“If these numbers hold in hardware-in-loop, this is the most viable path.”
Cameron’s camera turned off.
His audio remained live long enough for everyone to hear a chair scrape.
Then silence.
Isaac watched the blank square on the screen.
Six years earlier, that would have mattered.
Now it barely did.
Because the satellite was getting worse.
Two days later, OBSIDIAN-7 executed an unplanned corrective sequence.
Propellant usage spiked.
The thirty-one-day estimate collapsed to eleven.
Eleanor called Isaac at 3:12 in the morning.
“We just lost another eighteen percent of projected maneuvering reserve.”
He was already awake.
“How soon until next critical correction?”
“Seventy-four hours.”
Isaac sat up.
“Then the solution goes up before that.”
“It isn’t certified.”
“Then certify faster.”
“Isaac.”
“You asked whether I could fix it.”
“I’m telling you there’s no longer enough time to admire the paperwork.”
For the next fifty-eight hours, nobody slept properly.
The garage became a laboratory.
Isaac’s homemade rig mattered because it could reproduce the resonance quickly and physically.
NASA’s formal hardware-in-loop facilities were better.
They were also scheduled, configured, and thousands of miles away.
Eleanor had a team build the formal simulation in parallel.
Isaac’s garage rig became the fast iteration platform.
Change control sequence.
Run.
Observe.
Adjust.
Run again.
Adrian operated data acquisition.
Grace analyzed structural response remotely.
Eleanor coordinated reviews.
Isaac moved between them, correcting assumptions before people finished making them.
Not because he was magical.
Because he had already made those mistakes alone years earlier.
At thirty-seven hours, Adrian made the error that nearly ended the solution.
He changed a normalization coefficient in the simulation without propagating the update into the test-rig scaling.
The result looked spectacular.
Resonance suppression almost complete.
Isaac stared at the plot.
“No.”
Adrian frowned.
“What?”
“Too clean.”
“That’s good.”
“No.”
“It’s suspicious.”
They checked.
Found the mismatch.
Adrian’s face went pale.
“I’m sorry.”
Isaac said nothing.
Adrian expected anger.
Then Isaac pointed toward the correction log.
“Document it.”
“That’s it?”
“What do you want?”
“To be executed?”
Adrian gave a nervous laugh.
Isaac looked at him.
“Good engineers make mistakes.”
“Dangerous engineers hide them.”
“Write it down.”
Adrian did.
Later, that sentence would become one of the things he remembered most.
At forty-nine hours, they had a candidate.
Grace reproduced it independently.
Houston’s simulation matched.
The formal hardware team found no unacceptable secondary effect.
Flight dynamics approved a limited implementation sequence.
The oversight board convened.
Authorization came.
Isaac flew to Houston.
First time in six years.
The city looked the same from the highway.
That irritated him.
He had somehow expected geography to acknowledge what happened.
Eleanor drove from the airport.
“You could have sent someone.”
He said.
“I know.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because I wanted to.”
Isaac looked out the window.
No answer.
Johnson Space Center was not Nexora.
Still, walking through security triggered something.
Badge.
Glass.
Fluorescent light.
Controlled doors.
The smell of institutional carpet.
His chest tightened.
Eleanor noticed.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“Bad lie.”
“I’m functioning.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
Isaac looked at her.