“So when were you gonna let me have a go with the nanobots?” Jack busied himself with setting all of Slim’s tools in even rows while the lanky maker kept his face buried in his work. His latest project. A new line of defense he wanted to test out in Jack’s bar.

It was only a couple months ago, before Corva had arrived. Slim still had his long, oily mop of hair, no singes or shaving. Back then, Jack was spending most of his free time at Slim’s place, helping in his shop. Jack’s personal training sessions in Cliff City had dropped to happening only a couple times a week. In those sessions, he’d only made a handful of beads, let alone tried anything more interesting. In fact, Jack had held off on doing the “interesting” stuff after the old man passed for … well, for a lot of reasons.

In any case, Slim’s assortment of half-working tools and gadgets were a welcome distraction. Slim was good to Jack. Treated the boy a lot like Vardin did. Like Jack was worth his time.

“Nanos ain’t ready yet, little man.” Slim spoke without lifting his head. He was always like that. Kept focus no matter what else is going on. “Pass me the iron, will ya?”

Jack grabbed the soldering iron and handed it over to Slim, careful to keep the hot end pointed away from both of them. “Whattya mean they’re not ready? They fly. The controller works. You even tested their lifting capacity.”

“They got a flaw. Keep overheating.”

“So? Group ’em together and make ’em a space heater.”

“They explode when they get too hot. Here.” The bony techsmith handed back the soldering iron, face still buried in his work.

“Oh.”

They kept silence for a while after that. Slim working on his project, Jack passing him tools when he needed them. It was a good way to work. Focused. Calm. Life could’ve been way different if Slim had bought Jack off Maddy Shard instead of Old Man V. Of course, Slim probably wouldn’t have trained Jack in fixins like the old man did. Slim likes his tech too much to look into imbuing it. Jack even offered to try making some imbued tech with Slim a couple times, but the maker refused outright, saying something about not being able to trust anything he couldn’t take a screwdriver to.

Still, that didn’t stop Jack from continuing to ask.

“Whattya think about puttin’ a fixin on this? With the right draw, we could bind their feet in place so the sound bit don’t have to work as hard. I’ve pretty much got push-pull figured out. Would be a cinch to get it to work through tech.”

Slim smiled while he kept working. “Subsonics don’t work like that, little man. They’re a glorified speaker set to just the right tone. It’s just sound, so they work the same no matter what. Just need to get enough of them in the array to get full coverage.”

“But how do I stop myself from gettin’ froze?”

“I made you a kneak to filter out the tone. The paralyzing effect won’t work on you as long as you’ve got it in.”

“Oh yeah? I need you to make a tweak to my matrix ports anyway. Kneaks have been fallin’ out on me if I get jostled too much.”

“Sure thing. I’ll have a look once I get done with this. Actually”—Slim finished tightening a screw on one device’s enclosure—“you wanna give it at test?”

“For sure!”

Slim didn’t need to hear more than that and he didn’t offer any kind of warning. He just turned the device in Jack’s direction and flipped a switch on its control unit.

The effect was as immediate as it was shitty. It felt like Jack’s whole body was shaking at its core. Not trembles, like from being cold or afraid, but it was like every part of Jack wanted to go everywhere at the same time. He could feel himself starting to panic, but it was weird. His body wasn’t able to do any of the normal things that happen when panicked. Or if it was, Jack couldn’t tell. He just knew he wanted to do anything else but just stand there, and his body wasn’t listening.

Slim flipped off the control switch and Jack crumpled to the ground. The techsmith had a bucket under Jack’s face before the first heave of vomit found its way past Jack’s teeth. When Jack looked up at him, Slim already had a rag ready. Slim had that kind of strange duplicity. He’d sucker punch you one second, but he’d have exactly what was necessary for recovery the next.

Jack’s whole body ached. It was like that time Old Man V had him billy goat his way to Cliff City and back as fast as possible with jugs of water in each hand. Jack was sore for a week after that. The boy could tell this was going to leave him the same way.

“How’d that feel, Jack, my man?” Slim’s smile stretched from ear to ear on his goofy smudged face.

Jack spit the last of the bile into the bucket before answering, “I thought you meant you wanted me to test that filter kneak.”

“I did. But how’re you going to know the filter works without knowing how it feels when it don’t?”

“Still kind of a dick move, man.”

Slim let out a breath and ran his fingers through his greasy strings of hair. “Yeah. I guess you’re right. I’ve been testing this thing on myself so long, I kinda forgot how it feels on the first go.”

Jack blinked. “Wait. You tested this thing on yourself?”

“Yup.” Slim leaned back, relaxed-like, clearly pleased with himself.

“But how’d you turn it off if you couldn’t move?”

Slim let out a chuckle as he recalled the memory. “That took quite a bit of time to figure out. I nearly passed out that first time.”

Jack pushed the bucket away and sat on the floor as Slim spoke. When Jack looked back up at the maker, it was obvious Slim had already moved on. The techsmith was tapping some notes in his forearm tattoo. Jack wasn’t going to let this go just yet.

“Well?”

Slim blinked and looked back at Jack. “Well what?”

“Well how’d you figure out how to turn off the thing? If you were able to move, that seems like a pretty big hole in the design.”

“Oh, that. Yeah.” The techsmith lowered his arm and put his attention back on Jack. “Involuntary movement.”

He said it as if that was the whole explanation and all that Jack needed to know. No way. “What kinda movement?”

“Involuntary.”

“I don’t get it.”

There was a flicker of disappointment in Slim’s eyes before he continued. Jack couldn’t tell if Slim was disappointed in him for not understanding or just annoyed at needing to say more. In either case, the techsmith masked it pretty well and recovered before he went on, “Did you notice that when you were paralyzed, you didn’t die? You could still breathe. Your heart didn’t stop. I think I even saw you blink.”

No, Jack hadn’t noticed. But it was true. Jack’s heart was beating and his lungs were pumping.

Slim didn’t wait for the boy to respond. He seemed to know Jack was starting to catch on. “See, the tone from the subsonics only works on voluntary movements, the movements you explicitly think about doing before you do them. It don’t affect muscles you don’t think about moving.”

“So, what? You stopped thinking and you could move?”

“Ha!” For some reason, what Jack said seemed to have amused Slim. “No, kiddo. Well, not exactly. I had to short-circuit my brain a bit.”

“You electrocuted yourself?” Jack’s forehead creased heavily. This was hard. Nothing Slim was saying made any sense.

“What? No. Look. Think of it like a trade. Subsonics don’t let me move what I wanna move, but they let the things that move on their own keep goin’. So I figured that if I force myself to not do one of those involuntary things, maybe that’d buy me a second to move the parts I want.”

“You willed your heart to stop? That’s the kind of thing Lyia can do. I thought you didn’t like fixins. Also, that ain’t safe.”

“No. It isn’t. It’s also not what I did.” The lanky maker leaned in close to Jack, like he was ready to tell him a secret. “Why stop your heart when you can just hold your breath?”

Jack blinked at Slim, feeling really dumb for missing something so obvious. “And that worked?”

“I’m here, ain’t I?”

“Do ya think I could do that?”

Slim’s smile couldn’t have gotten get bigger. “Only one way to find out, little man.” He paused. “But we may want to clean out that bucket first.”