Thursday, January 19, 2012

The Tower of Trials Chapter 8 Page 2

Later that night, George was in his father's workshop.

He was working on that locked box from the tower. It was his down payment. The rest of his meager share would be deposited into his bank account once the Vixens had sold the rest of their spoils.

Since they could not open the locked box easily, the Vixens could not guess at its worth. So they had decided to foist it off on George.

"Put this back, Tillie," George handed a screwdriver to a little robot standing on the table.

The robot took the screwdriver with its mechanical arm, turned and returned the tool to its place on a rack of screwdrivers, arranged according to size.

The box had a smooth panel. A keycard reader or keypad or some other similar mechanism was supposed to signal the electric motor, which would slide the panel open, revealing the content of the box. Simple. Except that the keycard reader or keypad was missing.

With the probe of a small handheld multimeter, he poked the motor to test its circuits while examining them through a mounted magnifying glass. It was easy to reach the wirings of the motor since the internals of the electrical object were exposed. Based on the readings on the digital readout of the multimeter, he deduced that the circuits of the motor were still in working order. If he supplied power to the motor, it should slide the door open. He laid down the probe of the multimeter.

"Not yet, Tillie," George stopped the robot as it reached for the multimeter.

The circuits of the motor appeared to be intact. George still had to guess the amount of power needed to work the motor. Too little and the door would not open. Too much and the motor could be damaged and he would have to open the lock with liberal amounts of brute force.

George rose up from his stool. He needed a variable transformer from the cupboard. Too bad Tillie had not been programmed to retrieve tools for him. When was someone going to get around to doing that? Maybe it had something to do with the amount of work necessary. There were a lot of tools to apply with audio labels if Tillie were to match voice commands to the required tool.

A middle-aged man in dirty coveralls appeared at the door of the workshop. "Hah, never thought I'd see the day you'd willingly be working here this late, boy," he said.

Yeah, George would usually flee from work as soon as he was done with his duties. At that hour, he would usually be in his room, watching downloaded videos, or in bed.

"Just working on something, Papa," George said. He picked the equipment he needed from the cupboard.

"So, the wastes exciting?" the father asked.

Papa would want to know. From his stories about the wasteland, George knew that his father had also longed for the open freedom. However, his father had a family to take care off and so was stuck in the city. It was dangerous out in the wasteland and it would be irresponsible to leave his children as orphans.

George placed the transformer on the workbench. "It was okay," he said. His life was not secure out there. There was no one to protect him - no laws, no authorities, just him and his friends. Life was cheap there. But...

"It was free," he added as he looked at his father, "You can do anything you want there. No one to tell you no." Except for Mabel. "No need to worry if you're breaking a law or something. Or if the authorities are going to tell you you shouldn't do this or you must do that."

Yeah, and people were also free to take shots at each other.

The father smiled. "Had a good time?"

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