Three weeks since the park.

  I tried to optimize my learning in ways no one can investigate.

  By watching a repairman change the insides of an elevator and surprising him with my questions.

  I traded two portrait sketches for a broken kitchen radio and tore it apart.

  I sat in the municipal library where you can’t borrow anything, only look, and I learned from the State-issued manuals until the clerk coughed.

  The last was a terrible way to retain, but would help immensely if I ever lost access to the teachers I have right now.

  Tonight is Tuesday. The small workstation room smells like rosin. The windows are open. The smoke still hangs in the corners.

  Mother ties her hair up and sets a tin at my elbow. “Windows are open,” she says, “but don’t inhale the smoke. Keep your face back. Don’t touch your eyes. The usual.”

  She lays a perforated phenolic board between us. A paper bag of resistors. A handful of carbon comps, some metal film. A bundle of ceramic caps, axial leads splayed like insect legs. She sets down a simple kit she cut from scrap: a two-transistor tone beeper, a rectifier, a regulator.

  “We’re unsurprisingly far into the school track,” she says. Her tone is instructional. “This part is usually in an introductory course in Technical IV.”

  She taps the board. “Through-hole. That means components with leads that pass through drilled holes and are soldered on the opposite side. Fast to service. Stronger joints than surface-mount on bad days. Slower for factories that wave-solder a thousand boards at once.”

  “What’s wave solder?” I ask, to let her teach.

  “A machine that pushes a hot wave of solder across the board. All the joints wet at once. It’s how they did big runs even before 2000. Iron solder is you, a tip, and patience.”

  She places the iron in my hand. “Tip tinned. Wipe. Heat pad and lead together. Feed solder into the joint, not the tip. Pull away when it wets. If it smells like burned fish, you stayed too long.”

  I solder the beeper’s first joint. It shines.

  She talks while I work.

  “In 1977, people built simple radios at home but were restricted by limits like the power grid. By 2412, KF work forced extreme improvement in batteries because deep-space needed them. We don’t touch that here, but the chemistry trickled down—denser cells, safer separators, better charge balance. The power grid has been powered by underground reactors for nearly 200 years. 2799 was a bad year on Tikonov. Heavy raiding burned the easy things and shattered the complex ones. People kept what could be constructed with hands and steady heat. High-end fabs died or were unable to operate because of lacking electricity. Some were rebuilt. The Vindicator factory was even moved off-world, but that is another topic. That’s why we start with small-scale electronics and a lot of practice in Tikograd.”

  I place the rectifier. Bridge symbol toward the mark. Leads through holes. Flip. Solder. I write notes in a small book with a dull pencil:

  through-hole = leads through holes → solder

  2799 raids → simple tech survived; high-tech failed and was moved elsewhere

  She points to the resistor color bands. “Read them. 680 Ω is fine when the sheet calls for 700. Good enough. This will run a small fan without shaking itself to death.”

  I write:

  resistor tolerance ±5% ok → target behavior > exact value

  She checks my spacing. “Bend the leads once. Don’t nick them. Keep the body a finger’s width off the board if it will run hot.”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  I adjust. I solder. I don’t breathe the smoke.

  “Leads in holes means you can pull and replace without lifting pads,” she says. “Surface-mount is faster, but you need tweezers and a good hand. We’ll do that later.”

  I finish the regulator. She has me check the pinout with the meter before power. I do. It matches.

  We test. The beeper chirps a thin sawtooth. She kills power. “Again,” she says. I do it again on a fresh board, slower.

  She sets the iron in its stand and leans on her palms. “The school competition,” she says. “You will need... something.”

  I already know what not to do. The other life—the one no one can ever know—stays closed. I only borrow ideas that look like common sense here.

  “I have something that scales,” I say. “Something a factory can do a thousand of. Something that looks like it belongs in the five-year plan.”

  “What?” My answer surprises her.

  “A window-fan controller. Two dust sensors—one inside, one outside. A small 8-bit micro. PWM drive on a cheap fan. It only pulls when outside is cleaner than in. It learns the street’s pattern over a week, then schedules itself. It has a manual override to turn it into a simple fan.”

  She watches me think, then tilts her head. “Why not purely mechanical? Or just a self-made copy of something that’s already on-world?”

  “That would work,” I say, “but it won’t show the instructors and the guests how I stand out.”

  “And how do you know how to make it?”

  “I learned it somewhere.”

  “What kind of answer is that,” she sighs. “And understand this: your fan is probably not a new invention. It just isn’t produced on Tikonov. Or it is, and procurement takes them for barracks and clinics. Or it exists off-world, and no one ships it because the margin is poor and the freight is better spent on something else.”

  I nod.

  She keeps it factual. “Consumer electronics here are often not allowed to be independent. When they can be repurposed in times of crises, they are. If not, then the workers are directed elsewhere. Your monitor will definitely fall into the first category.”

  “What matters is if it is good enough to win.”

  “Oh, even if someone else has something better, as long as it is a noble, you will have already achieved fame. The chance that some Houses will parade their scions as a genius is there, but that happens often enough that the glamour has already gone.” She snorts, contemptuous. “It would just be a show of influence over who can make the judges vote for them. You will have no advantages, so coming that far will already help you get a scholarship to the Tikonov University of Sciences.”

  Mother watches me place the last resistor.

  “So,” she says, dry. “Do you also want to open a corporation to make these?”

  I blink. “Can we?”

  “Possible,” she says. “Very hard.” She counts on her fingers. “Capital. Licenses. Supplies. Workers. Space. And luck.”

  “How much capital?”

  “Enough for a first batch and the tools to repeat it. Sensor heads, micros, transformers, enclosures, test jigs, packaging. We have a small nest egg,” she adds. “It would help if you win a commendation at the competition. Maybe someone will want to invest in a corporation run by a small child.” The thought apparently makes her chuckle.

  “Licenses?”

  “You can’t sell anything without a registration and a safety stamp. The Safety Office will want a test report. The Trade Office will want a registration. All will want a bribe. We call it a ‘processing fee.’”

  “Supplies?”

  “Dust sensors are the choke. The best are imported through Alrescha on a quota. There is no planetary production, but we will have to check again.” She taps the bench. “We design around common parts: op-amps, passives, iron-core supplies. We ask your father’s coworkers where the honest sellers are. We buy surplus at salvage auctions. No buying from the depot.” She looks at me. “Ever. We will be placed under extreme scrutiny if we do.”

  “Workers?”

  “We are the workers,” she says, looking into the distance. “At first. I solder. Your father builds jigs and enclosures. You calibrate and test. 20–30 units a week is realistic without losing fingers or sleep.”

  “Space?”

  “This room, if we keep it tidy. Later, a table in the courtyard if the neighbors don’t complain about the smell.”

  I nod slowly. “Markets? Does that mean how we will sell?”

  “Two paths,” she says. “Slow: we sell at your Sunday stall and to shopkeepers who already like you. Fast: we ask House Qing-Liang to put their mark on the box and move units through their depot and connections.” She considers. “For that, we’d trade reach for margin. They won’t allow separate selling and will demand their cut. Thirty percent of gross to the House is typical. Forty if they handle paperwork and shipping. More than that, they own us.”

  “Is that… very bad?”

  “It’s how most independents end up,” she says. “They pay on time. They also tell you how many to make and when. Independent is more risky, but yours.”

  She keeps going, fingers ticking off problems and answers. “Quality could be assured with a jig—fixed flow, known dust, two-point calibration. Warranty could be one year, swap not repair. Label it something like ‘Lian Industries Fan.’ It would be assembled and put into a brown box, maybe with a one-page sheet with pictures.” I can nearly see the sparkle in her eyes.

  I watch her. “You’ve already built it in your head.”

  “I always wanted to do something like this,” she says. “But ideas are cheap.”

  “So we will start after I win the competition.”

  “You are confident,” she smiles at me. “How about we prototype now and talk business later. Or not at all. We decide that together.”

  I realize the idea is already running on its own legs—licenses, quotas, jigs, margins—while I’m still holding a pencil.