"Miami exec, this is Newark. Some kind of telecommunications relay. City business they said." the Earthstation informed her. "They're getting pretty pushy, even for New Yorkers."
Kerry tapped on the desk. "They're under a lot of stress, guys. Cut them a little slack." She glanced at Nan and cut the mic off. "Where's the nearest hard core gaming shop?"
Nan blinked. "What?"
"Miami exec, we are, we are," Newark answered. "I told them we could only give them maybe 256, and they went off on me."
"Yeah?" Kerry asked. "Okay, well get them on the line, and I'll conference." She put the mic on hold again. "A gamer shop. You know, PC games. First person shooters? 3D gaming world sims?"
Nan stared at her. "You mean, like video games?" she queried. "Sonic the Hedgehog? That stuff?"
"Okay, Miami exec, hold on a few." Newark clicked off.
"Miami exec, this is Miami ops," Mark broke in. "Nego on anything we can give big D outside maybe my setup server. They got anything there?"
"They don't Mark. Can you find me a gamer hack shop around here?" Kerry asked. "I'll send someone to get whatever their top of the line is."
"Sweet. Hang on."
Kerry picked up her tea and sipped it, taking advantage of the moment's lull. "Okay, while that's going on, Lansing, how's it looking there today?"
"Miami, we have a lot of cellular backhaul hitting us today," her hometown local office said. "Also, it looks like VOIPs getting hit pretty hard in the Northeast. I'm running hot across the board."
"Confirm that, Miami, this is Herndon ops," another voice added. "We've seen building traffic since about seven and--eh? Oh, ah yes. Ah, someone's looking at it."
Kerry muffled a grin, knowing full well who that someone was. "Thanks, Herndon. Lansing, keep the shaping in. We don't know what we're going to be called on to move today with all that's going on.'
"Yes, ma'am."
"Miami, this is LA Earthstation."
Kerry checked her watch. "Good morning, LA."
"Ma'am, we've got Intelsat on the line. They've got a software issue on one of their control systems and they want to know if we've got anybody there that can look at it. They're tapped for resources."
"Okay poquito boss, I got a place for ya." Mark came back on. "Got a pencil?"
Nan quickly grabbed a pad and a pen. "How do you keep up with all this?"
"Acquired attention deficit disorder. Comes with the job." Kerry was scribbling something herself. "Hang on LA. Miami applications support, you on?"
"We're here," a male voice answered. "I think we're the only ones not that busy today, Ms. Stuart. Would you like us to call Intelsat and engage them?"
"I would. Go ahead Mark. We've got a pen waiting," Kerry said. "Apps, see what you can do to back up ops there too, I know folks must be pretty tired in the center."
"Will do."
Mark's voice rapidly recited an address that Nan just as rapidly copied down. She finished and looked at it. "You want me to go get the biggest thing they got, right?" she asked. "Max RAM, max storage, max pixel."
"You got it," Kerry said, busy making notes. "Shoot, we've got some stuff hitting the fan here--damn it, I can't get deliveries in freaking Iowa. How in the hell are we supposed to go fix New York?"
"Any particular color?"
Kerry looked up and over her laptop screen for a long moment of silence. Then her eyes twinkled a little. "Not. Pink," she enunciated very carefully.
"You got it." Nan got up and headed for the door. "Be back in a flash." Behind her, a burst of chatter erupted, as issues suddenly scaled over each other, and the tempo rose.
"Miami exec, this is Lansing, we just got an alert from Citibank they're spooling backups from Buffalo," Lansing broke in. "They're pushing the shaping profile."
"Miami, exec this is Newark, I have the Governor of New York on the line for you."
"Miami exec, this is the Air Hub, we're seeing a lot of congestion. We've got packets dropping here."
A loud whistle suddenly cut through all the chatter. Nan paused at the open door and stared back at the desk, but Kerry merely smiled.
"All right," Dar's voice briskly followed the whistle. "Thor, god of the internets is here. Kerry, go handle the Governor. I'll start squeezing the pipes. Everybody just relax. This is where we earn our reputation."
"Dar, what about--" Kerry paused, the time limit and the commitment they'd made weighing on her suddenly. Yes, they told the government they'd go try and fix their problem but what about all of their own?
"Already doing the prep," Dar answered. "I've got about a dozen reports running that are going to need my algorithms. Hope you find that laptop."
"Hope you find room in your pipes for me to pull your image," Kerry remarked wryly.
"First things first," her partner said, with easy confidence. "See what we can do over at Newark. We're going to need the leverage."
Ah. Kerry punched in the conference line for the Earthstation. Complications. "Will do, boss, will do."
DAR LEANED AGAINST the console, bracing her elbows on the surface and folding her hands together as she studied the screen. She was aware, in a disconnected way, that there were a lot of people watching her, but her attention was absorbed by the thin tracing lines and flickering statistics in front of her.
The barebones diagram she was studying was a scaled down version of what she was used to looking at in her office, with fewer colors and sketchier details. It was enough, though, for her to see the imbalances caused by the outages and the need to route around them.
Any individual outage was not a problem. Dar had built more than enough redundancy into her design to cope with that. In fact, multiple outages were usually not a problem either. But the combination of multiple outages of their own, and the suddenly heavy demand from everyone trying to route around outages themselves was giving her usually robust network fits.
Giving Dar fits. "Damn it." She put her hands back on the keyboard and rattled off a few commands. "We need to get those damn nodes reconnected north of the city," she muttered. "I've got everything coming south and it's crunching the hell out of us."
"Ma'am?" One of the console techs timidly leaned closer. "Are you talking to us, or just to you?"
Dar glanced up, watching everyone quickly pretend to look at something else. "Well." She drummed her fingers. "I was talking to myself, but if you've got any good ideas cough them up." She waited, but the crowd remained respectfully silent. "C'mon, people. I don't bite."
Don came forward, with an air of martyred bravery. "Well, uh, ma'am--"
"Whoa." Dar held her hand up. "First of all, I'm going to be around for a while. Stop the ma'am crap and call me by my name, please."
Don's eyes widened, and his nostrils flared visibly. "Uh," he said. "Okay, Ms. Roberts. If you say so."
Dar gave him a wry look.
"Anyway." Don glanced at the big board behind them. "Um, what exactly are you doing? It's hard for us to make suggestions when we don't really have a clue what's going on."
Everyone held their breath when he finished, but Dar merely chuckled. "Good point," she agreed, settling back in her chair. "The network is imbalanced because of the outages. We're pulling too much, especially on the commercial side." She pointed at the big board. "That's why all the lines are purple tending to red, instead of blue like they usually are."
Heads swung toward the board, then back to her. "That makes sense," one of the techs said. "But what can we do about it?"
"I think a lot of people are using more data bandwidth than usual too," one of the female techs added. "Sending emails, and listening to the internet with all that streaming video going on."
"Agreed," Dar said. "Same thing we're doing, since some of the traffic is us on the big bridge," she said. "That global meeting place isn't a text screen and a bunch of black and white pixels."