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English
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Published:
2021-08-07
Words:
359
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1/1
Comments:
11
Kudos:
63
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5
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624

Rubber Ducky

Summary:

I'm sure their days are filled with moments like this.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

Rutherford reseated one last chip and routed power back into the unit. It came online with a series of suspiciously normal chirps, and the lights on the panel blinked a uniform green. His HUD confirmed:

> OVERFLOW 0%

"Oh my god?" He breathed. Could it really--? Give it another second, make sure, okay, okay, it's still on! It's stable! It's on and it's stable and it's fixed and what the HELL, that actually worked!

"Ha HAAAAA!" He whooped out loud, punching the air. Well, no, he'd MEANT to punch the air, but this conduit had a low ceiling. He chuckled at himself, shaking his hand.

"Haha, ow." As soon as the hand stopped smarting, he slapped his comm badge. "Tendi! Tendi, I fixed the hamilton converter! We just needed to replace the orthon adapter with a digon and gate the overflow!"

"Oh my god, that's amazing!" Tendi cheered from the other side of the ship. "See? I knew you could do it!"

Rutherford couldn't help but laugh. "You don't even know what IT is!" Last night, he'd been talking through the problem with her-- well, really more talking through the problem AT her. Tendi wasn't an engineer. She barely knew what a hamilton converter was FOR, never mind what might be wrong with it. But that didn't matter. She listened and nodded and insisted that he could do it!... whatever it was.

He, however, had been less optimistic. When he'd pulled the panel off this morning, he'd still had a total of zero ideas. But after a few hours of false starts, he'd eventually found a fix-- and not just any fix, but a surprisingly COOL one.

He should really be sharing this moment with one of the other engineers, he knew. Teambuilding, knowledge sharing, all. Tendi couldn't appreciate what he'd just accomplished. She wouldn't whistle and give him an "oh damn, that's slick!"

And yet... none of the engineers could make him smile like he was smiling now.

Tendi laughed along with him. "Yeah, but I know you, and that's all I need!"

Rutherford closed the panel, feeling like his heart might burst through his chest.

Same, Tendi. Same.

Notes:

In software development, "rubber ducking" is where you explain your problem to an inanimate object-- a rubber duck, a desk toy, a coworker who doesn't understand a single thing about your problem. Often times, the act of talking through the issue is enough to get the brain to surface a solution.

The title is also a reference to the Sesame Street song. If they still have Sesame Street in the 24th century, Sam spends the rest of the afternoon humming it.