Chapter 14: Order from Chaos
Timeline: 07:00, 8 days after reaching a 35-second window
Location: Staff Rowhouses, GIG/Apex R&D Campus, Agonwood
I woke up to the smell of coffee and the sensation of something stiff pressing against my cheek.
I peeled my eyes open. I wasn't in my bed. I was slumped over a desk, my face mashed against a stack of thermal schematics. My neck felt like someone had replaced my vertebrae with rusted gravel.
"Good morning, Dr. Patricks," a voice said, far too awake for my liking.
I sat up, peeling a piece of paper off my forehead. Julian was sitting in a lounge chair in the corner of the office, reading a tablet. He was showered, shaved, and wearing a crisp white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He looked infuriatingly perfect.
I, on the other hand, felt like a dumpster fire.
"What time is it?" I croaked.
"07:00," Julian replied without looking up. "You solved the phase change equation at 04:30. You passed out at 04:35. You started snoring at 04:45."
"I do not snore," I said, rubbing my face.
"You do," Julian smirked, tapping his screen. "I have the audio file if you require evidence."
"Delete it," I snapped, standing up. My joints popped in protest. "And stop recording me."
"I was recording the brainstorming session," Julian said calmly. "The snoring was just ambient noise."
He stood up and walked over to the desk, sliding a fresh mug of coffee toward me.
"Drink. Then go shower. You look like you lost a fight with a dryer lint trap."
I looked down at myself. I was still in my pajamas and hoodie. There was a smudge of ink on my hand. My hair was likely a disaster.
"The simulation?" I asked, ignoring the insult.
"Green across the board," Julian said, his voice dropping to that serious, appreciative tone that always disarmed me. "The vapor chamber works. If we use a methanol-water mix, the phase change happens right at the thermal throttle limit. It flattens the curve."
He looked at the screen, then at me.
"You did it, Lonna."
"Yeah. You called me over at an indecent time in the morning. You made me scallops, dumped all of the work on me, insulted me several times, let me fall asleep on your desk when you have a couch, spare room, or—I don't know, could have just walked me the 10 steps to my own place." I corrected, grabbing the coffee. "But sure. Thanks."
"Collaboration," Julian said, stepping closer. He reached out, and for a second, I thought he was going to touch my face again. Instead, he plucked the piece of paper I had been sleeping on from the desk.
"Take this to Marcus," he ordered. "Tell him to machine the casing. We test at noon."
"You take it. I'm sleeping," I mumbled sarcastically, clutching my coffee like a lifeline. "Let me know how it goes."
I turned toward the door.
Julian didn't even look up from his tablet. "You won't sleep," he said confidently. "You'll lay in bed for ten minutes, staring at the ceiling, wondering if the methanol mixture is correct. Then you'll come to The Barn anyway because you can't stand not knowing if you were right."
He held the schematic out.
"Take the paper, Lonna. Or don't. But we both know you're not walking away from the puzzle just because you're cranky."
I stopped. I hated him. I hated him because he was arrogant, I hated him because he was rude, and I hated him most of all because he was right.
I marched back, snatched the paper from his hand, and glared at him over the rim of the mug.
"I'm not cranky," I snapped. "I'm exhausted. And for the record, I'm taking this because I solved it, and I want to see my work pay off. Not for you."
"Understood," Julian said, a ghost of a smile touching his lips. "Now go shower. You smell like coffee and stress."
"I… I'm not showering because you told me to. Got it?" I turned on my heel and stomped to the front door, muttering curses.
I kicked the door open and stepped out.
Marcus was standing on the sidewalk, holding a bag of bagels from the campus café. He looked from me—disheveled, wearing flannel pajamas, holding Julian's mug—to the open door of Unit 2 behind me. His expression went flat. Like he just shut down.
"You didn't come home?" Marcus asked.
"I was working," I said quickly, realizing exactly how this looked. "Julian called me over at 3 a.m. The sensor failed again. We were running simulations."
"Simulations," Marcus repeated. He looked past me to the doorway, where Julian had materialized, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed, looking fresh and rested.
"She solved the thermal limit," Julian announced. "Vapor chamber cooling. It's brilliant."
"I don't care about the thermal limit," Marcus said, his voice low. He closed the distance between us, putting himself between me and Julian. "I care that she looks like she's about to pass out."
He looked at me, his eyes searching my face.
"Did you sleep at all?"
"I slept on a desk," I admitted, rubbing my neck. "For maybe two hours."
Marcus turned on Julian. The "easy-going guy" mask was gone. This was the guy who broke things for a living.
"We talked about this," Marcus growled. "She's not a battery you can just drain and recharge. If you burn her out, Vane, I'm done being polite about it."
"She's an adult, Marcus," Julian countered, his voice cool. "She can manage her own limits. She chose to stay."
"I chose to fix the problem so you'd stop texting me!" I interjected, stepping between them before Marcus could throw a punch.
I shoved the schematic into Marcus's chest. "Look. Vapor chamber. Hollow casing. Methanol coolant. Can you build it?"
Marcus looked down at the paper, then back at me. He took a deep breath, forcing his shoulders to relax. "Yeah," he sighed, the tension draining out of him. "I can build it. I'll have to mill the channels deep, seal it with epoxy."
"Good," I said. "I'm going to shower. I'm going to change. And I am going to drink this entire coffee in peace."
I started to walk past him toward Unit 3.
"Lon," Marcus called out.
I stopped.
"Bagel," he said, tossing me the bag. "Since he probably only fed you coffee."
I caught the bag. It was warm. Everything bagel with extra cream cheese—my favorite.
"Thanks, Marc," I said softly.
I unlocked my door and slipped inside. I leaned against the closed door and exhaled, closing my eyes.
Outside, I heard Julian say something low, and Marcus responded with a sharp, one-word answer. Then, footsteps walking away in opposite directions.
I slid down the door until I hit the floor. I took a bite of the bagel.
Julian fed my brain. Marcus fed me. And Alex… Alex played the long game.
I was too tired to figure out which one I needed more.
—————————————————————————
Five hours later, the mood in The Barn was tense.
I felt human again, thanks to a shower, real clothes (jeans and the blazer Alex bought me), and the bagel.
Marcus had machined the new casing out of a solid block of aluminum. It was slightly bulkier than the first prototype, but it felt sleek. He had bored out internal channels for the fluid dynamics and sealed it with aerospace-grade epoxy.
"Vacuum pulled," Marcus said, checking a pressure gauge attached to the handle. "Methanol injected. It's a closed loop."
"Power?" I asked Alex.
"Voltage stepped down," Alex confirmed. He was watching me closely. "The Gallium Nitride chips are running cool. I added a surge protector to the busbar just in case."
"Algorithm?" I asked Dave.
"Messy as hell," Dave grinned. "It's a digital arrhythmia. High entropy."
I picked up the device. It was heavy, cool to the touch. When I tilted it, I could feel the liquid slosh slightly inside the walls.
"Ready?" I asked.
Julian stood by the monitor, arms crossed. He hadn't spoken to me since the morning. If he even tried, I just glared at him.
I thumbed the switch.
The hum began. The high-pitched whine of the capacitors.
I watched the thermal camera on the monitor.
38 degrees.
39 degrees.
40 degrees.
This was the breaking point. This was where the impedance spiked and the smoke came out. I held my breath.
40 degrees… The temperature held.
"Phase change active," I whispered. "The liquid is boiling inside the chamber."
40 degrees... 40 degrees...
"It's holding," Marcus shouted, checking the surface temp with a laser thermometer. "The casing is getting warm, but the chip is stable. The heat is spreading to the housing."
"Signal is clean," Dave yelled. "We have sustained chaos!"
"Time?" I asked.
"Sixty seconds," Alex read off the timer. "Ninety seconds. Two minutes."
I lowered the device, cutting the power. The silence in the lab was profound for a second, followed by a collective exhale.
"It works," I said, looking at the warm aluminum in my hand. "It actually works."
"Don't celebrate yet," Julian said, cutting through the relief. "We have a signal. Now we need to see if it works."
Glaaaaaaaaaare.
—————————————————————————
Location: The Cul-de-Sac - Unit 6
The house stood there, beige and innocuous in the midday sun. I stood on the sidewalk, the device in my hand. It hummed again, vibrating slightly with the force of the fans and the boiling liquid inside.
"Alex, stay back with the sensors," I ordered. "Dave, monitor the bio-feed. Marcus, stay by the door."
"And me?" Julian asked, stepping up beside me.
"Be somewhere else. Go fetch coffee, or something," I said, pointing to the chalk marked safety line on the pavement.
"Unlikely," Julian replied, ignoring me completely and standing right at my shoulder.
I lacked the energy to argue. I raised the device and pointed it at the kitchen window. "Mark data collection," I said.
I pulled the trigger. The device kicked in my hand from the magnetic flux of the emitters firing. On the screen, the signal wave turned into a jagged, violent squabble of lines.
Nothing happened for five seconds. Then, the air inside the kitchen shimmered. What looked to be a gravitational lens distorted the view. The light passing through the kitchen window bent, twisting the white quartz island so it looked like it was underwater.
"Visual distortion confirmed," Alex shouted from the cart. "I'm reading a localized gravity spike. It's tidal forces!"
"Keep holding it," Julian said, his eyes locked on the window. "Don't let go."
Suddenly, the hum of the device changed. It deepened. The vibration in my hand turned into a violent shake. I gripped it with both hands. " and looked down at it. "Well, that's not good."
"Energy spike!" Alex shouted. "Lonna, shut it down! You're getting back-feed!"
I released the trigger, but the device stayed on. The hum got louder. The vibration rattled my teeth. The switch failed
Julian grabbed my wrist to steady the aim. "Lonna, listen. It's inductive coupling. The anomaly is feeding energy back into the antenna, keeping it powered."
"Drop it!" Marcus roared, running toward us.
"No!" Julian shouted. "If she drops it, the connection breaks and the backlash could shatter the sensors—or her hand! Lonna, you have to dampen the signal manually. Do you understand? De-tune the frequency."
I fumbled for the small dial on the side of the grip. My hands shook violently. The air around us felt heavy, charged with static.
"Turn it." Julian commanded.
I twisted the knob, scrambling the frequency to white noise. The connection broke. The hum dropped instantly. The shimmering in the kitchen vanished. The vibration stopped. Silence rushed back into the cul-de-sac.
I stood there, panting, the warm metal of the device heavy in my hand.
"Well," Julian said, breathless, standing inches from me. "That was definitely a response."
"Yeah," Marcus said, coming up beside us and putting a heavy hand on my shoulder, checking me for injuries. "But did you see the waveform?"
"What?" I asked, blinking spots from my eyes.
"The return signal," Alex said, running up with the tablet. He shoved the screen in front of my face.
I tried to focus. The graph showed the jagged, messy lines of our chaos signal. But right at the peak, where the feedback loop hit, the line changed.
It flattened into a perfect, smooth sine wave. A standing wave.
"We sent it chaos," Alex said, his voice hushed. "It filtered it. It sent back order."
"That's impossible," I mumbled, the adrenaline crash hitting me all at once. "Nature doesn't do that. Only... only a system does that."
"Someone take this," I said, no longer able to support the weight of the device. I don't know who actually took it because my eyes were already closed.
"Good," I whispered as the weight disappeared. "Now it won't break."
That's when I lost consciousness.