An Unexpected Fried Entree

Writers: Jane, Kurt
Date Posted: 3rd April 2008

Characters: Arateyka, Feydik
Description: Arateyka assists Feydik in some electrical repairs
Location: River Bluff Weyr
Date: month 9, day 10 of Turn 4

When Thread had passed, Arateyka made her way down to the substation where the technicians who dealt with the electrical needs of the Weyr based themselves. With a Turn-long stint at the Technicians Hall in her recent past it was often her that got assigned to help the technicians when they needed it. She pushed the heavy door open and walked into the huge workshop, looking around for the master she had been told to report to.

"Hey, Feydik. Where is everybody?"

Feydik looked up from behind the long, wooden table at which he was working. For a moment, his visage was a ridiculous sight, as his eyes were hidden behind huge round goggles made of smoked glass. "Oh!
Hello!" Feydik pulled the goggles from his eyes and set them aside, then placed the heated iron implement that he was using to fuse wire together aside onto a ceramic stand. "They needed extra hands for the ground crew.
Apparently a few spots got pretty heavily hit by the fall, so they wanted to take no chances. I would have gone myself, but if I don't get this switch repaired, we'll have some dark tunnels come nightfall."

Arateyka nodded, leaning over to inspect the other man's soldering.
"You're better at this stuff than I am," she admitted with a tinge of envy. She would never be good at everything, despite wishing she could be. "I was sent to be an extra pair of hands if I was needed."

"You can thank Senior Journeywoman Ivvala for that," Feydik smiled, "I don't know if you ever met her, but she was a real stickler for proper solderwork. I spent a lot of extra hours in the workshop redoing assignments that she judged to be 'functional, yet sloppy'." He chuckled, recalling the memory. "Well, anyhow, it's good that you're here! Uh, here, you can help me re-install the switch on the main generator. What I need is somebody to operate the main breaker panel while I make the necessary connections. Nothing very interesting or complicated, but I'd feel a lot better with you doing it, as opposed to somebody who didn't even understand basic polarity."

"Or didn't understand the need not to _fiddle_ with something else while he or she was waiting for the next job?" Arateyka suggested. "Not to _fiddle_ at all, in fact."

"Haha, yes, there is that too," Feydik admitted, chuckling as he went about screwing the cover back onto the switchbox. He took a moment to look around, then patted his apron and found what he was looking for stuffed into his belt...a pair of thick, padded, wherryhide gloves, useful for things like insulating one's hands from electrical current.
"Although," he remarked as he tugged the gloves on. "You cannot fault the natural curiosity of our species. After all, without that desire to poke and prod and examine, we wouldn't have any of the progress we've made today, would we? But, it does help when that curiosity is directed and guided. Improves the survival rate too." He shook his head. "But you didn't come here to hear me prattle did you?" He picked up the switchbox in his gloved hands and indicated a direction with a tilt of his head.
"Let's go see how good my solderwork actually is, shall we?"

Arateyka stepped back a couple of paces to give him room, glancing about herself to as she did so to ensure she wasn't touching anything she shouldn't be. The place was less familiar to her than her own smithy and she had no intention of ending up electrocuted. "Ready when you are."

Feydik led Arateyka out of the substation, a short ways down a corridor and to a heavy wooden door, on which a warning sign hung. He pushed the door open and they entered into a dimly lit room, in which the air was very warm and the "smell" of electricity pervaded. Thick cables, wrapped in insulation ran across the ceiling, and a constant churning sound, that of the generator, could be heard.

"Here," Feydik indicated a sturdy wooden cabinet, that he opened to reveal an electrical control panel, containing several small switches, each labeled and accompanied by a tiny, carefully crafted electrical light.
"I'll need you to deactivate and reactivate some of these in sequence while I go to install the switch. I'll call down the circuit that I need opened or closed, and you throw the corresponding switch and relay it back. Does that seem straightforward enough?"

"Perfectly," the journeywoman smith assured him.

"Good...good..." Feydik wiped his brow with the back of his glove, as perspiration had appeared on his brow -- perhaps from the heat in the room? "Right then, let's do this." He walked to the far end of the room and opened what had first seemed like a door, but was revealed to be a very large access panel. Inside were coils and coils of wires, arranged into complex patterns and arrangements.

Feydik looked around and dragged a small wooden table over, and set the switch component down upon it, then began hauling several tools out of his apron and setting them down on the table. He looked for a moment at the array of wiring, then selected a particular tool and approached one of the coils.

"Arateyka!" he called over his shoulder. "Deactivate circuits A-5 through A-9, please. Let me know when they're no longer hot."

"A-5. A-9. Both deactivated and gated off," she called, having done as he asked and slipped the guards across the contacts to make sure they couldn't be accidentally reconnected.

"Acknowledged," Feydik replied, and turned his attention back to the coils. "All right, detaching coil A-5..." He inserted the head of the tool into one of the fasteners and removed it, then did the same for several more. Finally, gingerly, he eased the coil out and set it down on the movable table. "Coil A-5 detached. Proceeding to coil A-9..." Feydik lifted the tool in his right hand and put his left on the coil to steady it...and jumped back suddenly as electricity crackled and arced visibly. He stared at his gloved left hand, which was singed at the fingertips, and smoked where it had been burned.

"Arateyka," Feydik turned to look at the journeywoman crafter. "Are you certain that you deactivated circuit A-9?" There was a strain in his voice, though it was impossible to tell if it was from annoyance or urgency.

"Absolutely." She checked again, though if there was one thing she was, it was cautious. "If you've got a live circuit then its some other -
Feydik? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Feydik answered, turning to look at the wiring again.
"Caught me off guard, that's all. This is definitely coil A-9, and I would not dare to think that an error in the master console could go undetected for that long. Therefore..." He rubbed his chin with a gloved hand. "Therefore...the problem must lie within. Perhaps a miswiring of the coils...though I daresay, that would have shown up much earlier." He walked off to a corner of the room and returned with two long, wooden rods. He inserted these into the wiring and began to probe around delicately.

"I need more light," he announced suddenly, after poking around for a while. "Arateyka, can you find something that I can use to get a better look inside of here? There might be some portable lamps in the supply cabinet to your left."

Relieved that the technician wasn't in trouble, the journeywoman smith rummaged around in the large cupboard and turned up at the man's side with a lamp and a small rubber-backed mirror that could angled on the end of a long stick. "Here, try this. I'll hang the lamp just here," she said, using the hooks on the lamp casing that were there for just such a reason.

"Ah, thank you," Feydik accepted the mirror and affixed it to the end of one of the wooden dowels. "Yes, this should do nicely." Using the yet-unadorned dowel to gently push aside wiring, the technician inserted the mirror into the depths of the coils. He hmm'd and mmm'd and made little remarks like 'needs to be tightened' or 'showing some corrosion'. Suddenly though, he drew back and said, "Euw!"

"Tunnelsnake body?" the journeywoman suggested, having been puzzling through the problem in her own mind.

"Excellent deduction," Feydik muttered, squinting through the nest of wires. "There's definitely something in there. Ah, let's see, if you could just deactivate circuits B-6 and B-9...I believe those are the ones that it is shorting over. Go ahead and do B-10 while you're at it, then I should be able to dislodge it."

Arateyka moved away to do as he asked, calling out an affirmation of each circuit that she disconnected. "Am I cutting power to large parts of the Weyr?" she asked hopefully when the circuits were safely opened and guarded.

"No, thankfully," Feydik assured her. "Everything we've shut down so far is primarily just lighting, and with the amount of people out on ground detail, the effects should be minimal. Still, we had best finish our business here in the most expedient manner possible." He set his face and reached deep into the nest of wires, his frown deepening as his gloved hand closed upon something. He pulled, dislodging it and hauling it out, dropping it almost immediately to the floor with a sound of disgust.

It was dead, whatever it was, and well charred. It gave off an extremely unpleasant odor. The creature was about a two feet in length. Feydik prodded it with one of his wooden sticks.

"Definitely a tunnelsnake," he said finally. "Or, at least, it was once. Now it's not much of anything. But I think that explains the short circuit."

"Do you need to do much cleaning in there?" Arateyka asked, not moving any closer because the smell was as good as a physical barrier.

"No, that appears to be the only foreign body, so to speak." Feydik picked up his tools again and set about removing the burned out switch. It didn't take him long, and he soon eased it out and set it down on the table. He then picked up the replacement component that he'd been working on and fit it into the space that the previous part had occupied. He hummed slightly to himself as he worked, probably not aware that he was even doing it. Aside from the soft humming, however, he was almost completely silent as he worked, falling into a deep focus on the task.

"There!" Feydik stepped back at last and wiped his brow. "I believe that should do it." He turned to look at Arateyka. "Go ahead and power everything back up, one circuit at a time. We'll know right away whether or not everything is functioning now."

The journeywoman smith called out the named switches as she reset them, one by one.

Feydik listened...and watched. When Arateyka finally called out the last one, he nodded and closed the door to the wiring cabinet.

"It's done!" he said, turning to face the journeywoman with a smile of relief. "Everything looks and sounds good, so we're in the clear. So, ah...thanks! You came along at just the right time! I'd have taken three times as long if I had to do this single-handedly. And if I'd had to rely on somebody who didn't know what they were doing...well..best not to think about that." He smiled. "So, I am officially in your debt. I owe you a drink or two." Feydik seemed to get ahead of himself. "Ah, well, after working hours..sometime, that is." He glanced down at the fried tunnelsnake. "I should get to cleaning up. No need to stick around for it -- I think you've done more than your share."

"It was no trouble," Arateyka assured him, only too happy to leave the technician to cleaning up - the tunnelsnake body, at least. "Will it take you long to finish up?"

"Not more than a half candlemark," Feydik assured her, pulling off the heavy gloves he'd donned to insulate his hands from the electrical current. "Though I'll have to speak with somebody later about checking the upper access panels. I know tunnelsnakes are slippery, but I'm willing to bet there's an opening that needs sealing somewhere." He gave a little shrug and a small smile. "I'll let that wait until tomorrow at least, though."

"Rather you than me," Arateyka said cheerfully, rather glad she wouldn't be the one on the long (and not traditionally very successful) hunt. "See you later, Feydik."

"Aye, I'll see you later." Feydik watched her leave, then eyed the burnt remains and started for the supply closet to fetch a broom. This sort of thing, strangely enough, had never been part of his instruction at the Technician Hall.

Last updated on the April 5th 2008

Welcome to Triad Weyrs!

An Unexpected Fried Entree