Chapter 13- Ronnie’s Patience is Challenged
As Ronnie and Angela sat in the kitchen, talking and sipping coffee and goats’ milk, the computer spoke to Ronnie, explaining a problem with the Super 11 transceiver. The computer said that the radio would receive a signal, but would not transmit a signal off The Empress. The computer said it needed Ronnie to test some signals with his voltage meter to help isolate the component that had failed. Angela asked if the problem was serious, and Ronnie explained that they needed the radio to transmit or they could not make purchases at the Open Market or contact their customers.
Suddenly Angela became very concerned because they now had no way to communicate with her doctor if she should need his assistance quickly. Ronnie went into the ready room and discussed the problem with the computer. The computer displayed the schematic diagram of the radio on the monitor screen so Ronnie could help the computer diagnose the problem. Ronnie had been forced to repair this complicated radio system once before and was not looking forward to working on it today. He removed the door to the radio closet, then unlatched two quick lock fasteners with his screwdriver. The drawer then easily slid open allowing access to the circuit boards. The circuit boards were about fifteen centimeters square and slid down into two guide rails where the contacts on the bottom end of the board plugged into the main motherboard. On the tops of the boards were a few colored test jacks, which brought signals and voltages out into the open so a service technician could have a starting point for troubleshooting. Ronnie discussed a few tests with the computer, and then both agreed upon a course of action.
That had already eliminated fifty percent of the circuit boards, and Ronnie realized he was starting to relax a little. The computer asked Ronnie to measure for a signal at the first test point when he keyed the radios microphone. Ronnie attached the leads of the oscilloscope to the proper terminals on top of the correct circuit board. The computer keyed the microphone and the signal was present. They continued testing until they found a point on the fourth circuit board that had no signal. The point before that had proper signal so the problem was located to that circuit board.
Ronnie asked the computer if they had circuit boards for the radio. The computer reminded Ronnie that they could not purchase the circuit boards; the boards would have to be either repaired onsite or teleported to the service center for repair. Ronnie asked if they could teleport this board to the center for a replacement. The computer said, “Ronnie you forget that the teleportation system does not function without this radio to supply the telemetry information to the teleportation computers.” Ronnie’s temper instantly raged and he screamed obscenities at the radio, the IFTT, the designer of the radio and anything or anybody else that happened to come to mind. Then he threw the screwdriver across the room and it stuck blade first in the wall beside the lavatory door. As he turned to leave the ready room, he ran into a lower cabinet door that he had left standing open and it almost knocked him to the floor. He grabbed the door, ripped it from its hinges and threw it across the room. It landed in the corner with a thud as it struck the wall. Ronnie then pounded his fist on the metal door to the closet beside the radio.
When Angela stepped into the ready room where Ronnie was still yelling, she could see the red in his cheeks and feel the anger in his body. Angela said, “Ronnie, I love you, but you need to settle down and we will find a way to fix this radio.” Ronnie frowned at her and pointed to the kitchen. It was obvious that Ronnie wanted Angela to move her ass away from the ready room until the radio repairs were completed. Angela did not speak another word, but did in fact sit down in the kitchen and remain silent. She had no idea if he would hit her if she remained in the ready room, but had no desire to test him until his temper settled down a little. Ronnie finally calmed himself, returned his concentration to the problem at hand and began working with the computer again to locate the defective component. “Computer, will you remove the power to this fucking radio so I can retract the circuit board and insert the board extender?” The power blinked off and Ronnie pulled the defective board from the radio, slid the extender down into the motherboard, and then inserted the defective board into the bus slot of the extender. The extender did just what it implied, extended the circuit board up above the radio’s motherboard so the technician could easily get a meter onto the electronic components. Ronnie and the computer soon discovered that one transistor had failed and a power resistor supplying voltage to the collector had burned open.
It appeared that the transistor had shorted from collector to emitter. The computer searched for the components from the inventory of The Empress and quickly found the resistor they needed, but the transistor did not match the one in inventory. Angela went to the inventory locker bay and retrieved the two components that should have been correct. The resistor was the correct one, but the transistor had a different manufacturers part number etched on it than the one on the circuit board. The computer referenced the part numbers again and said the polarity was different from the one they needed, and a test by Ronnie with the ohmmeter proved that the transistor was PNP instead of NPN, and this polarity difference certainly would not work. Once again, Ronnie was pissed, but when Angela stepped into the ready room, he took a deep breath and tried to calm down. He then asked the computer to reference all the transistors in inventory and see if they had one that was NPN, the approximate physical size, and one that would provide enough amplification gain to get this radio running until they could get to a service facility. Within a few moments, the computer came back and said there were three transistors in stock that may work, but one had a very good probability of working.
The computer gave Angela the location and she returned to the inventory locker bay to retrieve the transistor. When she returned, Ronnie asked how many of the transistors were in inventory and Angela said there were eleven left in the bin. The computer checked the reference documentation in memory for the correct pin arrangements of the replacement transistor. The computer displayed the replacement orientation on the monitor so Ronnie could see where the emitter, base and collector leads matched the arrangement of the defective transistor. When he had heated the three tiny solder points, and a tiny bit of new solder had melted, the transistor replacement was complete.
Now it was time for the testing. When Ronnie powered the radio, then keyed the microphone, the radio snapped to life. The computer quickly did a test of the signal feeding the eleventh-dimension string energy membrane, and found the signal to be correct in frequency and amplitude. Ronnie keyed the microphone again and talked to the Director of Operations at the IFTT to verify that the repaired radio was working correctly. When Ronnie was certain they once again had proper communications, he contacted the radio repair facility and made certain they had the correct components in their inventory. Then he placed an order for six of the transistors for his inventory and waited until the facility teleported the parts to The Empress. He did not even want this fiasco to happen again. Ronnie then ordered a replacement circuit board that the repair facility teleported to him. Once Ronnie installed the new board and it was operating correctly, he teleported the defective one to the repair facility so they could install the proper transistor and get the board factory inspected and tested.
The repair facility later told Ronnie that an Alpha particle had struck the transistor and punctured the emitter base junction, and that had caused the failure of the device. Ronnie laughed when he heard the explanation, wondering which whiz kid at the repair facility had made that determination. Ronnie loved it when the whiz kids treated him like an undergraduate. Ronnie wondered if the kid would have a different outlook on life if he knew that Ronnie wrote the book on eleventh-dimension time travel that the kid used for his class studies in the university he attended.
Now that the radio was again working, Angela stepped into the ready room and confronted Ronnie about his violent temper. She stood near the door between the ready room and the kitchen as she talked to her husband. Angela sa
id, “Ronnie, I love you, and will shut up if you do not want to talk to me, but you displayed a violent temper tantrum a few minutes ago that frightened me. I have never seen this side of you and would like you to tell me how one human can become so angered and violent as to rip a door from its hinges and stick the shank of a screwdriver in the wall from six meters away. I have never heard such obscenities as you just spewed here in the ready room. Can we discuss this please?”
Ronnie’s face again turned instantly red from anger, but he turned around and sat down in the captain’s chair behind the pilot’s seat. As he looked at Angela, he said, “I apologize for that outburst. I would never hurt you or touch you; I never direct my anger at living things. Although, humans can and often do make me very angry and sometimes send me into a rage. I have what the doctors call Bipolar Disorder. That is no excuse for my temper tantrums, just the reason for them.” Ronnie stood up and walked out the ready room door and out into the cargo bay. Angela decided to leave her husband alone and let him settle down for an hour or so.
As Ronnie and Angela cuddled in her bed, Ronnie felt the baby kick him hard in the stomach. Angela giggled and said the baby did not want him poking her and making her breathe hard. Ronnie said, “Maybe if I whisper to her and sing her a love song, she will change her mind.” Angela got out of bed, took her pajamas off, snuggled her body close to Ronnie and said, “It does not matter what baby wants tonight, because mother needs her man and right now would be wonderful.”
Ronnie had just turned on the shower so he and Angela could wash their bodies when the fire alarm began ringing. The computer began explaining to Ronnie (in its usual calm voice) the location of the fire, and began giving him the information he needed to deal with the situation. The fire was located in the ejection room on an oxygen generator used to scrub the oxygen used by Ronnie and Angela for breathing. The computer had already begun to isolate the generator and insure that there would be no leakage of the smoke and fire byproducts into the air supply. Ronnie had placed the oxygen generators inside a separate room in the cargo bay so each could be isolated and even ejected into space if there was a major problem. When Ronnie got to the room where the generator was located, he could already see the thick smoke inside the room through the Plexiglas window in the door. When he got close to the room, he could see a faint glow of orange and some very hot blue flames inside the room. The generator had sustained major damage by now and Ronnie decided not to even attempt to fight the fire. He asked the computer to disconnect the explosive disconnect couplers. Within seconds, he heard three sharp pops as the computer severed both incoming and outgoing airlines along with the pneumatic air supply that spun the generator. Ronnie walked out of the cargo bay to be certain he was safe, and then asked the computer to eject the generator to open space. Ronnie heard the loud hiss as the door to the ejection room door slid open, exposing the room to the vacuum of space. Then there were four more sharp pops as the computer detonated the four explosive bolts holding the generator to the floor. The generator immediately disappeared out of the containment room. As the computer closed the ejection room door, it quickly pressured the room again. Ronnie asked the computer to check the status of the remaining two generators to see if they sustained any damage. The computer said both oxygen generators were functioning correctly. Ronnie then asked if the computer knew the reason for the failure of the number two oxygen generator. The computer said the generator had a welded seam fail that allowed pure oxygen to encounter the hot exhaust pipe of the generator. Ronnie asked if the remaining generators were subject to the same failure, and the computer explained the number one and number three generators were of a newer design and did not have a similar welded seam type separator, therefore no similar event could take place. Ronnie asked the computer to enter the information needed to order a new oxygen generator and place the order with the Open Market. The computer responded with three chirps.