Sunday, December 5

There's two good days on a job: the first day and the last.

The longer you have been without a job the better the first day is. And the longer you have had a job, the better the last day is.

Brew had been without a job log enough that he was glad to have one.

Is that happy or glad?

Later, he would find himself fighting over happy or glad, in a rigged game, a game he could not win and did not know the rules to. A game he was doomed to lose. Because of his attitude.

It was just going through the motions, now.

Not to give away the plot.

Brew signed in and got a Visitor's Pass. He would be issued a permanent Contractor badge, by the base, with the Actaeon name on it, later in the week, and a laminated vehicle pass, for his car, to keep in the glove compartment when not on base and displayed on his dashboard when on base.

Pool rules.

Brew once read a book about the subculture of military dependents, service brats, in which pool rules had a resonance for Suzette, a colonel's daughter.

He would say "Pool rules," and she would know exactly what he meant.

The receptionist told the Personnel lady Brew was out front and she came and got him. Traci wasn't in yet.

She gave him papers to fill out, showed him where his office would be, and introduced him to his office mate, Del, who said, "Welcome aboard."

There was a computer on his desk, and a telephone.

"Del can brief you on the computer and the telephone," the Personnel lady said. "There are Guest cups in the coffee mess if you didn't bring your own."

Brew raised a finger.

He snapped open his naugahyde attaché case and withdrew a coffee cup. With an A/C/T logo on it.

"Voilà," he said.

The Personnel lady and Del cheered.

"An old Actaeon hand," Del said. "`First things first.'"

The Personnel lady left, Brew excused himself, saying, "I'll be Bach," and sauntered down the hall, to the coffee mess, coffee cup in hand.

The building was a rectangle with halls down each side and offices on either side of the halls. There were two conference rooms, a large one and a small one, two bathrooms, a women's and a men's, the coffee mess and the reception area, one at the back and one in the front. A door led off the coffee mess to a fabrication shop with tools and Brew's infamous Rewind Machine. Shop workers wore blue jeans and brogans, and so did Brew.

As Brew walked through the building to the coffee mess he saw people he knew, from 15 years before, or people he had worked with at other contractors, before he left town for Atlanta. He had worked for two other contractors in town besides Actaeon, both across Hathaway Bridge, both near the Navy base.

He knew technical writers, logisticians, draftsmen, or Autocad operators. Managers.

Training Specialists and Operations Analysts. People welcomed him back, asked him what he'd been up to.

It was good to be back. Brew felt at home.

Traci stuck her head in the door to see how Brew was doing. She laid three paper technical manuals on his desk.

"I see you're ready to work," she said. A reference to his blue jeans.

Blue jeans were normally prohibited for salaried personnel. Open-toed sandals. Hair that touched the collar.

A beard should be neatly trimmed.

NSA.

National Security Agency? Naval Support Activity.

"Rhino had a meeting at the base. He'll take you and Lucy Diamond over to the depot-level shop to see the rewind machine in operation today or tomorrow. Lucy's working on the Maintenance Plan. The SM&R codes are FUBAR."

Source, Maintenance, and Recoverability Codes.

Fucked-Up Beyond All Repair.

"Our IT person is also our Security person." Traci said. "He'll be in to set up your username and password. He'll prepare the paperwork for your permanent badge and vehicle pass, from the base. You have a phone extension. We'll get you some business cards. Your title is Technical Communicator I."

Brew's last job was Senior Information Development Specialist. A Technical Communicator III.

"Do you need anything? Del here was revising the parts list for the rewind machine. Until we hired you. If you have any technical questions, he might know that answer. If not Del, Rhino. You don't report to him, you report to me. But he's the project leader for this project. You can ask him questions if I'm out of pocket. He's authorized to answer in my absence."

Brew looked at the piles of paper on his desk.

"Maybe a scanner and some OCR software," he said.

"We've got a scanner. I'll have IT hook it up. What kind of OCR software do you need?"

"I've used OmniPage Pro. Whatever is the latest release."

"I'll have him order it."

She looked at Del. "Could you show him the machine? Give him the dumb admiral briefing?"

"I will," Del said.

After Traci left, Del said, "Ordering new software for you. I'm impressed. Better get everything you need now. After the bloom is off the romance you'll have to buy your own uni-ball pens."

Brew and Del went out into the shop.

"The books will tell you everything you want to know," he said. "I'd just start reading. Make notes of questions. Rhino or I can answer them.

"Did you know Rhino from before?"

"Yes. I used to work with him. Here. We called him Hippo. That's a rhino gone to fat."

"We call Lucy Diamond Commodore. She's an ex-hippie who went straight. She's in the Coast Guard Auxiliary and wears a uniform to work sometimes, if she has drill after work, and goes on small craft board-and-inspect missions on the weekends."

Del gave Brew a look, as if measuring him.

"We call Traci Dickless Traci."

"Why you male chauvinist pig," Brew said. "Does she bust your chops?"

"She's one of the boys. She talks the talk. If she has to get rough with you she will. You're not going to walk over her, just because she is a woman."

"I see," Brew said. "Well, I won't try to walk over her. Just because she is a woman."

"Have you seen the sports utility vehicle she drives?" Del said. "It's got the full Eddie Bauer decal package. It can climb straight up a cliff. It cost more than the trailer I lived in when I was a college student."

"Talking on her cell phone," Brew said. "Checking the GPS readout on the dash."

Del laughed.

"That's it," he said. "Reporting her coordinates to whoever she is talking to. The damned thing rides like an LCAC."

Del pronounced it el-kack, rather than L. C. A. C.

"In the Theory of Operation section of the manual there are two schematics," Del said, "an electrical schematic and a hydraulic schematic. You're supposed to key the Fault Isolation Tables in the Troubleshooting section to symptoms predicted by the theory, but I don't understand the hydraulics well enough to do that. Do you know much about hydraulics?"

"I can read the schematics," Brew said. "I can tell a pump from a motor. I'll just repeat what's in the books and let the reviewer flag it if it's not detailed enough. I'll let the engineer at the base provide the missing information."

"Lots of luck," Del said. "The engineer is a technician with delusions of grandeur."

"And persecution mania," Brew said.

"That's right," Del said. "He thinks the engineers are all out to get him."

"Maybe they are," Brew said. "They're all out to get me."

Actaeon's motto wasn't "First things first," it was "Make it happen."

Brew called "Make it happen" "Quick and Dirty."