FENRIR: Chapter 15

[seawasp]

Stephanie's been working hard..

 

Chapter 15: Project Management 101

     Stephanie blinked blearily across at the President, then glanced down at the empty coffee cup as though it had personally betrayed her. "How do you do it?" she asked with an edge of desperation.

     "Do what?" Jeanne asked, though looking at the dark shadows under Stephanie's eyes – visible even through her makeup – she was pretty sure she knew.

     "This!" The younger woman waved her hand around generally. "I mean, I know you have to be doing at least as much as I am, you're the President, but you look… well, awake. Sharp, focused. I'm on one committee after another and I'm always the one who knows the least but everyone's expecting me to help make decisions!" She shook her head violently, hair coming loose from the ponytail she'd tied it in. "I know, I know, I took the job, I…" She flushed visibly. "I want to be the voice for Fenrir," she went on, embarrassment in the lower tone of her voice. "It probably sounds stupidly arrogant, but…"

     "Not at all," Jeanne said, leaning back, remembering a similar conversation she'd had years ago, when she'd first launched her political career. "Most of us want to be remembered for something – the only immortality we really know works, after all. And Fenrir isn't just a once in a lifetime, it's a once in the history of all humanity event. You found Fenrir, and to you – silly though it may sound – it feels like Fenrir belongs to you. And that's perfectly normal for people; discoveries are special and we all want to stay associated with the special things in our lives."

     Stephanie's lips curled in what was at least an attempt at a smile, despite her obvious exhaustion. "Like being the first woman elected President, I guess."

     "In a way, yes," Jeanne admitted, "But that achievement will stay in the books, so to speak. Roger, for instance, won't end up replacing my name with his, even if he wanted to. And of course my legacy as President will depend on what I've done in that time. You and Fenrir," she went on, "have, quite likely, made sure that my legacy is secure.

     "But really, none of that's the question you were asking. You meant 'Madame President, you're at least twice my age and you're running the whole country, why aren't you ready to collapse like I am?", yes?"

     "Well… yes, exactly." Stephanie looked relieved.

     "The first answer is, actually, sometimes I am. I have a whole staff that knows how to make me look good even when I'm quite literally sick. Did you know I had a terrible case of the flu when I did my nomination acceptance speech?"

     "No! Really?"

     "Absolutely. I was loaded with so many drugs to keep me from embarrassing myself physically onstage that I practically floated my way up to the podium. I'm glad I'd worked on that speech for weeks beforehand, because I honestly don't remember giving half of it."

     Stephanie stared at her, amazement clear on her face. "I watched that speech! You looked absolutely on fire there, in the good way!"

     "So, that's part of it. Make sure you have someone in your corner to keep you looking the part." Jeanne surveyed her. "I am willing to bet that you didn't see Audrey this morning."

     "Audrey? No, I don't want to bother her for –"

     "Her job is to help you present yourself – you and the other top members of the team." She thought a moment, then pulled out her phone and texted Audrey Milliner. "I've told her you need a support team; she knows what I mean."

     "But I don't –"

     "You do," Jeanne said, and this time she made sure it was the President's voice. "We've made a lot of progress – the fact that I am sitting in this seat tells us that much – but women are still judged on appearance, and that will not change in the next five years. Doctor Stephanie Bronson should always look as poised and in-control as the President. That's not a suggestion, Dr. Bronson, that's an order. You are the face of Carpathia as well as Fenrir."

     Jeanne saw Stephanie's throat move in a swallow before the younger woman took a deep breath and nodded. "Yes, Madame President."

     "Good. Now, the other part of the answer – I've just given you part of it. Delegate. You're invited to, and scheduled on, just about every single meeting having to do with every single part of Carpathia, not to mention press conferences, meetings like this, and more. The secret is that you can say no."

     Stephanie's mouth opened, then closed.

     "I'm glad you feel so much responsibility that it clearly has never occurred to you to say no, but that is why you're so exhausted. You can't build Carpathia yourself, you can't select her entire crew, you can't control all the news released or do damage control on any stupid statements someone else makes. You can't make sure everyone in fifteen countries is doing their work.

     "So delegate. Your morning routine, let Audrey and the team she finds you set it and take care of it. You shouldn't be worrying about getting yourself coffee when you're working with an international team. You shouldn't be attending meetings where they just want to say they had you in the meeting, possibly so that your presence makes their work seem more important. Pick and choose, Dr. Bronson. If you don't feel qualified to make those choices, then for God's sake listen to Dr. Dobyns. He knows which ones are just wasting your time, I'll guarantee it."

     Stephanie laughed, and for the first time Jeanne saw a loosening in the tension across her shoulders. "He's been kind of hinting that some of them I could give a miss."

     "Good. I'll tell him to stop hinting and start hitting you with a two-by-four until you get the idea. Stephanie, I have to pick and choose. I could spend twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, throughout every day of the year in meetings and I still wouldn't have met with everyone who sincerely feels they really truly have to talk with the President about something absolutely vital. I have some briefings I cannot skip, others that I'd really love to but shouldn't, and only so much time for anything else."

She felt her own stomach tense at the thought of all the things waiting for her, told that tension where to go. "So, I have to choose, so that I don't either collapse or go crazy. Roger," she nodded at Stone, who had been sitting to the side, quietly sipping his own coffee and eating a donut, "handles that scheduling – sometimes he makes the decisions for me."

"A lot of the time, actually," Stone said, his smile carrying a touch of smugness. "I don't let anyone bother you unless it's really necessary." He looked to Stephanie. "She's absolutely right, and I think York Dobyns would very much like you to let him do the same job for you. Let him."

"All right!" Stephanie raised her hands in mock defense. "I'll let Audrey's team do their thing and ask Dr. Dobyns to help me figure out my real schedule! I surrender!"

"Good," Jeanne said. "Then let's not waste any more of your time, or mine for that matter, we've solved that problem. Bring me up to date."

"Okay. Thank you, Madame… Jeanne."

"My job is easier when yours is. You're welcome."

"So," Stephanie glanced at the outline of Carpathia on the wall, "We've got three groups working on the pusher plate. One in China, one in Germany, one here in the USA. That's going to take quite a while, but we can work on a lot of pieces in parallel so that won't stop other work."

"How are you making sure they're all compatible?" Roger asked. "I mean, just imagine if you have your shock absorbers designed for metric and you get a USA plate designed with inches and feet?"

Stephanie's smile was relaxed now. "Oh, we thought of that. It's not really different from the way modern software engineering handles work across big teams. All the design work for every component's being done in… a CENT-specific engineering design workspace that updates the design for all groups working on something, with those updates pushing notifications to the principals on each team. That means that if anyone changes anything on the design, it gets propagated to a central … representation of the component, so anyone else working on it will see that change immediately. There's a whole set of design review stages set up to allow a sort of fast spiral of development. If you really want the details in all the right jargon, I can get it to you –"

"Oh, dear God no. The important question is, do people believe we can make the deadline?"

"If no one slows anything down… yes. It's going to be tight – right now we're looking at six hundred eighty days to launch – but we think it can be done." Stephanie chewed on her lip a moment in abstraction. "The real problem is probably going to be trying to catch assumptions that were good in one field from screwing up another. Carpathia isn't really much like any ship of any kind we've ever built so we keep bumping up against key assumptions."

"Any examples?"

"Well… one we constantly have to keep fighting the experienced aerospace engineers on is their practically instinctive avoidance of adding weight to anything, even when you could use additional strength, stiffness, or so on. Weight's the single biggest constraint on typical spacecraft, so they're just so used to thinking in those terms that it's really, really hard for them to adjust to the idea that – for the most part – weight just doesn't matter. Add a ton here, a ton there, Carpathia won't care. Might as well worry about adding another pound to a railcar. They're used to trying to shave ten grams off a half-kilogram module. There's plenty more assumptions like that – every discipline has their own."

Jeanne nodded. "I see. Anything you need help on right now?"

"Well… we have to push the crew selection up. We need someone from like… every discipline on board, just about. Engineers, technicians, pure scientists, maintenance people, military in case everything goes bad, linguists, you name it, and all the ones with any technical background are going to have to double as inspectors of anything they didn't personally have a hand in, so that we can be as sure as possible that everything's made right."

"And," Roger said, "we'll have to make sure that the crew represents as many countries as we can reasonably manage."

She could see Stephanie wince. "I understand, Doctor; that means that at times we may have trouble choosing the best person for the job rather than the politically best person for the job. I think we will have to prioritize the crew selection in stages; the most vital for construction, maintenance, and support of Carpathia have to be selected primarily for qualifications – both technical and in terms of our ability to trust their judgment – with greater latitude in areas less and less vital to the functioning and safety of the ship."

"We'll need the first set within a few months," Stephanie said, "because we'll want to start inspections soon." She sighed. "And not long after that, you and FORT have to make the single biggest decision. Where. Carpathia won't be able to be moved from where we build her; once she's really underway, she'll be launched from wherever she's built. So it's going to have to be a site that's accessible, where we can deliver pretty much anything, and one we think will survive us detonating first a bunch of conventional explosives and then several nuclear bombs right over it."

"Wait," Jeanne said, startled. "Conventional explosives?"

"Probably," Stephanie said. "Dr. Eva over at DOE is still pretty convinced – and I am, really – that the basic detonations of this antimatter-catalyzed drive will be awfully low in fallout, but if you detonate an atomic blast right at ground level you could mix in a bunch of dirt and other stuff and make a lot more fallout. So the way you avoid that is basically to pile up a huge amount of conventional explosives under your nuclear pulse ship and detonate them so that it throws the ship up high enough that you won't get any of the ground in the nuclear blast range."

Jeanne had a vision of Carpathia sitting on a gigantic cartoon barrel labled "TNT." "I see. Well, that's an interesting way to bring home the idea of riding a bomb. When do we have to have the site selected?"

"I'd like it firmed up in a couple months," Stephanie said. "Given logistics and all… I don't think you can wait more than four months, five at the outside, before everyone commits."

Four months. With the toxic combination of national pride, nuclear paranoia, and technical limitations, final selection of a launch site in a mere four months was.. a daunting prospect.

But we have a very, very hard deadline. "I will make it happen, Stephanie," Jeanne said.

"Good," the younger woman said. "Make it sooner, if you can. Because we're going to need all the time we can get."

Jeanne knew all too well how big projects could expand to fill all the time available … and then demand extension after extension.

"You're right. And we have to make clear to everyone on the project, at all times, that time is their adversary. So my last piece of advice: make sure this is on every screen of every person working on the project." She tapped quickly at her computer and spun the screen around, to see Stephanie's look of approval.

"I'll make sure of it," she said.

From a dark screen the brilliant letters glowed:

LAUNCH: T-minus 680 days.

  



Sounds like lots of time when you're a kid.