Of course, I didn’t even make it halfway home before the two of them caught up to me. Even with the failed experiment that was my drone, my father could probably jog faster than I could run. As for my mother, she was more the type to go for efficiency rather than speed.
“Do you mind checking on the breakers before heading inside?” She asked as the building came into sight.
As I was the only one without something to carry, I agreed. Though I did wonder where Bert had run off to. “Either of you know where Bert went?”
“He went to get the last of his stuff packed for the trip.” My mother spoke as if the answer was obvious, and it probably was. But I would have thought that he was already packed. Then again, the guy did always leave things to the last minute.
While my mother went through the garage door to put her tools away and my father went upstairs to put the drone somewhere, I moved to the back of the house to check on the breaker panel. Every breaker was tripped. That was something that never happened.
Well, almost never. If there was a massive surge of mana, that could cause the breakers to trip all at one time as the various breakers surged past their set point. But that would need something as strong as a bolt of pure mana hitting the panel to cause such a thing to happen.
Honestly, electricity and mana were not all that different when it came to some things. Based on all the stuff my mother has taught me, how they flow was one such thing. Which begged the question, what could cause an electric panel to trip like this?
Well, the answer was quite simple. A massive surge, like a lightning strike or transformer fault, was the most common. Dead shorts, phase being out of sync, or a bad transformer were also possible. However, there was another option, though it was rare. An EMP.
Until earlier today, I didn’t even think it was possible to create such a massive wave of mana. And, just like an EMP, the wave knocked everything it came into contact with offline.
With how the emergency systems on our phones were hardened against massive bursts of mana, it made sense that they were able to come back with some functionality. As for our houses, I wouldn’t be surprised if a bunch of the fuses and wires were completely burned out.
My hands flicked through breaker after breaker. Resetting each one, save the big one. That one I saved for last. With a soft prayer that this would fix the mana flow, I flipped the final breaker.
Nothing happened. There was no hissing buzz of mana flowing through the lines nor a sizzle and pop as circuits or wires gave under the surge. Everything just stayed silent. Which either meant the line was still down, or something else was wrong. Sadly, given how the houses around us were lit up, I was going to go with there being another issue.
I didn’t have to check all that hard to find it. I had just hoped they were fine. After all, what was the point of a breaker if not to protect the various parts further down the line? Parts like the three fuses built into the center of the panel. Fuses that connected the main breaker to the rest of the system.
Honestly, if I ever got my hands on the guy that designed this system, I was going to wring his neck. There was absolutely no need for fuses in this damned panel. Yet the city required the damned things. Each of which were completely blackened.
Not willing to deal with the issue, and already knowing we lacked any replacements, I grabbed a couple pieces of foil and wire from the garage. With a few twists of the wires and a liberal use of the foil, I used the dead fuses to jury-rig temporary replacements.
They wouldn’t hold up to much, but it wasn’t like we were going to be using the garage for a bit. So it was fine. At least until my parents could secure a few replacements.
For a brief moment, I worried that my fix wouldn’t work. That my fuck up with the drone was a sign that I had lost my touch. Fortunately for me, when I flipped the breaker back on, the outside light above me flickered for a moment before the glow stabilized to its normal cold blue-white hue.
A whosh of air rushed out of me as I breathed a sigh of relief. I had no clue what I would have done if I had lost my skills. I doubted I would have even been welcomed into the academy. It was only thanks to my ability to repair things that I was offered anything.
Speaking of offers, I needed to figure out which one I wanted to take. The Technical Department sounded interesting. With all the various stories my mother told me of her time in school, it fit me pretty well.
Too bad there was a catch. To keep the offer, I had to meet a salvage quota. Which meant I had to leave the safety of the walls to gather materials. Also, what counted as salvage? Surely none of the ruins near the academy were left untouched. Though if they were, that begged the question: why?
Was there something guarding the place? Something that wasn’t really a threat to the academy and the city built around it. Yet powerful enough that first years stood no chance against it.
Yeah, I doubted the possibility. Sure, my parents were strong, but even I knew they were nothing compared to any of the people living at the center of our city. And that was before taking into account all of their equipment.
Then there was the Machine Department. It sounded like the safe option, but was it what I wanted? While the offer didn’t say I had any quotas to meet, it did say I would be required to work on projects they told me to.
“What has you thinking so hard?” My mother asked as I wandered into the front room. To my surprise, both her and my father had my drone out on the counter. Pieces were scattered all over the place as though they were trying to fix it.
In all honesty, they could have the damned thing. It was a nice project, but I doubted I would have time to work on it anytime soon. And even if I did, it was more of a fun project than anything practical.
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“Just trying to figure out which offer to take.” I shrugged.
Before I could make it down the hall to my room, my father spoke up. “Why not send a message to the academy asking to put off the decision until after the first month?” I could do that? Surely not. “That first month is all basic training anyway. Everyone is required to take those classes first, no matter who you are or what you are in the academy to study.”
Actually, that made sense. With a nod, I pulled out my pad to send them a message, only to remember the thing still needed to be fixed. Since I was going to be fixing mine, I might as well get everyone's done at the same time. “I have to fix my pad first. Do either of you want yours fixed?”
With a soft underhanded throw, my father tossed both his and my mother's in my direction. The arcs were perfect. Unfortunately, I fumbled the first and didn’t have time to even attempt to catch the second. While my mother constantly reminded me that my head was as hard as a rock, that didn’t mean the corner of the device didn’t hurt.
A grumbled curse escaped my lips before I could stop it. “Eli!” My mother admonished me. “What did I say about cursing in the house?”
“Not to.” The words came out harsher than I meant them, but god damn that hurt. Not wanting to cause any more issues, I started toward my door only to stop as I recalled the fuses. “Oh, and we need to order more house fuses. The three in our panel were burned out.”
“Foil and wire?” My mother asked. Who do you think I learned the trick from?
At my nod, my father grunted. “We can pick them up when we get back from our trip.” I just hoped that they remembered to turn the breaker off before I left. Who knew when the next time any of us would be back, and it wouldn’t do to let the place burn down.
With all three devices in my hands, I walked to my small workbench and flipped the switch to activate it. Nothing happened. The annoyed groan left me before I could stop it. Likely as not, the fuse inside the thing had popped. At least the fuses it used were one of the more commonly used sizes.
A few minutes later, the workbench was up and running. As I moved to pop open the first pad, I found that the table wasn’t the only thing that needed to be fixed before I could get to work.
Nearly every one of the tools on my bench needed work. The only tools that were fine were those that didn’t use mana. Either electric tools that I managed to get off the market, or those that were completely manual.
Hissing out my curses, I unscrewed, pried, twisted, and popped open each tool. Nearly every one of them was fucked. Unlike the table and the house, these ran on little mana cells. Which meant that the power was stable. As such, there was no need to install a fuse.
Without a fuse, the mana that washed through the circuit went wild. Wires were melted, boards burned, and cells popped. There was no way to fix these without a full rebuild. Something that I didn’t have the time or willpower to deal with right now.
Even if I did have the time, I wouldn’t waste it on rebuilding the tools. I would strip them and build them anew. They were reaching the end of life anyway. But, how would I go about repairing the pads? Actually, what was wrong with the devices anyway?
They resisted my efforts to get inside for all of a minute before they gave in to my rather forceful insistence. The flat mana cell batteries looked completely fine. So did all of the various chips. The only thing that looked slightly singed was a series of small fuses built into the battery circuit.
We had a few in the storage room, but the question was how to replace them. My soldering iron was one of the devices lying in pieces in the box with the rest of the broken tools.
“How bad is it?” My mother’s voice startled me.
Even as my heart beat a mile a minute, I pointed at the row of burnt parts. “All of the fuses are blown.” Then I gestured at the box of broken tools. “And anything without a fuse was practically turned into scrap.”
“Including your soldering iron, I see.”
“Yeah,” I groaned. “How do you think yours fared?”
“All of my stuff is fine.” Something told me that she was about to give me a lecture about preparing for the worst or some such. “There are spaces out in the wild where the mana in the air is high enough to push into circuits. Without proper protections, the circuits fail. What would you do if that circuit was running a water pump or piece of equipment? Would you take the time to repair the entire board?”
“No,” I scoffed at the complete waste of time. “I would use a fuse.” Before she could continue, I pointed out, “But that would mean that I would be on the other side of the wall. Something I have never wanted to do.” And yet here I was, getting ready to do just that.
She shrugged. “You never know what is going to happen. It is best to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Still, what if you built something for us to take and we entered such a region? I may not have time to rebuild the device.”
That was a good point. Most everything I worked on wasn’t for me. I had to stop thinking about what would work for me or in the area I was in. I needed to think about what they would be using it for and where. To make sure that it could handle the worst-case scenarios.
“And what if there is no time to fix a fuse? What if that device isn’t a simple tool but a weapon or a shield?” My eyes widened. “While self-resetting fuses are more expensive, I use them in every device I make.”
“But how do you keep the fuse from degrading?”
“I don’t.” She pulled out her portable workbench. It was little more than a mat that allowed her to hold various pieces in place as she worked on them.
With a flick, the panel holding the mana batteries opened. Sitting between them and the main circuitry was a pair of fuses. Unlike traditional fuses, these reminded me of tiny bulbs. They even screwed into the board like bulbs.
“Professor Harggarty was the one to come up with these little beauties.” She pulled one out and handed it to me. “The fluid inside is a mix of a few things. Of what, I cannot tell you, but the moment the wire is broken, the liquid absorbs the excess and uses it to repair the wire. Unfortunately, in doing so, the liquid is slowly used up.”
“So the liquid is both the repairer and the indicator on when to replace the fuse,” I asked.
“Correct.” She took the fuse and put it back into the device. “While I cannot tell you what to do with your time or funds while at the academy, I would recommend taking the time to rebuild all your tools and adding in some of these.”
“Where would I even get them?”
“Oh, the academy store sells them.” Ah. Which explained the small boxes my mother kept getting from the place. I had wondered about that, but never quite got around to asking. “For now, let me go get my tools so that you can get these things fixed and send off that message.”
With that, she popped out of the room only to pop back in less than a minute later with the soldering tool in her hand. “Oh, and we found the issue with your drone.”
“You what?” I nearly dropped the tool as I tried to process her words.
“Yeah.” She pointed at the various popped fuses. “While there was little damage to most of the circuits, the connection points between the main system and the intelligence chip were melted. Your father and I are going to take the drone back to the testing room…”
As I tried to get up to join them, she shoved me back into the chair. “You and I both know how boring it is to check the intelligence chip.”
So many simulations, all provided automatically by the test equipment. The only reason my mom had thrown the spider at the drone was to see if we could get any reaction. Now that I knew the connector was the issue, the lack of a reaction made sense.
“So, I want you to stay here, finish fixing those pads, and get packed.” She was not letting me get out of this trip now that I had agreed. With a resigned sigh, I gave her a nod and returned to the task at hand. All the while sending prayers up to whatever god watched over us that the trip would be uneventful.
