Last time, when Katarina skipped her classes, it was out of exhaustion.
Today it was partly because she needed to get work done...
... But also partly because she could.
She spent the morning in the academy workshop.
The air conditioning prototype was still giving her problems. The formation array held temperature beautifully for about six hours now, which was an improvement over the original four, but six hours was a parlor trick, not a product. She needed indefinite cycling. She needed the qi loop to feed back into itself without bleed, and every configuration she tried either destabilized at the seven-hour mark or burned through the power source like it was trying to set a personal record.
She logged the failure, adjusted two junction points, and started a new test cycle. Then she sat back on her stool, stretched her neck, and stared at the container.
[Okay... What am I missing?]
