TDC

The one thing that I never have to question if I regain consciousness and leap out of bed each morning is whether or not the day will offer any challenges.  How severe those challenges are, and how I choose to deal with them determine how the day will rank on my good to atrocious scale.  There is always something positive to be gained even from the worst days, so I have been fortunate to be able to label very few as atrocious so far.

All of that may change as a result of this morning.  Top Dead Center (TDC) is the point at which a piston has reached the top of its stroke, and is farthest from the crankshaft.  Knowing the position of TDC is important when working with engine ignition timing or testing to determine the health of the engine.  In this instance, it stands for something else.

My TDCS appointment for this morning was a joke.  I equipped my head with the Ultimate Signal Protector® before leaving HQ1.  I have no recollection of transporting myself to the destination.  The only thing I do remember is hearing the nav unit telling me I had arrived.  The facility was a former Borders Bookstore.  I knew the address was familiar!  The new tenants had not even bothered to remove the empty bookshelves.  Thinking back on the facility now, I’m not certain they were supposed to be in there.  It was hard to see anything because it was so dark with the plywood covering all of the windows.  They claimed that they were victims of the same bird strike anomaly that effected AcMo’s HQ1 a few months ago.  They were also having some issues with the power grid.  As far as I could tell the only issue was that they hadn’t paid for any power to be delivered.

The condition of this makeshift facility should have activated my spidey sense, but I don’t have that since I’m allergic to spiders.  Also I was eager to see what my brain could do with a bit of extra juice.  Everything was still good to go on my end until the technician brought out the TDCS unit.  She saw my signal protector and said that it was not compatible with the TDCS unit.  I assured her that the signal protector had universal compatibility, but she said that they couldn’t proceed if I wouldn’t remove it.  I asked to hold the TDCS unit while I pondered my options.

Even with the limited lighting available, I could see that this was a homemade device.  The level of sophistication involved in the build would have left a toddler unimpressed.  I suppose they must have believed only desperate people sign up for this type of therapy, so they could get by with a unit held together with electrical tape.  I think it was electrical tape; it could have been melted duct tape.  Whatever it was, it wasn’t holding the unit together.  To be honest, it looked and felt a lot like a pair of wireless headphones that had been covered with tape.  Any grade school science project was better constructed than this thing.  Still, the discounted rate for an amazing opportunity to boost my brain was hard to ignore.

Sure, I had mild misgivings, but I thought the potential benefits were too great to ignore until electrical problems with the unit gave me considerable pause.  I could hear the generator running in the back room, but because it was marked employees only, I didn’t go back there to take a look.  The odds of the exhaust being routed properly to the exterior of the building were quite low.  I knew I was going to have to make a quick decision.  While I was holding the unit trying to decide what to do, it began sparking.  Maybe I accidentally activated the power switch, or maybe it was the tape’s fault.  Proper blame attribution won’t alleviate the searing pain I felt next.  My decision was made for me at that moment because I hadn’t realized I was standing in a large puddle of water when I dropped the sparking TDCS unit.

Building security found me on the sidewalk with my Signal Protector nearby.  I tried to explain why I was unconscious on the sidewalk, but the security guard wasn’t buying my story.  He claimed the Borders store had been vacant for years.  Sure enough, every trace of this brain therapy shop had vanished while I was unconscious.  I did the only sensible thing I could once I regained full use of my legs and spatial awareness.  I grabbed my signal protector and made a run for it.

I was more than halfway to HQ1 when I remembered that I had driven to my appointment.  I was going to need to take another client’s vehicle back to get the one I had left in my haste to flee from the oppressive bonds of building security.  Great, something else I didn’t have time to do and that wasn’t on the schedule.

The run home gave me time to think about the next step.  I realized that it couldn’t be that hard to build an AcMo powered TDCS unit with a few tweaks to increase its power.  As soon as I could hydrate and then power nap, I was going to build an AcMo TDCS to test on our employees.

I will use any excuse to fire up our 3D printers, and this was no exception.  I found plans for a top notch TDCS unit online and modified those for AcMo purposes.  The electronic part was a bit more difficult, but I managed to solder a pair of jumper cables onto the back of the unit and apply the temporal lobe paddles.  Not to pat myself on the back too much, but this was a production ready unit built in no time.  Manufacturing these for the public will be simple.

All I needed was a suitable power source and a test dummy.  That’s when I remembered I had to volunteer first to make sure it worked before I could use it on any of the employees.  I hooked up the jumper cables to a client’s battery and had one of the desk engineers use the car’s engine to modulate power delivery.

We placed the unit on my head and started the car.  Apparently 1000 rpm is the threshold for my conscious brain.  I saw sparks again, and then everything went dark.  The room, the shop floor, outside (that may have been the sun setting, it’s hard to tell), and my eyes all faded to black.  The top of my head was numb and nothing worked.  I had fried my brain!  If ever there was a time for complete panic, this was it.  However, AcMo staff depends on me to stay strong, so that’s what I did.  The choice wasn’t mine because I couldn’t move my mouth to scream and my tear ducts weren’t functioning.  To the outside observer I appeared calm and collected during this extreme emergency, but on the inside I was frantic and crying like a newborn.

It felt like I was stuck in this state for hours, but according to the documentation, I was only frozen for 5 minutes.  Those were the longest five minutes of my life because my brain was completely dead, but I was conscious.  It was worse than the feeling I get when I wear the signal protector for too long.

The takeaway from my experiment is that AcMo needs a dedicated staff of test dummies, and that brains are not toys to be tampered with by untrained professionals.  I’m lucky we had a baseline of my setup and that it was compatible with my upgraded OS.  Otherwise today could have ended in a much different manner.  I hope to have another test unit built and operational by tomorrow.  I am determined to boost my brain no matter what.