An unsettling clank roused Lina from her daydream. Soon followed by a curse from Mom and then an ear-piercing screech that heralded a thick plume of dark smoke. She blinked away the last thoughts of sunshine warming her skin and turned away from the window, her eyes stinging.
The t-bar attached to a piece of thread that ran the length of the room was her personal highway, letting her zip over to her mother’s work bench in a matter of seconds.
Mom coughed and sputtered, frantically waving away smoke. Soot covered her face and settled into the fine wrinkles that grew deeper as she frowned, sighed, and slumped on a stool.
“What’s wrong?” Lina asked, looking up from the table top. The machine behind her, the cause of all this trouble, was glowing hot and she looked over her shoulder to make sure it wasn’t on fire.
“I can’t get this darned thing to work,” Mom said, glaring at the smoking hunk of metal. “Probably time to toss it in the closet with all the other failed experiments.”
Lina frowned. “Maybe I can fix it?” Her entire body was smaller than her mother’s pointer finger. If there was tiny detailed work to be done, she always jumped at the chance.
Mom’s expression softened, then turned stern. “That’s very sweet of you dear, but it’s too dangerous. I wouldn’t forgive myself if something happened to you.”
There it was. No matter how often she offered to do the job, Mom would never let her.
“But if you got this working, they wouldn’t be able to ignore you anymore. They wouldn’t be able to keep you in this basement with the cleaning supplies,” Lina said, stamping her tiny foot.
Her mother held out a hand and Lina climbed aboard, sitting in her palm. “What did I ever do to deserve you?”
“Probably something terrible,” Lina joked. Mom gave a watery chuckle and shook her head.
“I mean it. I don’t know what I would have done all these years if you hadn’t shown up to keep me company. I know it’s not the same as having others like you, but—”
“You’re my family,” Lina said. And it was true. As a baby, she’d been placed in a ship and crash-landed at Dr. Pollex’s doorstep. The doctor, an experimental physicist, didn’t know what to do with the tiny alien, but she’d taken her in and cared for her the best she knew how. Lina didn’t remember anything from the time before. She didn’t know why her parents put her on a spaceship bound for a distant planet of giants, but she could only assume it was to save her from something terrible. She was thankful they’d given her another chance at life. Even more thankful that it was Dr. Pollex who would become an adoptive mother to her.
She just wished there was something she could do to repay the kindness she’d been shown. To give back to her mother all the good deeds she’d done.
A knock sounded through the door, and it swung open without anyone answering it. Mom set her back on the workbench and stood to face the man who entered.
“Dr. Pollex! How are things coming down here?” the man in a crisply-tailored suit said, grinning so wide he looked like he might have more teeth than a normal human. Like a shark or an alligator. He coughed pointedly and waved smoke out of his face, looking around at the projects dubiously. Lina had never seen him before — not many people came down to this lab, or even remembered it existed — but her mother tensed, forcing a fake smile.
“Director Selachi, to what do I owe this… pleasure?” she struggled to produce the last word and it sounded like it physically pained her when she finally did.
To his credit, the Director didn’t seem to notice. “We have a representative of the grant committee visiting today and hoped you’d join us for the tour. We like to demonstrate our… diversity,” he said.
What he meant was ‘if we don’t parade around the only woman we have on staff, we might lose some funding.’ Lina had heard all too much about that little annoyance. Mom deserved better.
“I suppose I don’t have a choice in the matter,” Mom said, crossing her arms.
The Director ignored the comment and circled the bench, bending to examine the failed experiment. “What is it you’re working on here?” he asked, reaching for the machine. He hissed and dropped it back to the table with a clatter, sucking his fingertips where it had burned him. Lina fought to suppress her laughter.
“Matter transporter,” she answered stiffly.
That got his attention. The Director’s eyebrows shot up and he looked at it more closely. “You don’t say… Many people have attempted that before you without success. Are you making progress?”
Mom shifted on her feet, looking from the machine to Lina and then to the Director. “I think so,” she said. Lina heard the uncertainty, though. She had complete faith in her mother, but the older woman rarely had any faith in herself.
“Ah, well, something like this could definitely get you a lab upstairs, better equipment, perhaps an intern or two if you play your cards right.”
Lina watched as her mother’s hands balled at her sides and her jaw clenched.
“I appreciate that,” she said, the tone of her voice making those three words sound menacing somehow. “Should we meet up with the tour?” Already she was rushing to get the obligation over with.
Director Selachi cleared his throat and straightened himself with a stiff nod. “Of course, of course. Let’s go.”
He began to walk towards the door without waiting for Dr. Pollex. She hesitated by the lab table, bending down to face Lina.
“I don’t want you messing with anything while I’m gone, okay?”
Lina nodded dutifully. “I know,” she said, fondling the diode in her pocket. When Lina first arrived, she’d been terrified of the dark and too small to operate a light switch or flashlight. The diode was the first thing Mom had given her, the first thing that gave her some freedom to move around as she pleased. Because Mom trusted her.
Mom gave her a smile and patted her on the head with the tip of her finger. “That’s my good girl. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Lina stayed rooted in place, watching the two humans exit, waiting for the door to click shut. The moment it did, she turned, rubbed her palms together, and headed for the defunct machine. Mom didn’t want her messing with things, but she’d feel differently once her experiment was up and running.
“Alright, let’s see what’s going on here,” she said, hefting a metal washer and using it to remove the screws from the access panel. Screwdrivers were too heavy, and she’d already learned the lesson of how much they hurt falling on your head one too many times.
Four screws off and placed carefully to the side and Lina pried the access panel open. Another burst of soot escaped, and she sputtered, dragging her hands over her face; they came away streaked with black.
She ducked her head, climbing into the hot cramped space and started to look for what had gone amiss.
It was carnage. What had previously been tidy and efficient was now scattered and askew. Wires were singed, their plastic coating melting off to expose gold beneath, even the silver solders had melted and ruined some of Mom’s carefully-planned connections.
Lina stepped over the mass of melted plastic and drooping wires, searching for the source.
Beyond the tangled underbrush of wires, there was a massive configuration of gears, all specifically machined and etched to fit just right. Nothing seemed amiss there as Lina circled and observed.
The further she moved away from the access panel, the darker the interior of the machine grew. She wouldn’t be able to find anything if she couldn’t see. Lina fetched the diode from one pocket, and her other pocket held a fresh battery. When put together, the whole space glowed bright with an almost-blue tint.
Much easier to work by.
She attached the light to her headband, twisting her hair into a knot to keep it out of her face, and forged ahead through more melted wires.
So distracted by the tangles of wires, Lina missed another hazard and her foot slipped out from under her, sending her sprawling, sliding across the still-warm floor until she slammed into the base of the main support for the drive shaft. Her body ached from the impact, but she pushed it aside to examine the viscous yellow-green liquid she’d slipped in. She brought her fingers up to her nose and inhaled. Maple syrup. At least, that’s what it smelled like. Coolant, then. It must have leaked from somewhere.
Lina grabbed hold of the base of a bolt and hauled herself to her feet, fighting for balance in the slippery coolant. Beyond the drive shaft support — which may as well have been a skyscraper to her — the floor was clear, so she skated around, grabbing onto whatever she could reach to keep herself upright, until she could walk without slipping.
On the other side of the giant support she found the source of the coolant spill still dribbling from a ruptured hose causing the puddle to spread. What a mess. This was going to take forever to clean, but if she could get the thing working again, it would all be worth it.
She followed the line of the ruptured hose, guessing that was a symptom of the problem, rather than the root. There was that clang she heard that started everything. She was looking for whatever had caused that.
Finally, she reached the opposite end of the machine, the access panel feeling miles away. A fan pointed out toward a heat sink, its blades twice Lina’s size, but near the top, when she craned her neck back and shone the light on it, she spotted a chink in one of the blades.
Gingerly, she touched the fan, testing its temperature, then she grabbed the edge of one blade with both hands and shoved with all her weight, sending it on a slow, leisurely spin. When the chipped blade reached the bottom, Lina examined it, noting how the metal was bent, not just cut.
She frowned and tapped her foot, still looking all around. And then she spotted it up above: an empty hole where there should have been a bolt. It all began to piece together. She crouched down, shining her light to the far recesses of the machine and found the wayward bolt flung far from the fan.
So it must have been unsecured, she thought as she crawled under wires and picked her way over capacitors, and it must have fallen into the fan blades. The fan seized, which caused the coolant to boil, pressure building and rupturing the hose, and then all that heat was enough to melt the wires’ plastic coating and solders.
She grinned, dragging the errant bolt out. Another puzzle solved. Now, she just had to set to work fixing it all.