A little teenage romance/angst, a little action, something for everyone, but standard disclaimer these images have nothing to do with the story to follow. (click for a bigger view)
For first timers Chapter One
In case you want to jump back a week. Chapter 11
Chapter 12
The next day was a blur between trying to run the shop by himself with a lot of non-regulars doing Christmas shopping and fighting off the z monster, he closed up the shop an hour early, turned off the lights, stumbled his way to bed and went to bed barely taking off his shoes. The next day Gary was woken buy the doorbell at the apartment door and he stumbled half-awake down the stairs and standing outside was Andrew holding a box of donuts and two cups of coffee. At the sight of the box Gary’s stomach growled and he realized he hadn’t eaten since noon the day before and it was almost 11 am.
Gary let Andrew in and once upstairs they devoured the box of donuts and Gary was very thankful for the coffee. They talked about Christmas and each of their plans, Gary was going to close the shop and go home and visit his mom for a couple of days. Andrew would stay in town with his family and celebrate. It was then that Gary asked Andrew to come back to work at the shop, things were busy right now with Christmas shopping going on and with Sharon gone it was more hectic than he thought it was going to be. Andrew accepted and was glad he could help out. It was then that Sharon called and after talking a few minutes she asked if they could take a picture of the board with the resistors on it and send it to her phone. Gary and Andrew both decided that it would have to be after the shop closed tonight and Sharon said that was fine. The notes and sketches she had made just did not seem to give her the full picture, what with the resistors having different bands of color on them and all.
After getting off the phone, Gary and Andrew went downstairs and opened the shop back up and remained busy the rest of the day. After shutting down the shop properly, they opened the bookshelf back up and took pictures with Gary’s phone and sent them off to their absent collaborator. The next two days passed almost uneventfully, except for Andrew having Gary over for dinner at his house, and Andrew’s sister, a sophomore in high school developing a crush on Gary. When Andrew announced to the dinner table that Gary did have a girlfriend she looked crushed for a whole ten seconds. Gary thought Andrew’s family was great and they invited him to come home with Andrew anytime he needed a meal.
Meanwhile Sharon and Gary talked every day, sometimes twice a day until Gary closed the shop and drove the three hours home. At Sharon’s insistence he took some comic books home with him. She had wanted him to read some of the more popular books so he would be a little more in the know while running the store, he gave in and took home a couple Justice League and Avengers trade paperbacks. When he did get home, they talked about three times a day. Mostly they talked about Christmas and how they had celebrated it in the past, what was up with their families. On the few occasions they did talk about Gary’s father and Godfather is was mostly about how maddening the puzzles were. On Christmas eve they decided to not talk and try not to think about the clues till after Christmas, Gary reasoned that what difference would a couple of days make, the two had been missing this long, if it had really been that time sensitive his father would have sent him an e-mail or something quicker than a note hidden in a stack of comic books.
It was two days after Christmas that Sharon had a breakthrough with the resistors, it was actually her older brother Mark that noted it. She had been staring at the picture of a resistor on her phone when Mark glanced at it.
“Where are the third and fourth lines?”
Sharon looked at him. “The what lines?”
“Yea the third line and fourth. Each resistor at the minimum has to have four lines, sometimes more but the ones you have there only have two” He looked closer at the picture, “the third and fourth line has been painted over on this one.”
Sharon looked at the picture and saw it now, never having worked much with them she did not notice the paint. She quickly went thru the rest of the pictures, every resistor mounted on the board had only two different bands on it, not four as Mark had pointed out.
“What do the different colors mean.”
“Well you would know if you had wanted to learn about electronics and not just household wiring.” He gave her head a rub messing up her hair.
“Let’s not start that again, I wanted to go to college, not run wires my entire life.” She said joining in his joke. Mark was close to earning his Masters in Electrical Engineering and he would be the one designing solar farms in a few short months if his job prospects panned out.
“Different resistance levels to current, you do remember Ohm’s law right?”
“Yes.” She winced, mathematics had never been her strong suit, and even though it was simple enough she always let her father worry about the load on a line, she just ran the wire and hooked up the switches and boxes.
“Wait right here.” Mark said and went down the hall to his room. He came back a few minutes later and showed her a chart in a text book.
Resistor Color Codes
She looked it over and ran thru some of the pictures in her phone. She took the book and her phone and walked slowly to her room and got out a pad and pen. After a half hour work she looked at her paper. It was time to get back to school, she knew she had something. “Mark I need you to drive me back to school.” Sharon yelled.
She heard him growl then he responded as he walked into her room. “When?”
“As soon as possible.” Sharon replied as sweetly as possible giving him her best baby sister look.
“Hmmmph.”
Categories: The Disinclined Purveyor of Sequential Art
Stories and Quotes from the Mind* and Keyboard of A.A.Forringer 
Witty observation, disparaging remark, question for A.A., well this is your chance.