He kept his thumb over the square a heartbeat longer, then pressed.
[Purchase confirmed: Efficiency Tuning (Choreography Optimizer I).][Cost: 1 Survival Point.][Remaining Survival Points: 11.][Downtime: ~20 s.]
The machine relaxed. Motors unthreaded tension; the editor flashed an annotated path—tighter arcs, merged lift moves, calmer decel/accel bands. A ghost of future motion traced itself in dotted lines.
[Effect applied: projected cycle time −21%. Corner jerk reduced. Consumable wear reduced.]
He watched the dotted choreography blink to a solid line and felt a quiet he trusted more than applause.
"Resume—P-001, low thermal," he said.
[Thermal: 9%. Vent capture: good.][Cycle time estimate: 11 m 10 s per sheet.]
The hand glided to clamp at the new, slightly shifted points; the cutter punched pilots with fewer lifts; the capped emitter drew seams like a pen that had stopped stuttering. The tray sang a quicker rhythm—one bracket, two, joiner, bracket—clean little clinks in a tempo his chest agreed with.
He checked kerf again—no surprises. Corner radii looked like he'd meant them to. Tabs broke obediently when the hand gave them a trained flick. No new chatter, no new burr, just parts that wanted to be stacked.
"Good," he said, and let the next sheet feed. He nested deeper—fewer margins, same safety, because the optimizer's path left room for thought.
Pieces piled in the tray until the metal began to look like a bin of ideas instead of scrap. He labeled the second tote BRACKET A (DONE) and felt the room tilt back into a world where movement made sense.
Halfway through the third sheet, the hood's note shifted—just a shade, a change in grain rather than volume. He felt it before he named it.
[Filter differential: rising.][Vent capture: trending downward.][Recommendation: throttle thermal 2% or replace pre-filter.]
He stepped to the lip and lifted the shop towel—bend still inward, but lazier now. He squeezed a puff from the smoke bulb; the ribbon curved into the hood, wobbled, then committed. Acceptable—barely.
"Thermal eight," he said. The seam's glow cooled a half tone. Cycle time added a handful of seconds he didn't mind yet.
He watched two more passes. Differential crept again.
His jaw shifted. "We're not burning the shop to save a minute," he told the air and himself. "Swap on the fly."
He took a fresh roll from the wrap, set it on the bench, and ran his palms along the edge to find the grain. The hand braced at the frame; the cutter hovered, ready to make the quietest trim in the world.
"Hold, don't push," he said to the hand. To the box: "Maintain traverse; no dwell." To himself: Don't hurry; move fast.
He cracked the hood's pre-filter frame latches one at a time so the lip didn't burp air backward. The hand took the weight of the frame with its palm. He slid the old media out—loaded gray now, heavy with work—and fed the new sheet in until it found the right tension. The cutter kissed two corners to shape without raising dust. He set the latch and wiped the seam with foil tape before the air could remember it had been open.
[Filter differential: falling.][Vent capture: restored.]
He let his shoulders loosen. The seam in the box didn't even notice—it kept its quiet burn across an inside curve that would have been annoying yesterday. The optimizer had smoothed that corner into a thing a machine liked.
He rolled the spent media and slid it into a trash sack with a private satisfaction. Boring lived here now; boring he could scale.
The optimizer floated a suggestion at the corner of his view.
[Optional micro-merge: reduce two lift events; corner dwell decreased.]
"Accept," he said. The code folded, neat as a napkin.
A phone buzz broke the cadence.
UTILITIES: "Voluntary peak reduction event 12:00–14:00. Please reduce nonessential load by 20%."
He glanced at the inverter, at the battery, at the array of breakers. Nonessential load at his shop meant overhead lights and a compressor he had already bullied into silence. The hood and enclosure were essential. The cut—arguable. The notice said voluntary. Voluntary came with memory in some offices.
He thumbed ACK and typed: Operating under vent; essential only. He set overheads to off just to be that man.
The tray caught another bracket. The count ticked to 12—the first full rack. He carried the bin to the steel table and laid out six pairs. The hand joined him like a helpful student, aligning edges while he measured for the welds that would wait until he could be loud again. He made a chalk mark at each fillet location, then forced himself to put the chalk down and go back to cutting. Heat would be earned later.
He fed the next sheet. The optimizer's path looked more confident each cycle—as if code could learn a shop the way a hand learns a wrench.
[Cycle time actual: 11 m 02 s.][Projected after micro-merge: 10 m 48 s.]
He grinned, brief and private. Twelve minutes saved every hour was money in a world that had started to forget the language.
Midway through the fourth sheet, the optimizer tried to get clever where the nest was densest—four brackets drinking the same corner at staggered offsets.
[Suggestion: tighter cornering window; traverse +4%.]
"That's a no," he said. "Leave heat somewhere to go."
[Suggestion declined.]
Even with the decline, the cycle hit a note where everything pulled in the same direction. The hood whistled the soft tune of capture. The enclosure window fogged at the bottom edge and cleared—fogged and cleared—in a rhythm that felt like breathing.
He adjusted the tray routine: the hand flipped finished pieces into the bin while he chalked and sorted. That small choreography made time feel earned instead of taken.
The phone vibrated again—different tone.
COUNTY (Raines): "Got your conditional posted. Quick photo of hood with pre-filter installed would save me a drive later."
He snapped a picture that included the model plate and the taped seams and the EXTINGUISHER stencil underfoot. He sent it. Three dots appeared, then: "Thanks. Stay boring."
As if on cue, the hood's tone shifted a shade—not differential this time: the fan motor cycling into a higher draw as dust took the first bite at the new media.
[Capture stable.][Filter differential: normal for new media.]
He took the hint and set a timer to check again in forty minutes. He could love a machine and not trust it. That balance kept men alive.
By sheet five, the shop had a gait he could name. The optimizer's reduced lifts shaved little silences off the dance; his hands filled those silences with sorting and marks and the kind of planning that puts bolts where bolts want to live.
He broke for water at the bench sink and caught himself savoring the bad taste of rubber hose and metal because it tasted like work instead of cleverness.
The program chirped a soft completion. He slid the next sheet in, laid the cages, and let the cycle begin.
Halfway, the optimizer returned with a stern note he hadn't asked for.
[Warning: heat accumulation risk in nested quadrant (Q3).][Adaptive option: reroute corner order to distribute thermal load (adds 30 s).]
He glanced at the quadrant—a tight nest of tabs shielding a long seam. The hood's towel bent obedient; the smoke ribbon was still enthusiastic; air quality held steady in the green.
He looked at the clock in his head, which had learned to speak in brackets and bins. Thirty seconds added to a world was a different number than thirty seconds added to a morning. But metal that moves wrong because you were proud is a sermon, not a schedule.
"Adaptive yes," he said.
[Adaptive reroute applied.]
The emitter shifted sequence, giving a hot corner room to forget it had been hot. The hand flicked slag as if sweeping crumbs, tidying the path for another pass. The cutter opened an extra relief where a tab had been too loyal. The seam took it like a bridge accepting a lane change.
He let out a breath he hadn't realized he was counting.
On the seventh sheet, the Utility ping returned, more insistent.
UTILITIES: "Reminder: reduce load where possible. Follow-up spot checks may occur."
He looked at the roofline—panels, old but honest. The inverter's app would be a war he could fight later. Now, the only lever he'd pull would be a compromise he chose.
He dialed thermal to 8.5 for the last two passes and watched the towel; it still bent like a prayer you could get behind. Cycle time stretched by breaths, not minutes.
The tray got heavy. He swapped it for an empty one and felt something in him unclench at the sound of a full bin sitting right where it should—weight you could name.
The hood's note wavered—just once; not differential, not motor—a whisper of eddy at the enclosure's lower right corner. He stepped close and saw the faintest suggestion of haze snuggle the gasket and vanish.
"Seal," he said. "We're not doing that."
He palmed a strip of foil tape, pressed it along the questionable edge, and put the heel of his hand into it until adhesive learned the frame. The hand mirrored him on the inside with a little patch he'd pre-cut for a day like this. The haze failed to exist.
[Capture restored.]
The optimizer, not content to let quiet be quiet, coughed up a sweetener.
[Optional toolpath tweak: reduce cutter air-time 12% with combined pilot pattern.]
"Later," he said. "We keep wins small in daylight."
He fed the eighth sheet. The nest sat tighter than he loved in quadrant three because he'd told it to; that's where the steel had to go if the day was going to pay for itself. The optimizer knew it; the hood would find out.
Two passes in, the differential ticked higher than trend. The towel leaned in, then fluttered, then committed. The smoke ribbon hesitated before choosing the throat.
[Filter differential: elevated.][Vent capture: marginal.][Recommendation: throttle thermal 2% or pause for filter service.]
His jaw found the bone it liked to rest on.
He watched the melt pool crawl toward the quadrant that wanted the most from physics. The adaptive reroute would add thirty seconds and defuse it—but only if the filter didn't ask for the very thing he was trying to save.
The tray had slots waiting; his list had lines waiting; the shop had a man who refused to choose the wrong side of a rule.
The optimizer put the choice in a clean sentence he didn't need but respected.
[Option A: Abort cycle now, service filter, re-run sheet.][Option B: Maintain 8.5% thermal and accept marginal capture for ~90 s.]
The air at the hood lip pulled—still yes, but not confidently. The new media had done its hour and wanted a break it would not get if he lied to it.
He had a hand on the kill bar and a hand on the feed knob. The seam was twenty seconds from the densest corner. The towel's angle wobbled once, then remembered itself.
He looked at the bin labeled BRACKET A (DONE), at the NOTICE: CONDITIONAL OPERATION sticker, at the quarter-turns on the cap that had been, against odds, a good lie. He heard the Utility's polite threat humming under bureaucracy.
He had to decide whether to let the machine earn his caution or let caution cost a sheet.
He set his feet. He watched the pool and the towel and the corner that wanted to be a problem.
Then he chose where to put his hand.