Enhancer 2

by Wyatt Kane

  Nor would it be easy to get someone in. In a city like New Lincoln, it could take days to get anyone out to have a look. Weeks, even. Angie knew this as well as Ty did, so instead of offering a solution, she opened and closed her mouth a few times and flapped her arms like a chicken.

  It was almost enough to make Ty laugh out loud. He watched for a few seconds, then said quite clearly, “I can fix it.”

  Angie apparently hadn’t finished gaping. She turned the vacant expression on Ty and stared at him.

  “You can fix it?” she said.

  Ty shrugged. “Sure. If it can be fixed, I can do it,” he said.

  He could almost see the calculations taking place within Angie’s head. She stopped gaping and instead looked at him shrewdly. Her sneer was back in place.

  “You think you’re clever enough to fix a sound system without even seeing what’s wrong?”

  “I fix the gaming machines. And Martin said what happened. The mixer is fried. I might need to scavenge some parts, but like I said, if anyone can, I can fix it.”

  Slowly, Angie started to nod. Completely ignoring Martin’s hopeful expression and overlooking the rest of the staff as if they didn’t exist, Angie licked her lips. It was as if she had been offered an unexpected dessert that she was looking forward to consuming.

  “Okay,” she said. “You have your chance. Despite your insolence, if you get it working, you can keep your job.” Then her expression darkened so that her malevolence was clear for all to see. “But if you fail, if the sound system isn’t back up and running in good time, then you are done. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Your lazy, good-for-nothing ass is out of here, and I never see your ugly face again. You got that?”

  Randomly, Ty found himself wondering at the source of Angie’s rancor. Had she suffered a lifetime of torment that she now felt she had to inflict on others? Or was she just a loathsome troll for no real reason?

  In the end, it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was that for the moment at least, he still had a job. And he didn’t have to suffer through the rest of the staff meeting.

  He stood up from his bar stool, and as he and Martin headed away, he distinctly heard Angie mutter, “Now that’s what I call a win-win.”

  3: Fried

  Ty could hear Angie resume berating the rest of the staff. She had recovered from her shock at Martin’s news and was back to dealing out her particular brand of misery and spite. Ty was more than happy to leave them to it, but Martin was worried.

  “Sorry, man,” he said. “I might have just cost you your job. The system is totally screwed. I don’t see how it can be fixed.”

  Ty offered him a quick grin and kept walking. “Don’t write it off yet,” he said. “I have a bit of a knack for this type of thing.”

  He didn’t tell Martin that since he’d been wearing the device on his wrist, his “knack” had become something special. Through a process he could only partially understand, the device had analyzed Ty’s potential on a genetic and cellular level, and had released thousands of nanites into his bloodstream.

  Those nanites had worked wonders. In the last few days, Ty had grown several inches taller. He had put on perhaps twenty pounds of muscle, and even his complexion had cleared up. He was now the best version of himself that his genetics enabled him to be.

  And that wasn’t the end of it. Locked in his genetic code was a skill that elevated him beyond most others. Technological enhancement. He was still at a low level, but even that enabled him to work miracles.

  He had built a stun gun out of a toaster and parts of a microwave within twenty minutes. With the help of the tools in the Architect’s workshop, Ty had made improvements to the device itself. He had created a miniaturized energy converter that produced unlimited power, and he had modified a couple of blasters to give them a serious kick.

  He had also designed a mesh suit that projected an energy shield that could stand up to nearly anything. It was like his durability had been granted a boost. Instead of being made of flesh and bone, it was as if he was armored like a tank.

  Even now, he wore the mesh suit, complete with energy converters, under his shirt. And he had one of the blasters tucked down the back of his trousers. At a moment’s notice, he could bring both to bear.

  He could stand toe-to-toe against the superpowered villain Bain himself if he needed to do so.

  “You might need more than a knack,” Martin said. “You might need a miracle.”

  Ty just grinned.

  Instead of heading directly to the DJ’s booth, Ty went to the janitor’s closet to pick up his tools, as well as box full of broken game parts and wires he had collected during his time at the Club. That done, he turned to Martin, who was looking at him with a quizzical expression.

  “Have you changed something?” Martin asked. “You look different, somehow.”

  Ty had been getting many comments like that over the last few days. He just shrugged. “I’ve been working out a bit is all,” Ty replied. Martin continued to frown at him, still uncertain. “Come on,” Ty said. “Let’s see what you’ve done to your setup.”

  <<<>>>

  Martin’s booth was in the Club’s main room. Although, “booth” wasn’t entirely accurate as a description. It was more a nook, an alcove, a section of the floor that had been commandeered by the DJ and his equipment.

  From the main floor, it looked like a bank of speakers, with one large woofer surrounded by stacks of smaller ones. Ty knew that hidden among the speakers and elsewhere throughout the entire club, there were also strobe lights and laser emitters.

  He had seen all this before and had even replaced some of the strobe bulbs when they burned out. But he had never been into the booth itself. It was hallowed ground. A place where magic happened. And while Angie might have trusted Ty with the gaming machines, this was at a different level.

  Martin’s booth was the heart of the club. The beats he produced were the lifeblood that kept it all going. In Angie’s mind, it was not the place for someone like Ty.

  To her, it was like letting a monkey loose in a room filled with old metal toys. The monkey could play as it wished and there was little risk of real damage. But that monkey would not be allowed to play in a room filled with fine, delicate china.

  There were three low steps that led up to the booth. Ty grinned as he climbed them and looked about at Martin’s equipment.

  “It’s all top-of-the line gear,” Martin said. “Never had a problem with any of it until now. The turntables – you’d be surprised how many times someone’s managed to spill a drink on them. They just keep on turning. Even the computer screens. The crystal displays are more robust than the holographic ones, which is why I use them. But the mixer is the heart of everything. Without that, all we’ve got is some stacks, a couple of keyboards, and tens of thousands of dollars worth of silence.”

  Ty was impressed with the DJ’s set up. Martin kept everything spotless. Everything was in place, the turntables on separate shelves above the main speaker, the screens hidden from the clientele by the speaker stacks, and the keyboards tucked away behind Martin’s chair. He could spin about and access everything within a heartbeat.

  In the middle of it all, next to the microphone and headphones, was what could only be the mixer.

  Martin had taken the top off, exposing the innards. He was right. It was a mess. Something had blown, maybe a transistor or capacitor. It had been catastrophic on a minor scale. The circuit board itself was charred and covered in soot, and there was the distinct odor of burnt plastic and ozone in the air.

  “You don’t have a spare?” Ty asked. He knew the answer before Martin even replied. The DJ was too overtly anxious for such a simple solution.

  “Nah, man. There used to be a controller somewhere in storage. You know, one of those all-in-one jobs, with turntables and mixer all set up to go. Baby toy compared to this, but it would have done in a pinch.” Martin shrugged. “It disappeared maybe a year ago.
A light-fingered staff member or customer, maybe. I told Angie at the time that we should get a replacement, but here we are. A year later.”

  Ty nodded. So much for the easy solution.

  For the first time since offering to fix it, Ty wondered if he could. It wouldn’t have been a problem if he had access to the Architect’s fabricator and holographic imager. He would just scan the mixer, blow up the holographic image, and test each component individually. Then he would replace whatever wasn’t working, and that would be that.

  But this was the Concubine Club. Not the Architect’s mansion. Ty had access to only the most basic tools. A voltmeter. Screwdrivers. A soldering iron. A few spare parts. And that was about it.

  “Can you fix it?” Martin asked.

  Ty stared at the mess for some moments. He knew that a certified repair man working under the auspices of the mega-corporation that produced the equipment would simply rip out the motherboard and slot in a spare, typically after waiting a fortnight for the spare to be delivered.

  But Ty wasn’t a certified repair man. A week ago, he would have had to resort to prodding about with the voltmeter, peeling back the clear plastic coat and doing his best to isolate the parts that weren’t working. Then, without truly understanding what the various sections did, Ty would have done his best to replicate them with wires and transistors and anything he could cobble together.

  Maybe he could have got it to work again. Maybe he couldn’t have. It would have been a complex fix either way, and without a full workshop, Ty just didn’t know.

  But that was then, and this was now. And now, with the device on his wrist, Ty had an insight into technology that he’d never had before.

  And there was something about this particular failure, this technological burnout, that just didn’t smell right.

  He looked at Martin. “When did the warranty for this run out?” he asked.

  Martin looked at him blankly. “Uh,” he said, then found an answer. “About three months ago.”

  Ty grinned. He’d been expecting an answer like that.

  “Typical, isn’t it?” the DJ said. “Damned thing worked like a charm since new. Never had a problem. And now that the warranty is gone, look at it.”

  “Yeah.” It was a common enough complaint, and Brad, Ty’s roommate, had always maintained that it was on purpose. It was one of his favorite conspiracy theories. The mega-corporations programmed these failures into their products so that they could charge again for either repairs or replacements.

  Brad also suggested that it was why the corporations were so successful, and why more honest companies failed. Which of two competing companies would win out between one that could only sell you a product once, and one that could sell you not just the product, but a lifetime of repairs and replacements as well?

  Ty wasn’t as suspicious as Brad, but he could see the logic. Yet at the time, he’d offered a counter. “Then how come you can sometimes buy an appliance that lasts for decades?”

  “If they programmed the failures into every single product, it would be clear to everyone what’s going on. They’ve probably got some mathematician or other working out just how many programmed failures they can get away with before it becomes too obvious.”

  Ty hadn’t wanted to believe him. Yet now, he found himself staring at the proof.

  His skill gave him the ability to do what should have been impossible. Like a skilled tracker who understood the hints left by broken branches and disturbed earth, Ty could look at a circuit board and understand what each part of it did.

  As far as he could see, the part that had blown had only one purpose: to fail. And to take out a network of critical junctures at the same time, making it difficult to fix.

  Ty almost laughed out loud. He doubted that anyone else would have understood the pattern. But to Ty, it was clear. There was no doubt in his mind at all.

  It was also clear that he could fix it. The circuit board was reasonably efficient and elegantly designed. Yet to Ty’s perception, there were circuits that didn’t really need to be there. Components that weren’t in an optimal position.

  It was tiny and complex, and obviously machine-wrought, yet to Ty, it was like a roadmap. He could see it all clearly enough that it might have had signposts.

  He could get the mixer working again. He was sure of it. It would even be fun!

  4: Wires And Solder

  It took no more than half an hour. Ty was in the zone, focusing all his attention on the ruined circuit board. The rest of the Club faded into the background. Even Martin ceased to have any reality for him. Only the mixer mattered.

  In a way, it was like when he cannibalized the toaster and microwave to make a stun gun. His hands had worked automatically, intuitively, without his conscious control. Then, he had spent his time chatting with Brad as he worked.

  This time, he found himself humming tunelessly instead. He didn’t focus on what he needed to do so much as on what he needed to solve. And he just let his hands do what was needed.

  Slowly but surely, he Frankensteined a solution. The Architect’s fabricator would no doubt have been able to recreate the precise lines of the original circuit board. But Ty wasn’t a machine. He was lucky to even be able to see the circuitry he was repairing. Several times, he had to resort to peering through a lens to magnify what he was looking at, and he had to hold the soldering iron very still to ensure he didn’t make any errors.

  Fortunately, the soldering iron had a very fine tip.

  As he completed each section, he used a heat gun to melt a layer of clear plastic over what he had done to keep it separate from everything else. The air filled with odors of electronic construction, solder and plastic mixed with the heat from Ty’s soldering iron.

  When he was done, the insides of the mixer no longer looked clean and precise. It was a mess, a mixed-up jumble of wires and components all crammed into the smallest of spaces. Ty knew that nobody would have been able to figure out how it all worked. Yet to Ty, it was clear. He looked at the mess and saw elegance. To him, the different parts he had put together appeared to shine. They would do what he wanted, and do it more efficiently than the original circuit board had enabled.

  All through his life, Ty had been interested in electronics, but had never been truly gifted. Yet he had known a few who were. Not necessarily with tech, but with math. He remembered talking to one of them, a girl in his class who breezed through everything she did.

  “How do you know when it’s right?”

  The girl’s name was Diane. She had messy hair and teeth that protruded, and should have been unattractive because of it. Yet she was open and honest, and held no pretenses. She was a geek through and through, and in a weird way, her acceptance of it made her appealing.

  “When it’s right, an equation is elegant. I don’t know how to explain it, but it just feels right. It’s like a perfectly balanced teeter board on an apex. The slightest tremor or gust of wind should blow it over, but because it’s perfect, it just stays there.” Diane spoke quickly and accompanied her words with rapid gestures that seemed to hold meaning to her, but to Ty didn’t add anything to her words. “Sometimes an equation will have colors associated with it. It’ll shine, like the sun in the morning. When it’s right, it will be beautiful.”

  At the time, Ty hadn’t understood what she meant. To him, equations were no more than lines on the page. He couldn’t see the symmetry, the beauty that Diane was trying to express.

  But now, he understood completely. It was like that for him with what he was doing.

  Ty put down his soldering iron and just stared at what he had done. He breathed deeply, satisfied on a level he’d seldom known before. He knew without any doubt it would work.

  “Let’s crank her up,” he said to Martin.

  The DJ looked unconvinced. “You’re done?” he said.

  Ty nodded. At the same time, he flipped the mixer’s lid back over and slotted it into place. Then he offered Martin a grin. “Let’s see
, shall we?” He stepped back from the system. “It’s all yours. Try it out.”

  Still looking uncertain, Martin did as Ty suggested, and started his system.

  Screens burst into life right away. The hum of technology filled the air. Martin looked at Ty with an incredulous expression.

  “You did it!” he said.

  Ty just grinned. “Test it out. Make sure it all works.”

  Martin did so. He selected a record from those that lined the back wall above the keyboards and placed it reverently on a turntable, setting the needle in place. At once, the techno sounds of exactly the type of music Ty loathed filled the air, the beat loud enough to echo within Ty’s chest. The screens displayed a number of graphs and electronic settings that reminded Ty of the displays on the Architect’s holographic imager.

  Martin caressed the dials and knobs on the mixer with the confidence and surety of a virtuoso and the graphs leapt in response. At the same time, the music changed in ways that were both subtle and profound.

  Ty couldn’t help but grin broadly as Martin looked at him with newfound respect. “Man, you are a God-damned miracle worker!” Martin said. “I would have sworn that the mixer was done. Toast. Just so much plastic and metal, destined for the scrapheap. And you just went in there and brought it back to life.”

  Ty grinned even more broadly. For much of his adult life, his skills had remained unappreciated. Angie had never thought to compliment him when he fixed a machine. Instead, she derided everything he did, doing her best to convince him that he was worthless.

  To have someone overtly appreciate what he did was both refreshing and enjoyable. It was almost enough that, for the moment at least, he could put up with the horrible noise he had helped bring about.

  Nor had Martin finished in his praise. “I thought you had signed your own death warrant when you offered to help. I thought you were going to end up being fired.” Martin shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe it and caressed a few of the knobs on the mixer, changing the music again. “Man, you’re wasted in this place. You should be working for one of the manufacturing corps. Or maybe a repair business. I’ve even got a cousin who could use someone like you.”