Kaleb stared down at the mess of metal and wires on his workbench. The arm had been fully disassembled at this point. The frame was intact and set to the side, while the internal components were laid out neatly. Thanks to the Homunculi, everything was in its place. But the part that was giving Kaleb his biggest headache right now was the one he had set aside for too long.

"It's going to have to be a complete overhaul." Daivor said, puffing on his pipe.

Kaleb sighed and nodded. "Sure. But of which one? The one on my shoulder is going to be tricky, and if we change the connector socket on the arm, then it's going to take a hit in power."

Daivor grunted, but said little else as they both went back to staring at the shoulder joint on the new arm. The connecting socket, designed to pair with the one in Kaleb's arm, was completely foreign to them. It had multiple connection points and a serpentine design that threaded through the socket. The one in Kaleb's current arm was a more standard ball and socket armature, with one connector point right in the middle. One of them needed to change. But the newer arm's socket was designed that way for a reason. Kaleb just didn't know what it was.

He flipped the heavy metal socket in his hand and looked over the inside. Opposite the socket connection was a tangle of wires and a bunch of things that looked like slim 'threads'. Kaleb could feel his Electrician Skill pulling at something in his mind, but he couldn't reach it yet. Near his arm, Daivor was looking at the tangle of wires with a contemplative look on his face. Eventually, the gnome blew out a plume of smoke and shrugged.

"It's gonna have to be your shoulder's connector port."

Kaleb blinked. "Why do you say that?"

"Because it's older. I might not know what every wire and thread in the new arm does. But it is a top of the line prototype."

"From K-Tech…" Kaleb grumbled.

"Who cares where it's from? This thing was worked on by some of the finest minds money can buy. We have to assume this socket configuration is for a purpose."

"And we just blindly trust that? I'd rather just change both."

"Why not just do that?" Terrance spoke up from nearby.

The boy was taking a break from the forge to feed his Salamander, Scott. The red lizard was happily chewing on forge slag as Terrance ran a gloved hand over his scales. Terrance looked sweaty, but happy as he glanced at Daivor and Kaleb and shrugged.

"I mean, if you don't trust the configuration and you're due for an upgrade anyway…"

He trailed off as Kaleb began to rub his jaw in thought. Daivor blew out another ring of smoke and grumbled to himself. It wasn't a bad idea completely, just a time-consuming one. Kaleb would have to strip and catalog each wire and thread in the arm's socket before doing the same to his shoulder's port. He'd taken the cover off his own socket a time or two and it was just as full of wires and cables. All of them tied into his central nervous system. Which made it that much more dangerous.

"I'll do it." Daivor rumbled. "But we are going to need a better environment."

"We've been meaning to build Vivienne a medical wing underground, anyway." Kaleb nodded. "That would be the best place to work on my socket. But we can do this one here."

Kaleb set the joint down and grabbed a pair of pliers from the nearest homunculus. With his tool in hand, he proceeded to carefully remove each 'thread' from its base clamp. As he did, he discovered the threads were really ultra-thin cables designed to transmit electrical signals to the arm. But they were a lot smaller than the cables he had in his own arm. He untangled what he could and passed the rest on to the Homunculi. But he made a mental note to examine the threads in more detail once he was done.

Next, Kaleb and Daivor teamed up to map the connection ports on the arms socket. There were fifteen of them. Each one coinciding with a massive tangle of wires and 'threads'. As Kaleb set the latest bunch of wires aside, he asked Daivor.

"Why do you think they didn't just use these threads for everything? I mean, we have bunches of electrical wires and then we have the threads. Why use both?"

Daivor looked at the threads and the wires before he said, simply. "CNS versus PNS."

Kaleb was about to ask another question when his skill provided the answer. The CNS was the Central Nervous System, while the PNS was the Peripheral Nervous system. Looking at the 'threads', Kaleb noticed each one was heading into and through the socket reaching slightly into what would be Kaleb's body. That meant they connected to his CNS and hooked into his brain to deliver signals to the arm. The wires, on the other hand, were the PNS, handling the somatic actions of the muscles and pistons of the arm.

Kaleb held up the thin white thread to his eyes. Peering into its plastic sheath, Kaleb could see even smaller electronics built into the tiny thing. He blew out a breath at the science of it all and shook his head. K-Tech may have been a sketchy-ass place. But the work they did was top of the line.

Electrician Skill Level Up

Current Success rate +5%

Chance of electrocuting yourself is down 5%

Kaleb grinned at the notification and finished removing the wires and threads. With each removal, the Homunculi placed the wires in different groups along the table. They were separated by length, color, and the amount of electrical current they could handle. He gave the little creatures of wave of thanks as he finished taking the wires out and studied the socket architecture. The design felt incredibly baroque to him. But with the knowledge of the threads fresh in his mind, Kaleb momentarily thought about trusting K-Tech's scientists.

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"So we have multiple connector ports, each forcing threads through into the body."

"Also, they transfer power into the arm itself."

"How is a body supposed to cope with that much power?" Kaleb asked doubtfully.

"They aren't. But a robot body could." Daivor grinned up at him.

Kaleb rolled his eyes and ignored the gnome. Instead, he focused on following the grooves and divots into the socket itself. Each one was designed to spread the power from the wires and threads through the arm completely. It also would connect with its sister port in Kaleb's arm and deliver commands from his brain to the arm. But the more Kaleb stared at the arm and its inner workings, the more a pressing issue cropped up.

"We need to decide on the power supply first. Otherwise, all this is meaningless."

"Agreed. The arm's threads and wires are rated for high energy output. We just need to make sure your own arm can handle it as well."

"But we are agreed on the type of power we are going to be using, right?"

The gnome glanced up at Kaleb, confused for a split second. Before a smile grew on his bearded face. "Smart. I like it. But it will take some work."

"So? This entire project is going to end with you doing surgery on my shoulder, anyway. Might as well go big or go home."

"I agree. But let's build a few of the Kersait Batteries, just in case. We can use them as a backup."

Roy stuck his head up from his own workbench and looked over at them, surprised. "The batteries are the backup? What the hell are you guys planning on using for power then? Those batteries are the best we got."

Kaleb shook his head at the young Nova. "No, they aren't. We got vats of a highly potent energy fuel right downstairs. And it regenerates itself."

"The Weikacol solution?! That's nuts… isn't it?"

Kaleb chuckled and rubbed his hands together as Daivor explained. "Not really. We can't mimic the power cores this arm was using. But we can substitute them with something just as powerful. It means we'll have to retrofit the entire arm to handle a liquid power system. But we can do it."

"It sounds like you're just making more work for yourself." Marie said from her own workbench.

"The alternative is creating a brand new power core that rivals the one K-Tech was planning on using."

"And you don't think you can do it?"

Kaleb shook his head. "Probably not right now. Besides, why do that when the liquid power system can do the same thing? The Weikacol solution is very potent."

"What about when someone clips one of your liquid lines?"

"We can protect them as best we can. But it is something we'll have to plan for. In the meantime, we can also experiment with power cores. Maybe one day we'll be able to mimic K-Tech. But right now, we just need to power this arm."

Marie rubbed her chin in thought as she asked, "So you also need a flexible cable that can withstand a lot of force?"

Kaleb quirked an eyebrow before he remembered that the young woman had rushed off after seeing the synth-muscle cords. "What do you mean 'I also need'?"

Marie blushed slightly as she raised a strand of synth muscle into the air from her desk. She had apparently snuck one over to her side of the room. Kaleb and Daivor both glared at her, but the looks bounced off the woman. She simply shrugged her shoulders before setting the cord back down on her bench.

"I was thinking about making some armor that was essentially just synth-muscle. Something that increased the wearer's strength while also protecting them. This synth-muscle is tough and flexible, but not quite as tough as I need it to be."

"Are you stress-testing our limited collection of Synth-muscle?!" Kaleb asked, mildly distraught.

"Not with anything that's gonna break it, boss. Calm down. But I wanted to check the level of toughness."

Kaleb blew out an annoyed breath as Daivor swung over to Marie's desk and looked over her work. The young woman had a bunch of papers and data slates strewn over her work station. Apparently, she had been reading up on quite a lot of things. Kaleb glanced over at Roy to see the boy surreptitiously not looking in his direction. Clearly, the boy had been aware of Marie's little project.

Kaleb grumbled to himself, but he was interested in what Marie had come up with. Protecting the fuel lines for his new arm was going to be a vital part of the new build. A ding came from his terminal as Daivor sent over Marie's notes on what she'd been researching. Daivor gave him a wave as the gnome fell into conversation with Marie. Clearly, the young lady had made some decent inferences.

Kaleb opened the notes and started poring over them. There were many flexible metals in the game and most of them were readily available. But too many had very low Shear Strength. In her notes, Marie posited that some kind of alloy could be substituted, but she lacked the chemical knowledge to create such an alloy. Kaleb glanced up at Marie, who was still in conversation with Daivor. He imagined the gnome was asking the questions he would ask. So he tabled the discussion for now.

Going back to his arm, Kaleb began annotating each piece of the socket as he carefully took it apart. They would need to refer to his notes when they put things back together. Also, when they attempted to make the sister connection in his shoulder. He was still hesitant to use a K-Tech design, but he couldn't think of anything else at the moment. It was when he was comparing his own arm's design against the K-Tech one, when it hit him. Not for the first time, Kaleb wanted to smack himself in the face. Instead, he settled for banging his head against his workbench.

He was five blows into his head banging when Daivor's voice cut through his ears. "What did you do now?"

Kaleb stopped for a second before he picked his head up and grumbled. "Clara."

"Who?"

"Clara Strigian. Professor Clara Strigian. My colleague at the college. She's a fucking expert at robotics and could help us with this. Why didn't I think of her first?"

Daivor had swung his way back onto Kaleb's desk and he stared into Kaleb's eyes with concern. "Can she be trusted?"

"As much as any corporate stooge can." Kaleb shrugged. "She's a bit of a corporate rat, but she knows her shit. She works for TekNik."

"The company you just raided?" Roy asked.

"I didn't raid them! I sneakily found my way into their offices in order to uncover proof of their crimes."

"So an illegal raid?" Terrance asked.

"Don't you kids have work to do?!"

"Nah, this is way more fun," Marie chuckled. "So tell us about this other professor. Do you think she knows about alien alloys and metals?"

"I'd think so? Like I said, she works for TekNik and seems to thoroughly enjoy discussing cybernetics. We had a rather fun conversation the last time I taught my class."

"Fun conversation, huh?" Roy added, waggling his eyebrows.

Kaleb rolled his eyes, and ignored his assistant. Instead, he turned to look at the clock. It wasn't too late. If he borrowed a car, he could hurry over to the college and get the Professor Strigian's opinion fairly quickly. Daivor must have seen his wheels turning, cause the gnome tapped his pipe against the table for attention.

"Just take her pictures. We don't want her getting too good a look at what we got."

"Why not?!" Marie argued. "She could help us both."

"Or she could ask a lot of questions that we don't want to answer. Hell, she could also turn around and tell her corporate overlords what she's seen."

Kaleb bit his lip in thought before nodding. "Fine. Just pictures for a start. But if she proves trustworthy, we can invite her over to talk about things."

"About things, huh?" Terrance asked suggestively.

"About cybernetics, ya bunch of children! I know you have personal projects you could be doing! Get to work!"

The trio of teens chuckled at his outburst but went back to their own worktables and said nothing else. Kaleb rolled his eyes and looked down at the pensive Daivor. Kaleb waved off the gnome's concerns.

"Don't worry so much, Daivor. I'm an excellent judge of character. I know she'll help us out."

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