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Pride was a funny thing for Natalie. In the shadow of her own accomplishments she could only see the darkness and never appreciate the shade. For all the successes of the Ring, her Pylon, or her charities, any small failure outweighed all else. Standing tall with pride made her a target for ridicule and blame. And so she talked down what she’d done and when something (inevitably) went wrong, she would hang her head and apologize before setting off to fix things. It kept her safe but it kept her low. And her girlfriend wanted to see her fly. Today it was work on the Ring that vexed her.
Below King’s Canyon was the main generator space, a sprawling complex of concrete tunnels and banks of power cells. The place went in a huge interconnected loop and cascaded down across half a dozen levels. It was amazing that the island didn’t collapse with all the secret facilities under it. Down here was everything that kept the Ring functioning and something was wrong. The last match had to be scrubbed after the inner shield failed and everyone got scorched by an uncontained Ring. Natalie was still kicking herself over it.
Her toolbox thudded on the ground next to a set of power conversion modules. The room had a dozen of the towering monoliths of grey metal, fed by dozens of thick black cables. They took the raw power from the massive reactors that powered the whole arena and converted it to function with the delicate systems that kept the Ring functional. They were massive and plentiful, and very, very expensive. Behind the engineer, Renee casually leaned against the wall. Ostensibly she was here for security and came with a wingman strapped to her thigh. But her role was far more valuable. She was morale support. The mere presence of the skirmisher was soothing and her level head kept Natalie where she needed to be. Renee hummed.
“Walk me through it Nat. Why are we starting here?” Ever since Natalie told her about the ‘rubber duck method’, Renee had taken to requesting an explanation for her fixes. It was an excuse for her to listen to the brilliant young woman speak and it gave Natalie a chance to catch her own mistakes.
“Oui. I looked at the readouts right before the dome shield failed. The frequency of power through the shield generator was a harmonic of the power frequency of the generators electrical bus, but not of the PCM output. So then by checking the shield symmetry logs, I found that it failed starting at the six o’clock position, therefore if I am right, it was this PCM bank.” Natalie recited. She worked it over in her head. All of it made sense to her, and though Renee wasn’t entirely sure what she was talking about, the logic followed.
But there’d already been plenty of dead end hunches and guesses. Kings Canyon had been cooler than usual for two weeks, so perhaps somewhere in the design of the Ring there was a flaw. Natalie grumbled to herself. She thought she’d been careful, that she’d accounted for extreme weather but maybe not careful enough. If anything she made could just work for once, she could feel happy. With a sigh she began the latest investigation.
The engineer squeezed between the deenergized modules, searching for any outward sign of something wrong. None were scorched or deformed. She rubbed her hand along one. It was still warm from when it had been running just a few minutes ago. Maybe that was the solution. Natalie pet each module as if to soothe them like a frightened cat. As she rubbed her palm down the fifth she pulled it away. The casing was still as hot as a tray in the oven. Something was wrong here.
“Oh no, poor thing. You are burning up. Let us see what is the matter.” Natalie hummed. She always talked to her inventions like they were people, because in many ways they were to her. They had personalities and quirks, their good days and their bad days. “I’m going to open you up now, amie.” She said as she began to undo the locks.
“On to something already? The voices still aren’t helping us.” Renee chuckled. The subtle encouragement did not go unnoticed. She helped Natalie take the heavy access panel off and peered over the engineer’s shoulder.
She’d already started mumbling instructions to herself in French. What was an incomprehensible tangle of wires and terminals to Renee was as simple as field stripping an R-301 to her girlfriend. Unlike the outside, there was damage here. Blackened circuit boards still smelt of burnt plastic and shredded wires dangled from their ports. It wasn’t until a small squeak jumpscared Natalie that she found the source of her woes: a very confused little rat. He still had a piece of incredibly expensive super conducting wire in his mouth too.
“Oh, silly thing. You caused me so much trouble, come here petit ami. ” Natalie cupped her hands for the grey rat to climb into.
“So that’s our problem. You should feed him to Nikola for making you work today.” Renee teased but got smacked on the arm.
“That is not funny! He is too cute to be eaten. Besides, Nikola is too much of a baby. He would be scared of our new friend. I think Ash would like him.” Natalie held on to the rat and stood. There was nothing more for them to do now. The power conversion module would need replacing, a labor intensive and time consuming task that at least she didn’t have to take part in. And she’d have to see about cruelty free ways to evict the uncleared visitors.
The engineer disconnected the damaged power converter and ran a diagnostic. With only one offline, the Ring could still run at full power, it could run with half of them down. A safety feature had tripped to deactivate the inner shield to keep the PCMs from overloading. It was supposed to be momentary but the Syndicate had already confirmed their software had bugged. The lower power was the only reason the rat didn’t get a worse fate than a bit of a zap. It didn’t take much more looking to find how her got inside the sealed up unit either. During maintenance the Syndicate got lazy and hadn’t reinstalled it right, leaving a small gap under its base. Just big enough for a rat.
“Well you said this would take all weekend and it’s only noon now. You want lunch? After we drop him off somewhere.” Renee offered. At first begrudgingly she pet the rat, but she did have to admit he was cute.
“Oui. Bloodhound can take care of him for now, they are very good with animals. But I’m glad this is over with.” Natalie sighed. The sudden relief on her shoulders left her somewhat confused.
“That sounds like a good idea. And I’m proud of you. You figure this out and you proved again you designed the Ring right. Annoyingly right.” Renee teased. Ever since Natalie had returned it to counter her abilities, Wraith had been a little salty.
But inside, Natalie was glowing. Compliments and praise from Renee were rare, but always sincere. She looked over her shoulder at one small portion of her Ring. Her and her Papa’s life’s work was down here, an intricate mechanism that only she now had mastery of. A little pride swelled in her chest. Maybe she wasn’t a half bad engineer. But a smooch on the cheek from Renee sent her confidence soaring.