Nigel sat on the concrete floor and studied the mess of broken machinery in front of him. Gears, cogs, sprockets, and unidentifiable doohickeys were scattered in piles between his legs.
“There’s clearly some sort of order to where you put the parts,” Elise said. She leaned down and pushed her ponytail back over her shoulder, trying not to get grease smeared onto her leather jacket. “I can’t tell what it is, though.”
“Blocking my light,” he mumbled, then looked up, blinking. “Oh. Sorry. Rude?”
She straightened and stepped to the left, trying not to roll her eyes. She took a deep breath of the damp air and suppressed a sigh. “Yes, rude.”
“Have to get it working again,” he said, hands fidgeting over the parts. Stubby fingers flickered faster than she would have believed possible. Each movement he made was deliberate and precise. “Each pile goes into its own section. Here, hold this for me.”
She snorted and moved back to lean against the wall. She propped a foot against it for balance, concrete rough and cool under her fingertips. “I most certainly will not. That – thing – is what got us in the dungeon in the first place.”
He propped a long metal rod against his ankle instead. “Not a dungeon.”
“It’s a locked, windowless room in the basement. And we’re stuck here until the other bots outside go away, lose interest, or calls for more of those things to come help. I’m just glad we control the deadbolt. It’s close enough to a dungeon to count.”
“Horseshoes.” Nigel’s brow furrowed, his eyes darkening. He spilled the piles of gadgetry from their towers of precarious balance with a sweep of an arm. His nose nearly touched the ground as he chose new parts. “Bad design.”
Elise sighed. She had to draw an engineer as her partner. Every single time, it seemed like. “It was a reasonable argument that close counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and dungeons. Just give me that one, would you? And what’s this about bad design?”
She crossed her fingers and made a wish, as if she were seven again and arguing with her younger brother. Iftheir backup didn’t show up soon, Nigel would want to stay here until he fixed that thing.
“I improved it. Much more efficient this way.” He grinned at her, the spark back in his eyes. A squat finger hovered over a red button.
She pushed her foot against the wall and lunged for him. A beep halfway there told her she was too late. He’d started the blasted thing up again. She turned her lunge into a painful somersault and rolled onto her feet. Drawing her knives, she faced the machine that had chased them inside the room.
“It works!” he crowed. He scooted away from its treads, alarm flickering over his face.
Her shoulder throbbed. She wondered if a good stomp of her combat boot would do the trick? Was she fast enough to get past the whirring saw blades? “You know, you could have considered not fixing the tiny death machine, right?”
“Improving.” Nigel sniffed, and wedged himself into the corner.
***
This prompt has stymied me for far too long! I work with a LOT of engineers, and reality kept intruding. B. Durbin challenged me nearly a year ago with the following:
“According to Milton, the road to Heaven is rocky and narrow. The road to Hell is broad and well-paved. Therefore, we know which way all the engineers go.” (Professor Michael Bonin to engineering student Ron Palmer, attribution not part of the prompt.)
TE Kinsey’s latest cozy reminded me that engineers love to share information, even when they shouldn’t…and they also like to fix things. Even when they really, really shouldn’t.
