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short stories - Story in which some people cause technological systems to fail


I am looking for the name and author associated with a story that I read in a magazine (probably Analog) in the mid 1990s.


The primary conceit was that there exist certain people around whom machines, computers etc. simply fail more often then they do when these folks are not around. There is a log-scale for denoting how strong the effect is.


Other useful tidbits:




  • It may have been one of a running time-line.





  • It took place at a special facility on the moon---out of the way of others who might come to harm---with heavy redundancy of simple systems to provide atmospheric services, food, etc . and where these people have been (voluntarily, I believe) concentrated for research purposes.




  • The narrator notes that everyone in this select group owns their own crowbar (using it to achieve egress from their own cubicle after a failure of the door...)




  • It involved a nanotech spacesuit design.





  • There is mention of a no-fly zone around the facility.





Answer



Was it Down Under Crater Billy by Stephen L. Burns?


The nanotech spacesuit was essentially a sheet of nanobots over a passage, and simply walking through it put it on and activated it. There was also an incident where



an automated kitchen generated a thanksgiving dinner with far too much tryptophan and rendered a good number of the inhabitants unconscious.




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