# After the Sleeper
## Chapter 19: The Engineer's Choice
Edition A2-CH19-20260928-R5
Original Sleeper Archive fiction

At ten, Arun entered the Council House without the station notes Sela had laid out for him. Last night's grain route was still there in his head: the battery crew's held request, the beacon dropping out when the crane started, the brief fall in the pumping header. Sela had wanted him to carry the actual traces. He had left them on her desk, because somebody had to be able to answer the next station call.

The chamber Voss had chosen was smaller than the room used for public statements and larger than the weather room. It had a long table, eight windows and a ceiling painted with machinery nobody in the building could identify. Voss was already there. So were Kest, Marian, Ansel, Nara, Eliza and two engineers Arun knew from the southern and western exchanges.

Rook arrived last. Korr arrived after him and sat before he could object. Arun remained standing. Voss pushed a document across the table.

DIRECTOR OF ESSENTIAL SYSTEMS.

The title occupied the first page. Arun turned it to find the duties. The proposed office would recognise the engineering compact as municipal law for water, power, lifts, transit controls, communications relays and other designated essential systems. The Director could issue binding emergency instructions across those systems. The Director's signature would satisfy identity and authority checks where the old MASTER, trustee or custodian chains were disputed or unavailable.

Emergency directives would remain valid until withdrawn by the Director or superseded by the custodians. Arun folded the first page along its ruled margin and tore it from the rest of the document. The paper made a small, dry sound. He pushed the page towards Voss, with the line about his signature still visible.

“You want another Master.”

Voss said, “No.”

“You want one signature recognised across systems.”

“For emergencies.”

“You want that signature to replace disputed legacy authority.”

“Temporarily.”

“You want the office to decide when the emergency ends.”

Voss looked at the torn page.

“That clause can be revised.”

Arun said, “The clause is the office.”

Nara leaned back.

“Keep going.”

Voss ignored her.

“The city needs someone accountable.”

Arun sat down.

“That is different.”

“From what?”

“If a station's switch fails, give me the station name and the person who signed the sequence. That I can answer for. This gives one signature to every station.”

“The network you built last night acted across water, defence, landing fields and transport.”

“The stations moved their own switches.”

Voss stared at him.

“The stations acted.”

“They acted because your network let them.”

“The board showed them what was happening.”

“That is coordination.”

“And they saw one another’s limits while they did it.”

“That is power.”

“Yes. Which is why I want those limits kept public.”

Voss stopped. Arun had not intended agreement to sound like provocation. Kest opened the incident record from the night of the three orders.

“No citywide instruction from Arun. Local reasons recorded. Shared state published. Cross-system support transferred.”

She looked at him.

“You accept that this structure exercises power.”

“It changes what stations can do together.”

“Then who is responsible for the structure?”

“Holt at the southern exchange. The pump engineer who signed the reserve feed. Rook for the aircraft. Ask for the logs and I can give you their names.”

Voss tapped the table. “I asked who takes responsibility for the network between them.”

Arun looked down at the blank back of the proposal. “We haven't written that rule yet.”

Rook laughed once. Nobody joined him. Marian picked up the Director document.

“What would happen if Arun died tomorrow?”

Voss said, “The custodians would appoint another Director.”

Arun said, “And that person would inherit every override.”

Marian looked at him.

“The office survives the person.”

“Yes.”

“That is normally considered a feature.”

“Not if the office contains an emergency key to the city.”

Eliza said, “Especially after everything that has happened.”

Pera was not present. Nara wrote it down anyway. The two western engineers had been invited because Voss wanted people who might support the office. They did. At first.

One of them, Merin Holt, said engineers had spent generations being responsible for failures while administrators retained the authority to interrupt maintenance, delay repair or redirect crews.

“If we carry the risk,” she said, “we need enough authority to do the work.”

Arun nodded.

“I agree.”

Voss spread his hands.

“Then we are arguing about the title.”

“No.”

Holt looked at him.

“What are you proposing instead?”

Arun had no document. That irritated everyone. He turned the Director proposal over and used its blank final page.

“Each essential system gets a board.”

Voss said, “A committee.”

“A board.”

“That is a committee with furniture.”

Nara said, “Do not make me like you.”

Arun wrote four headings.

TECHNICAL.

WORKERS.

AFFECTED DISTRICTS.

PUBLIC AUDIT.

Kest leaned forward.

“How many from each?”

“I don't know.”

“That matters.”

“Especially if one district loses water and another keeps it.”

“Who appoints them?”

“I don't know.”

“That matters too.”

“Write it as unresolved until we have workers and districts here to help decide.”

Voss said, “You have replaced one complete proposal with four incomplete boxes.”

Arun looked at the torn first page.

“Four boxes we can amend,” Arun said.

Voss drew his completed proposal towards himself. Arun kept the blank final page and added a line beneath the four headings.

EMERGENCY POWERS EXPIRE AUTOMATICALLY.

Rook said, “How automatically?”

“By time.”

“What time?”

“Depends on the system.”

“That is not automatic.”

“The expiry is automatic. The duration can differ.”

Rook shook his head.

“In the air, six seconds can matter,” Rook said.

“Then don't wait for a board while you're flying. The forty-eight-hour agreement already gives you the aircraft.”

“And it gives me nothing about who sent it up.”

“That's why the office authorising the mission signs before take-off.”

Rook nodded once.

Korr said, “Put that in the minutes.”

Rook glared at her. Arun wrote another line.

NO PERMANENT CENTRAL OVERRIDE.

Voss said, “Then your board is advisory.”

“No.”

“What happens when three stations disagree during a cascading failure?”

“They act within local safety limits and the emergency rules they already published.”

“And if those actions conflict?”

“Then the charter needs a conflict rule.”

“You do not have one.”

“No.”

Voss leaned back.

“You see the problem.”

Arun did. That was why he had come. By noon, the blank page contained more objections than rules. Nara wanted district representation tied to affected populations and service dependence, not whichever districts could send people to the Council House. Marian wanted no board action to establish property ownership merely because it controlled an essential system.

Eliza wanted every emergency decision published with source, duration and dissent. Rook wanted military systems excluded. Korr wanted military systems defined. Rook stopped objecting to her attendance. Kest wanted a review path.

Holt wanted technical members protected from removal for unpopular safety decisions. Ansel wanted conflict-of-interest declarations. Voss wanted one emergency override. Arun refused it every time. At twelve-twenty, Voss changed the wording.

CENTRAL COORDINATION AUTHORITY.

Arun crossed it out.

At twelve-thirty, Voss tried:

EMERGENCY INTEGRATOR.

Nara laughed.

At twelve-forty-five:

SYSTEMS CONVENOR.

Arun left that one alone. Voss noticed.

“So the word is the problem.”

“No.”

“But that word survived.”

“Because it describes a meeting, not a command.”

Nara said, “Dangerous. He is learning politics.”

Arun ignored her. They broke for food without agreeing who had authority to call a break. Korr ordered sandwiches. Nobody challenged her. The second session began with the conflict rule.

Arun proposed that when two systems' safety requirements conflicted, each would publish its current state and minimum safe condition. The affected boards—or temporary local representatives if the boards did not yet exist—would identify feasible configurations. No system could be ordered below its published minimum merely to satisfy another system's preference.

Voss said, “That is what happened last night.”

“Yes.”

“You are writing one emergency into permanent procedure.”

“No. I am writing the part that can be generalised.”

“Which is your interpretation.”

“Yes.”

Eliza looked up.

“That sentence needs to stay in the record.”

Arun frowned. She continued.

“The charter should distinguish observed practice from the rule proposed from it.”

Kest nodded.

“Precedent is not automatic law.”

Nara said, “Thank you.”

The room became quiet enough that everyone heard the old heating system click. Arun rewrote the heading.

PROPOSED CONFLICT PROCEDURE — DERIVED FROM NIGHT OF THREE ORDERS · NOT YET ADOPTED.

Voss stared at it.

“You are putting footnotes in emergency governance.”

“Yes.”

“This city will drown in qualifications.”

Marian said, “It nearly drowned in signatures.”

That ended the argument for six minutes. The representation question took longer. Nara rejected one seat per district.

“The water system does not care where your administrative boundary is.”

Holt rejected one seat per worker.

“A power exchange has two hundred staff. A lift rescue service has twelve. That does not make the exchange sixteen times more entitled to governance.”

Kest rejected pure technical weighting.

“Then expertise becomes the franchise.”

Rook rejected unrestricted public seats.

“A crowd cannot vote on whether an aircraft is safe to fly.”

Nara said, “Nobody asked it to.”

“You will.”

“Then say no when I do.”

Arun wrote another distinction.

TECHNICAL LIMITS — SET BY QUALIFIED OPERATORS.

SERVICE PRIORITIES — REQUIRE AFFECTED PUBLIC REPRESENTATION.

EMERGENCY ACTIONS — TEMPORARY, RECORDED, REVIEWABLE.

STRUCTURAL RULES — REQUIRE MORE THAN ONE CONSTITUENCY.

Korr read it.

“That is almost readable.”

“Thank you.”

“It was not praise.”

“That is apparently contagious.”

By the next sheet of paper, a technician could refuse an unsafe operating limit but could not decide alone which district went without power. Nara read that line twice. Holt asked whose crew would carry the refusal in the middle of a night shift. They put the question in the margin because nobody could yet answer it.

At three, Marian asked the question nobody had wanted.

“Who can remove the Convenor?”

Voss said, “The custodians.”

Nara said, “No.”

Holt said, “The technical board.”

Kest said, “Then the board can protect its own leader.”

Arun said, “There should not be one permanent Convenor.”

The room stopped. Voss looked tired.

“You have spent five hours designing an office you refuse to occupy.”

“I am designing a procedure.”

“Procedures need people.”

“Yes.”

“Named people.”

“Yes.”

“Then name them.”

Arun looked at the four headings. Technical. Workers. Affected districts. Public audit.

“No single person.”

Rook said, “That is not an answer.”

“It is.”

“Who signs?”

“Different people for different things.”

“Who is liable?”

“Different people for different things.”

“Who gets blamed?”

Arun looked at him.

“That is the first honest objection you've made.”

Rook smiled.

“Thank you.”

They drafted an interim proposal for each essential system to form a temporary governance board of qualified operators, worker representatives, affected districts and an independent public auditor.

Technical safety limits could not be overruled by nontechnical vote. Service priorities could not be set solely by technicians. Emergency actions expired automatically. Renewal required confirmation from more than one represented constituency. All emergency actions, dissent and technical reasons would be published unless publication created a specific immediate hazard.

Cross-system coordination could use shared state, but the state board itself could not issue commands. No identity classification—MASTER, TRUSTEE, CUSTODIAN or otherwise—would create system authority without a separately recognised governance source. No permanent central override. The last line survived three attempts by Voss to delete it.

At six-thirty, Arun could still see the crease where he'd torn off Voss's first page. Kest was reading the last clause aloud when the southern power exchange lost telemetry. The interruption came as a black square on the wall map. A few seconds later the report of an explosion reached the table.

***

The first message said transformer failure. The second said fire. The third said four engineers missing. Arun stopped reading. He was already moving.

Sela met him at the Council House stairs with his coat.

“You do own one.”

“It isn't good.”

“Correct.”

They ran. The southern exchange fed three districts, two tram trunks, a clinic ring and part of the archive's secondary storage route. By the time Arun reached the Spine, the exchange had isolated itself from the main grid. That prevented the first failure from becoming a citywide cascade. It also left three districts dark.

The live state board showed black where the southern exchange should have been. The exchange should have shown red for a protective trip. It showed black, and the voice circuit offered static. Arun put his finger against the map at the clinic ring to check which supply it had lost. Rook called from the western field.

“Do you need aircraft?”

“No.”

“Do you need security?”

“Yes.”

“That was fast.”

“The exchange is dark after an explosion. Keep people out who are not repair, medical, fire or evidence.”

“Under whose authority?”

Arun stopped. The question was not sarcasm. Rook had learned.

“Local emergency safety at the exchange. Ask the station supervisor if she is alive. If not, the nearest qualified crew.”

“I can work with that.”

The line closed. The station supervisor was alive. Merin Holt had been thrown against a relay cabinet and broken two fingers. She refused evacuation until the isolation diagram had been copied. A medic copied it.

Then she left. Four engineers did not. Their names reached Arun one at a time. He knew three. The fourth had transferred from the western district six months earlier.

He did not allow himself to remember anything yet. The exchange floor smelled of burned insulation, hot metal and the chemical dust from fire suppression canisters. The main switch hall had not burned completely. One section had. The damage concentrated around a protection cabinet controlling the tie between two high-voltage buses.

Sela crouched beside it without touching.

“That is wrong.”

Arun looked. The cabinet door had been opened before the blast. The mechanical interlock was defeated by a strip of machined metal lodged behind the latch. A temporary jumper bridged two points that should never have been bridged during live operation. Someone had forced the protection sequence into a state the system was designed not to permit.

Arun held his hands away from the cabinet. Four dead engineers, and here was a piece of metal he could point to.

“Photograph everything.”

Sela said, “Already.”

Eliza's habits had become engineering reflex. The strip behind the latch had been machined to fit; the jumper joined contacts no crew could have bridged accidentally with the door closed. Sela labelled both in place. The local identity log gave them no UNKNOWN request or preservation credential, and nobody found a black mark. Arun could tell Rook how the protection had been defeated. He could not tell him who had put a hand through the cabinet door.

Rook arrived ten minutes later and looked at the cabinet.

“Inside job?”

Arun said, “Knowledgeable job.”

“Difference?”

“Yes.”

He was too tired to explain it kindly. The city wanted power back before the evidence team had finished the first photographs. Voss called. Nara called. The clinic called.

Two district courts called. A tram controller called six times. Arun answered the clinic first. Emergency generators had started. Fuel for five hours at full load.

Longer if the ventilation schedule was reduced. He asked them to publish it. They did. The three dark districts began producing their own state. Clinic generators.

Water pressure. Lift rescue. Food refrigeration. Street lighting. Battery reserves.

Tram shutdowns. Not one board. Many. Sela looked at the incoming feeds.

“The charter does not exist yet.”

Arun said, “The systems do.”

“What are we doing?”

“Repair.”

“That was not the question.”

He knew. The proposed charter sat in the Council House with NO PERMANENT CENTRAL OVERRIDE written on the last page. At the exchange, four people were dead. The shortest route to restoration was a central emergency configuration Arun could impose through the Spine. One signature.

One sequence. One person responsible. Exactly what he had refused six hours earlier. Voss called again.

“I can authorise the Director proposal now.”

Arun closed his eyes.

“Do not.”

“You need authority.”

“I need crews.”

“You need both.”

“I have local emergency authority at the damaged exchange and existing operating responsibility at the Spine.”

“You need cross-system authority.”

“No. I need other systems to tell me what they can safely do.”

“While three districts are dark?”

“Yes.”

Voss swore.

Then, quietly:

“Four engineers are dead.”

“I know their names.”

“Then stop making this philosophical.”

Arun looked at the burned protection cabinet.

“The clinic has five hours of fuel. I’m asking every station what it can safely spare.”

He opened the shared state network. Not with an order. With a request.

SOUTHERN EXCHANGE FAILURE — THREE DISTRICTS ISOLATED.

PUBLISH AVAILABLE TRANSFER CAPACITY, MINIMUM SAFE LOAD, STAFFING, LOCAL HAZARDS.

NO STATION IS AUTHORISED BY THIS REQUEST TO EXCEED ITS OPERATING LIMITS.

Sela read it.

“That is the charter.”

“No.”

“It is close.”

“Too close.”

“You want me not to send it?”

Arun looked at the dark district map.

“Send it.”

Responses arrived in under three minutes. Western Exchange could take eight percent additional load for one hour. North Transit Power could release reserve if two tram services remained suspended. River Pumping could reduce nonessential filtration cycles and return a small block of power to the grid. A private industrial plant offered surplus generation under a contract nobody trusted.

The clinic requested priority before street lighting. Lower City courts requested food refrigeration before public screens. The custodians requested central government communications priority. Rook requested field beacons and air-service fuel pumps protected. The proposed charter required people affected by a service to take part in setting priorities. Holt's exchange had no such board, and now Holt was at the clinic with a splint. Arun called Nara for the district names; she had already begun gathering them.

“We can assemble district delegates in fifteen minutes.”

“Too slow.”

She did not argue.

“What do you need?”

“Priorities from people actually affected.”

“Clinic first.”

“That is your answer.”

“The clinic is on generators.”

“Food refrigeration?”

“Save what the courts can distribute tomorrow.”

“Water?”

“Keep pressure in the pipes.”

“Street lighting?”

“Not before those.”

“Public communications?”

“Enough for emergency notices.”

“Air field?”

She paused.

“Enough to keep supply flights safe.”

Arun entered the priorities as Nara's recommendation from affected districts. Not a command. The distinction still mattered at midnight. Marian called from the succession office.

“My people are asking whether the industrial plant's contract is valid.”

“Is it?”

“I don't know.”

“Can they supply power?”

“Yes.”

“Can they claim emergency ownership later because we used it?”

“That is exactly what I am trying to prevent.”

“Then write that condition.”

She did.

TEMPORARY POWER ACCEPTANCE DOES NOT ESTABLISH TITLE, SUCCESSION, EXCLUSIVE SUPPLY RIGHT OR CONTINUING PRIORITY.

Arun read it aloud.

“That is ugly.”

“So is the contract.”

They accepted the power. Eliza arrived at the exchange with two archivists and one portable copy unit. She looked at the burned cabinet, the photographs, the machined strip and the jumper.

“The jumper was deliberate,” Eliza said. She photographed the machinist's marks through the clear evidence screen. “Where was it made?”

“I don't know. Sela is checking the workshop stock.”

“Keep the lathe shops out of the public notice until she has an answer.”

Arun watched the smoke fall through the damaged roof. People in three dark districts would want a name before morning. He told the recorder only what he'd seen. The first repair plan emerged at 21:20. Not from one office. Western Exchange would carry the clinic ring. North Transit would cover two tram substations and one water lift.

River Pumping would return surplus power during low-demand intervals. The industrial plant would support refrigeration and local lighting under Marian's non-title condition. The Spine would manage the intertie sequence. The southern exchange crew would rebuild the protection path before any reconnection. Arun signed the sequence only for the Spine steps.

Holt, one hand splinted, signed the southern exchange steps from the clinic. Nara's delegates endorsed the service priorities. Kest recorded the emergency basis. Eliza recorded the source documents. Rook protected the repair perimeter and kept aircraft out of the southern approach.

The paper passed from Holt's clinic receiver to the Spine and out to three stations, collecting the signatures for each station's own section. Sela pinned the copy beside the dark map. At twenty-two-oh-three, the first district regained clinic power from the western intertie. People cheered in the street. Arun heard it through an open service microphone.

He closed the channel. Sela looked at him.

“You dislike gratitude now?”

“I dislike incomplete restoration sounding like victory.”

“That is almost normal.”

The second district regained water pumps nineteen minutes later. One tram line returned at reduced service. Food refrigeration stabilised. Street lighting stayed dark except at intersections and medical routes. Public screens remained off.

Nobody complained about the screens. At 23:40, an engineer at North Transit found a thermal limit lower than the published value. The transfer plan had to change. Under a central command model, Arun could have ordered the station to hold until the southern exchange came back. Instead the local engineer published the lower limit and refused the additional load.

The refusal cost twenty-seven minutes. It also prevented another failure. Arun updated the plan. Voss called again.

“You see why I wanted one Director.”

“That engineer saw heat your office could not see from here.”

“You just changed a citywide restoration sequence because one engineer said no.”

“She published the limit before I changed a thing.”

“What if she was wrong?”

“Then we review it.”

“After the delay.”

“The station stays below its limit while we find out.”

Voss was quiet.

“What if she was right?”

Arun looked at the temperature trace.

“Then the delay is cheaper.”

The line stayed silent for several seconds. Voss did not concede. Neither did Arun. The repair continued. By two in the morning, the southern exchange had a temporary protection path.

The old cabinet remained evidence and could not be used. Sela and two engineers built a parallel trip circuit around it. They tested it without load. Then with partial load.

Then with the southern bus isolated. Holt watched through a clinic receiver and corrected one test sequence from memory. Arun told her to sleep. She told him to become Director. He told her that concussion had impaired her judgement.

She laughed and then regretted it. At 03:12, the exchange accepted its first limited load. At 03:44, the clinic returned to normal mains. At 04:10, food refrigeration moved off the industrial plant. At 04:35, the water systems released their borrowed capacity.

At 05:02, the first tram completed a full circuit. On the central map, grey replaced black in one block, then another. Arun checked the times against the individual service logs: clinic mains, food refrigeration, the water systems' borrowed capacity, the first full tram circuit. The map's green squares concealed those different histories if he looked at them for too long.

Three districts went from black to grey to partial green. At dawn, the crowds gathered outside the exchange fence. Some had been there all night. When the main southern feeder returned at 06:18, they applauded. Arun was standing beside the temporary protection rack with Sela.

The sound reached them through concrete. Sela smiled. Arun did not.

“You hate applause,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He looked at the four empty places in the crew list.

“Because it attaches the repair to whoever is visible at the end.”

Sela's smile disappeared.

“The dead were visible at the beginning.”

“Yes.”

They stood there until the noise faded.

***

The Council House meeting resumed at nine. Nobody had slept enough. The Director proposal was still on the table. So was Arun's charter page. Voss had added a new argument overnight.

The sabotage proved the city needed clear emergency command. Nara had added the opposite one. The restoration proved local technical refusal and shared state could prevent a second failure. Rook said both were too convenient. Eliza agreed.

“The attack does not prove either governance model.”

Voss looked irritated.

“It created a real emergency.”

“Nobody disputes the emergency.”

“And we observed the response.”

“We documented the response.”

“Then the response is evidence.”

“It is evidence of what happened under these conditions. Not proof that every alternative would have failed.”

Kest nodded. Holt attended by receiver from the clinic. Her face was pale.

She said, “I want the charter.”

Everyone looked at the screen.

Voss said, “You supported the Director.”

“I supported authority equal to responsibility.”

“And now?”

“Four people are dead because someone defeated a local protection system.”

Arun said nothing. Holt continued.

“If you make Arun Director, every future emergency will route through the person who happens to know the most this week.”

Voss said, “That person would be accountable.”

“So would a board.”

“Less clearly.”

“It puts more than one name on the log.”

“Why is that better?”

“Because power should be harder to inherit than a desk.”

Marian picked up the torn first page.

“What happens to this?”

Voss said, “It remains a proposal.”

Arun said, “Archive it.”

Eliza said, “Already copied.”

Nara looked at her.

“You copied the rejected Director proposal?”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

“Because later someone will say nobody seriously considered central command.”

Voss sighed.

“That may be the nicest thing you have ever done for me.”

“It was not for you.”

The interim charter received a name only because the clerks demanded one.

ESSENTIAL SYSTEMS CHARTER — WORKING DRAFT.

The clerks stamped WORKING DRAFT beneath the title and passed it back for the changes from the blackout.

Technical refusals required a recorded reason and rapid review. Shared-state publication could be limited only for a specific, documented immediate hazard. Emergency service priorities required affected-public input where time allowed; where time did not, reasons had to be published afterward. Temporary power or capacity transfers did not create property rights. No permanent override.

Every emergency power expired. Every renewal required more than one constituency. No person could hold both technical-control and public-audit seats on the same system board. Rook insisted on a flight-command exception. They wrote one.

It applied only when aircraft were airborne. He disliked how narrow it looked on paper. Korr considered that healthy. At eleven-thirty, Voss asked Arun one final time.

“Director of Essential Systems.”

“No.”

“Convenor?”

“Rotating.”

“First Convenor?”

Arun looked at Nara. She shook her head before he spoke.

“Temporary,” he said.

Nara stopped shaking her head.

“Duration?”

“Seven days.”

Voss said, “You just invented a term.”

“Put the start time beside it.”

“Renewable?”

“By the board, not by me.”

“The board does not exist.”

“Then the term ends.”

Kest wrote it down.

Nara said, “Public representation before renewal.”

“Before the seven days expire.”

Holt said, “Worker representation.”

“Yes.”

Eliza said, “Published decisions.”

“And the dissents.”

Rook said, “No authority over flight command in the air.”

“Yes.”

Marian said, “No property claim from system control.”

“A live circuit cannot sign a deed.”

Voss looked around the table.

“You have made yourself less powerful than the office I offered,” Voss said.

“There is a board to build,” Arun answered. “And seven days to get it built.”

Kest wrote the term beside his name. He asked her to leave space for the expiry date. At noon, the working draft went public.

The first comment beneath it said:

WHO ELECTED THE ENGINEERS?

The second said:

WHO ELECTED THE CUSTODIANS?

The third said:

WHY IS THE POWER STILL FLICKERING?

Arun read all three. At the southern exchange, a crew register lay open on a bench with four names marked for the investigators. Arun turned it face down before beginning the next isolation test. The new protection circuit tripped at the right threshold. He wrote the result beneath his seven-day appointment, then handed the test set to Sela.