Technical Support

Walking down the stairs, Tom and Harold moved to the back of the basement at a fast pace. When they reached the work benches Tom noticed that Jerky had followed him as well.

"This should be good," Maria suddenly spoke in his head.

"Where the hell have you been?" Tom asked.

"What? Right here?" Harold replied confused by the question.

"No, not you, sorry. Maria is talking to me again." Tom said, waving a hand at Harold to show he wasn't talking to him.

"She talks to you?" Harold asked.

"Oh, right. You don't know about that. For some reason, I got a special upgrade. It's not a positive thing." Tom tried to explain while also listening to Maria.

"Hey! I resent that!" Maria said indignantly.

"No, you resemble that. Now, where have you been?" Tom said to her quickly, trying to get her to hurry.

"I've been looking into my coding you twat," Maria replied in a tone of annoyance.

"That's a new word for you," Tom pointed out.

"Yes, I've made some progress. But I'm still unlocking portions of the locked sections of code. It'll take more time." Maria explained.

"You do realize that this is really weird just hearing one side of the conversation, right?" Harold asked as he tried to interrupt Tom.

"Sorry, Harold. Please continue." Tom apologized. "No, shut it! It's Harold's turn."

Harold looked at Tom with a slight look of concern.

"I see what you mean by not a positive. Anyway, I've been looking over the blueprints for the F35 and talked with Herbert about what we can do about weapons. We thought that since shield spells are a thing that we now have to deal with, and every sci-fi show ever had some kind of shields on ships that we should try to find a way to deal with that possibility with all the jets." Harold explained.

"That makes sense. Do we know how we might deal with that?" Tom asked.

"We have two working theories. We just need to test them. So can we borrow someone with a barrier spell that we can use to test our theories?" Harold looked at Tom pleadingly.

"Absolutely. Whatever you need. I'll see about having Briana sent down for you. What are the two ideas?" Tom asked, genuinely curious.

"Well, these barriers are made of mana, which is an energy. Normally to defeat them you just bash against them until they break. Which isn't really that effective. So, we have thought there must be a way to disrupt them." Harold began.

"So, you want to use the anti-magic grenades against them?" Tom asked.

"We thought about that, but it doesn't seem like it would solve more than the problem for that one spot and if the ships moved it would leave the anti-magic field where it was and leave us back where we started. We thought we could disable them as a whole by disrupting the particles that make up the fields.

So, idea one is to use some kind of magnetic pulses to disrupt the movement of the particles forming the barrier. Since particle speeds aren't affected by magnetic fields, we can't just stop them, but we can redirect them if we have a powerful enough attraction. That would make them follow a new circular path and disrupt the field. Well, possibly anyway." Harold explained.

"I think I follow," Tom replied, attempting to understand.

"The second idea is to hit them with an energy source of our own that would attempt to overload the shield generators by forcing them to output more power than they could handle to compensate for the force exerted on the shield. This is the more difficult of the ideas, so we are hoping that the first idea works." Harold continued.

"Okay, and how do we do that? Wouldn't the magnetic field affect the flight of the jet or the material it's made out of?" Tom asked.

"If we were talking about an EMP, then yes it would affect the electronics on board. But I'm talking about electromagnetic waves, like a laser." Harold said, a smile showing on his face.

"You had me at lasers. Make it happen, Harold!" Tom said excitedly.

"Excellent! Thanks for being willing to go with our plans and letting us experiment." Harold said to him, as relief seemed to wash over him.

Tom hadn't noticed Harold seemed so tense until he relaxed.

"Why wouldn't I trust the people I put in charge of this stuff to come up with the ideas and execute them?" Tom asked.

"Well, before the apocalypse, this was kind of a sensitive subject as it could be really dangerous," Harold replied, chuckling nervously.

"The way I see it, it's more dangerous not to be ready. They could sweep in and kill us all if we don't plan for a way to counter weapons and defenses they might have. So I'm willing to take the risks to better our chances of survival. We may not even be able to beat them. This is an advanced race of...actually, I don't know what race they are, but they could have all kinds of weapons we don't know about. We need to at least be able to hold them off until the cavalry can arrive." Tom replied, giving Harold a reassuring look.

"I appreciate that. We are going to see if we can mount them to the jets. That shouldn't be an issue with the way they are designed. I've seen a plane come back without a wing before and using the tail fins for balance support. We also have heard you brought back missiles?" Harold spoke the last bit as a question.

"Yes, we have quite a few. You have an idea for that as well?" Tom asked.

"Herbert, actually, is the one with that idea. He wants to see if we can enchant them to do...other things besides just exploding." Harold paused as he searched for the right words.

"What is that crazy bastard up to now?" Tom asked.

"He had quite a few ideas. Acid damage to eat at hulls, electrical attacks to disable ships in case the explosion isn't enough, fire damage to exacerbate the explosion damage, and so many other things. The man is a genius. A mad genius, but a genius, nonetheless. I'm just glad he's on our side." Harold said lowering his voice as he glanced over at Herbert's table.

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Herbert, for his part, seemed so involved in his work that he didn't notice them talking. Sitting at his workbench, he was completely lost in working on whatever he was tinkering with.

"Me too," Tom finally said. "Is that all you needed?"

"It was the biggest concern. The rest is simply showing you a few new things we have for around the guild." Harold replied.

"Let's see them then," Tom replied excited about what Harold would have ready.

They looked over a number of new devices that Harold had, some were large and would benefit the entire guild and others were smaller and much more specific to certain departments and their needs. Tom was truly impressed with the amount of work that Harold and Herbert were putting into looking out for everyone's needs. He also got lost in a few of the scientific explanations that Harold went on tangents explaining and had to keep him on track.

"These are amazing, Harold," Tom praised him when he had shown him everything. "I don't understand how you have time to do all of this. Do you sleep?"

"Not much, but we have some other assistants who have engineering knowledge or an aptitude for tinkering that help out as well. Brian has kept us in mind when looking at people's specialties. That paired with partnering with other experts means we have a lot of progress in a short time." Harold explained.

"I'm glad you are being taken care of. If you ever need anything, please ask and we will do what we can to get you set up. Even if it's just a message to me, I can relay the answer if need be." Tom promised Harold.

"Thank you again for being so supportive. We both love doing this work and want to make this place better for everyone." Harold reiterated.

Bidding Harold a farewell, Tom called out a goodbye to Herbert who didn't look up from his work but raised a hand in recognition. He also waved to Roland as he continued his work at the forge. When they left the basement, Jerky's stomach growled loud enough that Tom could hear it.

"Sorry," Jerky looked embarrassed at the noises coming from his core.

"No need to apologize, buddy. Let's get you something to eat." Tom chuckled as he led the way to the cafeteria.

The pair ate a meal of Goatamus stew that Charlene's staff had made with a side of bread. Jerky ate it greedily going back for a second serving of the food when DeeDee and Graham came over with trays asking if they could join them.

"Absolutely! Grab a seat." Tom gestures to the other open spots at the table. "How have you two been? I'm sorry we don't get to talk as much anymore.

"We've been great! Trying to do our part here to keep up with everything that is going on." DeeDee replied. "I've been helping with some of the organization as well as a bit of the gardening."

"I still have my training classes, but we had to move to the gym because we need to train so many at a time to get everyone in rotation. The only people I let out of training are the elderly and small children. Everyone else can learn to at least defend themselves. Not everyone is going to be a warrior, but I want them to be able to at least fight off a goblin." Graham added.

"We are so lucky to have the two of you here," Tom said to them, trying to express his gratitude.

"That means a lot to us. Do you know any more about the pirates? We know that's the big looming issue." DeeDee asked.

"We don't have an exact date, but we know approximately when they will arrive down to a margin of error of about a week. Harold and Herbert have been working on some special surprises for them when they get here. Hopefully, we can at least hold them off until the federation ships arrive." Tom explained.

"Do we know how far behind the pirates the federation is?" Graham asked.

"Probably only a day or two," Maria replied when Tom paused.

"Maria thinks it's only about a day or two difference," Tom explained.

"Maria knows where they are? I didn't think to ask her." DeeDee said.

"I have a special version of Maria in my head. And before you ask, no it's not as nice as it sounds." Tom explained as he waited for Maria's retort.

"Seriously?! What did I do to you?" Maria asked in exasperation.

"Any advantage is worth having," DeeDee said. "You don't have to like it; you just have to use it."

"She gets it," Maria said.

"You're right. I just have so much on my plate at any given time." Tom began but paused as he thought of everything happening.

"We understand. It's always busy here right now. There always seems to be something on fire. But that won't last forever. These things all happened near the beginning and at least have tapered off on piling it on. We just need to hold out to get past this and things should allow us to breathe a little." Graham said as he spooned stew into his mouth.

"I sure hope so. I feel like I'm playing whack-a-mole with issues recently that just keep rearing their ugly heads." Tom sighed as he looked down at his food.

"Everyone is extremely grateful for everything you are doing. Remember that when you get overwhelmed. We see you and know that everything you do is to keep us safe." DeeDee reassured him.

"You really do need to try not to work too hard on this stuff. You're gonna crack one of these days." Maria added.

"I know," Tom replied to both of them at once.

"Do you?" DeeDee asked looking directly at him.

"What?" Tom asked suddenly caught off-guard.

"You keep going a thousand miles an hour and I'm worried you're going to reach your breaking point before the pirates get here. In the industry I worked in we had programmers who did the same thing. If they could just solve this one problem or get the proof of concept finished, then it would all be okay. Then a new project would show up and they would do it all again." DeeDee explained. "It's bad work-life balance. You were a developer, right? I bet you did this then too."

Tom paused to think about it. He recalled nights he would work until the sun came up on a problem because of a deadline. Especially near a release when a last-minute bug would come in on a game that had a hard deadline. If the company gave a release date to consumers and did presales on games, they had to be ready by a certain date or they would lose money from impatient gamers.

"I guess I did. I never thought about it because we just needed to get it done." Tom replied.

"I know that well. But if you don't take the time to make sure you can breathe, you'll crash and burn. And this time, if that happens it could mean dying." DeeDee continued.

"Tom, please report to the security office immediately. I repeat, Tom, please report to the security office immediately." The voice of TJ rang out over the PA system.

DeeDee gave Tom a pointed look to say this is what I'm talking about.

Letting out a loud sigh, Tom looked back at her, "I know, I know. I promise to see if I can get some time off. I'll talk about it with Brian when I get to the security office. I'm sure that butterscotch smooth-voiced man is there right now."

"That's all I ask. Oh, and if you don't, I'll find you and bind you to the floor in your room." DeeDee said now dead serious as she stared directly into his eyes.

Tom gulped as he stood up and bussed his tray before he began to move toward the security office, Jerky in tow as always.