She kept all signs of the conversation from her face and turned to Marcus.
“Why don’t you take me through it from the beginning?”
“Really?” he asked. “That bad? You know this was all your idea, right?”
Stephanie stared at him and her jaw dropped in surprise. Marcus caught it and blushed.
“I…I’m sorry… It’s only… Do you know how many times I’ve exploded this morning?”
She heard spluttered laughter from the other side of the room, but all the other scientists were huddled over the computers and studiously avoided both her and Marcus’ gaze.
Finally, one of them spoke—a behemoth of a man who stretched and yawned as he looked at them. “You weren’t the only one, Marcus.” The man focused on her. “My name’s Trey, and we honestly are stumped. The theory says it should work, but the practice… Marcus says magic’s your speciality.” He gestured at the screen and pressed a key so the relevant diagrams were displayed on the wall opposite. “We’d appreciate your help.”
Stephanie nodded and walked to the screen, where she paused and looked at Marcus. “So…how about it? Walk me through from the beginning.”
The scientist’s face paled as the Morgana’s coldness seeped into her tones and she wondered how much of her alter-ego had bled into her eyes.
“Please,” she added, relieved to hear more warmth in her voice.
“So…” He joined her at the board and the other scientists gathered around. “It took us a few attempts to spin the eMU to the outside of the generator, but once we had accomplished that, we were able to pump it to the end of each of these tendrils coming off the main pipeline.”
He glanced over his shoulder to make sure she was following him. She nodded and tried to keep the Morgana’s impatience at bay.
I get that much, the Teloran hissed. It’s what happens next that I don’t understand.
Stephanie listened as Marcus took her through the process from the beginning to that point.
“It’s only when the magic starts to bring the radiation back to the center that we seem to have a problem,” he said and gestured at the pipe. “We’ve tried everything we can think of but nothing seems to work.”
“It doesn’t happen when the magic and radiation blends?” she asked, sure she’d covered that in the base idea.
“No.” He shook his head. “That works exactly as described.”
Stephanie frowned, thinking fast. “Could you pinpoint exactly where the explosion occurs?”
Marcus rolled his eyes. “If we could do that, we’d have had this problem solved already.”
She caught hold of her temper—and the Morgana—and tried again. “So it happens at multiple points all the time, or at many single different points across different attempts.”
“Yes,” Trey interjected before he could answer.
“Yes, what?” she demanded and frustration almost got the better of her.
“It’s happened both ways. Always multiple points, as far as I can tell, but at a different combination of points each time.”
“And there have been times when the energy gets back to the generator and the conversion process fails,” Marcus said.
“Before or after the energy in the pipes explodes?”
The scientists frowned.
“Computer, run the explosion sequence for the last two days’ tests,” he ordered. “Simultaneously. On multiple screens.”
The AI did as he asked but Stephanie interrupted the playthrough seconds after it started.
“Computer, stop. Run the sequences again but stop at each explosion until we ask you to continue.”
Again, the AI did as it was told. They watched the run-through in silence, then watched it again. On the third run-through, Nathan sighed.
“I don’t see it,” he told them. “I simply—”
Priority! the Morgana snapped in Stephanie’s head. Tell them to run it again.
“Run it again,” she ordered.
“Do you have something?” Marcus sounded hopeful.
“Maybe…” She stalled. “Let me go through it one more time.”
He was about to start it when her eyes flashed black and she raised her hand. The coldness that settled over her face sent chills down his spine, but he waited.
See? The Morgana explained. All the energy tries to get to the same point at the same time—and the conversion process starts while the chamber is still loading. It’s like a computer program. They’ve sent feelers out for the data, but when it comes back, there’s too much for the information pipeline to assimilate and process unless you prioritize it. Then, the main processing unit has to keep recalibrating for the data that’s coming in after the analytical process has started.
Uh-huh. Now that the Morgana had pointed it out, Stephanie could see where the energy might be bottlenecking at junctions immediately before the pressure built to an explosion. It took her a while longer to see what was happening with the magic in the main chamber.
“Oh…” she murmured. “Computer, back it up and slow it down. Focus on the main chamber.”
Now that she knew what to look for, it was obvious—if you were used to working with magic—like the Morgana had said. The conversion chamber started processing the radiation from the moment the energy reached twenty-five percent but the energy kept arriving, which was problematic.
“So?” Marcus demanded, unable to hold his impatience any longer.
Stephanie looked away from the screen. “You’re trying to convert a mass that’s increasing. That’s one of your problems,” she told him and was rewarded by a chorus of “ahs” and “ohs.”
Ignoring it, she continued. “So you either need to fill the chamber and run the process or work out a way to regulate the flow so the process can account for what’s coming in.”
“You said one of our problems,” Marcus observed.
“The other one is that too much is trying to get into the main pipeline at once, which slows the flow at the junctions and—”
“Causes a back-up,” Phillip finished for her. “Well, duh! Why didn’t we think of that?”
“Because it’s too simple?” Gemma suggested.
“Because we were too stressed about being blown up?” Trey shook his head.
“Because it’s so fucking subtle, we missed it,” Marcus declared and ran the recordings again. “The flow barely slows but it’s enough.”
“And it’s dependent on how much the node is bringing in too,” Phillip observed. “That’s why different ones went. If the computer made the amount of radiation in each area variable each time we ran the test, the nodes would have brought in different amounts.”
“Muddying the waters.” Trey nodded and examined the different sequences. “Computer, highlight the volume and pressure readings.”
Stephanie took a few quiet steps back as the scientists crowded around the screen. At first, they stood in silence and absorbed the data but after a short while, they began to ask the computer to highlight different variables.
This was followed very quickly by suggestions raised to fix the problem and requests for simulations.