Elias Wrenfield

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Forty-One Degrees

From The Current Encyclopedia

Forty-One Degrees is a novel by Elias Wrenfield and the second book of The Current series. It follows Cal Brandt, the environmental-monitoring technician at Halcyon Bio, years before the events of Book 1.

Premise

Every morning Cal walks four floors with a logger and a telescoping probe and writes down, by hand, how each room is feeling. In two rooms on the third floor, the supply air sometimes reads forty-one degrees. Not forty. Not forty-two. The sensors pass calibration, and the engineers have an explanation for almost every drop. Almost. So Cal starts a second column in the margin: who was in the room, and how tired they looked when they left.

Main characters

  • Cal Brandt. Environmental-monitoring technician. Keeps the record.
  • Priya Raman. A new chemist assigned to Lab 4.
  • Wendell. The night engineer, with decades of old ledgers.
  • A quiet, courteous man who is rising fast. He says he hasn't been tired since 1998.

Connections

  • The same building as Books 1, 3 and 4, years earlier.
  • Priya's story continues in Book 3.

See also