An efficiency-enhanced, three-terminal, bi-junction thermoelectric device driven by independently-adjustable parameters of temperature and voltage. Negative expressions of trust are used to reduce the trust of entities. Request failure detection mechanisms may be built into the custom wire-level communication protocol so that a requesting thread detects a failed request much sooner than if the thread utilized a standard communication protocol and relied on the client computer operating system for notification of failed requests. The root port is reset to force training of the first device and the second device.