Radiant Flux was looking at the pile of parts. There were unrecognized bits mixed in with the more common wires and circuitry. The kinksprings were off to the side, winding up slowly off of the house's mains. There was something particularly ominous about two longish cylinders in the mess. Looking a little closer at the writing on their side...

"Celest's sweet ass, Gene, where the hell did you capacitors this big?!"

Gene looked over the top of the table he was stitching wires into the kevlar body suit he'd be wearing. "Oh, those? I asked around at the Surplus Store. That was the highest voltage ones they had. I think they were used in a power plant."

"For the love of..." Something alarming caught Radiant's eye. Backing away slowly, in the calm evenly tempered voice of one who is absolutely not calm at all, Radiant stated, "The... the terminals aren't shorted... Why aren't the terminals shorted, Gene."

He waved a hoof about with the nonchalance he seemed to be displaying too much of lately. "I'm going to wire them up in a few minutes. I figured I had to remove that at some point during the installation, so when I unpacked them I took them off."

Radiant's tone remained flat. "How long ago was that, Gene."

Gene cocked his head to the side and squinted. "Yesterday morning. What's got you so on edge?"

"Gene. These kinds of capacitors can pick up a small amount of charge just from the air. Gene, we played with these kinds of capacitors in college. Not these ones, explicitly, but the same sorts of voltages. Do you know what one of these will do to an apple? Or a hoof?"

"Give it a sharp jolt?"

"We made instant applesauce with them, Gene."

"Oh. Ooh. Crap." His eyes widened with the realization that he may have almost ended his life far to early. He laid his suit down on the table gentle and slowly walked away to stand next to Radiant Flux. "Um, what do we do?"

"We're going to get a very large resistor and short it. Preferable on the end of a wooden stick or something. I have some back at my apartment, but I could rig up a salt-water resistor if you've got a few pounds of it and a bucket."

Gene shook his head. "I'm not one of those salt-lick junkies. We've both seen what that much sodium does to a pony. Can't we just use the wire it came with?"

"I've seen capacitors like that weld a stack of copper sheets together."

"Oh. Well, I guess your idea is better."

Radiant nodded. "I'm going to go pick up the resistors then. You can keep working on your suit, but well away from there. I'll be back in half an hour. I can wait for you to get your tools outside of the danger-zone, incase you need CPR or something."

Gene gave a tentative nod, and cautiously approached the table they had been working at. He gathered the suit components that weren't next to possible death, and took them out of his kitchen to his living room.

When they had both exited, Radiant's head dropped with a sigh. "I know we came up with general equations so parts could be swapped in or out as we found them, but damn, Gene. Those things are kinda overkill, don't you think?"

Gene shrugged. "I can only get so much energy from the kinksprings. And to rapidly make the field, I'm gonna need big capacitors. So, I kinda went all out. Two birds, one stone, kinda thing."

"Alarmingly apt metaphor. One of those could kill both of us."

"Wow, you're a bit of a downer. I'm sorry."

Radiant sighed again. "It's ok, we can work with this. I just need to get a bit more safety equipment. Celest, I'm glad you picked me to help you. I work with similar enough stuff on a daily basis, while you were slaving over test tubes and chromatographs. If you picked, say, Velma over in rheumatology, and she naively shorted it, you'd be having a very awkward conversation with the guard over what that loud 'squawk-bang' your neighbors heard was and could you please explain the griffon feathers all over your body."

Gene tapped his chin in thought. "Those talons would be helpful with all this stitching."

"Well, we can ask later if you're not done tonight. I'm going to be off now, don't do anything stupid near those things till I'm back. If we're going to do something stupid, we're going to do it together." Radiant smiled and exited Gene's apartment. He returned to stitching the cables into the garment. After fifteen minutes had passed, he heard a knock on the door. He got up to answer it.

"Radiant, that was fast, did you run the whole way?" There was an unfamiliar stallion at the door, tan of coat and dark of mane. "Oh, wait, hello. I don't believe we have met."

The stallion nodded. "That is correct. Though I believe you have something of mine, ahem, 'Shield Generator'."

Gene cocked his head. "Um, I don't imagine so, I purchased everything in here. I'm not liking your implication, sir."

The stallion smiled and waved a forehoof. "Oh ho ho, not in that sense. Allow me to introduce myself." He bowed his head and closed his eyes. "I am Dr. Clocks, and I take some interest in anyone who purchases a large number of my devices."

Rising up, Dr. Clocks spoke again, "Technology fascinates me, and I wish to encourage it's development. Perhaps offer some advice. And most importantly, make sure ponies who make large first time purchases don't end up killing themselves. May I come inside?"

Gene was staggered. This was Dr. Clocks, noted engineer and entrepreneur of some renown. He was standing at his front door. And he was offering to help?! "Yes, please, do come inside. Just stay out of the kitchen, there are some possibly charged high voltage capacitors in there."

Dr. Clocks sighed. "It appears I wasn't a moment too soon. Please, tell me about your plans, Generator."

"See, the field doesn't kick up to full power until something is detected by this circuit here, because..."

"Coronal discharge into the atmosphere will break down the field in moments. I understand, I'm not just a mechanical engineer."

Radiant didn't knock and burst into the house unannounced. "Hey, Gene! I brought some hundred megaohm resistors! And a wooden broom handle! Where's your duct tape aaaaand hello there." Radiant just noted the unfamiliar guest Gene was pointing out parts of his suit's circuit diagram to.

Dr. Clocks bowed. "Hello. I am Dr. Clocks, and I..."

Radiant Flux's mouth had dropped open at the sight, but swiftly closed with the drop of that name. Before Dr. Clocks could speak again, Radiant blurted out, "You're the inventor of the kinkspring. You've saved so many lives."

Gene was taken aback by that. "What?"

Radiant looked at Gene. "The kinkspring. High density easily moved energy storage. Oh, dang, that's right. You worked genetics. Your machines almost never leave the bench. For folks like us in radiology, some of us work outside, and you need a lot of power, and batteries just... don't cut it, when you're in the field."

Dr. Clocks nodded. "I'm very pleased to make you acquaintance... I'm sorry, I don't have your name.

"I'm Radiant Flux. I work at the same hospital Gene does. Did. We're still not certain if he should keep his day job. I, uh, well, it's an honor to meet you, but there's a pair of big capacitors in the kitchen I need to take care of. Gene, where's your duct tape?"

Gene held up a roll of the wondrous material. Radiant dashed over and began to strap the resistor to the broom handle with it. "OK, once I discharge the capacitors, I'm going to wrap some wire to the terminals. That wire will remain in place until we're ready to build the circuit that holds them. You both know CPR, right?"

Gene and Clocks both responded with a firm "Yes" before Radiant trotted into the kitchen with the taped together discharge device. With a faint pop as the capacitors made contact with the resistor, the built up charge was safely removed from each. Wire was connected to each terminal, at which point Radiant mentioned, "Well, it seems it wasn't as dangerous as I made it out to be. But damnit, Gene, this is basic safety! We're going to have to go through so many textbooks before you go out."

It was then that the door to Gene's house received another knock.

A somewhat tall mare was on the threshold of his apartment's landing, looking forlorn. "Excuse me, but is this the residence of 'Shield Generator'? I'm in need of a hero's service."

Author's Note

I had a chat with a physicist the other day. I learned a bit about the difficulty maintaining a charge like that in the atmosphere.

I also had a chat with a doctor who regularly works with MRI's. Seems like a few teslas of field strength have difficulty even deflecting a copper jacketed bullet.

Same event, really. Nerd parties bring out the best of us.

So I'm going to try and keep this as scientifically accurate as possible. But the idea is just to appealing to let it get in the way all of the time.

Also, any ideas for potential jobs are welcome! I've got a few, and boy howdy are they silly.