C3 355 Hours (Patreon)

Derp. I skipped this one and advance-posted the next one! I'm scatterbrained.

Tori's conversation with the commissioner is getting serious in this next Executioner's Gambit scene!

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Tori blinked and stared at the intercom, confused. “What do you mean, ‘That’s not how it works’? Of course, it does! Everyone knows that. If we disconnect the trinity, there isn’t anything the company can do about it from a thousand light-years away. They can’t make us plug it back in if we don’t want to.”

“No, I mean…” There was a long delay where she could hear the commissioner breathing, but he said nothing. Eventually, he asked, “Will you do a web search for me, Tori?”

“The wireless network is down,” she reminded him.

“Okay, next to the hatch, there’s a panel display,” Commissioner Troykintrassa explained. “Does it have power?”

Tori stood from the bench and studied the display for a moment. The entire screen was bright red and covered in bold, yellow text. “Yeah, it says, ‘Sulfur atmosphere: do not cycle lock without donning full protective gear.’”

“Okay, good, good,” said the disembodied voice. “That display’s just a data slate built into the lock. Tap at the top-right and bottom-left corners simultaneously to pull up a search window.”

Tori blinked in surprise but did as she was instructed. The red screen disappeared, covered by a familiar browser. “Oh, I didn’t know it could—”

“Now, type in, ‘How long can the trinity remain offline?’”

Tori frowned. She didn’t like the sound of that, but she did as she was told, and midway through typing, the browser’s auto-completion suggested exactly that. She clicked it and stared at the results it returned. “There’s a list of links.”

“Click on the one by Professor Kashara,” said the commissioner. “I think that’s probably the simplest, most straight-forward analysis.”

Her ears fell back. “Have you memorized every article in our database?”

“Not every article, no.”

Tori rolled her eyes. The gigantic lizards were so puzzling. Gigantic brains or not, she couldn’t fathom even wanting to memorize so much information.

She clicked the third link on the page and read from the top of the article. “It says ‘Every hundred years, Planetary Acquisitions loads more titanium onto their gateships to keep them from running out of fuel.’”

“No,” the commissioner corrected her, “it says, ‘Despite the fact that Planetary Acquisitions…’ Read more closely, Tori. This is important.”

The rusty red geroo groaned and rested her forehead against the screen. Why was he torturing her? “If you’ve memorized this article,” she mumbled, “couldn’t you just tell me what it says? Is there a reason why I have to read it all?”

“Of course I could,” he chuckled. “I could even tell you that the ship would explode if you didn’t help me escape, but why would you believe me unless you read it for yourself?”

She drew a deep breath and released it with as much noise and irritation as she could muster, then studied the article. After a few moments, she threw up her paws. “It’s all equations and formulas. None of this means anything to me.”

She couldn’t tell precisely, but over the intercom, Troykintrassa sounded … disappointed. He asked, “Didn’t you have science classes in school?”

“Yeah, one basic science class,” said Tori. “Gravity, friction, photosynthesis… It was a weed-out course to see who would go on to become a scientist. The year I took it, only one person passed, and she got a C.”

With a calm tone, the commissioner explained, “Okay, it works like this: The reactor’s fusion combines titanium and oxygen to make zinc, but most of the titanium bonds chemically to the oxygen which forms titanium dioxide. This ship needs the trinity online so that the recycler can break titanium dioxide back down into titanium and oxygen. Because once all the titanium is bound up chemically, there won’t be any elemental titanium left to fuel the reactor, and it will shut down.”

Tori shoved her palms against her eyes and groaned. “I… I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

“Fine,” he said, losing only a little of his patient tone. “Just scroll down to about two-thirds of the way through that page. There’s a single line that says, ‘t = 355 hours’.”

She scrolled and scrolled, formulas taking the entire width of the screen were followed by shorter and shorter ones until all the math abruptly stopped with the line he had described. “Wait, what?” 355 hours? That was … not hundreds of years, certainly. “How long is three hundred and fifty-five hours?”

“It’s about fifteen days, Tori,” he sighed. “If the trinity goes offline for fifteen days—give or take—there won’t be enough power capacity to bring it back up, and the reactor will be past the point of no return. It will go offline shortly afterwards. Without electricity, this ship is going to get very cold. All the plants on the agriculture decks will die, and everyone will freeze to death.”

“What? No!” Tori shouted into the intercom. “That’s insane! Why would it work that way?”

An apologetic tone followed a longer pause, “The company designed the reactor that way on purpose. If every gateship could simply switch off their trinity and live out their years drifting in deep space, they would. Planetary Acquisitions made you dependent on the recycler, and they gave you no way to bring the recycler online without bringing up the gate too.”

“But… But…”

“Unless the captain brings the trinity back online, allows the company to come through the gate, everyone will be dead in weeks, not centuries.”

Tori’s head felt light, and she sat back down on the bench to keep from falling. Only weeks to live? Was that possible? “And… And if we let you go?”

The commissioner didn’t respond.

When she finally gave up, she said, “Please sir, I’d like an honest answer. If we let you go, let you go get treatment, how long would we live?”

The answer was a long time in coming, and when it came, it was still too soon for Tori. “Not long… A day at most, but probably less. I’d never convince the hospital staff that I drank poison on purpose, and the company is ready to mobilize troops on a moment’s notice…”

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vqfbheKkKfNqSW0cBXjrZLfaKRH7PQlv3ZzKP9lhQ_M/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?