The next day she made it to work closer to the time she was supposed to, thus forestalling anymore visits from the boss lady. She made a little progress on her task in the morning, but was still stumped. It was frustrating, knowing that there was a solution but not having any real idea what it might be.
The problem with attempting to find non-plant sources of energy was that the sand worms were very attracted to alternating current. The prevalent theory was that it was used somehow in mating. Earlier attempts to set up wind or solar power collectors met with failure after the worms rampaged through the area, as it is hard to generate power when the ground is destroyed beneath the plant. Even building on bedrock had proved no barrier, with the worms literally crawling over iles of bare rock just to get to the source of the alternating current. Any Xenobiologists would have enjoyed studying the cause for the rampage, but the engineers threw their hands up in frustration and quit after one particularly nasty attempt that ended with the deaths of seven and the crippling of nine more.
Plant power, being generated in the bulb, seemed to be immune to the worms' attacks. Maybe because it was a fusion process, or maybe because it was shielded in some way by the bulb itself, but the power generated by the plants did not cause the worms to rampage. That was a good thing, as the struggling survivors of the Great Fall would not have survived long had the worms attacked the remains of the ships, but it was also a puzzle that needed to be worked out.
And over 150 years later, it was. After leaving the ship, Anne had wandered towards December. She had picked up a job waitressing, and her spare cecentos and double dollars went towards as many books as she could afford. She would wake early and stay up late, reading over what theories had been posited and printed, and trying to figure some way around the worm problem.
Finally, she seemed to have hit on it. The emitted frequency of generated power was much higher when it came from the plants. Her best guess was that it passed beyond what the worms could sense, and unknowing of the presence of the energy, they had no cause to attack. The logical answer would then be to figure out a way of imitating that frequency when generating other forms of energy. She spent another month trying to figure out how this might be achieved, then took her findings to the town plant and asked for a meeting.
They tried to kick her out the door, but she was persistent. And cute. And finally finagled a meeting with a plant engineer. He managed to concentrate on her proposal long enough to see its merit, and passed the report to his manager, who passed it to the head of research. He had been fruitlessly trying to come up with any idea, and upon reading the report, went to the head plant managers office and demanded that she be hired on the spot.
She wasn't. A whole week went by before the new department was funded. She was in on things from the beginning, however, from the scavenging for equipment to trying to overcome the obstacles of adapting earth technology to Gunsmoke standards. Effie was hired only a few weeks after Anne, and they became friends shortly after. Progress came in fits and starts, and there had been a few setbacks, but they were finally ready to unveil the new product.
And they prayed to all they held dear that the worms would not come near once they turned it on. A vacant expanse of desert had been prepared for the test, and now only awaited the arrival of the prototype.
Yes, things were finally beginning to look like they were actually working out.
Except for this one piece… Anne scowled at her monitor. While the schematics called out specifications for this part that would still be within tolerance after the increased load, she just had a feeling that the circuitry was going to overload. But for the life of her, she could not see how she was supposed to fix it. A complex piece that was a simple as it could be, she needed to find a way to decrease the number of linkages. And she couldn't see how it would be possible.
Here, they ran in parallel, here serial, and she could see why each type of connection had been made. It was all entirely logical and made complete sense. And was still wrong for the new application.
She fiddled with it for a bit, still finding nothing but growing tired of just staring at the monitor and doing nothing. It was a relief when Effie came in her office.
"Ugh. It's a zoo out there. You would think it's a Friday, the way they are carrying on."
"Isn't it?"
"It's a Thursday dear." She continued, "Or you would think that we were done with the prototype, and not still frantically stripping the walls for parts."
"Shouldn't you be out there playing mommy?"
"Please. I need a moment's peace before I try to deal with those fools again. Have I mentioned that I love your office?"
"One or twice. Maybe."
They bantered a bit for a couple more minutes, then were interrupted by a harsh, raw feeling of despair. Anne's head turned automatically to the right, orienting on the location of the disturbance. Effie's head turned as well, then, as she took in Anne's interest, she hazarded a question.
"Did… did you… feel that… too?" she asked shakily.
"I have to go," Anne responded quietly.
"You felt that. Tell me you felt that!" she demanded, needing some confirmation that what she had felt had been real.
"Isn't it obvious?" Anne had gone very quiet, very still, and there was something about her eyes now that frightened Effie, something very cold and inhuman.