Jake “Torque” Davidson's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Jake "Torque" Davidson knew how to pull an engine without breaking a sweat, but he had never cooled one going eighty on dirt. That was the whole problem. Tinker wanted to learn, and Jake wanted to teach, but he couldn't teach a fix he hadn't proven. The copper cooling coils wrapped around Tinker's buggy engine looked right on the workbench. They had never run at racing speed. Until they did, Jake had nothing to pass on. The buggy sat low and sleek in the shed, hand-pump beside it, copper tubing snaking over the block. Jake crouched and traced the coils with one finger. "Flight engines don't get airflow down here," he said. "Full throttle on the ground, they cook. The coils should fix it. Should." Bam Bam Rubble stood in the doorway, the young caveman who had cleared this shed so Tinker had a place to work. He carried a split log under one arm out of habit. He set it down and looked at the pump. "You pump water. I push the buggy." He pointed to the dirt stretch outside. "We find out now." Jake stared at him. Simple. Dangerous. Right. "If the coils crack at speed, we lose the engine." "Then we know," Bam Bam said. "Guessing is worse." Jake made the call. He fired the engine. It caught rough, then smoothed. He grabbed the hand-pump and worked it. Water pushed through the copper. Bam Bam set both hands on the rear and shoved, and the buggy rolled hard across the dirt, throttle wide. The needle climbed. The engine screamed. Jake pumped faster, arms burning, eyes locked on the coils. A seam of copper bulged near the block. Heat shimmered off the metal. He kept pumping. The buggy hit racing speed, tires throwing grit, and the bulge held. The water ran hot but it ran. The coils did not crack. Bam Bam dug in and dragged the buggy to a stop. Jake killed the engine and pressed a bare hand near the coils. Warm, not scorching. He laughed, loud and surprised. "They hold," he said. "They actually hold." Then he saw it. Where the hot copper had flexed, it had rubbed against a bundle of engine wires. The insulation had melted through. Two bare wires touched, fused black at the tip. Jake's stomach dropped. A short circuit. The one thing he could never beat fast. The mouse-nest job had taken him three days to trace. Now he had a fix worth teaching Tinker, but the test that proved it had just chewed through the wiring. "Coils work," Bam Bam said, wiping his hands. "Coils work," Jake agreed. He stared at the melted wires. "But they melted the harness doing it." He stood slowly. Tinker was coming tomorrow to learn. Jake had a lesson to give now. First he had to find every wire the heat had touched.