Stopping for the winter means more work, not less, and that means more information. (Prompt: 020 Full)

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Winter's Work

Morgan pulled his headset off with a sigh, turning to face his companion. "I've managed to squeeze a bit more data compression in there," he informed her. "But you're still going to have to start making some decisions, Julia. If you keep this up, you're going to fill up the system memory before winter's through."

Her eyes narrowed. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"If you think I'm saying it's time to decide what information's important enough to keep and what's going to have to be overwritten, you are."

"But it's all important! There's just so much information about this planet that needs cataloging. And I never thought we'd run out of system memory."

"Yeah, well, we're going to, unless you can uplink to an archive out there somewhere. Maybe you know about one. You know, with all those Station contacts you had before. Are there satellites orbiting this planet?"

The young woman's face fell, and Morgan realized he'd gone too far. "Look, I'm sorry. I just don't know how much more room I'm going to be able to create for you. The scientific database is already five times larger than anything else."

She kept her face turned away. "All right. I'll start looking for duplications and errors. At least that will be something we can take out."

"Julia," he said, contrite. "What I said. That was out of line."

"You said you were sorry," she muttered. "I believe you. That's enough. Thanks, Morgan. I'll take it from here."

Shaking his head, he exited the tent and surveyed the camp before him. When they'd made the decision to stop for the winter, he'd thought there would be less work, not more. To his surprise, the opposite had turned out to be true. Everyone was either overhauling and upgrading their equipment, or gathering information they thought would be useful once spring came and they were back on their way to New Pacifica.

As the person most skilled with their computer systems, it fell to him to make sure they had enough information resources to store all that data.

It's not like you're completely innocent of using information resources, Morgan, he chided himself. He'd deleted most of his personalized VR programs a while back, keeping only three that he couldn't bear to delete. He'd spent too much time working on those. But between what they'd learned during their ill-fated attempt at mining, and the remote studies they'd done on the Morgan River, he still had plenty of data storage in use.

The problem was that, according to Yale, winter was barely half over. Morgan found himself pondering alternatives as he made his way toward the bio-dome, and as a result, he didn't see Danziger until he'd nearly tripped over the other man.

"Watch it," Danziger snarled. "Bad enough I just lost three chips out of this. I can't afford to lose any more if we want clean water."

"Chips? You mean computer chips? In that thing? What is it, a water filter?"

"It is. But whoever designed it thought it needed to be able to analyze the impurities in addition to removing them. I've bypassed as much of that as I can, but can't get around it entirely." He rocked back on his heels, eyes narrowing. "What's it to you?"

Morgan's mind had already started racing. "What did you do with the computer memory that you bypassed? Is it just sitting there unused?"

"Yeah, except for the chips that've gone bad." Danzier's surliness had seemed to disappear when he realized that Morgan was apparently on to something. "Why?"

"Do you have anything else that's basically just ignoring its memory chips? Because if you do, I might have a use for them."

"You talking about all that grousing you've been doing over information resources? Could you put stuff on those?"

"Possibly." It'd be worth a try, anyway.

"I can't completely bypass the operational routines."

"Do you need to?" asked Morgan. "All I need is the unused space. I could use it to store things we need to keep but don't need to access every day."

Danziger's eyes narrowed. "It'd be a lot of work to reconfigure the chips. You sure you're up to it?"

"You'd prefer the alternative?" At the other man's silence, he continued. "It's not like there isn't any work anyway. Our days have been a lot fuller than we'd thought they would be."

"That's true." He shook his head. "But I never thought I'd find myself agreeing with you about the need to work."

Neither had Morgan, if he was honest with himself about it. But this winter had been full of surprises. This one, though, wasn't going to be one of the unwelcome ones. He could live with it. It certainly was better than a winter full of nothing but boredom, free time and lost information.