“Nah,” Tiphanie declines the offered bag of chips. “I’m trying a new diet with lower sodium.”

“Your loss,” the princess says with a shrug. She pulls another handful from the bag for herself and munches happily.

Adah agrees, it’s a good time for a snack break. She breaks a corner off of her processed meal bar and returns the rest to its wrapper. The bit she sucks on has the consistency of chalk, but at least the flavor is okay. It tastes like the way tomato soup could be described by a robot, which is close to, but not quite exactly in the same neighborhood as tomato soup. Chewing the bar makes her teeth feel squeaky, so she opts to suck on small pieces broken off of it instead.

Tsim is not sure where they should start work next. There is a lot to do, and a lot of places that they need to be. But with the life support not functioning as it should, he doesn’t want to climb around in any of the more closed off spaces. With the gate’s enormous interior volume and the aid of so many potted plants, there shouldn’t be much risk of actually running out of oxygen. But with the air sitting stagnant, he knows that it is a risk in areas that don’t benefit from the hard working flora.

That means no crawling about the underbelly of the level to really get at most of the small things Tsim could be working on. And there’s no way to work the ticket queue in order when there’s no priority schema in place yet. Tsim isn’t sure what they should be doing yet. But he is pretty sure that they shouldn’t be waiting around in an abandoned office space doing nothing.

He brings this up with Adah as privately as possible with Princess Prunus Persica Marian Hossenstoffer still sitting nearby while the disinfectant foams in her hair like an astringent scented crown. The princess, delicately ignores the employee relations work while snacking loudly on her bag of only almost expired carrot chips. Tsim wasn’t aware that dehydrated vegetable snack packs had expiration dates, but sure enough there it was.

With everyone stuck, Adah opts to encourage team cohesion by reuniting everyone in one place again. Vasko tags along. If it’s boredom or curiosity or simply not having anything more interesting to do at the moment, even he can’t tell. But he follows the team to the employee elevator, where they find that all nonessential functions are currently disabled due to system reboot.

And that includes the employee elevator, but not the tenant elevator. In some twisted sort of customer service consideration, the tenant elevators are considered essential functions. Apparently, employees should not be moving between floors during a system restart.

Adah sighs, disappointed by the choices of her superiors. And the team reroutes to the public elevator. Unlike the employee elevator, the public elevator shows significant signs of neglect, even from the outside. The doors are scuffed and dented and the elevator call button has been pushed so hard it’s fallen inside the housing. Adah adds a fresh work ticket for it to her list and preemptively assigns it to Tiphanie.

Vasko very helpfully shows the crew a trick to reach the button and pinch it to summon the elevator.

The tags in their employee badges refuse to open the elevator doors, so it’s a good thing for them that Vasko continues to tag along. Doors open for the untagged individual, and they’re able to catch the lift inward back to the tram level with his very much useful assistance. The inside of the elevator, is as expected, just as run down as its outside. And to add insult to the cracked mirrors on the walls and the rails that have mostly lost their shiny coat of enamel, the whole thing reeks of urine.

It’s bad enough that the elevator shows its age, but Tsim knows that there are most definitely restrooms available on every floor. He has memorized much of their schematics. There’s absolutely no need for someone to have relieved themselves in the elevator. And yet all signs point to that having been done repeatedly and recently. It depresses the plumber greatly to see how poorly the Moldy Donut has been treated.

The lights in the elevator flicker when it begins to move, and Tiphanie notes that it has a slow start. They are only going one floor up, so it doesn’t register fully as more than a brief jitter. But Tiphanie is deliberately paying attention to such matters. They suggest an issue with the magnetic rails the elevator rides upon. And that suggests a lengthy bit of maintenance.

That’s okay, Tiphanie tells herself, they have plenty of time.

Back on floor zero, the tram level, the group assembles with their new companion near the hole in the floor.

“We’re going to need a lot of supplies for this.” Tiphanie assesses the damage to the electrical systems in the floor, the level maintenance gap, and the ceiling below it. “I’ll need to run a new line, install a new vent sensor, and…” she pauses, hanging herself over the ledge partway to reach. “There’s a cut fiber here, so we’ll have to run a new line the whole length of the sector to do this right. I don’t want to leave any shabby patches when we’re supposed to be making the whole place better than new.”

Tiphanie reaches down and runs a finger over the frayed end of the barely visible fine glass fibers. Looking up the curving length of the tram station, she mentally calculates how many sensor network nodes would be dark from just this one cut fiber. They’ll need these sensors to be online to continue their work. She stands and grabs her toolkit.

Thankfully, the heavy kit had not been washed away by the pressure of the makeshift fire extinguisher Tsim employed to prevent the whole area from being evacuated of all oxygen. She has not even the slightest ill feeling toward him for dropping her into the hole between floors. Not even a little bit.

The lack of music is felt more than heard. The space feels more empty than it did before, with absolutely no movement in the air and no sounds but the ones the ring gate makes on its own. The eternal hum of power generation is something felt more as a background vibration than a sound. Tsim wonders that he’d never noticed the occasional low groans of changing pressures in the pipes that cross above and below.

Tiphanie discusses the temporary fixes with Adah and Tsim as she begins work. Adah signs off on the temporary repairs and enters the supply orders and forwards the purchase order requisitions to her dispatcher for approval. Tsim makes himself useful by holding cables in place for the electrician when requested. They have a lot of work lined up for them.

Some hours later, several patch cables dangle precariously across the gaping hole in the floor of the tram level. Tiphanie has done her very best to secure them well, but without the ability to also secure additional lengths of fiber cables or braided wire, has had to use shortest span routing instead of following the edge of the hole. There just isn’t a way around it with the limited resources available.

Completing the work ticket for the temporary fix earns her a harried thanks over the wire from Markos, still at work on the floor above. She isn’t completely sure if he’s already started the system reboot or if different systems are still in their staging status at the moment.

Either way, the stagnant air is absolutely foul smelling. The filtration systems that had been working well enough before are no longer completing their critical functions. Dirt, mold, and grime that went unnoticed in her first pass through this area now give off a distinctly sleazy odor. Abandoned food still sits in more than one of the restaurant refrigerators, now disabled as refrigeration falls under the life support umbrella of all things climate control related. And thanks to those same vents for oxygen refresh circulation running through to those spaces, that odor now leaks freely into the promenade.

When not distracted by her herculean effort to patch the data and power cables efficiently, Tiphanie gags slightly at the stink of the place. Vasko quietly passes her a mint. She takes it and opts not to be concerned as to the providence or expiration date of this gift.

“Think it’ll help?” the space hobo asks the professional electrician.

“It isn’t going to hurt,” Tiphanie mumbles an answer around the stone hard lump of sugar and menthol in her mouth. Something above and inward groans loudly.

Tsim looks sharply upward with an expression of surprise and terror. He recognizes something very dangerous in that deadly growl.

“Look out!” the plumber shouts, and dives forward to shove Adah to the floor.