by Robin Stanton » Fri Aug 25, 2023 4:00 am
"Damnit, what is it with failsafes being all safe and stuff!" she asks the empty engine room and gives the fuel-pipe a frustrated kick. "Fine, where's that stupid crankshaft thingie..."
She looks down from the engine down to the space underneath it where the large metal shaft turns the pumping of pistons into rotation. If she can get it turning just a little she might be able to keep it going but she's up against tons of resting metal and how knows how much water resistance on the ship propellers. How do a bunch of pistons exert this much force anyway? Her eyes wander to the giant engine and the rows and rows of pistons. Levers and gears and shit. Turn one thing a whole lot to turn a larger thing a little. Basic machine stuff. She puts her hand on one of the pistons and lets herself sink into it, pushing through the metal until she pops out into a flat cavity reeking of oil and diesel fuel. She has no nose but the stench somehow permeates through her protoplasm.
She gathers as much of herself as she can into the space, compacts herself down as dense as she can and then she expands, pushes all the tension in the densely packed goo out as if she was leg-pressing a gigantic weight. Which, in a roundabout way she is, but instead of muscles it's building pressure by shifting from dense metal to water over and over again, each time claiming the fraction of an inch of more room and moving the piston in one chamber, then sliding over to the other and repeating the process. First it's barely anything, then it's a millimeter of rocking them back and forth, then a centimeter, back and forth, back and forth. Finally one push sends the piston to it's apex and back down, making it just a little easier to push the other one and keep the movement going more and more.
Her Dad probably could have turned himself into real fuel or gas to make this so much easier but she has to fight for every stroke of the giant piston, each of which turns is focused down and down and down to move the propellers just a bit. Basic physics slowly overwhelming water pressure.