My hand slipped.
“Can you fix it or not?”
“I can. How long?”
“Eighty-six seconds. Eighty-five…”
“Okay, shut up.”
My fingers nimbled through the snarl of wires, yanking, tugging, (“Cutters!” I called), snipping, stripping (“Screwdriver!”), loosening, tightening, (“Soldering gun!”), heating and connecting. I watched my hands work, saw my dad’s electrician’s calluses on my fingers, felt my grandpa’s deft touch on my tools, recognized his old man’s tidy work in mine.
A current of electricians, from old Manhattan’s skyscrapers to Earthship Unity.
“Done!”
“Activate!” the captain ordered.
The wire scraps on the floor shuddered as our shields repelled the meteoroid.
P.G. Galalis writes, reads, and teaches science fiction and other speculative literature near Boston, MA. His stories have appeared in Diabolical Plots, Frozen Wavelets, and Galaxy’s Edge. You can Tweet at or follow him @pggalalis or visit him on the web at pggalalis.com.
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