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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