prompt: Palamedes Sextus, breakthrough and/or water
(apologies if I’ve misunderstood what you have in mind)
no that's perfect. anyway, I'm still Girl Genius-brained from the previous prompt, so:
As Chief Archivist, no room within the Incorruptible Library was outside Juno Zeta's purview. However, her duties required both good sense and self-preservation, so she used a high-shelf grabber-arm to nudge open the door of Archives Room 22B.
It had already been opened, albeit narrowly. Archivists, librarians, and innumerable other innocent Library employees had been rushing in and out for most of the last 48 hours, fetching and carrying odds and ends of contraptionary parts. Only in the last 19 minutes had the hubbub finally eased - replaced by a steady thump-thump-hummm that flowed out and down the corridor.
The revealed Archives Room 22B was in a familiar tableau (though all such tableaux are unique). Library personnel, particularly the Scientifically Inclined, splayed every which way, mostly asleep, satisfied and exhausted upon the completion of their newest Great Work. The Work itself, a hulking construction of pipes and cogs built out from the Great Steam Pipes in the walls (drawing on them for power, clearly). Juno squinted at it from the doorway - it was some sort of sorting mechanism, obviously - though why all the shards of diamond? And hey, was that her mass spectrometer?
Answers would come, she knew, from the centerpiece of the tableau: the two thirteen-year-olds at the base of the machine, fast asleep and curled up against one another like pair-bonded cats. Juno picked her way carefully through the sleeping librarians and touched the boy on the shoulder.
It was the girl who woke up instantly, of course. Though she didn't move more than to fix her eyes on Juno and say, somewhat sheepishly, "Ma'am."
"Morning, Camilla," said Juno, which was technically temporally accurate - midnight had come and gone 45 minutes ago.
"Is this engine likely to explode in the next twelve hours?" she added.
"No, it's steam channels are regulated with one-point-five endothermic hydrometers per foot, just like the main trunk." That was Palamedes, rolling over under her hand, leaping instantly to precision even as his glasses dangled from one ear. Palamedes Sextus, newfound Spark, Apprentice Archivist and, unrelatedly, Juno's son.
"And we both ate and drank at...some point in the last ten hours," added Camilla Hect, Gnostic Guard trainee, correctly anticipating Juno's next question.
