Jeeps part 1 - RPLOG
From Flexible Survival
Participants
Date
6/5/2013
Log
The garage is marginally busy with activity at best, the main door remains heavily guarded, the vehicles are in great shape, and there is a very out of place pink jeep sitting against one wall, a rather frantic looking engineer trying to draw information out of a mechanic. The engineer, a male of average height, wearing a mix of dark blue and grey, which clash with his red baseball cap. The mechanic is a mustached man with a solid blue suit, and a bit of a belly. "Look what's wrong with it?" the engineer says, his voice rather high pitched, to get a reply of "What exactly did you do to it?" from theh mechanic.
Edel shuffles into the garage, duffle bag slung over her shoulder. "Ah, I heard someone needed help, of some kind? Is this the place?" Her eyes linger on the pink jeep.
Arriving late, Arlan was visibly uncertain why RSX would call him for something to do with their motor pool. He was a before-P-Day educated engineer, and also a nanite adept, but most of his recent engineering experience was in getting the new Eureka production lines designed and operating in the factory complex in the southwest. Transferable skills yes, but far from a match to the task unless there was something else going on here. "Hi, I'm Arlan, chief of the Corundum Engineering group at Zephyr. I wasn't given a briefing on why I was called up here, how can I help?"
Jillian-C rumbles annoyedly deep in hir chest, having been picked up by one of the other two. RSX is definitely not one of hir favorite places, but refusing to help a fellow engineer when asked is not in the cards. The pink and out-of-place jeep immediately draws hir attention, but hir instinctive defensive reaction has hir only muttering "Rrrr... Hello..." as shi pads closer.
The engineer scrambles over to the approaching group, raising his hands and lowering them slowly, saying "Lower your voices. I'm in hot water, I've got loads of freecreds, I need help. I'm new here and I uh... that jeep is my bosses, and she took real good care of it, it's like a relic... now can any of you help me?" he says, the mechanic behind him shakes his head, more to the group than himself, and his moustache moves as he frowns. "I'm honestly not sure what he did to it." The group gets marginal attention, but the garage seems too busy to give them more than a glance.
Edel scratches the back of her head. "Uh, maybe. What's... Wrong with it? Does it not start? Out of gas? Need an oil change? I used to work on cars, but I need more to go on." The husky rubs her chin and stares at the jeep.
"Maybe, do you need custom part machining? Give me a spec to work from, send me back to the industrial facility in Eureka and I can probably have a run of a dozen widgets made for you quick unless they're something complicated," Arlan offers, still not entirely sure why they'd call for him on this case.
With the jeep right in front of hir, Jillian calms down slightly as hir focus narrows. "Yeah... gonna have to third the other two. From here it looks fine, does it just not run?" Still, shi's not going to touch it until after getting some idea of what the problem is.
The mechanic shakes his head. "Oils fine, we run things mostly on electric batteries here if you can't tell, it's an antique but they've got it outfitted pretty well, gas isn't the easiest thing to procure, rather save it. I took a look, I'm pretty sure it should run, unless I missed something." He steps aside to let the group take a look for themselves, before saying "Look I gotta get back to work, if you need something let me know." before he moves off towards an armored vehicle. The engineer rubs the back of his head and groans. "Can you take a look? I've been doing a bunch of stuff, I know i'm not supposed to be mixing all these new nanites with old stuff like that, it doesn't work out, it's a pain in the ass to upkeep but I don't think I did anything wrong..." he says while looking down, gesturing to the pink vehicle.
The dog offers a shrug and steps closer to the jeep. "Might as well look, maybe something will stand out." Edel sets her bag on the ground and leans forward to peer into the engine.
"Oh for fuck's sake, never replace something that isn't broken unless you really have to or it's a genuine upgrade that's been thoroughly tested. You cowboy tinkerers annoy me," Arlan grumbles before shifting his head into a robotic-shape with enhanced optics to begin examining the engine of the car.
"Yeah... working pre-P-day vehicle like this, and you have to go start replacing things until it stops working? Did you try putting things back the way they were before you started tinkering?" Jillian pads over to the other side of the jeep, staying out of the light so Arlan can see.
As the group approaches the vehicle they can instantly tell quite a few things. The engine looks fantastic for how old the thing really is. Everything looks pretty normal, nothing remarkably out of place. However, there is an odd amount of heat coming from the vehicle. More specifically from the battery itself.
Edel nods slowly as she observes the engine and slowly waves her hand, trying to find the source of the heat. "That doesn't feel too normal. Especially for something that is just sitting here. What do you two think?"
"I see the battery radiating a lot of heat on thermal profile, I say swap it out for a spare and test the vehicle with a spare, I lift and you two guide?" Arlan proposes, as a plan of action.
Jillian-C shakes hir head. "Hot battery means it's running a lot of electricity through somewhere. If it was as simple as replacing with a spare, that mechanic should've been able to handle it by himself with a hoist." Shi looks across at the nervous RSX'er. "What did you say you replaced? And with what?" Wouldn't want to yank out a battery that's sustaining some kind of containment field, after all.
The rookie groans and looks away, an eye or two looking at the group. "I did some work under the hood, changed some fluids, ah... what are thoe things called.... fuel/ignition... ah... look I'm not really good at this okay I was just sucking up to the boss..." he says, seemingly a little frustrated. "We can swap it out, but it didn't help the last time... look I've got plenty of money..." he adds, seemingly intent on buying his way out of this mess.
Edel scowls. "You can't fix this with money. We're trying to help, but we can't just make it happen with magic, you know." With a sigh, the husky glances between the other two. "If replacing the battery didn't work, either it's something else, or all of the batteries are bad. Maybe it's not hooked up right?"
"Oh bugger. I'm gonna try to look up a shop manual for this thing, we get to have fun going part by part to see what they messed up," Arlan says to Edel and Jillian-C. He then turns to the brownnoser RSX 'mechanic' and explains bluntly, "My time is very valuable you know, your, 'A lot of money,' might not even cover the time I've already spent here to say nothing of the other two folks here. I'll fix your little mistake here but mark my words, you owe."
Jillian-C's growl has returned, although instead of hir earlier nervousness it is now due to annoyance at an incompetent self-styled 'engineer'. "When this jeep was converted over to electric, it should've LOST any 'fuel ignition' system. So you obviously don't know what the hell you were replacing. So what did you put in?"
The engineer frowns, sweating as he looks at Jillian-C and rubs the back of his head, his hat twisting around a bit as he does so. "Ah.. ah... I put a... a cap, a new cap... and I changed the coolant and did the whole 9-yards... I might have knicked the uh... display but that shouldn't..." He stutters and spouts out words that start to make little sense in the situation.
