'
'Well, what you need to do is go to this website and fill out the electronic form and resume. Put this job number,' he handed me a slip of paper with a dot gov website and some numbers on it, 'in the blanks where it asks for it and use my name as a point of contact. You'll be called in for the official interview. Don't worry; you have the job in my mind. We just have to follow the rules to get you there.' He paused for a second. 'You might go to the web and brush up on what goes on at Wright Pat, especially in our group, and be sure to wear a tie. And . . . uh . . . you might want to get a haircut, my boss is old military and . . . well, you understand.'
'Okay, that's no problem. I needed a haircut anyway.' I instinctively brushed my long bangs out of my eyes.
It took about a month to get the drug testing, paperwork, interviews, and job offer letter in order. During that time I had registered for two classes the next semester and for the cooperative education program. Before school started in the fall I had told Robert to kiss my ass, collected my things, and walked out on him in the middle of a shift. I started working a couple of weeks later. I had to take out a small student loan to make it until my paychecks started. I was very happy about my situation, but my mood swings still persisted.
Finally, the first day on the job came and life was looking up. Actually the entire day was kind of hectic since I had to deal with security, social security, human resources, and I had to go through a new employee orientation, all of which took until well after lunch. The lady at the security desk took a decent badge image of me I thought. I was sportin' my new student-loan-purchased wardrobe and haircut. Of course, I got soaked by an afternoon post-Rain thunderstorm while trying to figure out how to put the security decal on the window of the classic Cutlass. That was just a minor incident. Then I spent a few minutes driving around the base looking for the Space Vehicles Directorate Building. So, I didn't actually get to my new office (get that—I actually
That night after my first day on the job Lazarus and I celebrated and then I cried for hours. I know I was sad from losing . . . everyone I had ever known in an instant, but that had been nearly three years ago and I was getting back on my feet. I shouldn't have been so bipolar for so long, should I? The drugs were not helping. My plan was to see a new doctor as soon as my insurance with the Air Force kicked in. I already had scheduled an appointment.
CHAPTER 4
The following few days I got settled in and filled out the SF-86 security form. That thing is electronic and asked for details about my past, which had been wiped from existence by The Rain. I asked Larry (no longer 'Mr. Waterford,' he said) about how it would be determined if I really ever existed or not since records and witnesses to my life had all been destroyed.
'Just fill out the forms and let Defense Security Services handle the rest,' he told me. 'They have had these difficulties since the meteors and have found ways to get information. Also, since The Rain, as you call it, they increased the requirements for polygraphs. Expect to take a lie detector test sometime in the next few weeks.'
So that was that. I was on my way to a new career, with a security clearance, even. I was put in for a Top Secret and was told to read all the documents on the so-called AFSPSEC website. I found out the acronym stands for Air Force Special Programs Security Education Community. I was also told I should look up the National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual, the Director of Central Intelligence Directives, and a few other security documents that read like stereo instructions.
Finally, on my second Monday, I was set up with a workbench in a lab space and actually given a technical task to do. Larry brought me what appeared to be a small motherboard in a plastic static bag (and by small I mean about twice the size of a sticky-note) and told me to figure out what it was.
'Do you have any information on it?' I asked him.
'Sure I do. But I want to see what you come up with first.' He smirked.
'When do you need this figured out? I mean how long do I have to tinker with it?'
'Take as long as you need,' he said smugly. 'But, uh, don't take too long.' And he left it at that. How damned vague could you be?
How long was 'too long' and how long was 'as long as I needed'? This was some sort of test for the new guy I figured. So, I sat there for twenty minutes or more just rolling the thing over in my hands and looking at it before I came up with a plan of action. Since it was pushing four-thirty p.m., my plan of action was to go home and take Lazarus for a walk, which is just what I did.
The next morning I had a doctor's appointment with my new headshrinker. After talking with her for some time, she decided that I had developed a tolerance to the Zoloft and wanted me to try a new drug, I couldn't pronounce or spell the name, which was just out on the market. Fortunately, she had plenty samples of the drug and gave me a handful of them, since they were apparently expensive as hell. I had decent insurance now, but the deductible on brand name drugs was two hundred and fifty bucks and I sure didn't want to have to pay that.
So, I took one of the pills with lunch and headed into the base for work. That little motherboard was still sitting on my desk in the plastic baggy.
'Well, first things first,' I told myself and carefully pulled the board out of the baggy. Then I took out my lab notebook and began making a diagram of the circuit. It took about three hours to get what I thought was a complete diagram for the thing drawn and each part that I could identify labeled. Then I tried to develop a block diagram of the circuit with the nonlabeled chips marked A through D; the rest of the components on the board were standard parts.
It was my guess that the board was a 'onesy' and had possibly come from a multi-card chassis. My reasoning for that conclusion was that all of the leads were covered and as short as possible, and there were outlines in each corner of the board for some sort of mounting hardware. The short leads would help prevent interference to and from other boards mounted above and below (or beside) it in the chassis. From this assumption I drew a dotted line around my evolving block diagram to represent a chassis.
The block diagram consisted of all five 'main' chips, A through E, represented as blocks of size proportional to
