Theory only Goes so Far

While Tabby went back to his nap by the window, Celia stared at her holographic design, trying to figure out what might go wrong with it.

Well… his arm broke when he tested the hand, she thought. So maybe something’s wrong with how the palm connects to the forearm?

She picked up the holographic arm, gave it a little shake, and turned it around in the 3D space, bringing it closer to look at where the palm met the forearm. She gave the metal plates on the hand a few gentle pokes, but since the CAD program couldn’t simulate physics properly, nothing useful came out of it.

She scratched her head, then decided to rip the plates off completely to check how the wires were connected underneath. Even up close, though, everything looked fine.

“You’ve been staring at that for a while now, you know,” a voice said from behind her.

Celia turned around to see the blonde girl who had been flying the butterfly drone earlier.

“Haha… have I now…?” Celia mumbled, dropping her head onto the table.

The girl smiled and leaned over to look at the design. “The name’s Leah, by the way. I don’t know much about robot limbs since I’m an Avian Robotics Engineer, but this looks fine to me.”

An Avian Robotics Engineer, huh? Celia thought, lazily staring up at her prototype. That sounds way more complicated than what I’m doing. Then it hit her. Wait, we see each other every week, and we’ve never even learned each other’s names? College life is so weird…

“My name’s Celia,” she mumbled into her arm. “And it looks fine, but it’s going to break. I know it will. There was a guy sitting right here with almost the same design, and his broke while he was testing the hand. I didn’t even realize I was copying him until I finished, and he left before I could ask him what went wrong…”

“Hmm…” Leah thought for a moment. “Well, I don’t know much about General Robotics Engineering, but I do know one thing for sure: theory only goes so far.”

She pulled a controller out of her pocket, and her little blue butterfly drone fluttered around Celia’s head.

“I didn’t think this little guy would fly very well either, but as you can see, he turned out just fine. The thing to remember is that CAD designs are mostly theoretical. You can throw all the engineering theory you want at them, but there are almost always going to be mistakes you can’t see until you actually build the thing. You might waste some materials along the way, but that’s better than staring at a prototype and getting nowhere.”

Celia’s eyes followed the butterfly as it circled around her.

“Well, I am on a time crunch,” she finally said. “I guess you’re right. Thanks, Leah.”

“No problem,” Leah replied. “We engineers have to help each other out. I remember being a rookie and staring at a CAD screen for hours on end. I don’t want anyone else falling into that trap.”

Rookie? Celia winced like the word had stabbed her right in the heart. I’m in my second year already. But I guess this does count as a rookie mistake…

“Anyway, I’ve got to go,” Leah said. “My time slot’s almost up, and you know how stingy they get about having too many engineers in one room.” She powered off her drone and waved goodbye before packing up her things.

Celia stood up, cracked her knuckles, and took a deep breath, before walking over to the giant metal synthesizer and dumping out the scrap metal in her backpack.

The metal synthesizer was a huge machine that worked a lot like a smeltery, and students used it to make the specific parts they needed for their projects. There were two ways to get metal out of it: pay a fee to have it synthesized from the molecular level, or feed it junk and let it salvage whatever metal was inside for free.

Most students went with the first option. It didn’t cost much, and it was a lot easier than running around collecting trash, even if synthesizing from scratch took a whole extra day. Celia, however, lived close to a landfill right on the edge of the city. Technically, taking anything from there was illegal, but after plenty of careful testing, she had figured out that nobody was watching the place. As long as she didn’t take too much, she wouldn’t get caught.

When the synthesizer finished processing her scrap, she checked the screen to see how much she had to work with.

Three kilograms of aluminum, she read, trying to picture what she could do with it. That’s barely enough to build the arm, and that’s not even counting the fact that it’s supposed to break.

She sighed and tapped through the menus to choose how the metal should be shaped. Looks like I’m going back to the landfill again, she thought. Not that I hate it. Running around places I’m not supposed to be is kind of fun.

Once the parts were made and had cooled down, Celia wasted no time. She started putting the arm together, following the design from the CAD program, and after about an hour of work, she ran out of materials.

Crap, she thought, looking at the unfinished arm. I knew this would happen, but still… what the heck is this?!

The “arm” was a mess. It was a weird mix of gears with varying levels of tightness stuck onto a long, black metal piston, with rubbery, stringy blue tubes sticking out of it everywhere. It looked kind of like a raw chicken drumstick after you cut into it.

Well… hopefully it’ll look better once it’s finished, she told herself. It’s supposed to break in the end anyway.

She checked the time. 18:34. I still have a little over an hour left, but there’s nothing else I can do here… I guess I should head home early and collect more metal for Wednesday.

She stuffed the “arm” into her backpack and walked over to Tabby.

“C’mon, Tabby, let’s go,” she said, waking him up. He blinked his eyes open, detached himself from the window, and hovered after her as they left.

On the elevator ride down, Celia looked out at the city. The sun had already set, and the skyscrapers on the horizon were lighting up one by one in every color imaginable. Seeing the city light up like this was one of the reasons she liked taking late classes. Well, along with the fact that she was not a morning person either.

Outside, she made her way across campus toward the subway station. Groups of students were everywhere, chatting with each other, zooming past her on hoverboards, or playing games on the sports fields. Seeing all of them with their friends gave her a small pang of envy. It wasn’t like she was bad at talking to people. She could get along with others just fine. The problem was that it was hard to become friends with people who didn’t share any of her interests.

Most of the friendships she had at school felt shallow, like they only existed because they happened to be in the same classes. Besides Tabby and a few of her relatives, there was nobody she could really share her interests with. After all, what was she supposed to say? “I want to launch a rocket into space someday! It’s totally illegal, but it’d be fun to try anyway!” She’d sound insane. People would feel like they were talking to a future wanted criminal.

She did like building robots and repairing things, but she didn’t care about it all that much, and her university wasn’t even known for its General Robotics program. If she really wanted to make friends that way, she should have gone to the newly opened Technical University of Amsterlin near the capital sector, which actually was known for it.

Am I just a boring person? she wondered, trying not to let the loneliness get to her.

As she headed down the stairs into the subway station, she looked back at the campus behind her and asked herself the same question as before.

Why did I pick this school anyway?