Not that being indoors did her too much good. The headaches and nausea and homesickness stuck with her even while she was on her Wonder, like right then. Being there did give her a some reprieve from it, but not by much. It was easier to work, though, so that was a good thing. She was still puzzling her way through what the Code had mentioned, about a defense system to protect her Wonder from the effects of the storm.
Unfortunately, for the past few days she had been actively avoiding electronics for fear of zapping them to death. A few computers at work had already become casualties to the unusual static buildup in her body, as well as her phone and a few other electronics she tried to use along the way. It wasn’t until she vented to one of her friends that she was offered some kind of solution to it–something called an anti-static wristband.
Granted, it would only work when she was at home where she could properly attach it to a grounding point, but at least it was something!
She bought one and immediately tested it once she got home, and once she found that it worked she headed back to her Wonder just some hours later to try and test it there as well. And she knew it wasn’t exactly a normal grounding point, but thankfully the theory translated to Mercurian technology as well, which meant that her main console was safe while she tried to poke around for any kind of information about the devices scattered about, getting slaughtered by the storm outside.
With the map not yielding any more information than what she’d already found, she had moved on to her folder in the USB. Thanks to her predecessors, there was a lot of information there…but. It was a double-edged sword in that this also meant she had a lot to sift through. And to make matters worse, with pretty much all the information being in a variety of alien languages she could only glean information from whatever pictures or diagrams she came across.
So.
Suffice it to say she’d been clicking her way through the files for a while now, and she’d so far barely made any kind of dent.
Eventually though, she found her way inside a folder full of blueprints, diagrams, and schematics–and not just image files, but also a file that displayed a simulation of how the devices would function in theory, once constructed. For the first time since she started, Ekstrom felt an inkling of hope in actually finding something that could potentially be some kind of defense system she could look into repairing. It was a long shot, but maybe…
It was an hour or so later that she was staring at a very specific image of the device she managed to bring down with her from the surface, just above her wonder. The next few files were a blueprint of a machine, a diagram for what looked like a net and a corresponding schematic for that net. And then the next file was that simulation file
She watched as a single current shot up out of the silhouette of that machine from the blueprint, eventually making contact with the first of those small devices, and from there she watched as the simulation played “connect the dots,” eventually zooming out to show that the entire Wonder was completely covered.
Ekstrom watched it a few more times, then found herself going back to the image files to try and find a hint as to where the room where this theoretical machine was supposed to be in. It took a few passes, but eventually, and with a bit of squinting, she spotted it. A familiar symbol, one she’d seen countless times on various runs through the Circuit.
The Knight eased back in her chair, a small, confident smile settled on her face because she knew exactly where to find that machine. Upon realizing that, she was already jumping ahead a few steps with the questions running through her mind.
How many of those devices needed repairs? Did they maybe make spares? Would it need repairs? How long would it take to repair in the first place? And even once she repaired it, how exactly does it turn on? Was there a power button, like on a computer? Did she have to hook it up to something else? To something in the Primary Grid, maybe?
All these and more started piling up as she carefully ran through possible answers for each, but she calmly sorted through each thought as it came. She'd gotten past the hurdle of figuring out if something like this even existed in the first place. Now that she found it, it was just a matter of figuring out how to activate it. She had the blueprints, diagrams, and schematics right in front of her, though granted whatever text was available was in an alien language but she was confident she could go by the pictures alone at this point since she wasn't developing the technology but trying to make repairs where potentially needed.
And hey. If she managed to find the way to powering her entire Wonder, what was one more machine inside of it?
885 (gdocs)
Backdated to 3/18/25.
Backdated to 3/18/25.
