Adrian handed him a small box.
Inside was an old metal wrench.
Ethan looked confused.
“My father's,” Adrian explained. “He was a mechanic before he built the transportation company.”
“I can't take this.”
“You can.”
Adrian closed Ethan's fingers around it.
“My mother said you should have it.”
Ethan stared at the worn tool.
Suddenly Adrian Mercer seemed less like a powerful businessman and more like another mechanic's son.
Perhaps that explained everything.
College was harder than Ethan expected.
For the first time in his life, being good with machines wasn't enough.
There were equations.
Programming.
Thermodynamics.
Materials science.
During his first month, Ethan called Daniel almost every evening.
At first he pretended he was simply checking on the garage.
Daniel eventually confronted him.
“You hate it there?”
“No.”
“You sound like you hate it.”
“I feel stupid.”
Daniel laughed.
“Excellent.”
“That's not helpful.”
“You've spent your whole life being one of the smartest people in a garage. Now you're surrounded by people who can teach you things.”
Ethan leaned back against his dorm-room wall.
“What if I'm not good enough?”
“You know how many engines you ruined while learning?”
“Several.”
“Exactly.”
Ethan stayed.
Slowly, things changed.
He discovered that the practical experience he'd gained in the garage gave him advantages many classmates lacked. They could calculate mechanical forces faster than he could, but Ethan could often visualize what those forces actually meant inside a working machine.
His professors noticed.
During his second year, Ethan joined a student project designing a low-cost electric delivery vehicle.
That caught Adrian Mercer's attention.
Mercer Transportation was beginning to explore electric fleet conversion.
Adrian invited Ethan to intern with the company.
This time Ethan accepted without hesitation.
During the internship, he saw the transportation industry from another perspective.
Thousands of vehicles.
Fuel costs.
Maintenance schedules.
Route efficiency.
Downtime.
Suddenly the problems Daniel faced at one small garage existed on an enormous scale.
Ethan became fascinated.
One evening Adrian found him studying maintenance data long after everyone else had left.
“You remind me of someone.”
“Your father?”
“Unfortunately, me.”
Ethan smiled.
Adrian sat across from him.
“What do you want to do after graduation?”
“I don't know.”
“That's an acceptable answer.”
“Really?”
“At twenty, absolutely.”
Ethan looked through the office window toward rows of trucks.
“I want to build something.”
Adrian nodded.
“Then learn everything you can before deciding what.”
Back home, Dawson Auto Repair continued growing.
Daniel hired two apprentices.
Marcus became shop manager.
And Margaret still brought cookies.
Whenever Ethan returned during holidays, customers asked when he was coming home permanently.
He never knew how to answer.
Part of him wanted to.
Another part sensed his journey wasn't finished.
Not yet.
During Ethan's final year of college, Mercer Transportation faced a serious problem.
A new series of delivery vehicles began suffering repeated electrical failures.
Dozens were pulled from service.
The manufacturer blamed maintenance.
Mercer's technicians blamed defective components.
Every day the argument continued, the company lost money.
Ethan was completing his senior research project when Adrian called.
“I need another set of eyes.”
Ethan traveled home that weekend.
At the Mercer facility, he examined three disabled vehicles.
Nothing immediately made sense.
The failed components were different.
The error codes were inconsistent.
But something about the damage bothered him.
He spent Saturday testing circuits.
Then Sunday.
Late Sunday evening, he noticed a pattern.
The failures occurred primarily in vehicles assigned to routes requiring frequent stops.
Ethan examined the charging records.
Then temperature logs.
Then replacement histories.
At midnight, he called Rebecca.
“I think I found it.”