Simply sanding won't work anymore.
Patches just add more weight for the frame to bear, not that the frame hasn't had a fair share of welding and restoration administered.
Continuing to try to get the grit and appearance of rust off of the surface but it just doesn't come clean. The last time out a noxious chemical compound was used, in theory this would keep things from corroding. That did little to nothing aside from make the surface sticky for a few hours and then it went back to rusting in a corner again.
Desperate now to prevent any further damage.
There is a buffer piled in one of the boxes of equipment that was being used until it all proved futile. Pulling another mask down, hours are spent again polishing the resurfaced chrome to a point where it shines so deeply you feel as if you could step into the distorted picture. As if the twisted representation was somehow a more perfect mirror of what was out here.
Standing back to admire the work, the first brown lesion appears again toward one side. Sinking to abraded knees, praying for a release from this effort that will not come the device associated with the latest failure slips from dust coated fingers and crashes to the floor. Shatters. Broken. Motor half-fallen from the heavy plastic case. Denuded in the face of senseless destruction.
It may be easier just to give up, go away, and let it sit there to rot.
Pushing through waning darkness, greeting daylight again from the small windows in the front of the working area. Living, breathing, the city sleeps unaware of the holes again developing on the surface. A few more days and more filler material will be needed, a larger sander and several hours in a respirator to fix this.
Arcane repair manuals do nothing save waste more time that could be used locating suitable shoring material. Not too much longer before it disintegrates. Wondering what that will look like almost constantly now that hope has been traded in this lengthening war. Will it simply fall into pieces in a choking cloud of dust, or will it evaporate slowly like water vapor?
Perhaps the answer lies in fusing more material to the surface, building up around the damage until it is no longer visible. MIG/TIG welding, extrusion or powder coating, electroplating are all possible candidates.
No. Then the core will decompose, the body will follow and nothing will have been accomplished aside from accelerating the erosion. There are so many layers now that the whole project resembles an old lakebed vomited up for geologic analysis.
Heaven is forbidden, but I'm going anyway.
To hell with repairing my soul.
This has been a super random Nodeshell Rescue