Supplemental Record
Document Review — Network Continuity Proposal IS-41
A systems team submitted a technical proposal to Sykes concerning an upgrade to several FSC information networks.
Sykes returned the document without approving it.
Attached to the front was a handwritten note:
“Recommend RCP validation before NCS integration. Current FDR dependency may compromise OSP continuity if the APL fails during secondary RST transfer.”
The project lead approached Sykes shortly afterward and admitted that he did not understand the note.
Sykes asked which part was unclear.
The engineer pointed to several acronyms.
Sykes replied:
Sykes: “Exactly.”
None of the abbreviations in the note meant anything.
He then asked the engineer how many acronyms an FSC employee might reasonably encounter across Information Sciences, Security, Intelligence, Infrastructure, Health, Combat, Wonder classification, base operations, and ordinary technical work.
The engineer did not offer a number.
Sykes handed the proposal back.
Sykes: “Then why are you assuming the reader knows yours?”
Sykes: “There is too much here for anyone to know all of it.”
He continued:
Sykes: “Every department thinks its abbreviations are obvious because everyone in that department uses them.”
Sykes: “Then the document leaves the department.”
Sykes's guidance was subsequently adopted informally throughout the Fail Safe Contingency, Eliminating a large number of Department Specific Acronyms, though more largely adopted cross Branch Acronyms did persist
“Acronyms should be used sparingly, as each one creates another possible barrier to the correct digestion of information.”
Personnel Observation
High-Frequency Hearing
Despite his age, Sykes retains an abnormally strong sensitivity to high-frequency noise.
He can hear transformer whine, poorly shielded power supplies, certain display electronics, failing capacitors, and other electrical sounds that are inaudible to most personnel in the same room.
His ability has occasionally identified equipment beginning to fail before diagnostic systems detected a problem.
Sykes will stop conversations to locate a faint electronic whine, unplug charging adapters belonging to other personnel, shut off idle monitors, or request that equipment be removed from a room because it is producing a sound nobody else can hear.
Several supposed equipment faults reported by Sykes have subsequently been confirmed.
Several others have not.
A particularly contentious incident involved a ceiling-mounted power converter that Sykes complained about for nearly two months before Infrastructure finally replaced it simply to end the complaints.
Sykes reported that the replacement was silent.
Everyone else reported that both devices had been silent.
