The world answered with white fire.
Light punched a line across the steel. The laser didn't scream; it whispered—paper tearing, clean and patient. A spray of sparks sheeted down the tray and died in a hiss. Heat moved like a tide; Noah felt it on his face through the dark lenses, a dry push.
[High-Energy Smelting Laser—active.][Material: mild steel, 8 mm.][Melt pool stable.][Recommended traverse: 220 mm/s.]
"Two-fifty," Noah murmured. He wanted to see where the edge frayed.
The crystal hovered a coin's width above the plate. The hand braced the far edge. The cutter waited at station three, ready to nip tabs the laser left as anchors. The overlay hung in his view like a second set of instincts.
His phone buzzed again. He ignored it. The beam traced the chalk line and made its own truth: no burrs, no chatter, no wandering kerf. The shop changed smell—hot iron, faint sweetness of cooked oil, a rude reminder that he should install a better hood.
[Air quality degrading. Increase ventilation.]
"Later." He adjusted the traverse. The melt pool narrowed and brightened, the color of a star seen through smoke.
Halfway through the cut, a loud pop kicked his heart. A bead of slag had blown under the plate and glued itself to the bench, pivoting the sheet a millimeter. The beam met the tiny step and flared. The hand snapped to compensate, but the flare bit a crescent into the sacrificial tray.
"Shit." Noah killed the beam with a thumb bump and cracked the valves on the air knife. He slid the hand in and pried the plate up with a steel wedge. The glued slag resisted and then let go with a sound like gum surrendering.
He reset the edge, tapped the surface with the back of a wrench, human sonar. The ring came back even. He took a breath, reset the aperture, and brought the light back.
[Resume from last coordinate?]
"Resume."
The white line grew again, chatty now, a sewing machine stitching a future. He thought of that stupid phrase he'd heard in open-plan offices years ago—move fast and break things. He didn't want speed or brokenness. He wanted repeatability and the kind of accuracy that made permits irrelevant.
The cut finished clean. He fished the hot bracket with pliers and set it on a brick.
[Operation complete.][Thermal stress minimal.]
"I'll take minimal." He chalked the next plate and queued the cutter. The lance descended and sang a higher note, shaving slots for cable runs. The hand followed with a deburring pass, two quick flicks per slot, minimalist ballet.
The phone kept nudging. When he finally flipped it over, the notification shade stacked a short story:
UTILITY ALERT: "Smart meter flagged atypical load at 14 Quarry Lane. Please confirm legitimate use."COUNTY COMPLIANCE: "Noise complaint—potential unpermitted heavy equipment. Reply to schedule inspection."UNKNOWN: "Call me."
He set the phone down. Eyes mean schedule. He tightened his jaw and swapped plates.
[Suggestion: Switch to assisted curve mode for interior arcs.]
"On." He highlighted the rail pattern, a long dog-bone shape with precise holes. The rail would carry two arms on linear bearings, their weight and panic-proof redundancy making up for the fact that he was a single human being and could not be everywhere at once.
The laser drew the outline; the cutter opened the holes; the hand played janitor and surgeon. The shop stepped into rhythm. He lost the clock. He had wanted this for months—this sense that the bench knew his intent and could interpret it at the speed of a good thought.
A sputter shook him out of it. The inverter on the wall coughed; the ceiling light blinked.
[Power delivery sag 7%.][Recommendation: throttle beam 5% or activate buffer.]
"Buffer." He hit the switch; the battery stack under the bench came online with a deep, contented hum. The lights steadied. He made a note—more panels on the roof; more storage; all before weather turned.
He stacked two finished rails, a bracket, and a joiner on the bench. The pieces looked like toys now; in an hour they'd be a spine. If he could mount the three arms and run a simple choreography routine before night, he could start nesting parts—nested cuts, nested days.
The gate buzzer grated.
Noah froze. He hadn't even known the gate had a buzzer; he'd wired it yesterday and not tested. He killed the cutter with a foot switch and let the laser hover, the crystal dim but not cold.
From the window he saw a county car, pale and righteous, idling at the chain-link. A woman stepped out—dark blazer, hair in a knot, a tablet under her arm. Not a cop. Worse: someone who logged things.
He exhaled, wiped his hands, and flipped the laser to standby.
[Standby.]
He walked to the door and stepped outside, not far, not welcoming.
"Mr. Cole?" Her badge flashed dull silver. "Marin Raines, County Compliance. We received a complaint regarding heavy equipment use and possible unpermitted structural work. Mind if we talk a minute?"
"Talk's fine." He kept his shoulder partly blocking the door.
She smiled the tired smile of people who don't mind being the villain. "I need to verify you're not endangering yourself or anyone else."
"I'm good at not dying." He glanced at the road. Empty. "What's the complaint, exactly?"
"Noise. Lights. Atypical power draw flagged by Utilities." She held up the tablet. "Any excavation? Fuel storage? Welding beyond minor?" She ticked a list with a stylus.
"Minor." He felt the heat of the laser in his back; he imagined the white cube of the crystal pulsing softly like an animal pausing for orders.
Raines craned a little to the side, eyes slipping past his shoulder. "May I take a quick look inside?"
"No." He let it sit, then added, "I mean, not without a warrant or a proper appointment. You understand how people get about workshops. Insurance. Tools walking off. I don't know you."
She kept the smile but let it die at the corners. "We can schedule for tomorrow. If you're operating heavy industrial tools today, please cease until we verify venting and fire suppression. It's standard."
"Tomorrow works." He slid a business card from his pocket—one he'd printed to look boring: Noah Cole — Restoration & Fabrication. The kind of card you forgot in a drawer.
Behind him, the laser ticked as its housing cooled.
Raines heard it. Her chin lifted. "Are you running something right now?"
"Cooling fans," he said. "The place is old; it complains." He held her gaze with a blandness learned from big offices and worse meetings.
She resisted looking past him again. Professionals didn't peek. She wrote something on the tablet and let the stylus hang. "There's also been purchasing activity flagged by local recyclers. Nothing illegal; just… unusual volume. People get nervous when someone buys all the metal."
"I make tables," he said. "Ugly ones."
A ghost of a laugh. "I won't keep you. Expect an appointment window in the morning." She walked back to her car, then paused. "One more thing—keep an extinguisher close if you're cutting. We've had two shop fires this month. People forget how fast dust turns to fuel."
"I don't forget." He waited until her car shrank along the fence line and took the corner. Then he whistled once, low, a pressure release.
He shut the door and leaned against it. The shop felt both safer and more exposed.
[External contact terminated.][Recommendation: hazard audit.]
"Later." He returned to the bench and nudged the rails into place. The hand fetched bolts from a tin, counted them into little groups of four like a well-trained kid. He set the first rail, checked level, set the second. The cutter snipped shallow recesses for the bolt heads; the laser kissed them to clean.
He brought the three arms to life together for the first time. The hand rotated on the X carriage; the cutter followed at a half-beat; the laser hung back, leader and judge.
[Choreography program: TRIAD-START.][Safety envelope mapped.][Begin?]
"Begin."
They moved—not fast, not flashy, but with the kind of self-respect machines get when they're aligned. The hand pinched a spacer and slotted it. The cutter trimmed a thread end. The laser traced a seam and sealed it with a glittering zipper. Noah watched for collisions and saw none; the matrix was good.
On the third pass, a bead rolled off the seam and found the only dry patch of sawdust he hadn't swept. It caught. Fire drafted across the bench edge, a sneaky orange line as casual as a cigarette.
"Damn." He slapped the extinguisher into his palm and fired a short burst. Propellant smell smothered iron. The hand smudged the last ember with two quick taps.
[Incident: minor.][Recommendation: install full hood and dust extraction.]
"I said later." He also meant soon. He made another note—hood, filters, duct. He could cut the housings himself.
He lined up the next two plates and felt the clock again. The day wasn't generous. He needed one more major step before dark—a mounted backbone with the three tools parked on independent carriages. With that, he could begin to be more than a guy at a bench.
The gate buzzer sounded again. Short, then long, then short. A different rhythm. Not a county car this time; county cars did not beep in Morse.
Noah killed the choreography and dimmed the shop lights. The laser dropped to idle, the crystal haloing blue.
From the window he saw a pickup at the fence, old paint, high idle, two shapes inside. The passenger peered up the drive, phone in hand, camera lens glinting.
He didn't like attention. He sure as hell didn't like a camera.
The pickup door opened; a heavy man in a work coat stepped out. He didn't bother with the buzzer. He lifted the chain-link latch and let himself in.
Noah moved to the door again and opened it just enough. "Can I help you?"
"Afternoon." The man smiled the friendly smile of people who practice stealing with documents. "Elliott sent us. Said you were looking to buy sand and aggregate."
Noah kept his face still. "Did he."
"Name's Bix. Cousin runs a lot." He looked past Noah the way Raines hadn't allowed herself to. "We can do cash. No questions."
Noah didn't move. The man took his silence as room and stepped closer. His eyes snagged on the bench. Even with the lights low, the crystal's blue core was the kind of color that sells men on bad choices.
"What's that?" Bix asked.
"Lamp." Noah stepped sideways just enough to block the sightline. "You from town?"
"Out by the quarries." The man's hands were empty; that didn't comfort Noah. The passenger stayed in the truck, phone up. Recording? Maybe just bored. Maybe neither.
"I'll call your cousin if I need bulk," Noah said. "Today I don't."
Bix ran his tongue along his teeth, a small animal checking its cage. He tapped the door with a knuckle. "We like to know what's moving out here. Lots of… projects. Folks get weird. Good to meet you, though." He slid a card across the threshold. It wasn't a county card. It wasn't even a real card. It said Materials & Solutions with a number that didn't look like a business line.
"Good to meet you," Noah said tone-flat. "Gate's that way."
Bix held eye contact one beat too long, then grinned and backed off. "We'll talk."
The pickup rolled away. Noah waited until it turned right at the end of the lane, then counted to thirty with his eyes closed. When he opened them, the shop was still there. The rails waited. The crystal glowed.
He had an hour of decent light left and a tomorrow shaped like an inspection. That meant he needed one thing more than rest—
—he needed the backbone assembled and the arms parked where they could pass as harmless. The universal engineering robot could hide in plain sight as a "CNC prototype" if he could put a shell around it.
He threw the lights back up and set the next plate. "No stupid cuts," he said again, and the room answered with obedient hums.
The laser dipped.
[Warning: External device detected. RF signature near window.]
He blinked at the overlay. "Define external."
[Unidentified consumer drone. Range: 24 meters. Camera active.]
So the passenger had sent up a toy. Of course.
Noah killed the overhead lights and dragged a scrap of corrugated tin onto a sawhorse, propping it as a quick blind between the bench and the window. He didn't have time to play. He needed the long seam joined, now.
The drone's little shadow skated across the glass.
He set the seam in chalk, brought the crystal down to a hair's breadth above steel, and flicked back to manual. "We do this, then we hide."
[Choreography pause. Manual control assumed.]
The beam lit—and through the dim shop the thin line of man-made dawn strobed against the tin blind. Outside, something whined—a drone moving closer.
The gate clanked. Metal on metal. Not a buzzer this time. A hand on a latch.
A knock sounded at the door again, sharp, authority-shaped.
"Noah Cole," a woman's voice called. Raines. "I need to perform an immediate safety check. Open up."
His thumb hovered over the kill switch. The seam was three-quarters joined; stopping now meant grinding and rework and a night lost. Continuing meant a door between him and a woman with a tablet and a camera—and a drone watching through the window crack.
The beam carved forward, steady as a heart.
[Decision required: cease operation or continue under risk.]
Noah looked at the door, then at the white line eating steel, then at the window's slice of late light and the small, hovering eye beyond it.
He set his jaw.
"I'm busy," he said, and brought the crystal lower.
[Power increase 8%.]
The knock came again, harder.
He didn't answer it.