The air in the maintenance bay hummed, thick with the barely contained energy of the Probability Drive's core and the residue of our tense standoff. Anya, her hazel eyes sharp and missing nothing, gestured towards the rear of the monstrous vehicle where the glowing blue conduits converged on the cylindrical heart of the machine. My own internal reserves felt dangerously low, hovering at a meager [22/80] SP, the simple act of fixing her sidearm having cost more than it should have.
"Alright, Debugger," she said, her voice crisp and all business now that a fragile truce was established. "There she is. The source of all my speed, and currently, all my near-death experiences."
She moved towards a workbench cluttered with heavy-duty tools – hydro-spanners that looked capable of dismantling a tank, laser cutters, diagnostic pads displaying streams of chaotically scrolling data. With practiced ease, she tapped commands into a ruggedized terminal bolted to the bench, its screen flickering to life with complex energy flow diagrams and error logs filled with angry red warnings. The setup was pure scavenged functionality – high-tech components bolted onto makeshift mounts, powered by thick cables snaking back towards the humming drive core itself.
"Standard diagnostics are useless," Anya stated, pointing a grime-stained finger at a particularly alarming spike on an energy graph. "Reads stable one second, threatens to implode the next. Pre-Glitch tools can't parse reality fluctuations interfering with the data stream. All I know is, when I push her hard, especially transitioning through distorted zones, the core output becomes… unpredictable." She grimaced. "Yesterday, the primary manifold tried generating its own localized black hole. Tiny one. Mostly harmless. Except for the part where it nearly shredded the port-side track assembly."
Localized black hole. Mostly harmless. Right. My definition of 'harmless' clearly needed recalibration to post-Crash standards. My headache, a constant companion since the NOC, pulsed in sympathy.
I cautiously approached the drive core. Up close, the hum wasn't just audible; it was a physical pressure, a vibration that resonated deep in my bones, making my teeth ache faintly. The glowing blue conduits weren't just painted lines; they contained roiling streams of contained plasma, shifting and swirling like captured nebulae. The central cylinder itself, maybe three feet tall and wrapped in complex heat sinks and dampening fields, emanated a faint, cool breeze despite the palpable energy radiating from it. Its surface seemed to shimmer subtly, not quite solid, like looking at something through intense heat haze, but cold. The air around it smelled sharply of ozone and something else… clean, sterile, almost like the inside of a particle accelerator.
"What… what actually powers it?" Leo's voice was barely a whisper. He'd cautiously moved out from behind the track unit, his eyes glued to the impossible engine core, a mixture of draftsman's curiosity and pure terror on his face.
Anya shot him a glance, then smirked mirthlessly. "Couple of salvaged zero-point energy taps, heavily modified, feeding into a reality-stabilization matrix that… well, mostly stabilizes reality. Theoretically." She gestured vaguely at the core. "Think of it as gently persuading the universe to let us cheat, rather than brute-forcing our way through."
Gently persuading the universe. Riiight. And its recent arguments involved miniature black holes.
"Okay," I murmured, taking a deep breath. This was going to hurt. "Let's see what kind of argument it's having."
Activating [Perceive Glitch] felt different here, near the core. Usually, it was like tuning into background static, finding the discordant notes. Here, it was like opening my mind to a roaring waterfall of pure, structured, yet incredibly unstable information. Lines of energy, shimmering matrices of force, layers upon layers of interwoven code – not software code, but the base script of reality itself, warped and manipulated by the drive. It was beautiful and terrifying.
Then, I applied [Glitch Analysis - Rank E].
The waterfall became a supernova.
My mind reeled from the sheer density and complexity. This wasn't like debugging a flashlight's faulty circuit or a keypad's simple logic loop. This was like trying to simultaneously debug quantum physics, general relativity, and twelve competing brands of unstable operating systems all running on hardware forged from condensed nightmares. The sheer scale of it hammered against my already weakened mental defenses.
I visualized the energy flows Anya had shown on her terminal, trying to correlate them with the raw reality-code I was perceiving. Saw the ZPE taps pouring raw potential into the matrix. Saw the matrix trying to weave that potential into stable spacetime geometry, allowing the drive to 'persuade' reality. But there were… errors. Glitches. Deep within the core matrix code.
Imagine trying to follow a thousand glowing threads woven into an infinitely complex tapestry, but half the threads kept randomly changing color, phasing out of existence, or spontaneously knotting themselves into paradoxical loops. That was the core matrix. The 'exceptions' Anya experienced? I saw them as violent cascades, tiny knots in the weave suddenly tightening, forcing reality to snap back violently, creating energy spikes, spatial shears… miniature black holes.
My SP started draining like water from a sieve, far faster than the previous, simpler tasks. [-5 SP… -10 SP… -15 SP!]. Sweat prickled my brow despite the cool air radiating from the core. The sterile smell intensified, making my eyes water. The intricate patterns I perceived flickered, threatening to dissolve into pure chaos. My mental [Logic Probe] felt laughably inadequate, like trying to reroute a tsunami with a toothpick. The effort was immense, pushing my reserves to the absolute limit.
Anya watched me, hawk-eyed. Her arms were crossed, stance skeptical but intensely focused. She wasn't tapping her foot, but the impatient energy was radiating off her. She noted the pallor deepening in my face, the tremor starting in my hands again, more pronounced this time. She saw the strain. Maybe, just maybe, she recognized the look of someone genuinely wrestling with something far beyond normal comprehension, someone running on empty. Leo looked like he was about to be sick, his draftsman sensibilities probably offended by the sheer wrongness of the drive's internal logic.
I pulled back mentally, gasping sharply, the world swimming violently back into focus. The headache had ramped up to migraine levels, complete with bonus nausea and flashing lights at the edge of my vision. [SP Level Critical: 7/80]. Any deeper and I risked serious mental feedback, maybe even permanent corruption from the raw reality code. The buffer was gone. I was right on the edge.
"Okay," I managed, leaning a hand heavily against the cool, smooth flank of the Probability Drive's armor plating to steady myself, fighting the urge to vomit. "Okay. I see it."
Anya raised an eyebrow, noting my obvious distress. "See what? Pretty lights? Impending doom?"
"The core matrix," I elaborated, rubbing my temples, trying to force the words out through the haze of pain. "It's… unstable. Fundamentally. It's like it's running two incompatible physics models simultaneously, and they're constantly fighting for dominance. When you draw heavy power, especially during reality transitions, the conflict spikes. It can't resolve the paradox, so it essentially… throws a cosmic tantrum." I waved a hand vaguely at the core. "Manifesting as energy surges, spatial warping… you get the idea."
"So you can see it," Anya murmured, her expression shifting from pure skepticism to something closer to cautious belief, mixed now with a dawning understanding of the cost involved. Still wary, but the 'useful' part of her assessment was clearly winning. "Can you fix it?"
"Fix?" I gave a short, humorless laugh that turned into a cough. "Fixing the core conflict? That's probably beyond my paygrade. Think 'rewriting fundamental laws of the universe' level stuff. But…" I focused again, briefly, ignoring the screaming protest from my SP reserves [-1 SP], pushing past the surface chaos to analyze the pattern of the conflict, feeling the strain scrape against my absolute limit. "…the tantrums themselves? The way it fails? Those look like exploitable error cascades. Maybe I can't fix the core problem, but I might be able to… install better error handling. Redirect the tantrums. Dampen the spikes before they try to invent new particle physics inside your engine." [SP: 6/80].
Anya considered this, chewing on her lower lip. "Error handling," she repeated slowly. "So, not a permanent fix, but enough to stop the surprise black holes?"
"Theoretically," I admitted, swaying slightly. "Needs more analysis. Deeper dive. Which I absolutely cannot do right now. And probably some way to interface directly with the matrix control system, assuming it has one that hasn't melted."
Suddenly, a low groan echoed from the main garage entrance. Deeper, more resonant than the first sound. Followed by a distinct scrape of metal on concrete, louder this time.
Leo jumped, golf club rattling against the floor. "It's moving again! Something big!"
Anya swore under her breath, pulling her sidearm again, her brief moment of consideration evaporating into renewed tension. "Time's up, Debugger. Deeper analysis later. Can you do something? Right now? Something to give us even a little more stability if we need to make a run for it?"
The pressure was back, tenfold. Stabilize a reality-bending engine core with virtually no SP left, with an unknown threat potentially about to break down the door.
Easy peasy. Right?
"Alright," I said, steeling myself and looking back at the humming, glowing core, knowing this next step would almost certainly force another dip into the reserves I couldn't afford. "Let's try installing Service Pack 1 for applied cosmology. No promises, except that this is probably going to hurt. A lot."