The power plant is a new installation, built well away from Safe Haven’s existing mega-spheres at the bottom of the ocean. The Newmen haven’t even run cable between the two sites yet. If anything goes wrong, the implosion or explosion or whatever happens shouldn’t endanger anyone.
Mo is overseeing the prototype fusion plant. Dr. Panya is observing, but not interfering. The real test is whether the Newmen have learned enough physics and engineering to do this themselves.
“Stage 1, green,” Mo reports over the comm system. Back at the Launch System, the others are observing the board. Meters are steadily rising. Some are in the green zone, some aren’t - and some are already into the red.
“Flooding.” Sea water pours into the outer chamber of the power plant. Alarms begin blaring, only for Mo to silence them. “Ignore that - they need calibrating still.”
Nobody’s quite content with that reassurance, but after all, this is a test. Summer forces herself to exhale pent-up breath, and Otto pats her gently on the shoulder. But his eyes are still glued to the board.
“Stage 2, green.” Over the comm system, behind Mo’s voice, they hear a clunk and a loud hum.
The board flashes all red - just for a second - and then indicators stabilize.
“Stage 3 ready. Deploy Apollo.”
Fusion power has a bootstrap problem. Once a reactor is up and running, it can provide the energy for its own containment system. But how do you juice up a reactor that isn’t running yet? The team is using power from another fusion reaction - the Sun itself. Summer’s system of teleporting solar radiation back to Earth will jump-start the power plant. If successful, the reactor can be self-sustaining from the deuterium found in seawater. If not… well, they built one reactor. They can build another one if necessary.
Summer hits the button. The Launch System fires up. The Apollo module fires.
She’s still a little bitter that her Chariot is scrap, and she hasn’t had the heart to rebuild it just yet. But this part is still working, and it can serve a new purpose.
“Deployed,” Otto reports back to Mo.
“Roger. Receiving…”
A few more alarms blare, and the board’s readings go wild, just for a second.
Summer holds her breath–
“Stage 3, green,” Mo reports. “We got neutron production.”
The Launch System’s control room explodes into cheers.
Of course, Aria and Leo have to be told. Otto admits to some guilt about going over Aria’s head on this one. Safe Harbor is still her creation, and a move this big would have been something she’d initiate. He’s sort of justifying it to himself as being a rescue thing, since the most immediate demand for more energy is the Launch System itself, and spare parts fabrication.
The plan is to run the reactor for a week to monitor how it goes, then initiate a safe shutdown and reboot it from scratch. Summer has a week to rebuild the Apollo system, and she seems enthusiastic about the prospect. That should satisfy Leo’s demands for safety. Otto knows he’s going to ask.
He lays all this out to his co-conspirators before the video call begins. Big Bill seems optimistic, Mo is taciturn as usual, and Summer’s smile is tinged with a nervousness that bothers Otto. But it’s too late now.
The video call comes online. There’s some definite lag, and some noticeable static, given how the call is being routed from beneath the ocean to the Australian outback. But there’s nothing for it. The Newmen are a work in progress, and that includes telecommunications capability.
The pair are lounging outside the RV, and the rugged scenery is visible on Aria’s laptop camera. Aria herself is wearing sunglasses, a torn t-shirt, and beach shorts. Leo is dressed in denim cutoffs and a tank top. While Aria looks comfortable, Leo is visibly sweating and his facial expression marks him as near death.
“Get me out of this humidity,” he begs.
“Wish I could help ya, buddy,” Otto says, turning his palms up in an apologetic shrug.
“Gimme your update,” Aria says, all business.
Otto lays out the work that’s been done on the fusion plant - the most important thing, in his mind. He can see Aria’s expression sour, and glances at Summer in a silent plea for help.
Summer knows just what to say. “So, the thing is, all we know to use it for is rescue stuff. So I thought, Aria must have thought all this through. Do you already have a list of city projects for us to start on, assuming the power plant works out?”
Otto can tell this is exactly what Aria wanted to hear. Her face warms up immediately. “Yes, actually. Great job taking that project as far as you did. Everything you want to use it for makes perfect sense, but I do have some suggestions. I’ll shoot you an email soon.”
“Convince me it’s not going to explode,” says Leo, who’s been waiting to ask this only out of deference to his wife.
Otto expected this. He gives a rundown of the safety precautions they’ve taken, how the system is isolated, everything. Leo nods tensely, and Otto can see him wanting to speak up every so often, only to hold himself back.
It’s not that the power plant planning was bad. Both Aria and Leo are feeling cabin fever. They want to be back in the action, building things, being part of the team again.
Otto has to do his part. “Leo, if you got anything to add on the safety thing, either add it to Aria’s email or send us your own, okay? We all heard the same lectures from Dr. Panya so maybe there’s things you’ll think of that we overlooked, or just trusted would work.”
Leo senses that Otto knows what’s bugging him, and he smiles through the sweat and misery. “Yeah. Yeah. I trust you got this figured out, but if anything comes to mind, I’ll definitely mention it.”
The conversation quickly and naturally turns to the newest Newman, Fez. Aria lugs the laptop into the RV so people can see the little tyke, already crawling around. Aria has programmed holographic toys and environments for the kid to interact with.
“Fez is something new,” Aria says over the call. “Unlike us, they’ll never remember mortality. So as much as I hate doing it, I have to teach Fez about pain and danger. They can’t get seriously or permanently hurt by anything in here - but it’s otherwise as real as anything a biological kid would experience. They have to learn what it’s like to be both human and robot.”
Everyone enjoys watching their new family member playing around, but the call eventually has to conclude. Farewells are exchanged, promises are made, and when the call clicks off, Otto sits back and exhales a long sigh of relief.
Leo can’t exactly invite the neighbors over to the RV. “What’s that you got there, young feller?” “A high-tech Nursery where my robot wife and I are raising my holographic firstborn.” “Well shoot, I reckon I better phone the authorities.”
He’s got a different way to stay sociable. He made a deal with a guy - “if I can fix any car on your lot you’d be scrapping otherwise, I drive away with it” - and he made good. What he got was an old Toyota Land Cruiser, a beast of a machine meant for use in places like the outback. He’s since modified it for an electric drive train, powered by a Casimir fractal, and he regularly hauls it and a set of cobbled-together tools to a spot on the only highway around, half a mile from a local fruit stand. He hangs out a sign on cardboard reading “LOU OLDMAN - ALL MACHINES FIXED” and waits.
At first nobody came, and he worried he was wasting his time. But soon enough, people brought stuff by. Small stuff, things they were going to throw away. Then they brought appliances in the beds of trucks. Then they brought trucks, towed by other trucks. Word got around.
These days, “Lou Oldman” gets regular business. He deals in cash, takes only what his customer can pay, and will always let the customer watch in case it’s something they can fix themselves next time. He’s never failed to fix a machine that was fixable. He’ll come to your place if there’s no way to get your broken thing to where he’s at. He looks rough and dangerous, a muscular man covered in tattoos with a resting frown on his face, but down here that’s practically a job requirement.
Today, long after sundown, he comes home with 432.07 AUD in his pocket, two arms full of locally produced groceries, and a home-cooked meat pie courtesy of a happy customer. He takes a cold, cleansing shower to wipe the grime and dust and oil off his skin. He spends time playing with his child, and half an hour reading after Fez starts showing signs of being tuckered out.
By the time Fez is fast asleep, Leo’s own eyelids are droopy. But he finds himself waking up when Aria nestles down beside him and whispers in his ear. “How do you feel about being Master of the mansion… and meeting your new robot maid, who must be properly educated in her duties?”
“It’s a heavy responsibility, but if I must, I must,” he grins back at his loving and adoring wife.
The call comes in to Safe Harbor, early in the morning. and keeps coming in. The Launch System operator finally resorts to tracking down Otto in his room.
Otto kicks Big Bill and Mo out of their beds, and hammers on Summer’s door until she answers with a bleary mumble.
The Newmen drag themselves into Ops. On the video screen is a frazzled, fretting Leo and a horrified, helpless Aria.
“Fez,” she says, before anything else. “They’re - they’re - the system - it’s - there’s nothing in there.”
“Hold on,” Otto says, jolted awake by the possibility of something happening to his new nephew. The others are similarly finding themselves alert. “Just… tell us what’s going on.”
Leo manages an explanation. “There’s zero neural activity in Fez’s brain. They’re either missing, or - or -”
He can’t bring himself to say ‘dead’, but the word hangs in the air regardless.
Aria’s voice grows stronger. “Otto - if there’s any possibility the RV systems malfunctioned–”
Otto knows she’s desperate for an explanation, and will go after anyone or anything that might help her cope with this crisis. It has to be dealt with.
And to be fair, the possibility she raises has to be considered.
“We’ll be there ASAP,” he promises.
