The moment the alarm shattered the silence, Chen Hao stepped into the electrical room. Before he could even put down his tool bag, he caught a strange noise coming from the direction of the windmill—like rusty gears gnawing at each other, a muffled sound that made his teeth ache.
"Speed reduced to zero." Nana's voice rang out even faster than the alarm. "The main control system has been locked into a fault state."
Chen Hao turned and ran back, not even having time to fasten his helmet. "Didn't we just adjust the tension? It hasn't been that long!"
"Fifteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds." She followed behind him, her pace neither hurried nor slow, but data kept popping up: "The vibration value inside the generator compartment has suddenly risen above the critical threshold, and the automatic shutdown protection has been triggered."
They rushed to the base and climbed up the maintenance ladder. Chen Hao was panting like a leaky old blower, and he even got stuck halfway up—his belt caught on a bolt. He cursed as he untied it, looking up at the towering tower: "So our windmill is some kind of precious princess, not to be exposed to wind or rain, and even having to choose the right time to breathe?"
Nana didn't reply, but quickened her pace and opened the generator compartment casing first. She raised her arm, and a faint light shone from her fingertips as a scanning wave swept over the drive shaft and bearing assembly.
“The spindle bearing is severely worn, the lubrication layer has completely failed, and fatigue cracks have appeared in some areas.” She withdrew her hand, and a three-dimensional cross-sectional view popped up on the panel. “Continuing to operate will cause the spindle to shift, which may trigger a chain reaction of structural damage.”
Chen Hao leaned closer for a look; the inner ring of the bearing was almost worn into a polygon, and the metal surface was uneven and pitted. "Whose bearing is this fragile? It's only been running for a few days!"
"It has run for a total of 123 hours without any lubrication or maintenance," she said. "According to standard procedures, it should be tested and replenished with special grease every 100 hours."
"Wait a minute." Chen Hao frowned. "Why didn't anyone remind us? Doesn't the system alert us by itself?"
Nana brought up the log interface, and a series of red markers popped up: "A total of seventeen abnormal vibrations were recorded in the past two weeks, all of which were below the mandatory alarm threshold. The system judged them as 'tolerable fluctuations' and no maintenance task was generated."
"So it thought it could tolerate it, but ended up breaking itself because of it?" Chen Hao stared at the little red dots, his tone filled with annoyance at being tricked. "So the machine also knows what 'turning a blind eye' means?"
“The system only executes the preset logic.” She turned off the projector. “The problem isn’t with the program, but with the lack of an operational strategy.”
There was a moment of silence between them. The windmill stood still, its blades suspended in mid-air, like hands raised in surrender. The lights of the base in the distance were still on, but the sense of security that had just been ignited seemed to have been somewhat eroded.
Chen Hao squatted down, pried a piece of debris out of the damaged bearing housing, and flipped it between his fingers. "When I built it, I thought all I needed was electricity. Who knew I'd have to rub its back and oil it every day?"
“All continuously operating systems need maintenance,” she said. “If you don’t wipe the blade, it will rust; if you don’t lubricate it, the shaft will break. This is not an accident, it’s inevitable.”
“But we don’t even have a decent wrench.” He stood up, patted his trouser leg, “let alone a vibration meter, a sealing oil gun… these things sound like a hospital check-up package, and this isn’t a high-end club.”
"The Off-Grid Energy Facility Operation and Maintenance Manual lists twenty-one basic tools." She flipped her wrist, and a list unfolded in the air. "Thirteen of them are necessities, and the base currently has zero inventory."
Chen Hao sighed and turned to walk towards the warehouse: "Then let's rummage through it and see if there's anything that can be used."
The warehouse door creaked open with a harsh sound, as if protesting their arrival. The shelves were piled high with scrap parts, broken cables, and several pieces of metal of unknown purpose. Chen Hao scanned the shelves with his flashlight, finally stopping in a corner—where lay an old-fashioned hydraulic pliers, its paint chipped and its handle wrapped in tape.
"Can this be used?" He picked it up and shook it.
“It can be used for clamping, but it cannot precisely control the torque.” Nana glanced at it and dismissed it, “Bearing installation requires torque output within ±5% error, which is difficult to achieve manually.”
He pulled out an electric screwdriver, its battery already bulging. "What about this?"
"Unstable voltage can easily cause thread stripping."
"And this?" He held up an iron pipe. "To extend the arm and save effort."
"It's an unorthodox modification, which carries a high risk."
"Couldn't you have said 'barely acceptable'?" He threw the iron pipe back into the box with a clang. "You can't expect me to twist it by hand, can you?"
“The maximum output torque of a human finger is about eight Newton-meters, while a connecting flange requires forty-five Newton-meters,” she said calmly. “If you try it once, you’ll most likely throw yourself off.”
Chen Hao sat down against the shelf, looking up at the moonlight streaming through the ceiling. "So the current situation is: we know where the disease is, and we know how to treat it, but we have no medicine, no syringes, and even the thermometer is fake?"
"The conclusion is correct."
"I'm really getting worse as I get older." He rubbed his face. "I should have known better than to use second-hand bearings to save money. Now look what's happened, I just turned on the power and I have to be a repairman."
Nana walked to an old workbench and lightly tapped the surface with her fingertip. The static electricity pushed aside a circle of dust, revealing a line of small characters engraved underneath: "If you can't fix it, build it."
She looked at the sentence and paused for two seconds. "We can make our own tools."
Chen Hao looked up: "What did you say?"
“There are seventeen design schemes for simple repair tools in the knowledge base.” She pulled up the drawings. “The structural parameters can be adjusted according to the available materials to achieve functional substitution.”
"You mean...we'll make our own wrenches?"
“It’s not just wrenches.” She continued to unfold the blueprint, “The vibration detector can be modified with an acceleration sensor module; the lubrication gun can achieve quantitative output by combining a pressure tank with a precision nozzle; and the calibration bracket can be welded from truss scraps.”
As Chen Hao listened, he slowly stood up. He walked behind her, staring at the complex structural diagrams, his brows furrowing deeper and deeper. "These things sound harder than my college entrance exam math problems."
“You don’t need to know everything,” she said. “You take care of the hands-on work, and I’ll take care of the design.”
"But what if it still doesn't work after you make it?"
"Then change it and do it again."
"Until when?"
"Work until it's usable."
The air was still for a few seconds. Then the wind picked up again, causing the steel frame to sway gently and make a low creaking sound.
Chen Hao looked down at his hands; they were greasy, rough, and filled with black grime under his fingernails. He suddenly chuckled. "Tell me," he said, "what's the most reliable thing I've ever done in my life? Skipping class? Sleeping? Or hiding under the covers reading comics?"
Nana did not answer.
“Now I have to tell you,” he said, pointing in the direction of the windmill, “the most reliable thing to do is probably to squat in this crappy place and make yourself a wrench.”
She looked at him, her gaze unchanged.
"Print out the blueprints," he said. "Make something that can tighten bolts first. We'll deal with the rest later."
Nana nodded, swiped her finger, and several sheets of A4 paper slowly emerged from the printer. Chen Hao took the first sheet, which depicted a strange metal device and was labeled "Manual Torque Wrench Prototype 1.0".
He stared at it for a long time, then muttered, "This thing looks like the illegitimate child of an egg spatula and a wrench."
"Functionality takes precedence over aesthetics."
“You’re right.” He rolled up the blueprints and stuffed them into his pocket. “Let’s go to the workshop. Let’s see if we can become scientists who collect junk.”
A night breeze swept through the empty factory area, ruffling his sweat-dampened bangs. Nana followed half a step behind him, the terminal screen constantly lit up, the newly generated tool list continuously updating.
Chen Hao pushed open the workshop door, and the room was dimly lit. He fumbled for a switch in the dark, and the overhead light flickered twice before finally turning on. A pile of miscellaneous parts were laid out on the workbench, and a dusty welding machine sat in the corner.
He spread out the drawings, picked up a marker, and wrote a few words on the edge: "Windmill Nanny's First Day on Duty".
Then he bent down and began to count the materials.
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