The Sparkle Was Real
The next day, I came in to work in a buoyant mood, a full hour before the shift began.
"WN-3. WN-3. WN-3..."
I sat down at my desk and pulled up the Inform logged in the company system. A short scroll later, the entry for WN-3 came up.
"...Inspection?"
WN-3 had gone into inspection. I checked the equipment code too. Down. Unusable. I read on down the Inform.
The dummy data... higher than average?
Set against the baseline they'd fixed—against spec—the numbers were running high. In a case like that, quality could take a hit, so pulling the tool for inspection was the obvious next step.
And the cause... they still haven't found it.
Whatever had pushed the dummy data up was still unknown.
Hah.
This was the most awkward kind of case. Two shifts had already passed, and still no cause. Odds were good it would turn into a long trace, a drawn-out hunt for the root. Even so, part of me felt good. What was the word. A sense of accomplishment?
There really was an issue.
The sparkle I'd seen yesterday hadn't been a lie. Something had definitely been wrong, and for whatever reason the dummy data had come out high. I'd headed off a thing that had been about to become a quality issue. I leaned back in the chair.
Kreeeak—
The fluorescent light went round and round.
Wild.
That settled it. My eyes could see a fault. The new hire who had done nothing since coming in but take grief from his senior had caught a problem on the tool before it broke. Sure, it was because of some strange ability.
Still. It's mine.
No need to draw a hard line around it. It wasn't knowledge, and it wasn't experience, but it was a power I had all the same.
"What are you doing?"
A blunt voice called me out of the thought. I looked up, and there was my senior, drinking coffee through a straw.
"Ah. You're here."
"I asked what you're doing."
"I was reading the Inform."
"You think I can't see that?"
Why was this man so prickly first thing in the morning? I shrugged.
"Even if I don't get all of it, I thought it'd be worth learning."
"Pfft. Yeah, I bet."
He sneered, set down the bag he'd brought, and stood up from his seat.
"Let's go in. The others will be waiting."
"Yes."
I'd been reading the Inform, and somewhere in the middle of it the time had come to enter the line. I gathered up the notebook I used for Informs and got to my feet. My senior, meanwhile, headed for the line without having read a single word of the Inform, and without an Inform notebook on him at all.
...Was that even allowed?
Of course it wasn't. When the Inform first got underway, though, nothing much seemed wrong.
"Ahh, guys, good work out there today~"
My senior greased his way through greetings with the seniors from the previous shift, and I ducked my head in a bow. The usual scrap of small talk.
"Running a shift with this kid is seriously killing me~ Wonder when Yeongseok's coming back."
"He's in next week, so what. Till then you're the shift leader, so try actually managing."
"Hey! It's not even your shift and you're just running your mouth?"
Same as always, he was throwing me under the bus and whining about how hard he had it. The room didn't look especially pleased to hear it.
Does he have no sense at all?
I shot him a sideways glance. He was so lost in what he wanted to say that he probably didn't even notice me looking.
"Anyway. I'll start the Inform."
And so the previous shift's Inform began.
"WN-1. Yesterday you said valve No. 1 had a head leak and asked to have it replaced, right? There was an additional confirmation request in from the shift before, so we checked. They say nothing was wrong."
"...They did? That's a relief."
My senior's eyes wavered. He had swapped valve No. 2 and passed valve No. 1 along untouched—hearing it was fine had to have rattled him. It wouldn't even occur to him that I was the one who had replaced it.
"Right. From now on, don't file extra confirmation requests unless you have to. You know that's just shoving the responsibility off."
"...No, I was just worried~"
"You think you're the only one who worries? Don't do it."
"...Got it."
The first lash. I could see my senior's shoulders draw in.
Shouldn't have been so stubborn.
I shook my head, small enough that the other seniors wouldn't see.
"Next, WN-3. This one's a bit of a problem..."
"WN-3? What's wrong with that one?"
He asked it back without a shred of tact. It was a tool our own shift had requested inspection on, and he was asking why. Irritation gathered in the previous shift's eyes.
"The dummy data is running high."
So I answered for him. The air said someone was about to get an earful, and a sharp mood only makes it hard to breathe. If I could dodge it, I would.
"...Yeah?"
My senior looked a little thrown. Maybe because the answer had come from me, of all people. Either way, something like surprise passed through the previous shift's eyes as well. The irritation was long gone.
"You know your stuff. Anyway, so it can't be used right now, and it's in inspection. What we've already tried is..."
An air-valve replacement. An air-hose inspection. On top of that, a tool reboot and a verification of the dummy-wafer hunting data. There had been a lot of tracing. I nodded at each item as I heard it. My senior only listened, bored.
"...So pick it up from there. You got it?"
"Yeah."
"Yes."
"Good. That's the Inform, and..."
And with that, the Inform ended without incident.
"Dongcheol."
Or so I thought. A senior from the previous shift called my senior by name.
"Yeah? What?"
"You think you've been around long enough for that? Why'd you show up without your Inform notebook?"
The notebook was right there in the senior's hand as he said it. Same for another senior beside him.
"Uh... that's..."
"Forget it. We'll let that one go. But you're not even reading the Inform? When you clock in, reading the Inform first is basic, isn't it?"
The senior's eyes turned to me.
"Seokhyeon knew the whole history on WN-3. What the hell are you doing?"
"No, I mean, that's..."
"Do the job right. Do it right."
With that, he dropped into a chair and finished tidying the Inform in the system. A cold atmosphere filled the meeting room.
Whew. Thin ice.
Twitch the wrong way and the sparks might land on me. A little time passed like that.
"We're going. Hang in there."
The senior who had torn into mine left the meeting room. So did the other one. Which left...
"...You happy?"
Just the two of us.
"No."
"Feels good, knowing the Inform all by yourself? What, you want to do the work alone too?"
"I'm sorry."
"Tsk. Whatever. I'll look at WN-3, so you go check the dailies. You wouldn't get it if you looked anyway."
He got up in a huff and headed for WN-3. I clicked my tongue.
The hysteria is no joke.
If you thought about it, I hadn't done anything wrong, had I? I'd only done my own work properly. From where he stood, that must have looked bad.
Doesn't matter.
I had no intention of half-assing the work over it. If anything, I only wanted to do it more properly. One line from the previous shift's senior.
That was enough. It meant what I was doing wasn't wrong.
From here on, the same. No—harder.
All I had to do was build enough skill that my senior couldn't look down on me anymore. Then maybe he'd settle. To get there—
"Guess I should go look at the dailies."
The daily work came first.
The daily work was done. It hadn't been the kind of work that takes long to begin with, and what I had left was time. Usually, at a moment like this, I would read an equipment manual or study the process.
Is WN-3 coming along?
That interested me more. I was curious whether the sparkle had gone, too. I headed for where WN-3 stood, and there was my senior, still wrestling with the tool.
"Damn it... why won't this work."
He was pulling the fitting where the air valve met the hose.
"Senior, the daily work is finished."
"Yeah."
"Would it be all right if I asked why you're pulling the fitting?"
I wanted the reason. That air valve wasn't sparkling. And even if it wasn't, I thought there might be something to learn. It helped to know which way seniors with experience traced their way toward a cause. It was the process of finding what was wrong.
I can't just trust the ability.
Swap a part because it sparkled, and all I'd be was some oddball tearing parts off and sticking them back on. I had to know why it was a fault, and what the cause was, if I was going to explain it to anyone else.
"You think you'd get it if I told you?"
"..."
Would it kill him to just explain? Watch him long enough and he was the type who manufactured work for himself. I was dying to tell him he didn't even need to do that...
"Figured the fitting might be seated loose and leaking air, so I'm checking."
But contrary to what I'd expected, he gave me the reason. I was thrown. Why was he acting like this? Anyway.
...Huh?
But then he didn't need to tear it down, did he?
"Senior. Couldn't you just cycle the valve and see?"
"..."
"Sorry."
I apologized on instinct. I didn't want to stand there and listen to him sulk.
"Hah. You think you're that great?"
"No."
"Then you take a look. See what's wrong."
He flung down what he was doing and stormed off. I shrugged and stepped up to the tool. A good chance to look it over with no one in the way.
"Hmm..."
I checked the lower section. But contrary to what I'd expected, it wasn't the air valve that was sparkling.
"...Huh?"
A sparkle—
From inside, deeper in the lower section, something glittered.
That's...
What was sparkling was a solenoid valve. The device that drove the air valve off an electrical signal.
"Why would this..."
The sparkle was fierce enough to dazzle, as if it were shouting at me that this was the problem.
...Pull it and reseat it?
A solenoid valve has a power line too. I reached out, unplugged it, and plugged it back in. The sparkle didn't go away.
Do I have to replace it?
There was no history of the solenoid valve ever being swapped. Replacing it might be the right answer. But.
And what do I say I'm doing it for?
I didn't trust myself to explain it. Why on earth would a solenoid valve push the dummy data high...
"Ah."
I thought I had it. It had been in the equipment manual and the process manual I'd read recently. The structure of the upper air valve, and what the dummy data meant. I sat down at a nearby computer and read the manual through once more.
Good.
That was reason enough to replace it. I went straight to the parts cabinet and took a solenoid valve of the same model. I'd never swapped one, but the structure wasn't that difficult.
Just seat it right.
And get the power line plugged in properly. As I'd expected, the solenoid valve came out easy. I finished tidying up around the tool and went to find my senior.
"Senior. I'm going to check the dummy data on WN-3."
"What did you do?"
"I replaced the solenoid valve."
"The solenoid valve? Wasn't it an air valve issue?"
It wasn't. All anyone had said was that there was an issue. Nobody had said it was an air valve issue.
"I only remember that there was an issue."
"Ah, forget it, forget it. Just check the dummy data or whatever."
He waved me off. I shrugged and requested the dummy data.
And one hour before the shift ended, the dummy data came in.