"–oh, thanks–"

He dashes to the hose to look through the rings crammed onto the end.

"–diamond! Got it!"

He starts pulling them off carefully to get at the one he was looking at.

"Okay I might need a laser for this part–"

December slaps a slim, silvery cylinder into his hand. One end is pointed: the other, blunt with a metal clip. Rubber pads just above the pointy end suggest a grip like a pencil: a single silver button sits where the thumb can hold it down. 

"Blue-cutter!" 

"Yes! Thank you! Got a microscope?"

He digs his pocketknife out of his back pocket and sits down at the workbench, pushing its current contents aside.

December's hands tap his temples - "Goggles!" - and green-shaded lenses assemble themselves across the bridge of his nose. Blocky letters slide into his vision, somehow picking out the places he doesn't need to see. 

[SCAN: ENGINEERING]
[MAGNIFICATION: 0x]
[TARGET: INCLUSIONS]

As his attention shifts, the goggles respond smoothly, zooming his vision in: the counter ticks up. five, ten, fifty, a hundred, five hundred. Green highlights pick out the slight flaws and inclusions in the stone, the details of how it attaches to the ring. The image stays solid, even as he breathes and shifts, never jerking or losing the focus of his attention. 

He laughs in delight.

"Good–something to help pull this out–"

He puts down his knife and the cutter for a moment to crack his knuckles.

“Pliers!”

Thwap. 

Excellent.

The diamond comes out of the ring, the goggles zoom in, and he fires up the bluecutter–

"–wait, I've only got one of these, I've gotta get it right the first time–"

He puts down his other tools and grabs the coloring book and a stray pencil, turning it to the back cover and starting to sketch furiously.

(Avalon winces where Z can’t see her.)

(December catches Avalon’s wince out of the corner of her eye, and - ) 

The lines Z’s drawing highlight in green: when he raises his pencil from the page again, a glowing green tracery follows it up into the air. 

The HUD updates. 

[OVERLAY: ENGINEERING] 
[MAGNIFICATION: 5x] 
[MODE: HOLODESIGN]

–oh! Better!

He starts to sketch in midair, closing the coloring book and pushing it carefully aside.

He might be here a while.

(Avalon carefully retrieves her coloring book before it can be further sketched on.)

(December shares a half-smile with her.)

(She lays her head on December's shoulder, and watches.)

He sketches and refines for some time. He tries to really understand what he's doing, every so often, but he finds that trying just makes his head spin, so he lets himself calculate and plan and mark up his model and doesn't try to apply the science education he doesn't have.

Then he picks up the blue-cutter again and sets to work laser-engraving the inside of the diamond. It took a while, to get his design to incorporate the inclusions, but he thinks it's really going to be worth it...

(He has no idea how long he's been here.)

Avalon and December come and go: after an attempt at leaving coffee in his workspace fails, December attaches a bracelet of a strange, greenish metal around his upper arm. It stings for a moment - then the fog of fatigue at the edges of his brain clears. 

[WONDER STATUS]
[WAKER: ACTIVE]
[CHARGE: 12 HOURS]

December sips her coffee.

–ahaha yes. The sting energizes him before the thing even kicks in, and after it does he feels completely refreshed.

He finishes the minute engravings in...a couple of hours. A few hours. Something in that time frame. As soon as he does he heads to the cauldron, turns it up and starts gutting the phone. The plastic casing goes in, as does some quicksilver, and – yes! – a chunk of one of the bouncy balls. Now he just needs something for a mold...

[OVERLAY: ENGINEERING]                                                        [WONDER STATUS]
[MAGNIFICATION: 1x]                                                                     [WAKER: ACTIVE]
[MODE: CONSTRUCTION]                                                        [CHARGE: 8 HOURS]
[SCAN: COMPONENTS]                                                          [SUSTAINER: ACTIVE]
[SEARCH: RE-APPROXIMATION]                                           [CHARGE: 22 HOURS]

The mugful of marbles highlights in his vision, along with the dresser drawer, the aquarium, the cauldron, and three dozen of the hodgebodge boxes. 

As his attention flicks to the already-occupied aquarium, three-quarters of the green glows abruptly wink out. 

[FLAWS DETECTED]
[RE-APPROXIMATED]
[CONTAINER]
[VOLUME < 20 LITRES]
[NON-RIGID]
[NOT IN USE]

He grabs the mug.

Is there any clay around here? Something he can mold and mark up?

The goggles highlight... something. It's behind another stack of cardboard boxes. 

(It proves to be a lacquered wooden case full of little plastic cans of silly putty.)

...he can work with this. 

A little silly putty, a little crushed chalk from the next drawer down, a little applied heat...he's got something he can make a mold out of.

He gets the two halves done quickly, with a little help from the smaller tools on his knife and a piece of wire he had handy. When he pours the melted plastic mixture in it hardens quickly.

He cleans out the cauldron. The ring goes in next, as well as some wire and some of the phone guts. While it's melting, is there a toy laser pointer down here?

His goggles pick out a drawerful in three different colors.

–even better!

He grabs one in each color and heads back to the desk, guts them as the metal melts in the cauldron. He reuses his molding material, scrawls in the right lines, pours it in – there's the wires he needs. And if he takes this chip from the phone, the battery from this pointer, sets in the diamond and...

Everything becomes a blur for the next few hours. He has flashes of memory – slicing nerve fibers, arranging lasers, splicing in the headphone jack from the flip phone – but it's all wordless ideas and impulses and that same crackle of electricity and scent of ozone from the club.

By the end of it, the bracelet has come off, somehow, the workbench is a mess of wires and nerve fiber leavings and – blood? for some reason? – and he's asleep face down in scraps of putty, clutching a small black plastic capsule with an input jack at one end and nerve fibers braided into a cord at the other.