They built the buffer in two chambers, because one was not enough.
Mara drew it at the bench in the early afternoon, with Eshel’s trace of the eighth governor’s swing beside her and Tavin’s sketch of the widened seat on top of it. A buffer sat between the governor and the channel: a pocket of space, where the flow could pause instead of slamming into the seat. But the eighth branch’s trouble came in two speeds. The fast snap when the governor shut. And the slow swell when the cold shell finally answered, all at once, long after.
One chamber could not take both. A chamber sized for the snap would fill and burst on the swell. A chamber sized for the swell would be too soft for the snap and let it straight through.
“Two,” she said. “One takes the fast changes. It’s small and stiff. It catches the snap.” She drew it, close to the seat. “The other takes the slow ones. It’s bigger. It fills slowly and lets the energy out over a longer time.” She drew the second chamber behind the first, joined by a narrow throat. “The fast one hands what it can’t hold to the slow one.”
