Chapter 76: Discovery

Frost heard a loud noise before he reached the workshop.

A deep hum traveled through the partly open door, accompanied by the occasional rattle of something metallic.

He paused with his hand against the frame, wondering whether he should wait outside until whatever Yasmine was doing had stopped being dangerous - that is, until he heard a slightly crazed laugh.

"It works!"

Frost pushed the door open, only to find her practically bouncing beside one of the larger workbenches.

Her goggles were crooked, her two-toned hair was even messier than usual, and a dark smear ran across her cheek.

"You’re here!" she exclaimed, spotting him. "Come here, quickly! You have to see this!"

"What did you-"

"Just come!"

She hurried over, caught his wrist, and pulled him towards the bench before he could finish. Frost followed willingly, though he kept a wary eye on the contraption bolted to its surface.

At its center was a cylindrical metal casing about the size of his head. A shaft extended from one end into a much larger testing apparatus, while thin lines of light ran across the casing beneath a steadily shimmering triagram.

Frost recognized the basic arrangement immediately.

"The motor?"

Yasmine nodded so vigorously that her goggles nearly slipped off. "The motor! And it isn’t catching anymore. Look!"

She pointed towards the shaft, though it was turning too quickly for him to make out much beyond a metallic blur. Even the uneven clattering of her earlier prototype had disappeared, replaced by that smooth, powerful hum.

Frost leaned closer, his initial curiosity quickly becoming genuine interest. "You fixed the alignment?"

"That, and the essence distribution. The old arrangement was putting too much force on one section at a time, so I divided the script and made the output alternate around the shaft."

She spoke quickly, pointing out different sections while Frost tried to keep up. Some of the explanations went beyond his understanding, but he could follow enough to realize that she had done considerably more than repair their original design.

"You’re barely feeding it anything," he said, studying the small essence indicator beside the casing.

Yasmine’s grin widened. "Exactly."

She reached for a lever on the testing apparatus and gradually pushed it forward. The hum deepened, and the heavy frame beneath the bench gave a slight tremor.

Frost glanced at her.

"That’s applying resistance," she explained. "Watch the readings."

He did, though a moment later, he looked back at the motor, then at the display again.

"Wait. Are those numbers right?"

"I checked the measuring script three times."

"You’re sure?"

She gave him an offended look. "Frost."

"Right. Sorry."

He leaned towards the display again, mentally comparing the figures with the measurements she had taught him over their previous visits. Surely he had misunderstood something, because there was no way that little thing was producing that much torque.

Yasmine increased the resistance further, and the motor kept turning.

"Holy shit," Frost whispered.

He wasn’t an expert, and he certainly couldn’t have built an industrial motor from memory, but he knew enough to understand what he was looking at.

The force coming out of that little casing was leagues beyond anything he had ever heard of back on Earth, even from machines so large they needed entire buildings to house them.

And she had made it on a cluttered workbench, surrounded by half-empty cups and discarded metal scraps.

"How is the shaft still in one piece?"

Yasmine looked positively delighted by the question. "Reinforcement inscriptions. The first one twisted apart before I even got this far."

"The first one?"

She pointed towards a misshapen piece of metal on a nearby tray. Frost had assumed it was scrap.

"Ah."

"I had to reinforce the housing too, and the supports. Honestly, getting it to turn was the easy part. Making sure it didn’t tear itself apart was much more annoying."

Frost watched the motor for another moment before slowly shaking his head.

"Yasmine, do you understand how ridiculous this is?"

"Ridiculous in a good way?"

"In a very good way. We had motors on Earth that were bigger than this entire room, and you’re telling me this little thing can produce more force?"

Her face brightened again, and she turned towards the machine with an expression he had never seen on her before. Usually, even when a project went well, she looked relieved more than anything else.

Now, she looked as though she could barely contain herself.

"I knew it could work," she said. "I knew there had to be a way to keep the motion continuous without wasting so much essence between each rotation!"

She lowered the lever and cut the supply. The triagram faded, and the shaft gradually slowed until the workshop was quiet enough for Frost to hear her excited breathing.

She suddenly threw her arms around him.

"It fucking works!"

Frost barely had time to raise his hands before she squeezed him, laughing against his shoulder. He stumbled half a step, then steadied and held them both, a surprised chuckle escaping him as she bounced on her toes.

"Yes, I noticed."

"You don’t understand. I’ve been trying to get it stable for days! Every time I fixed one thing, something else went wrong, and last night I thought I would have to take the whole thing apart again."

Judging by the bags beneath her eyes, she had probably done exactly that.

"But you didn’t give up," he said, smiling down at her. "And look at it now. You made something amazing."

Yasmine lifted her head, and her cheeks flushed with excitement. She caught his face between both hands and pulled him down, pressing her warm lips onto his.

Frost went completely still.

It wasn’t a quick peck either. She kissed him deeply, her fingers squishing his cheeks as she held him in place, and whatever sensible thought he might have formed disappeared before it could get very far.

By the time he thought to respond, Yasmine had frozen too. She drew back just enough to look at him.

It was clear she hadn’t meant to do that.