Complicated Internals

Kita returned to his lab and sat at his personal terminal.

Over the last few weeks, Kita had added a lot of stuff around his terminal. A small plant, a small floater that held a piece of Btius 342 one of the rarest exotics humanity has ever encountered. And a photo of Helen in her lab coat.

Although it wasn't much it felt really cozy and would always calm Kita down. This was quite a similar setup to his lab back on the Shore.

As he sat down, he quickly accessed the data that Hugo had sent over. He needed to find out what other things was going on with the Drive before he gave Dr. Kbom a call.

Kita began looking through the pre and post FTL logs of the drive. There was nothing wrong with that. Everything was quite normal and within the specifications.

But as he checked though the Runtime logs of the Drive, he found something interesting. It seemed that the drive was in-fact not receiving enough power! And it was reporting low energy levels!

This was quite a dangerous situation. If the drive decided to stop working mid FTL then it could be really disastrous.

But this situation didn't make any sense! It was guzzling so much energy through the powerlines that the lines were almost at the capacity!

But the drive itself felt that it didn't get enough energy?

"What the hell?" Kita scratched his head in confusion.

It didn't make any sense what so ever!

"I wonder how much energy does it think it's getting? Is there a bug in the energy monitor system that caused it to think that it was drawing a really low amount of power. And caused the drive to draw more power as a result?"

The theory was solid. It made sense.

If that really was the case then It could be solved quite easily. So Kita began to look into this direction.

Unfortunately, After about 3 hours of going through the energy monitoring system, It seemed fine and working correctly. There was nothing wrong with it and everything was reporting correctly.

So, whatever was going on seemed to be happening in the other parts of the drive.

Kita pulled up the schematics to get an idea of what was going on, But he wasn't a true expert in FTL drives, So he had no idea on what he was looking at in this super complicated schematic.

He gave up after trying for a bit.

He decided to report his findings to Dr. Kbom and ask if he had any idea on what's wrong with the drive.

So he quickly gave Dr. Kbom a call.

There was about a 50% chance that he'd pick up. So Kita waited patiently for a few minutes before Dr. Kbom picked up the call.

"Hello Doctor. How have you been?" Kita greeted him.

"Fine fine. Just busy with meeting with these old fogeys. It gets boring after a while. I need a break." Dr. Kbom sighed. He seemed quite tired from the projection. Although Dr. Kbom was in a quite a advanced age. But there were still signs that his Body couldn't keep up with his ambitions.

"Well, if you ever need a break, I say you go back to Trikton for a while." Kita suggested.

Trikton was Dr. Kbom's home planet. It was where he grew up and spent much of his founding years. Dr. Kbom often talked to Kita about it. How the blue sky covered with white clouds and the bright local star providing warm light. It was one of his favorite places.

"Yeah... I've thought about it. But there's too much to do here. Everyone tries to get me to do things. I'm tired of it. Anyway. What prompted this call?" Dr. Kbom asked expectedly.

"It's about the FTL drive you sent me. It's having some complications."

"The FTL drive?"

Kita went on to explain the situation about how it was guzzling way more power than the specs recommended. But it was logging that it was being under powered. It didn't make any sense.

"I see... I assume you've already checked the power monitoring systems?"

"Yes, It's working correctly." Kita replied.

"Hmm..." Dr. Kbom visibly fell into a deep thought.

As the primary designer of this FTL drive, Dr. Kbom knew it the most. Nobody could claim that they knew more about it than him.

So if anyone had any idea about what was wrong with the FTL drive, It was Dr. Kbom.

Dr. Kbom thought for quite a while before saying.

"I think it has something to do with the new Energy delivery system that I integrated with the Drive"

"New energy system? What do you mean?"

"Well..."

Dr. Kbom went on to explain that the new FTL incorporated a brand new internal energy system that was inspired by the lines back on B1.

"The efficiency of the lines was so good that It inspired me to come up with a new energy system that incorporated some of the principles of the lines."

"What?!?!?"

Kita was astonished at Dr. Kbom's feat. It had only been about half an year since the B1 incident. But he had managed to figure out a way to integrate the principles of the Lines into a complicated product like a FTL drive?

Kita looked at Dr. Kbom like he was looking at a monster. This reminded him once again what it was that had propelled Dr. Kbom into the forefront of the research community in the Empire.

What made Dr. Kbom such a fearsome individual. He had unparalleled talent in all fields related to FTL travel. And that made him the supreme figure of this field.

But that prompted a Question in Kita's mind.

If he had managed to do what he was claiming, then was he able to recreate the Energy lines?

"Did you manage to replicate the Energy lines then?" Kita quickly asked. The implicates of this would be huge if he had done it.

"Oh No. Those things are way more complicated that you might think. I gave up after trying for a week. I merely used the different design principles and the energy transportation patterns that the lines used and was able to get a 0.3% boost in energy efficiency. But it seemed that I concluded too early." He said.

"I see.." So it seemed that he wasn't able to replicate the lines themselves. Instead he used the energy transfer patterns and other aspects of the lines. That was still something!

"Say, Kita. Can I ask you to take a look at the internals of the FTL drive? Try figure out what's going on?" Dr. Kbom suddenly asked.