Steampunk Shenanigans

It took a little longer for Evie to get ready the next morning, and Damien wouldn't have minded so much if he didn't have to wait outside her room like a creep. When she finally came out, he did a double take. Damien never paid much attention to what Sylvia wore, but he had to admit that it looked good on Evie. It was a sensible blouse with a pink necktie and a beige skirt, and she had piled her blonde curls high up on her head with matching pink hairpins. She caught Damien staring and blushed.

"I know, it looks wrong on me," she said.

"Not at all," Damien said. "Actually, I think you look quite nice. I dare say you pull it off much better than Sylvia does."

"That's not possible," Evie said, rolling her eyes. "Sylvia is a real lady. You can sense it when she walks into the room."

"And you're not?"

"Well... no. I'm not."

"I beg to differ," Damien insisted. "I definitely see a lady in front of me. And if it makes you feel better, any time you leave the room it sends a bolt of lightning straight through my heart."

She looked like she wanted to ignore him, but couldn't stop the light laugh at his corny joke. He swore he saw her blush a little bit, too. Maybe because the comment was a little flirtatious, but Damien wasn't sure why he was acting like that. He tried not to think too much of it.

After dinner with Sylvia, Damien and Evie had gotten their story for Corbin straight. They simply had no other choice but to stay in his house if they were going to use the lab. They didn't like it, but they actually accepted the story. Olessa seemed especially upset that she couldn't aggressively flirt with Damien anymore, but he was very happy with that.

They had the day to get started on the spider, but Damien had already started drawing up plans for his universal remote. Evie sat in a chair and made a game of tossing treats in the air for Minnie to catch, and the little fox was excited to have a playmate in the lab for once. She eventually looked up and strolled over to Damien and check on what he was doing.

"You already built the remote?" she asked, looking at the device in his hand.

"I wish," he said. "No, this is a remote for something else. Automatic window blinds. I figured if I can use this as a shell for the cuffs, I can survive with opening and closing the blinds with my own soft, delicate hands."

"You poor thing," she said. "So you're reusing the parts to make something new?"

"Do you want to see?"

She took a step back and shook her head.

"No," she said. "I was just curious. I don't want to ruin anything."

"You won't ruin anything," he said, using his foot to pull a stool up next to is. "Come on, I'll show you."

She was hesitant, but sat down and leaned in to look at what he was doing.

"So drew up a prototype plan, but I have to start with something before I can tweak it to work," he said. "See these little cables? I'm using this tool to gently connect them into these tiny plugs. You have to be careful, because they can tear easily. Then we have to find a replacement part."

She watched intently as he showed her what he meant, using a pair of tweezers to plug a red cable into a red plug. He was surprised that as he explained what these connections did, she was actually nodding and paying close attention rather than looking bored with him.

"So the red cable controls the side buttons," she said. "The blue cable goes in the upper left plug. Right? And it controls the front buttons?"

"Yes," Damien said, impressed. "That's right. Good work."

She beamed with pride at the praise, and he couldn't help but smile too. He adjusted the lamp so she could see better and offered her the tweezers, but the smile fell off her face.

"No, I can't," she said.

"Yes you can," he said. "You just explained what the blue cable is and where it goes. You can handle plugging it in."

"I'll break it."

"Then we'll fix it."

She was hesitant, but took the tweezers and leaned in as she carefully took the cable and moved it towards the plug.

"Good, keep it steady and gentle," Damien told her. "Slide the plug in, then use the tweezers to flick the locking mechanism in place. Don't rush it."

She kept her movements slow and focused, and plugged the cable in without tearing it. Once she locked it in place, a light on the side of the device flickered to life. She lit up as well, proud of her own work. It was a very simple and minor part of the build, but Damien knew exactly how she was feeling. When you have never built a thing like that before, the satisfaction of seeing something you build come to life was exciting.

"Good job," Damien said. "You have a steady hand."

"It was just one cable," she said, brushing the compliment off.

"You don't know how many of these cables I have torn while trying something like this," he said. "It takes a natural skill, and you have it."

"You really think so?"

"Of course," he said. "We'll figure this thing out in no time."

She smiled but seemed more shy now, looking down at her feet. She helped him in the lab for the rest of the day, but the remote didn't get very far. While Damien didn't expect it to work in one day, it was still a little disappointing.

They switched to working on the spider, getting a little bit of a skeleton going for it so they couldn't be accused of slacking. Still, they talked about the remote and what they were going to do next with it.

"It's a one way connection," Damien explained. "Even though there is one remote that controls all of these cuffs, each cuff only connects to one single remote. Picture it like a string. Lets say there are ten strings connected to one point, and three of those strings are connected to us. We can't disconnect the string from our own end, but want to take the other end and move it somewhere else."

Evie was deep in thought as she used a wrench to tighten a bolt on the spider. She paused, then looked back at Damien.

"What if the strings were cut?" she asked. "Not connected to anything. They just flop to the floor. Does that make them up for grabs?"

"Maybe," he said. "Unfortunately, we can only work on theory. The only way we can figure out how these connections work is to disconnect from Corbin's remote, but if we had access to that, we wouldn't have to build our own device in the first place."

"I had a radio once," she said. "I remember it was on my windowsill, and I had so many problems with it. I found out later that my mirror was angled in a specific way, and it was disrupting the signal. It was reflecting onto the antenna and heating it up, and the heat was disconnecting it."

"Heat," Damien repeated. "Maybe we could use that to disrupt the signal to the original remote. We just have to figure out how to pick up the transmission from the cuffs on our own device instead of letting it reconnect to Corbin's. And then we have to figure out how we're going to do all that without them finding out."

"That's not easy."

"It's not."

She wrinkled her nose in thought and he sighed, standing up and loudly cracking his back.

"I think it's time to call it a night," he said. "Even Minnie is asleep."

They looked over to where the fox was curled up and sleeping in her corner, and Evie seemed to know Damien was probably right. She looked a little disappointed, so Damien gave her a reassuring pat on the back.

"Hey, it's not over yet," he told her. "We're going to figure it out. You did a great job today, Ducky."

This made her smile as she stood up and smoothed her skirt out. Damien let Minnie sleep in the lab for the night, locking the door behind him. Night had fallen outside and as they left, they ran into Jimmy the custodian.

"Oh, Dr. Hart," he greeted. "Still here, eh? You should get home to your- oh. Is this your wife?"

This time Damien was the one who flushed red, though Evie was quick to follow suit.

"No," he said quickly. "This is Evie, a colleague of mine. Like I've told you.... many times... I am unmarried. I am still unmarried."

"Oh, I see," the elderly man said with a nod. "Well, you two have a lovely evening. Good to meet you, Mrs. Hart."

Damien was still red as they walked out and Evie looked over at him curiously.

"Sorry about him," Damien said. "He means well, he's just... really old. Sometimes he doesn't understand."

"That's okay."

Damien gave her a nod, but he was still embarrassed. At least he was exhausted enough to get some real sleep that night.