I'm recalibrating the timing between two sensors that are currently firing about 4 milliseconds out of sync, Ethan said, not looking up. Doesn't sound like much. It's not much on its own. But combined with the heat issue I just fixed, that gap was wide enough to start a chain reaction under real riding conditions. How do you even measure 4 milliseconds by hand?
You don't exactly. You get close, then you test, then you adjust. Ethan finally glanced up a flicker of something, almost like amusement crossing his tired face. It's not magic, Mr. Hail.
It's just patience. Same as anything. Reaper, who drifted close enough to actually watch the work now instead of just judging it from a distance, found himself asking a question he never expected to ask a teenager. "You learn all this from your dad." "Some of it," Ethan said.
"Some of it I figured out on my own, messing with things nobody else wanted to bother saving." He tightened a connection, checked a reading, nodded to himself. There's this old tractor been sitting in our back lot for 3 years. Everybody told my dad it was scrap. I've been picking at it in my spare time just to see if I could get it running again.
"Did you get it running?" "For about a week before something else gave out." Ethan almost smiled. Machines like that teach you more than the easy ones do. You learn to see problems other people already gave up looking for.
By the time he finished the timing recalibration, nearly an hour had passed, and the garage had grown tense with a particular anxious quiet of people watching a clock they couldn't see but could absolutely feel. Two down, Ethan said, straightening up, rolling his shoulders to work out the stiffness. Two to go, Marlene checked her watch, then her phone scrolling through something with a frown that made Marcus' stomach clench. What is it? Nothing yet, she said.
But my contact just texted. The judge assigned to the Precision Dine Technologies filing cleared his morning schedule unexpectedly. "Might mean nothing. Might mean he's planning to rule early." She looked up, meeting Marcus' eyes.
"I'd move faster if I were you." "We're moving as fast as we can," Ethan said, already pulling up the software interface for the engine's control system, plugging in a cable S had produced from somewhere in the back of the shop. "This next part's not something I can rush. If I get the calibration wrong here, I could make the whole problem worse, not better. How much worse?
Dutch asked. Worse as in it might not just shut off after 60 seconds anymore, Ethan said. Worse as in it might not run at all. The words landed heavy in the garage, and for a moment, nobody spoke the weight of the risk finally settling fully over everyone watching. "Are you sure about this?"