Modern Age Online

Kaleb reattached the access panel to the left arm. He had finally finished the repairs on both arms and legs. Running the diagnostic station and watching how the different bits of machinery reacted proved helpful. Luckily the damage in the arms had also been replicated between the two. It was a little tricky replacing a few of the parts, but he managed and he was now running the diagnostics for the umpteenth time.

He had to replace a tiny hair-like antennae, replace a few strange looking gears, and find a dead wire in a mass of wires. Once he had found and repaired everything he set out to find the piece labeled IBPCCU-000001. He guessed that it was a chipset, but the PCB’s in the arms and legs worked fine.

“Last one.” Kaleb said as walked around the exosuit.

The dark room made it hard to gauge time, but he figured it had been at least two hours since he entered the room. The last access panel he had to check was on the back with the power supply. But when he looked into the maintenance panel, he saw no circuit boards of any kind. There were bunches of wires strapped to the walls, the power supply’s housing, the connection sockets for the diagnostic station, and what looked like vibration padding or insulation on the inner walls.

Kaleb studied the interior over and over. He hoped that running diagnostics would show something like it had with the other problems. But so far nothing, soon enough the station beeped loudly meaning it had ended its run cycle. Kaleb rubbed his face and walked over to the diagnostic station.

“Ahh yes, the twelfth problem. This should be fun.” Obadiah spoke up for the first time in a while.

Kaleb blew out a breath. “This isn’t one of those unsolvable problems is it? I fucking hate those.”

Kaleb looked over the new readout on the station finding just one entry. The entry informed him that a there was some kind of error in the IBPCCU-000001. Opening the entry further only revealed that the error was an unstable power draw somewhere. Kaleb sighed again as he looked away from the readout and back to the exosuit. The fault wasn’t bad enough to shut down the suit's electrical systems, so he assumed that the power draw had to be minor.

Obadiah’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “It is perfectly solvable, it’s just a difficult problem.”

Kaleb nodded his head absently before looking back at the diagnostic station. “You know I am surprised this isn’t more helpful. You would think it could isolate the problem more accurately.”

“HAHA! It can! We rolled back a few features and settings on the diagnostic station. Remember the goal is for YOU to find and repair the problems. We didn’t want to make it too easy.” Obadiah laughed.

Kaleb growled angrily before suddenly he stopped. A toothy grin spread across his face as he had a sudden idea. Quickly he turned around and shut down the diagnostic station. He circled the station finding the small panel that allowed access to the diagnostic station’s battery supply. He found a large gray rectangle with two large wires leading deeper into the machine. As Kaleb removed the two wires he heard Obadiah complain loudly.

“Now that’s cheating!”

Kaleb sat the unplugged cables down and counted to thirty in his head. “Hey, I have a faulty diagnostic station. Now I could try to find the various settings and features you and your people blocked. Attempt to undo them through the menus and such; An option I’m sure you have accounted for. Or I could hard reset the whole damn thing and start from scratch.”

Obadiah merely grumbled as Kaleb reattached the two large wires and closed the panel. He turned the station back on and waited. Soon he the station’s screen lit up with the initial set-up guide for the Charon Electronics DS-112ODBKU Diagnostic Station. He smiled to himself as he filled out the general information on the machine.

“Did you want to register this unit for an online rebate?” Kaleb asked sarcastically.

Obadiah’s grumbling just grew louder and as Kaleb chuckled.

“Your right. You guys probably already did that. Don’t want to get in trouble doing it twice.”

Kaleb took another few minutes getting the machine setup. Once he had it ready to go he had to detach and reattach the leads into the Exosuit. That minor job finished he started the machine up again and leaned against the worktable, looking smug.

“Proud of yourself?” Obadiah groused.

Kaleb sighed and stretched his hands above his head. “Immensely.”

Obadiah voice grew whiny as he said. “You erased all my settings for that machine. I will have to redo the voltage and mechanical readouts for all the tech I inspect.”

“What else besides the exosuit do you inspect.” Kaleb asked.

“I have a few friends I do maintenance work for. There’s a government Super who uses a power suit and I do his basic maintenance work for a fee. Trouble is, the damn kid uses sounds waves as a weapon. The station would kick out various bits of decibel information, both acoustic and electrical that I had all nicely sorted in a custom layout in the diagnostic station.” Obadiah explained.

Kaleb felt a little bad after hearing the old man’s complaint. But he really could see another way to solve the problem. He was about to apologize when the station beeped again. Walking over Kaleb read through the new information. Obadiah was right, he was getting all kinds of information now, not just the errors. He had temperature information on the different compartments along with voltage output of all the separate subsystems. He had to scroll far down to find the error readout.

Once he found it, he not only had the error information it also gave him a general location. Thoracic chamber 0,-3 cm. Kaleb read the location and smiled his toothy grin. If he was guessing right, then the problem was in the back panel an inch below the power supply.

He moved over to Exosuit and removed the power supply. Gently setting the cylinder on the nearby table he looked into the power supply’s housing. Sure enough, he found a small PCB nestled just below the lower power socket. It took a few contortions in his hand but he got the small circuit out and unplugged. Kaleb held it up to the light noting that it looked like the type of circuit board used in old commercial mini-computers.

Kaleb looked over the board trying to find anything noticeably wrong. But whatever was wrong with it wasn’t visible on the board itself. Kaleb moved over to the diagnostic station and set about plugging the small circuit board into a nearby tablet. As he did, he heard a loud click come from the speakers from above him. Apparently Obadiah had turned off his mic.

Kaleb shrugged off his curiosity as the tablet lit up, recognizing the small PCB. He had to navigate a fully text based OS, but he found several large files and one audio file. The files seemed entirely text based, and someone labeled them with unintelligible strings of texts. The audio file, however, was simply titled ‘Obadiah.’ Kaleb clicked on it and listened intently as a male voice with a light German accent spoke from the tablet speakers.

“Obie, if you are listening to this then I guess you found this mini-computer hidden within my old effects along with my plans for the Mark VII. I know you never agreed with my decision to help the greater Super community, but I hope we have remained friends. I was never like you, Obie. You are a soldier, destined to march between battlefields for as long as your body holds up. But I can’t watch you do that anymore. Your idiotic son’s attempt at being a hero has proven that while you and I did great work, I would better serve this country by inventing and letting the HLO decide on who should have access to my tech… *hack* *cough*…”

The audio paused for a few seconds as Dr. Kersait devolved into a fit of coughing. But the old scientist recovered quickly.

“I know you fear what will happen to my inventions once I am gone. But, I assure you, I have taken steps to make sure they will always use my technology for the greater good. That being said, I have decided to pass on a few of my earlier projects to you. Failures, all of them. But they hold some sentimental value and who knows, they might be workable in the future. I know it might not seem like much, leaving you my cast offs, but you’re a smart man. I am sure you’ll find someway to use them. Finally, I want to apologize again for what I did to you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I agreed with your plan, I’m sorry we carried it out, and I am sorry it forced you into the shadows. If they ever discovered what we have done, then they would do everything in their power to get a hold of you…”

Obadiah spoke from just behind Kaleb drowning out the rest of doctor Kersait’s message.

“Arrogant bastard never thought they would let me live outside of a lab once they found me. Well, I guess he was half right.”

Kaleb whirled around, surprised that he hadn’t heard the old man sneak up on him. Without his notice the man was now less than five feet away. Kaleb’s eyes went wide as he stared into the face of Obadiah Nova. A face very different from the one he had seen on the laptop video three floors below.