data sent or received.

Orrie’s still got his hand out, and he actually takes a slight step in my direction. Missy and Matty, for their part, are looking back and forth between Orrie and me.

What the hell, I think, and press the bright blue contact-list button a third time.