Your generator will work
One of my guilty pleasures is the fiction of Ayn Rand, in particular The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. It’s a guilty pleasure because I find that Rand’s philosophical principles half-baked and potentially dangerous, but nonetheless, there are few books of a thousand pages or so that I will happily re-read over and over. Interestingly, reading some of the Atlas Shrugged reviews of Amazon, it is astounding that a book written 50 years ago still gets new reviews posted every couple of days.
I have just re-read Atlas and was struck by one of the scenes. Contrary to the intention of Rand, it brought to mind the philosophy and practice of Gandhi and Jesus in his admonition to turn the other cheek. The message of that instruction is not just to be passive, but to expose the injustice of those seeking to use force against you. The illustration has some spoilers.
The greatest “hero” of the book, John Galt has been captured by the mooching men of the government. They are trying to force him to use his ability to help them run the country, which is in a shambles after being subjected to a whole range of collectivist and corrupt regulation. Galt is refusing to cooperate, insisting that he will do what he is ordered to do but no more, because he will not sacrifice his ability to their lack of morality.
He is lying on a mattress in a room in a State Science Institute and is connected to an electrical torture device which the SSI has developed for situations such as these. A technician, under the orders of the government men, is running the device through its paces, and Galt is in immense pain, but makes no sound. Suddenly, the generator powering the torture device breaks down. The leader of the government orders the mechanic to fix it, but he (being someone hired for obedience rather than ability) cannot fix it. The government representatives begin to shout at the technician and he continues to respond that he doesn’t know how, that he doesn’t know what is wrong.
Galt (a scientist by profession) lifts his head and instructs the technician on how to fix the problem. He tells the technician to find a silver box in the machine, open it up and find the fused connection, separate the fused points, remove the corroded metal and replace the connection. Then, he says, your generator will work.