An electro technician's life - part 11

Slowly the next day, if you could call the next shift that, arrived and the
covers of the windows were slowly retracted into their compartment displaying
the vastness of what was on the other side of it. Slowly the luminance increased
in strength lighting up the little room, creating shadows that followed the
obstacles that interfered with the line of the light.

Gently she opened her eyes and leaned backwards. She had not slept well at all
this night, and it was no wonder since she had fallen asleep with her head
resting towards her knees. She was still sitting by the wall. She rubbed her
eyes in attempt to get the sleep out of them and she was partially successful.

“Achievement 70%” She thought to herself and sighed at her attempt to be like a
machine.

She stood up and stretched once more but still she felt tired and torn. She
should probably had slept on the floatbed as usual, but she didn’t. She had
spent most of the night, since she came back, staring at the things around her
in the apartment. Analyzing them and their use. She didn’t really remember when
she had become so tired that she had fallen asleep but she recalled that some of
her last thoughts were that the things in this room were important, perhaps not
directly for the Tower itself, but for her. And if they did good for her then
she could use that to do good things while doing her job. It sounded like a bad
excuse in attempt to justify them, or perhaps it was the reason for them being
there. She decided that the latter answer was the best and filled another cup
from the machine. Damn she was tired, perhaps she would have to use a StemPatch
to get herself going.
She had a quick look in her bag and noticed that she only had one half left, it
had leaked out. She recalled that she might have hit something in all the fuzz
while fixing the Genetubes, quite a lot had happened recently and the injector
itself was not of the newest kind.

She injected what was left and just moments later she felt how the tiredness
faded off and she felt more concentrated and up for a task. But what to do then,
there were not much around to fix it seemed, her NeckLink gave a sensation
telling her that Thosam had received the message she sent.
“That would probably keep him busy a moment or two” She thought and smiled a
little when she recalled how he had looked when she was repairing his
CommConsole. Always staring at the tubes and the liquids. So why not try and
swing the Device together, its better he get it now then later and in fact there
were not much left to do on it now. Just some assembling and testing of the
internal hardware and then its all good. But except for one thing, the screen
itself needed some better coverage to be able to work in tougher environments
since she knew Thosam were often out running around collecting samples and all
that.

She had some ScreenPlaster somewhere in all the mess and she soon found it.
Quite efficient to be able to locate and t retrieve something this small in a
mess this big. And soon it was shaped as needed to fit the screen. After
applying it and let it dry for about 10 minutes, standard time for this kind of
covering plaster, she could assemble the screen part into the top cover. Which
in fact was just a small metallic edge around the screen so it could be fitted
with the backplate of the device.

Now it was time to do a initial run of the internal software of the device and
she connected it to her computer and sent over the BootPROM to extract itself
into the BootChip. Since things were quite well optimized it didn’t take long
for the BootPROM to get loaded and she was met with a Controlling System Not
Found error. That seemed well and it was now time to transfer the Controlling
software to the on board memory, said and done she started to transfer a
standard system over to the unit. As soon as some values returned showing that
it had been registered in the memory a small edit made the BootPROM to look at
the on board memory for further information after doing the initial boot
sequence. A reset of the unit ( mostly repair techs were able to do it, but it
was not intended for the common user to initiate the command ) and it turned out
that the BootPROM did look at the memory for further information and soon the
device was up and running as expected.

She wondered how many times she had done this procedure, how many terminals had
she reflashed due to broken hardware. It was not time to add the support in the
Controlling System so it could detect and use the extra features she had added
to it. And while doing so also applying some changes to the system itself for
better performance.

“Additional Software Installation : Complete. Applying Updated Software :
Complete. Applying Self testing : Complete; no errors found. ” That was also
the message telling her that the installation and upgrade had gone well. Seemed
as everything was up and running now and she did some simple tests with her
Portable Device. She opened the message that she had received from Thosam via
her NeckLink and extracted the message header to find the unique ID of Thosam’s
NeckLink.
She entered it as the pairing device which now implied that it would only
respond to Thosam’s NeckLink if he chose to use it. She never forced things on
others.

A few more tests later and she was all set to go. She got her belt on , grabbed
some empty injectors and threw away the faulty one for recycling. She headed out
through the little door and down the lift while finding the best route to
Thosam’s lab on her device. ” I wonder if this will be a function that Thosam
will use, if he will use the device that is.” She thought to herself. Well even
if it was not used she still had learned a few things from making it, so in
every aspect it was worth it.

She walked along a corridor past the garden and stopped by a window and had a
quick look. In there some strange plants grew, tree’s rising from the ground and
in the far distant she could glimpse the holographic image representing TAU.

“Could be a nice place to relax I guess” She thought and continued to walk along
the corridor heading for the lift.

Soon she was not far off from the lab where she had fixed Thosam’s CommConsole,
she used her NeckLink to verify that she was a Technician and thus had access
and the door slid up with a silent hiss. The lab was empty and most of the
equipment was left turned off. Perhaps he was out doing something important, it
was hard figuring him not to be in here.

“Well if he needs and wants it, he will find it.” She thought and left the lab
leaving the device on the desk next to a report of some kind.