AN: 11 Advanced Chapters on my Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/cw/Crimson_Reapr
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The next day was accompanied by the sounds and hums of the printers going to town. They both pulsed with steady lights, the larger one thrumming as it created sheets of alloy that were thinner than a hairstrand, yet stronger than Earth's old steel technology. The smaller printer thrummed as well, though it made less noise as it stitched together the coils and housings with a precision that only a machine could achieve.
Mark stood a good distance away from the two printers, not wanting to test out his theories of what would happen to the human body if it were to be in the vicinity of a printing or feeding nanoprinter. He held the tablet in one of his hands, its 24-inch screen working alongside the nanoprinter's glow to illuminate his face as his eyes darted back and forth. The hum of progress was a sound that should've felt reassuring to Mark. However, it wasn't. His mind, though occupied with his current task, kept on wandering back to the chamber where Anahrin was lying. Every tick of the printers reminded him that the clock was ticking and Anahrin's expiration date was only getting closer with every passing second.
He clenched his jaw and shook his head, forcing himself to snap out of it. "Work now, worry later," he told himself as a pair of drones buzzed past him carrying a recently finished coil that was almost the size of him.
Yeah, that was another thing about these reactors that was just hitting Mark. They weren't some tiny things like the movies in his old life suggested. No. These were huge; the scale of the reactor he had created was huge, measuring a solid 40 meters long, 40 meters wide, and 25 meters tall. Sure, you felt small when standing next to a starship, no doubt. But you never really took in the scale of these things until you got up close and personal with its inner workings.
Mark waited for the nanoprinters to finish their current order before approaching. He bent down and strained as he picked up a dense, yet very delicate part of the housing. But his hands betrayed him as they trembled. The piece was supposed to be perfectly smooth, with all of its tolerances measured down to microns, and he almost dropped it, fumbling a little before finally setting it down a little too hard on the ground. This prompted a loud metallic clank that reverberated in the cavernous room.
"Oh... you've gotta be kidding me," he said as he started to inspect the part. "Fuck me, man..." he muttered as he found a barely noticeable dent on the side where he had placed it. He took a deep breath in an attempt to calm himself, but that didn't work out.
A socket was seen flying across the chamber a few seconds later, clinging against the wall it made contact with. Mark sighed and put in another print order for the same part and moved to the assembly room to work on putting what he currently had together.
By evening, Mark had managed to only assemble a single core frame, and to his dismay, it leaned ever so slightly. It was misaligned by less than 5 millimeters, but when it came to reactors, less than 5 millimeters was like playing in the devil's hands. He stared at it, sweat stinging his eyes as he tightened his jaw to the point that his teeth started to hurt.
He wanted to throw another tantrum, to break something, to let his frustrations free. But he instead forced himself to leave the assembly chamber and go talk to Anahrin.
As soon as the doors to the chamber slid open, Anahrin opened his eyes, smiling weakly. "I know that frustrated look... how are things coming along?"
Mark dropped into the chair, elbows braced on his knees as he leaned forward and ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah, I started, alright. But I already screwed something up."
Anahrin closed his eyes and swallowed before speaking, his voice faint. "Fast is slow... and slow is fast. A lesson you should've already learned when assembling the engines. If you rush the assembly, then you risk creating mistakes... And mistakes breed collapse... And collapse kills."
Mark buried his face in his hands as he spoke, his voice slightly muffled. "I don't have the time to be so damn perfect, Ani. You-" he stopped momentarily before forcing the words through his clenched teeth. "You don't have the time."
Anahrin smiled softly before speaking, his voice drowsy and just barely louder than a whisper. "You are correct... but that is only all the more reason to do it right."
Mark sat in silence, reflecting and rocking in the chair as he watched Anahrin rest. After a while longer, Mark returned to the assembly chamber and disassembled the frame, rebuilding it from scratch, this time without the same mistake he had made earlier.
---
The second day bled into the third, and the third into the fourth as Mark's focus bounced around from the printers to the assembly chamber, to the chamber where Anahrin was lying in. He tried to maintain himself occupied, only allowing any respite for himself when he woukd be keeping Anahrin company or the hours he slept.
Simple mistakes just kept on piling up as he worked. He wound a coil backwards, fitted a containment seal upside-down, miscalculated the bolt torque and stripped threats clean off. Each mistake he made was costing him hours of work, and every time he woukd let his anger out the only way he knew: cursing and insulting himself.
"Come on, you fucking dumbass, just focus, dammit, focus!" His voice echoed in the assembly chamber. Sometimes he would slam his fists into the ground in defeat, other times he would pound his own head for making such simple mistakes. Other times, he would just stand there, motionless as he stared at the parts and closed his eyes to keep himself from breaking something.
"You know, Ani, I'm this fucking close to losing my shit," he said to Anahrin while motioning with his thumb and index finger during one of their talks.
Anahrin sighed heavily, slowly shaking his head in what could only be disappointment. "Mark... one of the very first things I thought you was that patience is a virtue. Take your time with things, measured twice and cut once. Your Neuroplasticity is at the level where learning anything is as easy as breathing. So just take your time and you will see how your mistakes will decrease and your progress will speed up."
Mark furrowed his brows in confusion as he asked, "My Neuro what now?"
Anahrin chuckled softly. "Your Neuroplasticity... It was an unexpected, yet most welcome side effect from when I saved your life. And it appears to be permanent... It is the part that controls your learning, in a sense... It controls just how easy it is for your brain to create new neural connections and to reorganize itself, and yours is stuck at the level of... hmm, would it be toddlers for humans? Yes, toddlers... The point in human life where everything a human sees and learned is just absorbed by the brain like a sponge... So, just give it time, you'll get there."
Mark nodded slowly, recalling how the number of mistakes he had made today was far less than he had made yesterday. He then thought about how, when he had been learning under Anahrin, everything would take a few days before it finally clicked in his brain, and it would be smooth sailing from there on.
---
By the end if the first week, the framework of the reactor stood at the rear of the unfinished sleek heavy frigate. The Strathos' Shepherd stood on its own now, it's 3 massive landing struts deployed to hold its massive from without the help of anything else.
The frame was a skeletal shell of alloy lattices that were meant to house a reactor cor that was yet to be installed. Mark stood beneath the massive framework, tablet with the schematics in one hand and a torque wrench in the other, sweat plastering his shirt to his back. His eyes burned from lack of sleep as he tapped away at the tablet's screen, breaking his vision from it every once in a while to look over at his work.
He was so tired that he barely felt the torque wrench slowly slipping from his hand. But by the time he did, it was already too late. His attempt to catch the falling torque wrench only worked to propel it towards the framework. Mark's eyes widened in horror as he saw the tool fly in slow motion and make contact with a couple of wires and circuits. Sparks flew off almost the instant the wrench made contact with the wiring, and a thin wisp of rancid smoke curled up.
"No... Fucking... way," Mark cursed as he brought up a scanner to the affected area. It didnt even take a second before the screen of the scanner lit up with reports that flashed red. He had fried the circuits and the wiring. A whole day's work was undone in a second of negligence.
Mark wanted to genuinely cry. 'Why hadn't he just put the torque wrench down?' He asked himself. He had made it so far without mistakes, and now he had to strip the wiring and the circuits and redo them again because he didnt leave the wrench on the floor where it belonged.
He sighed and left the chamber with his head down, defeated by his simple error.
Anahrin stirred awake as he felt the door opening with a soft hiss. His eyes opened weakly, the glow of his blue eyes growing ever fainter with each passing day. "What has gotten the better of you today?"
Mark sighed, pacing around the room instead of taking a seat. "My dumbass self. I don't know, man, I'm just making really stupid mistakes. I just dropped a damn wrench and was trying to grab it. But instead I sent it flying into the circuitry I had just spent the day installing, frying the entire damn thing."
Anahrin, to Mark's dismay, chuckled. "It's all part of the process, Mark... No one is perfect... especially not when they're doing everything by themselves... are you thinking of giving up?"
Mark shook his head, his response coming immediately after. "Give up? Hell no. It's just frustrating, that's all."
Anahrin smiled and raised his left arm, prompting Mark to move to his side. He then softly jabbed his finger into Mark's chest while speaking. "That's the spirit. If you're not going to give up, then why care about the setbacks?"
Mark didn't even give time for the question to settle before speaking. "Ani, you know damn well why I care about the setbacks. I promised you-"
Anarhin waved his hand dismissively, interrupting Mark. "Promise me my ass. If my pupil can't do his work right, then his promises aren't worth a shit."
Mark was taken aback by the change in Anahrin's vocabulary, but it was something that worked to finally drive a message into Mark's thick skull.
"You are... not me," Anahrin said. "And that is good. You are you, but right now you're trying to be me. Fast is slow..."
"...and slow is fast," Mark finished for him.
Anahrin smiled faintly before sleep overtook him once again.
---
Things started to brighten up for Mark on his second week of assembling the reactor, though it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows.
His exhaustion had started to become a physical thing now, his limbs dragging, his reaction time slowing, and his thoughts fogging over. He woukd misplaced things sometimes and repeat steps he had already completed, forgetting whether he had tightened a bolt or merely imagined himself tightening it.
He even dropped a containment ring one morning. It hit the floor with a metallic clank, bouncing off the ocean before rolling out of reach. Mark didn't curse his luck this time. He just sighed and grunted as he got on his knees and stared at it. He shook his head, and a defeated chuckle escaped him before he forced himself to reach for it, retrieve it, and just keep it pushing.
The reactor was starting to come together, piece by piece, it's coilds slotted into housings, plates sealed against frames, and energy channels neatly twisted and arranged through the growing device.
"Look at you go, Mark," he said to himself as he stood back and admired his work. "From a nobody to a Navy Captain to a Starship Engineer, and now, a god damn electrician. That's some clean ass work though, would give any of them union guys a run for their money."
But even though things were looking up for Mark, he couldn't help but grow more and more frustrated with Anahrin. Every single time he visited, the guy just kept on going on and on about patience, about taking his time, about checking twice, doing once. It didn't help that Anahrin's voice grew soft every single time he came around.
"...Balance Mark... you need balance..."
"...You got to check the tolerances, Mark..."
"Slow it down, Mark, slow it down..."
"...Fast is slow, slow is fast..."
Mark listened to every single piece of advice Anahrin spat his way, but his patience was only fraying thinner after every word Anahrin spoke.
He finally snapped one night, slamming his fists onto the dais, startling Anahrin from the sleep that was about to take him only seconds after he had finished speaking.
"Do you have any fucking idea what this feels like? To watch you fade while I just keep on wasting time due to my fuck ups? You tell me to slow it down, and every single damn time I do so, I swear I can hear you breathe like you're drowning all the way from the assembly chamber. And I just fucking can't-" Mark's voice broke as he pounded his head with his fists. "I fucking can't lose you, Ani."
The silence that followed Mark's outburst was heavy, but Anahrin's following words hit Mark like a freight train.
"Mark, from the very first day we spoke to each other... You and I both knew that our time together... wouldn't be long." Anahrin's voice was barely above a whisper. His breathing was actually louder than the words that left his mouth. "For me, it's now been over a year and a half since I got the prognosis... that I wouldn't live past another year, yet here I stand... or rather here I lie... still breathing well past my expiration date... stop worrying about me, and make sure you make me proud with a job well done."
Mark turned from Anahrin in an attempt to hide how he felt. His words lodged themselves in Mark's chest like a blade, and for the first time, he didn't argue or try to blame himself. He simply sat down beside Anahrin and looked at him.
Anahrin's full features had been heavily dulled, his skin rapidly drying and aging. He no longer looked like the handsome young man Mark had met. No, he now looked like a man in his late 80s.
Mark stared at Anahrin for a while longer, until sleep and exhaustion claimed the two of them.
---
It took Mark a total of 3 weeks, an additional week from the intended timeline, but the reactor had been nearly completed, its massive size looming in the assembly chamber, which was only dawrfed by the size of the ship it would be going into.
Cables snaked across the floor, coils glistened with fresh chrome alloys that would later turn blue with exposure to heat and energy, and the containment field gleamed under the dim lights.
Mark stood before it, swaying on his feet, eyelashes had formed under his eyes from lack of proper sleep, his hands were raw, knuckles split and bruised from all the manual labor he had done, but his gaze was locked onto the reactor with an immense determination. Every single mistake he had made, every single hour he had lost, every single outburst of rage he'd had culminated in the machine that stood before him.
Mark tightened his grip over the torque wrench he held as his right leg couldn't stop moving, an anxious tic that had been rearing its head more and more as of late. His jaw ached from all the times that he had squeezed his mouth shut after a mistake. He could feel an extremely heavy weight on his back where, a couple of chambers behind Mark, lay Anahrin, his breathing only growing shallower by the minute.
"Slow," Mark reminded himself. "Fast is slow, and slow is fast."
He then cracked his knuckles and grabbed onto the final pieces that needed to be applied onto the reactor, giving then to the bots to help him carry them. He then climbed onto the reactor, making his way up until he reached the top. There, he grabbed one of the smaller coils, his hands trembling as he slotted it into place. He tightened everything into place and covered it.
A smile plastered itself across Mark's face, and he let out a heavy sigh of relief. He smacked the parts he had just finished tightening twice and let out a small chuckle as he said, "Yup, that's not going anywhere."