***POV Jordan***

It was raining... Again. This time however, I didn’t have to go to work today. It was my day off, Sunday. It was about 10 AM and I had already done my usual routine (showering, eating breakfast, cleaning my teeth, shaving, etc...).

I thought I would at least be a bit productive today. Maybe go jogging. God knows I haven’t done that in a while, even if I’m not one of the fittest out there. I don’t want to become a fat piece of lard that you see on some TV shows. But with this weather, I just didn’t see the point to it.

I can hear some of you think. “Jordan, what is your job exactly?” Well I’m an Energy Manager. That means I get assigned to a situation within the company I work at and I upgrade and improve that specific point of the company if my boss thinks it’s a good investment.

For example: The company I work at needs to lower its electrical consumption because of some ecological guidelines. So they tell me these guidelines and let me have a look around the company. I tell them their lighting infrastructure is outdated and could have a great impact in reducing the electrical bill, then the boss will give me the green light to improve the lighting, like switching to LEDs. So I am basically the next level of electrician. I like my job.

Anyway, about me. I am a bit of a shy guy. But a comedian if you know me a bit better, or that’s what my friends tell me. I live in Belgium currently, more specifically in Ghent. It’s a decent city to live in, but that’s about it.

I like music, more specifically Rock. I play the piano as well as the organ, two instruments I really do enjoy playing. The thing I love to just mess around with the most is my sampler. With that I can just do silly stuff like create 8 bit music and other tunes.

In my free time I either play games, play music, or my friends play matchmaker for me and get me out on a date. Needless to say it usually goes horrible. Now that we have introductions out of the way, I was busy being bored.

I might play a game, haven’t done that in a while. I have been a bit too busy with work lately, I might as well do that. I was thinking about a blast from the past, Age of Empires 2. I played that game so much when I was little. And I also heard the recent DLC’s are pretty decent. So with my decision made, I started up my pc.

After the download was complete, I quickly started up the game. I started a random match against some bots to test if my skills had left me over the years. I quickly got immersed into the match I was playing. It quickly became a 3 hour match against 4 AI’s. I failed to take notice of the time that passed as I did my last push against the final AI.

I was just about to take the game and win when my phone started ringing. With a heavy sigh, I paused the game.

“Can’t a guy just play a game on his day off,” I ranted with some frustration. I picked up my phone and saw that it was already 1:43 PM. Damn, and I still had to eat my lunch. I looked at who was calling me and saw that it was my boss.

“Hello Mr. Torgue. What can I do for you,” I said trying to sound a bit cheerful.

“Son, we have an emergency that calls for your attention. At site Ertsvelde, the power grid you calculated and installed for our new solar panels is failing because of a peak in energy production. A peak you calculated that shouldn’t be possible.”

I was a bit shocked (no pun intended) because the power grid had enough safety regulations in it that it was near to impossible for a situation like this to happen.

“Sir, hang on a bit. Let me see if the data from the company server can provide more insight on the matter.”

“Make it quick because we need you here to fix this mess before the damage becomes worse” Snapped Mr. Torgue.

“Sir, any strange readings I see literally only started 3 minutes before you called me. Are there any unusual things happening at the factory?” I asked with worry.

“Son, we had to evacuate sector C within the factory because of these weird purple shining sparks coming off of the power supply to the machines. That’s all I have. Now listen, we made this investment because of your advice and if the damages become worse then a few hours of shut down then I am afraid that we can no longer have you in this corporation.”

I stayed silent for a few seconds. I replied with a shaky,“Yes sir, I understand.”

“Good. Now get your ass over here and fix this,” He said a bit aggressively. And then he hung up.

Fuck. This day went from good to “you’re about to lose your job” bad. “Calm down Jordan. You will be able to fix this mess without a doubt, I hope.”

It takes at least 10 minutes to get there by car, so I got moving. I quickly grabbed a couple of wraps from the fridge to eat on the go. I got my bag with the laptop from the company and headed out of my apartment.

I got towards my car. It’s a Opel astra from 1993. It’s old but it gets me from A to B. But lately I have been having some problems with my car. I needed to go to the garage sometime when I had some spare cash.

I tried to start her up.

“FUCK!” She wouldn’t start. “Don’t tell me, I have to go through this weather by bike,” I whispered to myself.

After 5 minutes I just gave up. “The one time I really need you, you piece of junk.” Now I was really frustrated. I picked up my bike and got through the shitty weather. I lost enough time as it is. It’s a good thing the company lies outside the city so I don’t have to get through all the traffic jams. Who am I kidding, It’s Sunday. There is no traffic on Sunday over here.

**TIME SKIP**

I tried to get there as fast as I could through the rain. It took me about 20 minutes to get to the company. And obviously I was soaked to the bone. I put my bike aside and I was quickly greeted by Ned. He’s a long time friend of mine and is head of one of the production lines in the factory.

“Yo Jordan. Glad you could make it this fast. And with a bike through this weather? What happened to your car?” He asked.

“Couldn’t start her. So I chose to lose the least amount of time. So what’s the problem here exactly?”

Ned answered: “First get inside. I’ll explain on the way to sector C.”

When we were inside everything goes just as normal. It was like nothing is wrong with the factory at all. But this was only sector A, the processing sector.

“The trouble only started about 40 minutes before you got here. Some machines are overloaded and are out of commission. The power grid from the solar panels are acting up,has this purple shining static around it and power production jumped from 6% to 165% which is insane considering the weather,” Ned explained.

Damn. This was one strange phenomenon. “This jump in production came out of the blue?” I asked.

“Yep. The bad part is it is still rising. If we don’t do anything now, I think our capacitors might explode. According to the papers you made, they’re the weakest of the installation.”

I thought for a minute about all the probable outcomes and which solution I would be able to use. “Are you sure this is coming from our solar installation?” I asked.

“165% sure. The readings just all indicate that,” He confirmed.

“It might be risky but I think I have a probable solution. But I have to see the situation before making assumptions.” I thought out loud.

“Damn straight you do,” he said while we continued walking.

We arrived at the sector and we noticed the effects immediately. There was nobody there. You could see the AC (Alternating current) HV (High Voltage) cables enveloped in this weird looking lavender static field. And the staff alarm was ringing with red lights everywhere.

“Let’s go to the observer room,” Ned said.

When we got to the observer room we could see all the data from the entire factory. The first thing I noticed was all the warnings from sector C.

It seemed like the capacitors were going to fail soon. If we didn’t do anything, they would cause major damage.

“We gotta try and uncouple the capacitors,” I told Ned.

“They still have a huge amount of power in them Jordan. This won’t be easy and without risk of them exploding,” he commented to my solution.

I thought long and hard. Such a huge problem in such a short time.

“Can we connect them directly to the national power grid?” I asked.

“It should work. But the boss ain’t gonna be happy, you know, paying the electrical bill afterward,” He joked.

“Mr. Torgue is going to have to deal with it. Its the bill or 1/4 of his factory in this site. I know what I would chose.”

Ned butted in: “If you’re going to couple the capacitors on the national power grid. Why don’t you do the same for the solar panels?”

“It’s too much power to dump in one go. But we might be able to divert our power to other companies near us and just some of it to the national power grid. Ned you are a genius,” I continued with Ned’s train of thought in mind.

“It’s why I’m here. Now let’s get to it,” he laughed.

We put on our safety gear and started going to the problem in our power grid. And with that we started on our plan to repair the power grid and remove the danger from it.

We were able to connect the capacitors to the national power grid without any real issue. We also got in contact with the nearby companies and some of them were glad to help and get free power in doing so. So the only thing left to do was to separate the factory grid from our own solar panels.

This way we produced solar energy that went back into the national grid and then we get the power we need from the national grid. It’s is definitely not a good solution by any means. But it was only temporarily.

It took us about 5 hours to get where we are now and we are exhausted. The only thing left was to close the connection between the panels and the factory.

“Ned can you make sure there’s no power flowing throughout sector C? Else I won’t be able to uncouple the grids safely.”

“Sure thing,” he said. “I’ll call you when it is done so that you know when to start.”

After about 5 minutes, I got a call from Ned telling me that there should be no more power flowing throughout sector C. I cut through the wires and installed a massive switch for future purposes.

“Ned I’m about done here. But try and start up the grid again to see if there is anything we missed,” I told him through the phone.

“Sure thing. I’ll let you know if there is still something going wrong,” He responded.

I heard the tell tale sign of the power switching back on. The first thing that happened were the lights that jump back on. I was a bit blinded at first. But I was able to adjust to the new light. I noticed that nothing horrible was immediately happening. Fingers crossed this worked.

“Hey bro. We did it. And about damn time too. It’s 8 pm on the dot. I’m tired as hell though.” I heard from the phone.

“Everything should be fine now Ned. I think it’s about time we go home. Come down here and help me clean up,” I told him.

“You got it!” I heard him respond.

While we were gathering our gear I see the same lavender static field creep on top of the switch I just placed. Fascinated by it, I decided to take a closer look. I tried to touch it with my heavily insulated gloves. It harmlessly danced on the glove.

Suddenly one of the cables from the solar panel grid jumped lose from the large switch I placed. It stabbed through my safety vest and hit my soaked clothes underneath. The last thing I remember is being enveloped by the purple field.

Author's Note

Characters are based on a couple of friends of mine.
This is my first try at something. I hope that its decent.
This is also just the intro to the story.
I have had this I idea for a story for nearly the 3 years that I have been a member on this site.
But I have never seen anyone pull something like this off.
Also English is not my native language. So if you see grammatical errors or spelling errors. please just tell politely me and I'll fix it.
Btw I hope you guyz like the nod to borderlands.
Have a Good day. Bam_BE.