New Tales from Hilbert Space

by Gabriel Just

it, you can’t fix it.”

  “Nonsense, all I need is a little more time.”

  “More time? You have two more hours. I will send a specialist right away. If you can fix it before she arrives you may keep your job, otherwise you are fired.”

  “Two hours, no problem. I can assure you, everything will be fine by then.”

  Dwakk closed the intercom channel and sat down on the floor. “That’s impossible!” he cried. “I can never fix the Transcannon that fast.” The old Dranik braided his root beard. Normally this helped him think, but this time it made matters worse.

  “I have no time to relax,” he thought. “I have to fix this right away. Maybe I just need to try it again and again.”

  Dwakk loaded a standard transport capsule into the Transcannon. After he pushed a button on his terminal a countdown began and a red warning light informed everyone that the Transcannon was about to fire. With one loud, hissing noise the capsule vanished. Dwakk could follow its route on his terminal. After about half the way to the receiving station he lost the signal. Packet loss. Again.

  “No, no, no! You are supposed to work! I will lose my job.” Dwakk hit the terminal a couple of times until he realized that the current situation was not the computer’s fault. It was the Transcannon’s fault. And although the bigger part of said cannon was outside the small service station, Dwakk was stationed on, he was still able to kick the Transcannon’s loading chamber. He hurt his foot very badly, but felt slightly better nevertheless. He was still stressed out, and everytime he was stressed out, he also became very tired. The engineer sunk to the floor and fell asleep instantly.

  Much later, the sound of the door buzzer woke him up. Someone wanted to enter the room. Dwakk didn’t know who, so he decided to play dead.

  “I am here to fix the Transcannon,” a female voice stated. “Would you mind opening the door?”

  “Maybe the door buzzer is not working,” an artificial voice said. “Should I try it again? Should I repair it?”

  “No need, I heard the buzzer, it is working,” the female replied.

  “Well, I better try it again, just to be sure.”

  The door buzzer sounded again.

  “It seems operational,” the robot’s voice said. “This time I heard it too. But what if it broke down, right after we tested it? Better test it again.”

  The door buzzer sounded a third time.

  “Well, so it definitely works. But what if the last test broke it?”

  Before the door buzzer could ring a fourth time, Dwakk spoke up, because he could not stand that sound. “Alright, alright, I’m here. I’ll let you in.”

  Dwakk pressed a button next to the door and as soon as it began to move, a repair drone flew through and knocked him on the ground. It flew two complete circles around the room, after that it hovered right next to Dwakk.

  “Lots of damage here,” it noted. “I need to repair everything. Where should I start? The door needs more oil, the terminals need cleaning and a few of the wall panels need to be polished. And that Dranik is in the wrong position, I think they should always stand upright to work properly. Better start with the Dranik.”

  The drone extended a grabbing arm, picked Dwakk up by the neck and pulled him up. “There, all fixed. I better check if the door buzzer is still working.”

  “Bzzzzt”

  “Yes, everything is fine. I’ll go ahead and clean the terminals.”

  Dwakk tried to understand what was happening as a Skaren entered the maintenance room. She was nearly twice Dwakk’s size, currently had deep red scales and wore a toolbelt equipped with tools Dwakk could only dream of.

  “Hello! My name is Katara. I’m so sorry for my repair drone,“ she said with a friendly smile. “Ever since I overclocked it, it is quite… lively. Are you alright?”

  Dwakk dusted off his clothes. “Of course I am alright. Don’t you worry. I am Dwakk, by the way. Chief engineer of this Transcannon. Well, I guess I just lost this particular job, but apart from that everything is fine.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know that. I’m terribly sorry. I came here as fast as I could. Officially my shift starts in an hour, but I thought I might start early.”

  “In an hour? That means we still have time! You think you can fix the Transcannon within an hour? I could keep my job.”

  “That depends on the problem. Do you know what’s wrong with your machine?”

  “No. To be honest not. It all started a few weeks ago. We had minimal problems with package loss.”

  “I think that’s normal for a Transcannon.”

  “Well, we lost nearly 50 percent of the freight we shot.”

  “Interesting. And it got better after that?”

  “Well, ‘better’ is a strong word. It got… different. Now we lose about 95%. But we send a lot less, so technically we are losing less.”

  “Still, this rate is unacceptable. There must be something wrong with your cannon. Let my drone take a quick look at it. Patcher, would you take a look at the cannon please?”

  “You named your drone Patcher?” Dwakk asked.

  “No, it’s not its name, it’s its designation. Practical Automated Tube Changing Emergency Robot.”

  “It was constructed to change tubes?”

  “Only in emergencies. But I upgraded it quite a bit since I have it. Now it can do most of the things I can do, only faster. Fix stuff, maintain things. And since it can float with it’s antigrav generator it can even clean hard to reach places.”

  “I see,” Dwakk said as he watched Patcher float out of the room, through the airlock and then along the barrel of the Transcannon, which was visible through the transparent force field at the end of the maintenance room.

  “No damage detected,” Patcher said over the intercom. “But I better check one more time.” Once again he flew all the way to the front of the barrel, took a quick look inside and then back again. “No, everything is fine with the cannon. But I am afraid we have a bigger problem: The door buzzer might be broken.”

  “Bzzzzzt!”

  “Ok, false alarm, everything is fine with the door. I just wanted to make sure.”

  “Well, in that case,” Katara said, “the problem might be somewhere else. What kind of capsules do you use?”

  “The normal ones?” Dwakk asked, slightly embarrassed.

  “So standard issue Transsteel cases?”

  “Well, no. We don’t use Transsteel anymore. It is far too heavy, so I exchanged it for Hexaglass a long time ago.”

  “Interesting. How do you compensate for the mass loss? I mean, there is a reason you are supposed to use Transsteel.”

  “Well… I… It is very technical, I am afraid I could not explain it to you.”

  “If you say it works, I believe you. Any other non standard equipment you use?”

  “Well,” Dwakk confessed. “There might be a few other things. Tiny things. If we shoot freight over long distances we sometimes miss our target.”

  “That’s common, nothing to worry about.”

  “Yes I know. But then I thought it would be easier for the receiving station if the capsule had an engine itself. You know, so that they don’t have to retrieve the capsule. It would just fly the last bit by itself.”

  “Engineers tried this for years, no prototype was successful.”

  “That’s why we started shooting already functional shuttles. Of course we had to reinforce them and increase the size of the loading area, but it worked. We can now fire shuttles full of freight.”

  “How is this possible? How do they arrive in one piece?”

  “I admit, we lost the first dozen shuttles and two of the receiving stations, but in the end I perfected the process. I used Hexaglass to reinforce the shuttles. And now it works perfectly.”

  “I don’t think that is good for your cannon. Or your shuttles. Or anybody, really. That may very well be the reason for all your packet loss. Might I see such a special shuttle?”

  “There is only one left. It’
s currently in the loading chamber. Want to take a look?”

  “You leave your cannon loaded all the time? You know that’s dangerous, right?”

  “Don’t worry, I am all alone here. And I know what I am doing. Most of the time. Over there, that’s the beauty.”

  The shuttle looked like a standard issue shuttle, suitable for four to five people. It was reinforced with thick beams of transparent Hexaglass, which shimmered golden when watched from the right angle.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Dwakk said and was proud of his invention. “You see how shiny it is? To be honest, that is the main reason I used Hexaglass.”

  Katara nodded friendly and ordered Patcher to scan the shuttle.

  It quickly flew around it and afterwards stated, “No damage detected. Better check if the door opening mechanism works.” Patcher pushed a button and the shuttle door opened. “And the door closing mechanism.” Patcher pushed the button again. The door closed. “Hopefully that didn’t overload the door opening system. There is only one way to find out.”

  “Would you stop it, Patcher?” Katara said. “The door works fine. We should take a look inside, maybe there are other modifications that are harmful for the Transcannon.”

  Dwakk, Katara and Patcher entered the shuttle.

  “So, what exactly did you change in here?” Katara asked.

  “Nothing!” assured Dwakk. “Only minor upgrades really. First of all I threw out most of the safety systems. I mean, they only need space and an unmanned shuttle would never send a distress call. Smart thinking, eh? And the brakes of course. We want to deliver our freight as fast as possible, why would we need brakes? And of course I removed