Reggie gripped the bars on either side of his seat with white knuckles. Alarms assaulted his ears as Captain Marin barked orders to the crew of the S.S. Bold Horizons. The Aries class space Cruiser rocked with a vengeance as a bulkhead exploded nearby. Reggie’s ears nearly blew out from the sound of a panel being ripped from the steel hull.
“This isn’t going to end well for me…” thought Reggie with a pit in his stomach.
Somewhere inside him he knew the ship would land with few injuries on the crew at large. A coronal mass ejection blasted them from a nearby luminous giant star, causing havoc on all of the ship’s systems. Basic propulsion remained, but life support had been cut off nearly completely.
“Fire on deck C. Thermal couplings at critical. Gravity well fluctuating ten percent, please be aware of potential object momentum changing at a moment’s notice.”
Everything was going to hell in a hand-basket so quickly. Why did he have to get stuck in this with these people.
#####
Flipping through a manual, Reggie prodded a wire with a pair of pliers. His blonde hair was caked with grease along with his overalls. The smell of copper and oil permeated the air around him as he worked on a matter constructor’s connection to the battery vats.
“Looks like wiring isn’t much of a problem boss. Wherever your deficiency is it isn’t coming from these connections. What’s the viscosity level of the main vat? Do we need to adjust the silver levels?”
Placing his pliers on the floor, he stood up from kneeling and wiped his hands on his pants. Sipping from a mug of coffee he brought with for the early morning patch job, he pondered what was causing the constructor to construct everything at dangerous temperatures.
“Kinematic viscosity shows acceptable levels. Gravity field for gel vats are holding just fine.” replied Gareth standing attentively at the instrument station above.
Reggie wiped the dripping mess that was his brow. He’d been kneeling and crouching in small spaces for nearly two hours trying to troubleshoot the ship’s problem. Thankfully the panel behind the matter constructor was the last place to check. All he had to do now was fire it up and give it a test run.
Stepping lazily around a big black box with white horizontal lights protruding from either side, Reggie inspected the machine of his own design. Pressing a dark panel on the side, he felt his hand sink into the reactive gel. All he had to do was think it and it turned on.
“Alright then. Turns on just fine. It did before though. Gareth I’m gonna put a plain spanner through to see how it turns out.”
With a simple command a light steel spanner constructed itself in a flash of controlled light bursts.
“Here’s the real test… Ow! Son of a bitch!” exclaimed Reggie as his hand was scalded on the steel spanner.
An error code flashed on his augmented reality interface indicating temperature control failure for the unit. Gareth grabbed a small spray canister from his pocket and made his way down a steel ladder to the bottom floor of the supply room. He grabbed Reggie’s hand forcefully and sprayed the burned area completely.
“Didn’t forget this time man. What do you think it is?”
Reggie shook his head in defeat.
“I mean, could be a lot of things. Reconstructing matter from pure energy doesn’t mean it always dictates the level of energy each molecule has after reconstruction. It may put the pieces together just fine but it simply isn’t regulating how much energy is left over which could lead to very catastrophic consequences.”
Gareth cocked and eyebrow while stowing the bottle of burn spray. Placing his hand on the box, he looked down at it with wonder.
“Catastrophic? How catastrophic?”
Reggie pursed his lips and thought how best to illustrate it.
“Skipping the technical stuff, it could lead to fatal radiation or basically a nuclear explosion… of sorts.”
Gareth glanced down at the machine and retreated his hand slowly.
“Um, nuclear explosion?”
Reggie laughed as he thought about it for a moment.
“Ha! Yeah, we’d pretty much be making this a binary star system at that point I imagine.”
Gareth stepped away slowly from the machine and made his way back up the stairs.
“That’s… terrifying. Why do we have this thing on board?”
Bending down for his pliers, Reggie also grabbed the spanner and tapped it on the machine lightly. Gareth jumped as steel met steel.
“So that the captain can save like twelve percent on buying new equipment. I mean, I’m sure it’s also partly because then she can say she’s part of pioneering the tech. But I’m pretty confident it’s more so because of the first part.”
Laughing at Reggie’s truth was all Gareth could do. Captain Marin was a piece of work. She often demanded double shifts of support staff and rarely even acknowledged them. The only reason Reggie didn’t see more grief from her was because he developed the matter construction technology and he could leave with his prized machine any time he wanted.
“You’re absolutely right. It is more of the first part.” barked Captain Marin from the Supply Room door.
