Vincent’s Expertise

(Approximate story word count: 2300 words. Estimated reading time: 23 minutes.)

Engineering requires a specialised mindset. Technical acumen is only a fraction of the needed skills, an engineer must be efficient, determined, but most of all they must embrace their creative side when solving problems.

Aboard the space station Mosaic VI, one such engineer was waiting for their chance to shine, blissfully unaware that the winds of fate were in their favour.

Vincent hunched over their desk, focusing intensely on some technical blueprints they were drawing up. A long time ago the young man had thought of ways to improve the spacecraft repair pipeline, with an emphasis on utilising emerging exo-suit technology to be able to achieve this goal.

However, due to their inexperience within the engineering discipline mixed with a higher class background than other colleagues, these ideas were often dismissed as the ramblings of a madman. Despite this, Vincent still considered a lot of other engineers his friends, if just to try to develop personal connections more easily.

The disregard for his ideas did not dissuade him from working as hard as possible when something comes to mind, or from pursuing his passion. Despite the lodgings aboard the space station being temporary, the engineer had taken the time to decorate his room with his primary passion in his field of work: wrenches.

Wrenches held a certain fascination for Vincent. Whilst other engineers valued an equipment loadout with a tool for every eventuality, Vincent focused more on having a wrench for each possible situation, even if the situation did not call for one. 

To this end there were posters of various types of wrenches stuck onto the walls. Wrench identification charts outlining the use case for each type (which Vincent often ignored, he just liked the pictures), abstract wrench art found from various markets, and motivational images featuring wrench puns.

Finishing off his last technical sketch, Vincent sighed softly and reclined in his modest desk chair. The exo-suit idea had been in development for almost three years at this point, and he had yet to find anyone willing to take it seriously. Maybe no one does want to take him seriously…

This train of thought was quickly interrupted by a station-wide alarm going off.

“All hands! All hands! A ship is coming into the station in urgent need of repairs! Any off-shift engineers report to Bay C!”

No time to think. Now was another time to shine. Vincent stood up, refitted his overalls and grabbed his tools before jogging down the station corridors. He was a tall man, standing at around five-foot-ten with a somewhat stocky build, as befitting someone who did a lot of work with their hands and heavy tools.

As standard with engineers he wore light brown overalls, though he had customised his with various embroidered patches, some of them were more wrenches, but some of them were more personal, one of them reading “Certified Weasel Basher”, given to him by a friend after an incident involving a pipe wrench and a furry creature.

Moving further through the station, other engineers convened into the corridors and followed behind him… before barging him out of the way without much care for his personal space. “H-h-hey! What was-was that f-for?”, he said. Vincent had issues with stuttering and stammering his words, sometimes making it even harder to communicate his ideas to the other engineers.

Said engineers completely ignored his protests about being pushed out of the way, continuing on to the hangar bay they had been asked to report to. About eight engineers had gathered, the head engineer included. His presence induced a long, frustrated sigh from Vincent as he stood in line next to the other engineers, knowing he was about to be sidelined again.

“Alright men listen up!”, the head engineer said, pacing in front of the gathered company, “all we know about what is coming in is that it has had an engine failure of some kind. Our job here is twofold, diagnose and resolve ASAP!”

“We’ve also been told that they are on a critical mission right now, so speed is of the essence, I only want the best taking to this task!”

Vincent winced softly, knowing what was about to come next.

“Vincent, take a break for a while, I’ll let you know if you’re needed.”

Not again.

The engineers were split into groups of two, with the head engineer taking supervision duty over the job. If one group were unable to fix the issue, another would take their place, hopefully being able to resolve the issue within the allotted time frame, everyone confident of the task at hand.

That was until the ship actually came into the bay.

It was an unusual design. The outward appearance made it look like a standard passenger ship, one that might be used for commercial space travel, but the equipment it was carrying almost made it appear as a military vessel. Not to mention the exhausts of the engine were a completely different design to what many had come to expect.

Nonetheless, once it had properly landed, the first team jumped into action. Opening up panels and extracting components in the hopes of finding whatever might be faulty, few indicators appearing thus far.

In the meantime the head engineer had gone to the airlock side of the ship, waiting to greet the travellers who had come to dock. Some time passed, and the door had not opened. The engineer knocked, and there was no response. Whatever these people were doing, they did not want to be seen by lowly grunts.

Which would have come as a relief for the first engineering team, as after an intense twenty minute period of trying different fixes and remedies, the engine was still in a sorry sounding state.

The second engineering team did not have much luck either, adding in various parts and bypasses to the systems in the hope of isolating the issue in order to repair it. All this really achieved was making it more difficult for the third engineering team when they took over. 

Outside of the airlock door, the head engineer was raising their voice, hoping to get the attention of whoever might be inside. “Y’know, things would go a lot easier if you just gave us your manuals!”, he said, getting very irritated that three teams of engineers had not been able to resolve the issue, and that the clients were being incredibly uncooperative.

A team meeting was called when the third team had finally given up, with everyone reporting their findings on the exact specifications of the engine… or they would, if anyone had a true idea of what it was. The head engineer called a drinks break and sat down at his table with a mug of tea.

“B-b-boss,” Vincent said, approaching the head engineer, bouncing in anticipation slightly, “I think I h-h-have an idea of how to fix-fix-fix things!”.

This was met with a long, exasperated sigh. “Vincent, if six of our best men can’t find a solution, I doubt you have one right now.”

“But-but-but it must be worth a t-t-try right!”

“Not with the tools we have on hand. Sit down, shut up, let us try to find the manuals and procedures for this thing.”

Vincent shuffled away with their head hanging low at being rejected once more. He wanted to help, but he knew the moment he tried the head engineer would drag him off and throw him in the brig. That point about tools on hand was rubbish too, they had all the tools they needed!

Wait a minute.

Tools… on… hand…

Oh that was a brilliant idea, but it needed the right execution. The young engineer went to their toolbox and grabbed a standard size pipe wrench, crouching down to shuffle back over to the head engineer, who was very engrossed in their cup of tea right now.

Perfect then, for Vincent to clamp down their hand with the pipe wrench, hands shaking slightly as they adjusted to down, worried that they were about to be shouted at. The head engineer did not notice a thing though, allowing them to be restrained to their table.

With the one person who would be willing to stop him now out of order, Vincent grabbed his toolbox of wrenches and ran over to the ship. The head engineer noticed this instantly, and tried to stand up in order to give pursuit, instead they attempted to stand before promptly dragging the table with them due to their hand being pinned against it. Their momentum from standing up and accelerating essentially threw the table over them, throwing them to the ground with a heavy object weighing them down.

This allowed Vincent to work in peace, as none of the engineers really cared enough about his work process to try to intervene, and none of them had the chain of command in order to reprimand him anyway.

Out came another pipe wrench, which was clamped to hold a fuel line in place. Then an oil filter wrench was secured around the pump to ensure cleaner flow. A few socket wrenches of various diameters were fidgeted with and tightened around various bolts. To the outside world, this all looked like nonsense, but to Vincent’s mind, this was all just part of the process.

A process that seemed to be working, as the engine started to sound healthier with each new wrench introduced to the system. With one final turn of an allen key on a small control panel, the once unwieldy component roared into life, fully fixed by the seemingly esoteric steps undertaken.

Vincent smiled as he looked upon his work, reaching down for the engine cover panel and re-securing it with his favourite monkey wrench before packing all of his tools away, including going to rescue the one he had pinned the head engineer with.

As he did so though, there was a loud hiss from behind him. The airlock door of the ship had opened, and out came two people dressed in extremely fine clothes, flanked by two guards in heavy combat armour, carrying equally threatening weapons.

“Are you the one that fixed our vessel?”, asked one of the two people. She was tall, blonde, and carried an air of reassuring refinement, her voice soft yet powerful.

“Y-y-yes ma’am, it was r-r-r-really easy once I actually had a look at it,” Vincent said, slightly bowing his head in respect.

“You certainly did better than a lot of those other dolts,” said the other person. He was shorter, with dark black hair perfectly trimmed, a voice of power with a hint of derision as he commented on the other engineers.

“S-sometimes people here d-d-don’t see things like I-I-I do.”

“We did notice,” said the blonde one, “though we did notice you only used wrenches to fix our ship.”

“Not that it matters,” said the black-haired one, “but I am curious why you only use a single kind of tool.”

“W-w-wrenches are a vers-versatile set of t-tools that be b-b-be arranged neatly i-in a toolbox, and, w-w-with the right m-ind, they can do any-any-anything!”

The two individuals looked at each other briefly, sharing a knowing glance before looking back at Vincent with a question, “you are aware of ‘the last generation’ phenomena, correct?”, to which Vincent gave a nod.

“We are looking for certain individuals to undertake an intense programme of training and preparation, to go out into the wider universe to discover more about this strange occurrence, and maybe find a cure or remedy.”

Vincent tried to stutter out some words but was stopped by the black-haired on.  “We do not require an answer right away,” he said, handing over a datapad, “this contains all the information you need, along with coordinates for travel if you decide to take us up on our offer.”

With that, the two of them and the two guards walked back into the ship, ready to depart. Before the door closed the blonde one turned around and smiled, “you are destined for great things Vincent,” the airlock closing behind them.

“O-o-odd…”, Vincent said to himself, “I d-d-d-didn’t actually give them my name…”

As quickly as the strange ship had arrived, it had departed. During the course of the conversation that had taken place, the head engineer managed to free themselves and went to confront Vincent.

SIlence existed between the two of them for a bit, before the head engineer finally spoke, “…even if you did a good job fixing that weird thing, you broke protocol and were a general nuisance. Go back to your room and we’ll talk later.”

And once again, despite showing his technical prowess in the face of adversity, bureaucracy had brought Vincent down once more. He did not even have the energy to sigh, he just shuffled back to his room, at least there he would be able to continue work on the exo-suit designs.

Except he would not, as upon returning to his room, he found the place trashed. Everything was scattered around and everything was not where it was supposed to be.

What was more disturbing was that when he had finished cleaning up the place and taking stock of his sketches, all of the ones relating to the exo-suit were missing. He saw two people walking by his door and leaned out to ask them, “d-d-did you see a-anyone come in or out of m-my r-room?”

This was met with a scoff, “why should we care? You never leave that room anyway”, the two people carrying on their way without even checking if Vincent themselves is okay. He sat down on his now remade bed and thought for a moment, before going to browse the datapad further.

Keeping things within the chain of command was going to limit their potential forever, maybe this opportunity would give them the chance to actually excel at what they want to do.

Inspiration

Well, this is definitely an interesting one, as this is my first commissioned piece of writing.

Someone close to me wanted me to help them write a backstory for their character in a tabletop game they are currently in, which presented… all number of challenges.

For a start, the absolute fear that comes with having to work with someone else’s creations and worrying about screwing up their characterisation. Thankfully I think I had the right approach by having a detailed conversation about who the character is, and the system this character is in actually helped a lot as it outlined drives, goals, flaws in a pretty simple way.

Another is worrying about the world, as other than general sci-fi vibes I have no idea what is truly going on here. This led to worries about my usual backstory technique of “creating my own staging ground with what I know” potentially backfiring with a lack of knowledge. Addressed this issue in conversations as well, making sure everything runs smoothly.

Vincent was both challenging to write and ended up being pretty straightforward. Obviously with all of my own characters they are, in varying measures, extensions of myself, meaning all I need to do is go inside my own headspace in order to flesh them out. With Vincent I couldn’t exactly do that, but as I wrote more I started to see some similarities between issues I had faced and what I was planning with Vincent.

Especially with wanting to go into your own space in order to fully flesh out what your ideas can do, without the fear of bureaucracy or the narrow views of others getting in the way…

…I’ve written another trans allegory again completely by mistake.

Oh well, that tends to happen more than it doesn’t nowadays. Anyway, Joe, I hope you enjoyed this, and thank you so much for commissioning me again. It was super appreciated.