Page 14 of Tech Prince Troubles
Every day, I felt this urge to talk to Sam, to ask him the simple questions I’d practiced. But every time I stood at the counter, faced with his disarming smile, I struggled to say much more than “Good morning.”
I took a deep breath. No more ruminations. I wanted to finish this floor and get my daily espresso. I put my hand against the Art Deco plinth that hid all the cables and fixed another stutter in the energy flow. A gentle push was all it needed to level out and flow naturally again. As I crept along the corridor,chasing down and repairing every single issue, I marked them as done on the schematics and tried to make sense of it.
Three hours and many, many glitches later, I was done with the third floor but no less frustrated. All these glitches and stutters in random locations across all floors. Even the ones that reappeared in the same spot didn’t follow a set pattern or logic. None that I could find.
When I entered the hub, Riley was bent over her tablet, the tip of her tongue sticking out.
“Where is Rick?”
“On the second floor. A lamp shorted out.” She looked up. “How was the third?”
“A quiet mess. Should be fixed. For now.”
Riley squinted at me, the screen light making her amber eyes glow. “Don’t you start. I think Rick half believes this wing is cursed. That this is some ghost’s revenge for messing with their home.”
“Unless spirits can set timers, I assume I’d have felt them go through me.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
I frowned. “Certainly not. My people have had numerous experiences with them in the past.” One of those things I could have asked Kin-Bertie about. Wouldhaveto ask if we couldn’t solve this in the next few months.
“Wow. Really? Maybe don’t tell Rick.” She sighed. “Unless spirits are actually causing this whole mess. This was supposed to be an awesome project. It went so well in the beginning. But now… it’s one thing after another.”
“When did the glitches start?” I asked as I scanned the logs again, as if going through them would change the information.
“Last month… before you arrived. Before then, all we worried about was hiding all the tech behind the old and renovated fittings.”
“Did anything particular happen last month?”
“Not that I know of. No major shorts, no equipment failure. None of the renovation crew drilled in the wrong places. Nothing like that. You can find all that in the logs. The glitches were just… there one day.”
“Any thunderstorms?”
“Nope. None of that. There was one further up the coast, but it didn’t hit us. We haven’t had any major power problems since I started working here. None.”
I connected to the wall screens and put up the schematics of the grounding system. “Nothing out of the ordinary here, either.”
“Only Rick had the training to deal with that. I think NiraTech’s last scheduled maintenance check was… four months ago?”
The door opened, and Rick walked in, followed by Jim, who scurried to his desk with a mumbled, “Morning.”
I couldn’t decide if Jim was shy or if he didn’t like me.
Rick put his gear down and asked Riley, “What happened four months ago?”
“Grounding systems maintenance check.”
Something clanged against a desk and crashed to the floor. Jim cursed.
“Sorry, wasn’t paying attention.” He held his water bottle up with a trembling hand.
Rick smiled at him. “Go home. I’ll wait for the day-shifters. It’s been a long night.”
“Thanks.” Jim dropped the bottle into his bag and left the room. The closing door muffled his, “See ya tonight.”
He didn’t seem shy…
I was still staring at the door when Rick said, “Riley’s right. NiraTech’s last automated check was early January. But I immediately scheduled a twenty-four-hour basic scan after that firstweek of glitches.”
