An electro technician's life - part 17

A Electro technician’s life – Part XVII.

With the sounds of the ChimpBot moving behind her Drakfot exited the garden and
took a right heading towards the corridor and the hub nearby. For some reason
the hubs always needed a fixing even if many passed them daily and you could
always see at least one technician digging in them. Then again being parts of
the central network be it electrical or fluid transports its quite natural that
they are worn out. And considering the shape the tower already is in its
understandable.

She passed the corridor and gave the garden a glance and noticed that the
ChimpBot hadn’t gone far yet, it was on its way to the sharepoint, probably to
check its status and content. Drakfot continued to walk by the windows but just
before she left the garden heading for the actual hub she noticed a hatch being
broken so she stopped a moment and scanned it with her Portable Device and saw
that it was slightly damaged in the control board and the circuits had taken a
toll too. She got them sorted quite quickly with the tools she had on her, but
the pipes had to be left to someone who had the sufficient tools for the job so
she updated the status of the hatch in the error report and escalated it to MMT
section.

She walked down the corridor and just as she received a message on her device
she meet another one hurrying past her. It was probably the technician who had
received the job to mend the piping in the hatch. She did her best to keep out
of his way and didn’t bother more with that since she had to check up the
message. There were in fact two messages this time, one from Thosam and the
other was a high priority error report. She opened it and saw that there was a
major leakage in Ringlab from one of the factories. It seems as the laser had
bursted but the backup fuses had failed so it had not turned off as per routine
when an error occurs and it had resulted in the laser cutting through the
machine hitting some pipes behind it with cooling fluid. It was nothing out of
the ordinary, except the cooling fluid was a so called High Temperature Managing
Liquid, in short touch it without proper protection clothing and it would insta
cool the part that it touches.
Suddenly an update message made the Portable Device sound off a beep. It seems
as it had gotten worse too, according to the message the laser was still not
turned off and was still causing damage and proceeded to cause more damage.

“Old circuits I bet” she thought to herself as she took off through the hub and
heading towards the RadLock leading to the canyon which she had to pass through
to get to Ringlab. As usual it took too long for the RadLock to transport her
and as soon as the doors opened she ran out heading for the platforms outside.
Well there she took a right and went down the pathway and continued crossing
another platform and up another pathway. After running by some machines and
sharepoints she found the way leading down to the RadLock that lead to Ringlab.
Once more the wait for the RadLock to open up so she could get to the job. She
ran through some smaller corridors and ended up in a ring shaped plateau where a
giant elevator was in the middle, luckily she did not need to wait for it as the
corridor leading to Ringlab was just a few meters away.

She was met by an unusual sight this time, the area had been sealed off around
the machine because of the danger of both the liquid and the laser. It seemed
like the area was impossible to reach for maintenance unless the liquids were
cleaned away and of course if you had the proper protection clothes for it,
which Drakfot didn’t have at the moment.

“We have some people coming to wash off the cooling fluids, but they won’t be
here for a while and the laser will make it difficult for them to work there
safely.

Drakfot picked up her Portable Device and skimmed through the blueprints of the
Ringlab, she had got an idea and wanted to make sure it was doable and moments
later after some quick searching she found that it was both possible and doable.

“Is there a safe path to the hatch located two spots down from here?” She asked
the one that seemed to be in control of the blocking.

“Yeah, well if you are careful. Why?” He replied.

“I have an idea about getting that laser to shut off. Excuse me” Drakfot said
and ran off before he could even start protesting about the dangers it would
mean.

It was quite a simple idea actually, the laser had probably caused some sort of
overload, perhaps the fuses had blown up but not loosened properly as they
should. Well time would tell when they would finally get their hands on the
broken equipment. But now she had something else in focus, getting that laser to
stop working. Quite ironic to have a repair tech actually destroy equipment
instead of fixing it. She found the hatch and quickly removed the plate and
connected her Portable Device to the intra connector so she could get the status
of the current hatch. But it was more then that she was able to get from here,
this was one of the hatches which also had a secondary connector to control
different circuits and their currents, their active or inactive states and so
on. What she was after was the variable of current per circuit and the path
guide system. These extra functions were place around in case the auto shutdown
and rerouting function would fail, TAU might not get the error message and
didn’t have a reason to shut it down or whatever the reason might be for not
disabling the faulty equipment and rerouting the traffic through working lines.

She connected her device and a few settings later she had redirected the power
from five other hatches into the circuit leading to the one near the broken
machine, a flip of a digital switch on the screen and they started steering
their currents to the same location.
The reaction didn’t wait and suddenly there was a loud bang followed by three
smaller ones.
It was the condensers that had been overloaded and exploded which happens when
driving too much power through a line that cannot handle it. This time it was
good that it wasn’t able to handle it as the overload had caused the condensers
and circuits on the broken hatch to fail and sustain heavy damage. And within
seconds the laser faded away and finally shut down. The cost had been three
fuses in the other hatches, but that was minor compare to the damage already
caused by the laser and the cooling liquids.

The liquid itself had stopped its flow thanks to they had shut down the valves
for the pipes, but the draining function had failed since the cooling fluid had
caused the opening mechanisms to freeze rendering them unable to open. But it
also had another effect and Drakfot started to feel it now, the cold in the
room, even though it was large, was overwhelming and as she coughed she felt how
her lungs was hurting and the breath felt like it was almost cutting her throat.
It was time to get out of there, and that fast. She took off taking a slightly
longer way but in return she was able to get further away from the fluids. This
was a job for a good cleaning team.

“I told you it was dangerous to do that..” The man said as she got back to them
coughing. It didn’t hurt as much as when she was standing nearer it.

“Yeah, well that laser had to be shut down right. And not it is so as soon as
the cleaning team is done here we can have a go at fixing the damage. I guess
that at least 40% of the machine will need replacing. Not to mention the
electrical details. But that is for later,give me a beep when they have cleaned
it up and I’ll have a look at it.” Drakfot said as she walked away from there.

There was noting she was able to do there for the moment, until it was cleaned
up and replacements had arrived. She walked down a corridor and ended up in
another hub. She was longing to get to her floatbed, and perhaps a cup of that
warm drink before resting. As she entered it she noted that some sparkles was
coming out from behind a panel and she couldn’t help herself but to pry it open
and see what was wrong. It was just a socket that had started to malfunction and
it was replaced in a few minutes.

The Portable Device buzzed in her pocket reminding her about the second message
she hadn’t read yet. It might be something interesting to read, perhaps an
update to the readings she had copied from him from when he had been down to the
older premises of the Tower.

She opened it and read it.

“Hello Drakfot.

I have made an initial test of the matter that you had found. It was not hard to
locate thanks to the information you added in your message.
From what I have found out about it yet it seems to be some sort of bi
production of some kind. I have yet to figure out all of its constituent but it
is work in progress. I did however, in a moment of luck I guess, find that
during some circumstances it could become a rather effective corrosive, in a way
almost seems to be accelerated.
I will continue my research on it and keep you updated as it progress.

Thosam”

It seemed as she had give him something to work on and that he was fascinated by
it. That is something good, better would be if an antidote for it could be
developed too.

There was a sudden noise of metal cringing and as she turned around the last
thing she saw was a big pipe coming towards her swinging from its holding in the
roof before it turned pitch black…