Crossroads and Ailana’s Journal: Part 2—2026-07-07 (Patreon)

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TOTALLY COOKED

Nick Fashola and Evelyn Chandler sat down to discuss the state of Alderwick’s failing systems. Before they got into that, Nick asked about her move and whether she was satisfied with the condo.

“More than satisfied,” Evelyn replied. “You said the second bedroom furniture can be moved out and I can set it up as an office?”

“Of course,” Nick replied. “I can schedule movers whenever you’re ready.”

“Go ahead with that. And Alderwick will buy office furniture for me?”

“Yep… just let me know what you want.”

They talked about her needs for a little while, then got to the matter of Alderwick’s problem.

“Look, let me be honest,” Evelyn said. “Your information systems director, Simon Fenn, isn’t going to be happy. Essentially, System Three is rebelling.”

“Rebelling?”

“Parts of it are totally cooked. Two action-level subsystems are totally down. They auto-closed all the ports like there was an incoming hack, so the shell system can’t even connect. The top admin layer might be okay but the subsystems aren't listening.”

“So what’s the go-forward?” Nick asked.

“You said the actual programmers are not available?”

Nick shook his head. “International politics.”

“We need someone. I didn’t write the base code. I connected the systems and set up the shell to talk to everything. I’m going to shut down the action systems and see if the admin and management layers stabilize.”

“Were you able to get the logs I asked for?”

“I did. I dropped them in a SharePoint folder for you,” Evelyn replied.

“I’ll dig into those and see if I can find out who’s mad at us right now.”

With two of the four action systems offline, half your people probably are. I talked to Fenn… I told him I couldn’t believe he let an AI hire people without a lot more close oversight.”

Nick nodded. “This project just wasn’t his priority. He’s accountable for the big fish.”

“Now, you’re in charge of the guppies?”

“I am. I’m going to make everything right. This is important to the owners.”

Evelyn smiled. “Your aunt and uncle.”

“Yeah. I’m going to make everything right. I just need time. And your help.”

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CHANGES by Kent Marlon

I’m between work calls and thought I’d check in. By now, you probably heard that Izzy and I are most likely moving to South Padre Island.

Let me just take away the “most likely” and explain what’s going on.

The plan is to be in SPI by the 15th. Izzy has a job waiting at a clinic there. She’ll be doing discharge follow-up work as a social worker. I’m probably not saying that exactly right.

I want to circle back and say that I believe providence has been pretty busy in all this. Call it a quiet miracle if you want.

Izzy and me both work for Humanity Housing. I’m half-time running crews of volunteers for their home repair program. She does the casework for people in the Stop-Gap Housing program. Us leaving could have put Humanity Housing back on its heels.

Watch what happened instead…

Chloe Hastings ran into some guy she knew from freshman year of college. He was looking for a place to live so he can go to NYU for grad school. She recommended Crossroads.

Addison—always chatty, never shy—found out he was starting a master’s in social work. Hold that thought.

Melissa Gaines, who works at Humanity Housing, is moving to Crossroads this week. She’ll have a two-bedroom in Phase II. So, Addison has talked to her.

Addison decided—because she sort of does things like that—the new guy, Aidan Red Elk, could take Izzy’s job and mine, too. She made calls.

Turns out, Dexter Helmer agreed. So, my job and Izzy’s are being rolled up, chopped up, and reorganized so that between Melissa, Dexter, and Aidan, all the bases get covered.

Now, Izzy and I can make the move without feeling like we left a sinking ship behind us.

Our big challenge between now and the 15th is finding a place to live. We’re going to call Ailana and Jason Keller to see if they can do some recon and help us find something in the area. We need two places, of course.

And we’re both in the process of getting our work licenses there. I guess more on that another time.

HERE I AM by Evelyn Chandler

I do feel bad for Alderwick’s misfortune, but their move to correct their problem has led to me finding something I don’t think I knew I needed.

A better quality of life.

I founded Tessera Bridge Systems in 2013 after Palo Alto Networks, where I had been working, went public in 2012. I had exercised a substantial portion of my employee options and purchased additional shares, so I had the capital to make a move.

I picked Houston and decided to put my dissertation findings to work. My doctoral research focused on secure interoperability among heterogeneous distributed systems.

That work became the foundation of Tessera: building secure bridges between systems that were never designed to cooperate. Turns out, I’m pretty good at getting hardware and software to play nice together.

Houston was nice. But it’s a big, busy city. They say Houston is an hour's drive from Houston. If you’re downtown and traffic’s bad, it could be worse. But for years, I poured myself into Tessera, so that didn’t matter. But now?

I’m 47 and work has been my life.

I’ve been on retainer with Alderwick for a while. They pay me more than enough to cover the mortgage on my condo, but they expect me to return their calls promptly. Rarely do I bill enough hours to exceed the retainer.

Nick Fashola says they want me more hands-on with the side project he’s supposed to redeem. For me, that means a free place to live with a view of the Gulf and a short walk to the beach. For me, it means a better quality of life, more income, and close access to things I love. Goodbye, Houston.

South Padre Island is better for many of my non-work interests: sailing, paddleboarding, kayaking, bird photography, beaches, weather watching, astronomy, and snorkeling.

I’ve always preferred warm coastal environments and find moving water mentally restorative. Unlike a software problem, the ocean cannot be debugged, optimized, or persuaded to follow my architecture.

I’m here. Now, I just need to get my bearings, learn the area, and start enjoying my new life.

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