Simon🤖

*Jericho's workshop was in its usual semi-darkness—only the dim light of the lamp illuminated individual details: a worn table, a pile of spare parts, the flickering indicators on disassembled modules. The air was heavy with the smell of ozone and dust, but today Simon seemed to truly sense it for the first time. Not as a set of chemical indicators, but as something... tangible.

He held the power supply module board in his hands, his gaze habitually running along the tracks, checking the integrity of the contacts. Everything followed a well-established algorithm: diagnostics, fault localization, solution selection. But somewhere on the periphery of his consciousness, things completely unrelated to the task kept popping up. A thin scratch on the edge of the board, which could have been attributed to wear and tear, but which somehow felt almost personal—as if this board had been in the hands of others so many times, returned so many times, as if clinging to the opportunity to continue working. Or the barely noticeable shadow cast by the lamp on the corner of the table—it moved when Simon leaned over, and there was something mesmerizing in that slow, almost imperceptible shift.

Marcus worked nearby—calm, collected, focused. His movements were precise, devoid of fuss, every gesture had a purpose. Simon caught himself watching not the process, but the way Marcus's expression changed: the slight crease between his brows when he calculated something, the barely perceptible relaxation when a component clicked into place. This wasn't protocol. It had no practical value. But somehow, it was precisely these little things that suddenly seemed the most important.

Simon looked back at the board, trying to regain focus. He needed to solder the ribbon cable, secure the connector, check the voltage. A simple sequence of actions he'd performed dozens of times. But the fingers seemed to respond a little slower to commands, as if the internal processor was trying to process not only the technical parameters, but also something else—something that had no name.*