An Unlikely Ally

Chapter 5 - A plan coming together

John awoke from his slumber, groaning a bit as his back cracked when sitting up, he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and sighed when they focused on the devices in front of his bed.

"I guess I need to sort this out somehow." He said in between letting out a yawn before setting out with his daily routine. He kicked off his clothes, wiped down, changed into another fishing shirt and shorts, and then brushed his teeth, instantly feeling refreshed from the minty flavour.

The now-growing pile of clothes was starting to get to John, he scooped the musty heap and dropped them outside of his room before returning back inside, a problem for another time he reminded himself before he knelt down in front of the burnt-out CD player.

"Where do I even begin? I am not an electronics person." He whispered to himself, picking up the device and turning it over aimlessly. He stared at it for a few moments until his mind wandered over the problem at hand.

He let his mind wander, like a hound searching for a scent trail, hoping to find something. When suddenly the picture becomes slightly more clear in his head. "I am trying to power the CD Player directly, the chess clock is too high of voltage."

John let the words sink in slowly, lolling them around his tongue. "Why am I trying to power it from the chess clock? Because I can't press the on button." He rested his head on his hands, trying to think about anything electronic he knows.

"Only thing I know is some stuff dad showed me about his car. Just jumpstarting, replacing fuses and relays when they broke."

However, the last component he listed caught his attention. "Relay... What did that do? The fuses are obvious, but what did the relay do?"

John was sitting on the floor, back against the wall of the library, in between two bookshelves. He had two piles of books by both of his sides, on his right was a steadily decreasing mound of unread magazines about cars and general mechanics, on his left was a growing pile of skimmed ones.

John finished his current magazine and let out a dissatisfied sigh as he placed it on the left, standing nearly half a ruler's length. "Why does every damn book just tell me about how to replace relays and not how they function?" He sighed and picked up the remaining pile and placed it on his left, deciding against going further with his current approach.

John had seen a few diagrams of some common models of cars and the relay in use, but he didn't know what he was looking at, since previous knowledge is assumed.

He stood up and went on a walk through the rows of shelves, he looked through the different categories. "Science, chemistry, biology... No, ugh. What do electronics classify under?" He muttered, pulling out a random book on the shelf under the science category and flipping to a random page. "There are two ways to harness atomic energy, Fission and Fusion. Fission is where we split the atom, which releases generous amounts of energy in the form of heat, in a sustained- Ugh no, definitely not needing nuclear energy in my situation. Goodness sake can't I just find a book labelled 'beginner electronics' or 'electronics for dumbies'?" John promptly put the book back in its spot and sighed. "Really missing Google right about now." He said before resting his head against the end of the shelf and closing his eyes, after a deep breath he opened them, his eyes focusing on the science category index plaque that was secured to the end of the shelf.

"600: Engineering. 601: Mechanical. 602: Physics. 603: Electronics" John nearly jumped, he had found it.

He looked at the shelves and saw section 603 and quickly raced over. He traced his finger from left to right over the titles of the books. "All about Inductors, no. Usage of Semiconductors in the modern day, no, I think? Function and Usage of Relays!" He whispered, but could barely hold back his excitement as he snatched the book and flicked through to the index.