DISCORDIA

[ 21 ] root cause

     THE ROOT CAUSE is an initiating cause of a condition or causal chain that leads to an outcome or effect of interest. It's used to describe the depth of a causal chain so that an intervention could be implemented to improve performance or prevent an undesirable outcome. The removal of the root cause from the problem-fault-sequence stops the final undesirable event from recurring.

     In other words, she was a glorified repairman.

     Jinny hunched over the computer terminal as she furiously typed in code after code into the source window while monitoring the state of the engine temperatures. It was easy but tedious work, that required a huge chunk of her time to analyse fault trees and report the accuracy of their failure rates. She reached over to pick up her cup of water when the terminal started to analyse her samples again.

     "You've been at that for hours." A young dark haired man approached her terminal and took a seat in an adjacent chair. He crossed his legs at the knee and folded his arms behind his head. "Don't you think you should take a break or something?"

     "No rest for the wicked," she replied with a scoff of laughter. "Sinclair needs a systems analysis A-SAP."

     "Yeah, he really knows how to work a person," Tom said. "But aren't you technically part of the Guard? How'd you get off duty?"

     "I'm also the only person on this entire space station who specialises in software engineering," she rolled her eyes.

     "Then stop scaring off all the candidates and get someone to replace you!" he shook his head in disbelief.

     "They are all weak, can't handle a little pressure, pfft," she retorted. "But that leaves me with the sole honour of updating the Ark's systems."

     "Which puts us all at your mercy, I get it, I get it," he laughed.

     Jinny faked an evil cackle. "One day I'm going to spam the servers with vids of dancing baby penguins."

     "That is totally-" he started heatedly before breaking into a wide grin. "-an amazing idea."

     "Sinclair would go ballistic," she laughed as she examined a few graphs on her screen before going back to the source window and tweaking the numbers in her data mine. "Can you imagine the look on his face- " She lowered her tone. "-we are not here on a vacation, this is the survival of the human race, an entire species resting in the palms of your hands!"

     "We are holding everyone's lives in the palms of our hands." He got up and punched her lightly on the shoulder. "Get something to eat at least, you loony bin."

     Jinny made a face and imitated him sarcastically as he walked away. After about an hour more of data mining, she finally saved her analysis and retired for the day, making her way back to Phoenix station. Halfway there, she received a message on her personal comm and decided to turn back around. The route she took was familiar, one that she had treaded through more times than she could remember in the past five years.

     The solar fields that covered the top of Walden had always been her sanctuary; up there, she felt immortal like she was actually a constellation made up of stars. The reflective surfaces of the glass panels made it look eternal and it was always warmer up there. Especially at night when they had everything on stand-by, it was always a little cold in their floating home.

     Jinny ascended the winding stairs to the top of the platform before making her way to the southeastern corner of the fields, where the floor was made of glass and the rows of solar panels stopped at its edges. She saw him lying down on a blanket with his arms rested above his head and gave a wave when he saw her. Jinny beamed as she went over to join him, lying down next to his lankier frame with shoulders touching, and stared up at the glittering expanse surrounding them.