2021-09-07 ---------- michael baylor and i were on assignment for nasaspaceflight at spacex's production facility in what remained of boca chica texas, with permission to cover the behind the scenes development process of the starship program. we had just come inside from the baking hot sunlight, pushing a small rattling plywood cart full of junk into the ground fabrication building. michael had had a friendly argument with one of the workers over whether the idea they were pursuing would work. michael thought it would work, but by then they had all moved on to a different approach. in order to jack apart two large heavy steel frames by a precise amount, the workers had welded an eccentric bushing to some thick rebar that had been bent into an L shape. pulling on the end of the rebar should rotate the bushing and separate the pieces of the frame. however, the "bushing" was just a rusty short segment of pipe that had been tack welded on. the friction from the weight of the frames caused the meager weld to fail in shear and then rotate freely to no effect. so baylor wanted to go weld it up properly and try again. we weren't critical to getting the job done, as reporters, so we carried the contraption over into the welding corner. "i was thinking about trying to get a job at spacex, but i don't think i'm quite insane enough to work here." i said out loud to nobody in particular. a young man walking by in a hard hat and blue spacex t-shirt paused and looked at me expectantly, then realized i wasn't talking to him and continued on with whatever mission he was on. it was interesting to recognize so many people from the security camera footage, and see them just being normal humans interacting. a small team was discussing the addition of some vertical supports to a pickup truck bed. baylor was affixing the pipe segment in a vise, while i wrangled the other end of the rebar into position. "you know we really should get a picture of it before goobering it up with your amateur welds. it's part of the story. you can't just ignore your real job because you want to play construction worker." i said to him accusingly. "nah, that would take too much time to do right, and this is just a minor thing." he had aligned the pipe now, and was studying the dials on the welder. well if michael was about to weld on this precious historical artifact, i had better hurry up and get a photo of it before it was irreversibly altered. so i took my little point and shoot camera out of my pocket, turned it on, held it up to the pipe, put my gloved finger on the trigger button, and BOOM, a bright flash of light and a heavy bodily sinking sensation. michael and i looked at each other, surprised pikachus. i looked at the camera, wondering if i had left the flash on. it was completely dead. what just happened? that was a loud boom! "did I do that?" i pointed at myself, totally not doing a steve urkel. the immediate boom exactly as i was squeezing the camera button was just too much of a coincidence. i gazed around the room in a stupor. so the speculation on the forum was true then? they had actually installed EMP devices in sensitive production areas to deter information leaks. how would it even know the difference between a camera flash and a welder, or the currently rumbling heat lightning outside? was there some kind of sophisticated machine learning system monitoring the entire EM spectrum? what about authorized cameras, did they disable the whole system or could it tell them apart? several engineers had stopped their jobs and were standing around in the center of the room, looking up and a mysterious shimmering light up there. "what was it man? magnetic fields, dark matter..." one of the engineers joked. slowly the unusual sight resolved itself in my brain. there was a large square bubble of metallized mylar sagging down from the ceiling towards us, about five meters on a side, with a square cutout in the center. it must be the remains of the EMP device. did i just nuke several dozen peoples' phones? oh crap, i wasn't even supposed to be in this building. better act normal... "gonna have to replace it." i said nonchalantly, standing with my arms crossed like the other engineers. everyone nodded and went back to work.