The heavy oak drafting table on Ironwood Peak had a tiny wobble.
It wasn’t an acceptable wobble.
To an ordinary fighter, a tiny bending in a wooden workstation was a matter of total indifference. To Frank, it was an unbearable load-bearing defect that offended the deepest shape of the cosmos.
He knelt on the polished dark rock floor, his denim overalls stretched taut over his knees, squinting through a brass fine-scale measuring tongs at the gap beneath the table’s eastern leg.
“Three point eight tiny fractions of an inch on the north face,” Frank muttered. He tapped the oak with a grease-stained thumb. “Four point one on the slanted. The subfloor settled after the spring rains. Unacceptable compaction.”
Standing five paces away, Shen Shitou held a twenty-pound forged steel sledgehammer across his chest like a ritual scepter. His heavy shoulders were draped in a buzzing white orange safety vest.
“Master,” Shen Shitou rumbled, his voice shaking with deep respect. “Shall I strike the earth-shaking bedrock beneath the mountain to re-level the land-wide plate?”
“Put the sledgehammer away, Shitou,” Frank sighed without looking up. “You don’t re-grade a world-size fault line to fix a wobbly drafting table. Just find me a piece of scrap cardboard or an old cedar thin wedge.”
