Chapter 12: The Grind
Timeline: Month 2
Location: GIG/Apex R&D Campus, Agonwood
The next six weeks were a slog of caffeine, solder fumes, and arguments.
We had moved our base of operations to The Barn, turning a corner of the massive hangar into a makeshift apartment/lab. The "Laser Maze" lay dismantled in a crate, much to Marcus's disappointment, replaced by workbenches covered in fried circuit boards and empty coffee cups.
The goal remained simple on paper: Build a "Chaos Emitter." A device that could generate a signal complex enough to mimic biological life without risking a limb.
The reality involved a nightmare of thermal dynamics and signal degradation.
"It's not working again," Julian said, his voice tight. He paced behind my chair, staring at the monitor where my simulation ran. "The entropy curve flattens out after three seconds. It looks like a heartbeat, then it devolves into static."
"The processor is throttling," I said, rubbing my temples. "I can't generate that much data that fast without melting the silicon. It's a heat issue."
"Then fix the heat," Julian demanded.
"I can't cheat thermodynamics, Julian!" I snapped, spinning my chair around. "Unless you suggest submerging the entire device in liquid nitrogen, we are hitting a physical limit."
Julian opened his mouth to argue, but a hand landed gently on his shoulder.
"Take a walk, Julian," Alex said. His voice was calm, low, and brooked no argument. "Go bother Dave about the biological algorithms. Lonna needs room to breathe."
Julian looked at Alex, then at me. He saw the genuine exhaustion in my eyes. For once, he didn't push. He nodded sharply and walked away toward Dave's station on the far side of the hangar.
I slumped back in my chair, exhaling a breath I felt like I'd been holding for a month.
"Thanks," I mumbled.
"He forgets that human brains also have thermal limits," Alex said. He pulled up a stool and sat next to me. He smelled like cedar and fresh linen, a stark contrast to the burnt rosin smell of the lab.
"I'm stuck, Alex," I admitted, gesturing to the fried chip on my desk. "I have the theory. I know what the signal needs to look like. But I can't push the power through the board without frying the traces. I'm a physicist, not an electrician."
"Good thing I hold a Masters in Electrotechnical Engineering," Alex smiled.
He reached over and picked up the circuit board I had been torturing. He put on a pair of magnifying spectacles. They should have looked nerdy, but on him, they just looked like another expensive accessory.
"You're trying to route the power through a standard copper trace," he said, turning the board over in his long fingers. "It creates too much resistance. You're creating a bottleneck."
How can he make even that look cool and effortless?
He set the board down and picked up a soldering iron. "May I?" he asked, looking at me.
"Please," I said. "Save me from the copper."
"Come here," he said softly. "I'll show you how we cheat thermodynamics."
Surprisingly, he grabbed the armrest of my chair and rolled me in until our knees touched. He held the iron, but he guided my hand to the solder wire.
"We need to bypass the board for the main power rail," Alex explained, his voice a low rumble in his chest. "We're going to use a busbar. A solid strip of silver. Lower resistance, less heat."
He guided my hand. The tip of the iron touched the silver, and the solder flowed like liquid mercury, perfect and shiny.
"Steady," he whispered. "Just like that."
It felt intimate in a way that had nothing to do with romance and everything to do with competence. His hand over mine was warm and sure. He was sharing his skill, transferring his confidence to me.
For twenty minutes, we worked in silence, building a bridge of silver across the board. The rest of the lab faded away. It was just the smell of flux, the heat of the iron, and Alex.
"There," Alex said, sitting back. "That should handle the load."
He took the spectacles off and looked at me. His eyes were dark and warm, crinkling at the corners.
"You have good hands, Lonna. Steady."
"I... thanks," I stammered, suddenly aware of how close we were. "You're a good teacher."
"I only teach people who actually want to learn," he said. He reached out and brushed a smudge of soot off my cheek with his thumb. The touch was electric, but gentle. "Julian wants you to be brilliant immediately. I'm willing to wait for you to get there."
"That's... patient of you. Although, you just said I wasn't brilliant." I teased.
"I told you, I'm playing the long game," Alex said, his gaze dropping to my lips for a fleeting second before returning to my eyes.
"Hey!" Dave's voice cut through the bubble. "I think the algorithm is ready for a test run! I've layered the atrial fibrillation pattern over the neural spike train."
Alex pulled his hand back, but he didn't move his stool. He kept that proximity, that claim.
"Let's test it," Alex said to me, his voice for my ears only. "But if it fails, we're done for the day. I'm taking you to get real food."
"Deal," I breathed.
I plugged the modified board into the prototype housing Marcus had built. It was a mess of wires and exposed silver, looking more like a "Hollywood version of a bomb" than a sensor.
Marcus walked over, wiping grease from his hands with a rag. He looked at the device, then at Alex's proximity to me. He didn't say anything, but he moved to stand directly behind my chair, resting his hands on the backrest.
"Housing is secure," Marcus said. "I milled the heat sinks deeper. It should dissipate the load."
"Do we power it up," I asked everyone and got either silence or nods.
The LEDs flickered green. The hum of the capacitors began—a high-pitched whine that usually ended in a pop and a puff of smoke.
This time, the whine stabilized.
"Heat?" Julian called out from across the room.
"Holding at forty degrees," Marcus reported, checking the thermal camera. "The silver is dissipating it."
"Signal?" I asked Dave.
"Broadcasting," Dave said. "Entropy profile is complex. It looks... messy. Alive."
We all watched the monitor. The signal held for ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty.
Then, the whine changed pitch. It turned into a screech.
"Forty-five degrees," Marcus warned. "Climbing."
"Don't lose the signal," Julian yelled. "Hold it!"
"I can't just push it through," I muttered. "And now, it's choking."
A red light flashed on the bench power supply. THERMAL SHUTDOWN.
Pop.
A wisp of acrid blue smoke curled up from the silver busbar Alex and I had just installed.
"Damn it," I sighed, dropping my head into my hands. "Thirty-five seconds. That's not enough time to scan a room."
"It's five seconds more than we had yesterday," Alex said, his hand finding my shoulder and giving it a reassuring squeeze. "It's still progress."
Julian walked back over. He looked at the fried board, then at Alex's hand on my shoulder, then at Marcus standing guard behind me.
"It's a cooling issue," Julian stated flatly. "Air cooling isn't enough. We need liquid."
"We can't put a radiator on a handheld device," Marcus argued. "It'll weigh twenty pounds. Lonna won't be able to lift it."
"Then we rethink the housing," Julian said. "Or we use a cryo-sleeve."
"No," Alex stood up. "We rethink it tomorrow. Lonna is done."
"We're close," Julian argued, his eyes hard.
"And she's exhausted," Alex countered. "She's shaking, Julian. Look at her."
I looked down at my hands. He was right. The fine motor tremors from fatigue were setting in.
"I'm taking her to dinner," Alex announced. "Dave, Marcus, you're welcome to join. Julian, you can stay here and stare at the thermal logs if you want."
Julian looked at me. He looked at Alex. A silent conversation passed between them—a challenge issued and accepted.
"Fine," Julian said coolly. "I have calls to make anyway."
Alex offered me his hand. "Come on. I know a place that serves food on actual ceramic plates."
I took his hand. As we walked out of The Barn, leaving the unfinished, frustrating machine behind, I leaned into Alex. But before I got into the car, I felt a familiar tug on my other arm.
"I'll drive," Marcus said, dangling the keys to my own car. "You look like you're about to pass out. I'm not letting you ride shotgun when you're this tired."
I looked at Alex, then at Marcus.
"I'll follow you," Alex said easily, handing the lead over to Marcus without a fight. "Just make sure she eats."
"Always," Marcus said.
We still hadn't solved the puzzle. It was five more seconds, but the box was still locked—and it was currently smoking on a workbench. But as I sat in the car with Marcus driving and Alex following close behind, I realized the machine wasn't the only thing buckling to the heat and stress. It wasn't the only thing adding to our frustrations.