Rusty's gonna save ICE

Rusty rusty, old man rusty never knew when to stop. They told him to not work on the old car technology anymore, there's batteries and chargers and solar panels now, nobody's going to pay you for that, they told him. He didn't let that stop him from tinkering around in the employer's time. And his managers looked away when they saw him play with the black grease and the dangerous liquids. Because if there was anybody who could come up with a new discovery in an industry that was almost two hundred years old and had been worked on by tens of thousands of extremely intelligent engineers, it was Rusty.

His story was otherworldly. His parents had been refugees, running away from a country to another, figuring out a stable place to bring up their growing family. Using available means to get things done wasn't just an option, it was the bare necessity. As a young child Rusty learned to make fans out of old car engines, washing machines and dishwashers all improvised, the guts of television from eras gone by to create a frankenstein of an entertainment console that nobody but he knew how to repair. He was a machine shop in a single person. You showed him a new equipment, told him what it did and gave him some operational parameters and the theory involved -- after all, despite being a savant, Rusty wasn't a god, he couldn't unravel the decades worth of physics and engineering education just by looking at something -- and he'd putter about, take it apart, fix it back up, in a few days he'd tell you exactly the function of each part, and how one would design a better version of the gadget.

His nickname was quite obvious: he tinkered around with the iron and glass out in the dumps, and thus he was Rusty.

When Rusty was nineteen his family finally settled down. He caught up with the formal education he'd missed out on over two years, applied to college, summarily accepted by the best schools in the area, and excelled the first two years of education. An eagle-eyed professor who saw the man's potential offered him a job at a company he was advising for. A summer worth of seeing him get his hands dirty and they knew he was their man. Full time job offer, effective immediately, they would pay him as much as he'd be given once he'd completed his degree. And in the meantime he could play around with whatever he desired for half the clocked time. An amazing salary, opportunity to work on something he'd always enjoyed, and the freedom to explore his personal interests. It was too great of an offer to let go. After two years of college and four years of formal schooling, he worked as an engineer at an autobile enterprise.

In the three decades he worked as an active engineer, he mentored thousands, got a hundred patents all by himself, and gave a away hundreds more because he didn't see the value in the piece of paper with his name on it. He didn't care for employment opportunities: he was well-aware that a competitor would easily triple his annual salary for him. The company had been kind, they had given him individual freedom, he didn't see the value in running after money. And it wasn't like he needed more of it.

In the later years in his career, the technology he'd spent his life perfecting fell out of favor. He'd be the one to save it, if anything could ever be done.