I snap my head back down, with renewed vigour and hope about communicating with everyone without needing to play charades. With the knowledge that this is a microphone, my mind swims with the possibilities. If they can grow quartz crystals, they may be able to refine and grow silicon crystals, effectively making computers. Getting back on track, I add a resistor above the tremorsense and attach a ground wire below it. Tapping off between the resistor and tremorsense, I look to Silvra and gesture towards the translator.

“And what do you think you are doing?” She remarks, eying the setup with a mix of scepticism and intrigue. Her arms were folded, her brow furrowed in concentration.

“Just because you may be able to overhaul our entire way of life, does not mean I will give you something worth half a year’s wage. You best get to explaining yourself.”

Taking a deep breath, I sketched a quick diagram on the paper between us. I outlined how the piezoelectric effect of the tremorsense could convert sound into electrical signals that the translator could interpret. “It’s like turning vibrations into voices,” I explained, hoping the simplicity of the analogy would bridge the gap my technical terms could not.

“It…should work. Why has no one thought of this before?!” Silvra asks eagerly, reaching for even more paper, with Thallion leaning in to take notes as we possibly cross the language barrier.

Silvra passes me the translator, and carefully I place the tap wire on the central nub, and the ground on the body, similar to how their hands work with the metallic pin and the rest of their hand. I then reach for my phone and attach the power to the resistor, and the ground to the body of the translator as well.

I speak.

“can you hear me?” I ask, apprehensively, hoping I did not just blow up the device. It’s faint whine either being a really good thing, or a very bad thing.

“What was that?!” Lena turns around, after staring off into space as we got technical.

“i said, can you hear me?”

“yes we can!” Lena exclaims, not through the device, but from across the table, her eyes wide with astonishment.

“I can too. it is a little dull, but we can hear you. and you can hear us! without us touching it!” Thallion remarks,

I notice that yes, I can hear them, but rather than being melodic and transferring all the intent behind the meaning of the word, translating the emphasis, it comes across as dull, flat and lifeless, like text to speech readers. I find it quite painful to listen to.

“Perhaps it's a minor calibration issue,” I suggested, already thinking about adjustments to enhance the voice modulation.

“maybe i can sound like a robot for now, but perhaps, you should continue playing hot potato with the translator?”

“forget that!” Silvra remarks. “i may sound flat, but i don’t have to pass the device around! i can just leave it on a desk somewhere and it will just work!”

“not only is this an overhaul in this device, but think of the implications. we can talk across species without needing to touch very complex systems. we may even be able to communicate with animals, Lena!”

Lena perks up at this, “if i could talk to them, then i may be able to convince the big ones to leave us alone, but I worry about what that means if they are truly intelligent.”

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Looking back at the device, I think back to the little I remember for analog electronics. The device can pass emotion and translate it, so it is capable of doing so. Maybe there is an issue with the prefilter? I could possibly fix that.

“silvra, it is amazing that we can talk, but I find it painful to listen to all of you due to the robotic voice. i think i can fix it. do you have the schematics for the device?”

“i don’t know what robot is, but i am guessing the flat sound, i do have drawings, let me go get them”

Silvra heads out, and Tallion is writing down everything. Lena is leaning over his shoulder.

“i know you are upset, but what you did is monumental, communication without contact, translation without touch. just remember that you are using your phone for power!” Lena states. I cannot tell emotion but bittersweet is all I can get.

Silvra enters again, knocking the snow off her clothes carrying some yellowed paper. Placing them down before me, I look across them.

“maybe increase the power input? That usually works for us. More space for clarity, or something,” Thallion adds, trying to be helpful.

I shake my head no, trying to ignore what he just said, based on the fact that is how humanity killed the first transatlantic cables. It is not a power issue as the device turns on, but a warping or nonlinearity of the data itself.

After a few moments of staring at the schematics, I find the input and the first thing I see is the massive choke directly after the input.

“a ha! found it!” I exclaim, reaching for the toolkit that Silvra brought over a few days ago. “just need to remove the choke at the front!”

“before you go voiding the warranty on this, why would that solve anything? that is how we regulate the flow of power!”

“i make direct current from my phone, so i don’t need to regulate it, in fact, that choke is destroying all high frequencies. i will talk about it if this works.”

“ok, but i’ll dismantle it. just point out the part on the schematic, and provide a jumper to cross over the holes”

Sighing, I grab the cables from the toolbox, along with the soldering iron and candle. Silvra grabs the components from me, and carefully unscrews the ground bell from around the power pin. Finding the power pin’s input into the interior, there is a large coil. Silvra quickly removes the coil and puts the jumper in its place.

Reassembling it, she gestures for me to talk. Taking a deep breath, and reconnecting my phone, I talk.

“Good afternoon everyone! And welcome to a new era! One of power for all!”

“I can hear you loud and clear!” Silvra exclaims, jumping up from the table.

“Astounding! Decoding the schematic and removing the choke did solve the problem!” Thallion replies.

“It worked before, and now it works better, I still think the first is more important to document”, Lena interjects, clearly getting bored of all of this tech talk

“So, Silvra,” I mention, “removing the choke works due to the same way the coil of wire moves coins: magnetism. Over the next few days we’ll be going over this in a lot more detail, but the choke does not choke the current, it converts it into magnetism, which is then released later. A changing current results in a changing magnet inside. It is very weak but enough to smooth input ripples, and stretch out the input spike slightly, which is probably why it is there in the first place.”

“But it comes with a downside. It acts stronger on faster switching pulses than on slow ones. My dc power has only an on pulse, but the signal of my voice is made of many higher vibrations. The choke would have killed this high frequency, and would have only passed the lower, which would be the fundamental frequencies only, sounding flat. The translator would then only be able to act on this flattened signal.”

“Now, I only got about half of that, but it stores the current as something called magnetism, saving it for later, and smoothing out the input,” Thallion states, looking up from his notes.

“Exactly. Think of it like a dam. Takes the surges and smooths them out, but you lose the changes caused by individual rainfalls”

“So what exactly is magnetism?”

“That is a good question, and contains several fields, chemistry, physics, all of what we classify as science. It will look like magic to you, but any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science. Just be ready to learn.

“Does this make the motor thing spin?” Lena asks.

“Yes, yes it does.” I reply, looking at my phone and the power slowly but steadily dropping.