Where in the Galaxy is Tepka-101?
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Tepka-101 - The Hyper-condenser That Couldn’t
After the failure of their Silvum series hyper-condenser, the Ulmaatis began work on a new Tepka series model. With improved engineering and greater capacity, they hoped that the Tepka series would power the first ever relay station.
So began construction on Tepka-101. It took nearly three years, but finally the Ulmaatis had a functional hyper-condenser (albeit, functional outside of practical application). Tepka-101 started up fine time and time again, so it was only logical for the Ulmaatis to take it to the next stage - installing Tepka-101 into their relay station, the Forward Arc.
That is when all their testing and theoretical results flew out the window. Once it was installed, Tepka-101 just didn’t work. It wouldn’t fire up. The Ulmaatis couldn’t get any readings from it. And they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it. Was there a screw loose? Had it been installed incorrectly? Were the cables fine?
Nobody could tell you how many times the Ulmaat scientists reinstalled the damn thing. I think they lost count after the tenth try.
They gave up eventually, changed tactics when they started working on Tepka-201. It’s kind of funny though, knowing that Tepka-501, a hyper-condenser with the exact same blueprint as its original counterpart, worked where said counterpart failed.
Why didn’t it work? Well, who knows. Just another one of life’s greatest mysteries.
Many years after its construction, Tepka-101 was officially decommissioned by the Ulmaat Prime Association. They stopped all research on it and shipped it off to be displayed in the Lavitun Muse on Ulmaa. There, Tepka-101 stood as a testament to the Ulmaat determination. A reminder to the people that, although there were many hardships during the process, the Forward Arc was finally complete and the Ulmaatis were the first species to jump from one galaxy to another.
It wasn’t until after Tepka-101 was stolen from the Lavitun Muse when the rumours began to spread.
Sabotage on the Forward Arc
A common theory amongst the Ulmaatis and undoubtedly the one that makes the most sense.
The Curators of Honest Tales (CoHT) Society pieced together a timeline for all of the scientists who worked on the Tepka series hyper-condenser. They found that two of the lead scientists - Z’Poxu and D’Urquan - were in charge of installing Tepka-101 in the Forward Arc. Every instance of it’s installation, at least one of the two scientists were present.
Not much of a conspiracy to start with, but add in the fact that Z’Poxu and D’Urquan were longtime friends and that both were removed from the project late into the development of Tepka-401, it adds a little bit more sustenance to the theory.
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Author's Notes
This article was created as part of the World Anvil Summer Camp 2020 event.
Summer Camp 2020