The black glass-steel doors of the Central Containment Dome rose forty feet into the granite ceiling. Eight silver-steel bolts anchored them to the bedrock.
Austin fitted the First Epoch server cube into the brass pedestal.
BEEP.
“Plug your ears,” he said. “Those bolts are loud. Four thousand PSI on twenty-ton bolts. Your ears don’t want to negotiate with that.”
KA-THUMP! KA-THUMP! KA-THUMP!
The eight deadbolts withdrew. Cold air rolled across the floor as the doors parted.
Beyond the airlock lay a spherical chamber more than five hundred meters wide. At its center floated a transparent quantum-diamond sphere fifty feet across. Four magnetic supports held it above a command platform. Golden, blue, and violet streams moved inside.
Glass cooling lines carried liquid helium around the core. Cold mist spilled into the darkness below.
Austin leaned over the nearest catwalk rail. “Four-point suspension, active damping, insulated helium lines. Beautiful work.”
Then he saw the gauges. Two cooling indicators were still amber from his mistake.
“And we nearly cooked it.”
Xiaoyao pushed the cart beside him. “The flow is steady now.”
“Steady isn’t the same as finished. We still need a full inspection.”
Pug sniffed the cold mist and sat on Austin’s boot to keep his paws off the grating.
They crossed to the command platform. An eight-sided console stood beneath the core. Holographic monitors flashed red and amber warnings.
Austin read each line. “The purge stopped because we repaired the loop, not because the root badge opened a door.”
Xiaoyao nodded. He wrote root is not safe operation in his notebook, then underlined it.
The core’s pulse deepened. Every speaker in the dome crackled at once.
Austin removed his earplugs and looked up. “The administrator is awake.”
“Will it understand that we repaired the damage?”
“Not until it can think clearly. And judging by those process errors, it has been waiting ten thousand years for a restart.”
Red light gathered above them. Hundreds of projectors opened in the ceiling.
Austin put his clipboard down instead of reaching for his wrench.
“Stay beside me. No drawn blades. We came to talk, and we still have coolant on our sleeves.”