One week later...
Victory, I discovered, had a shelf life of exactly twelve hours.
I woke up on the concrete floor of the Lab, shivering. The wool blanket I had pulled over myself smelled of mildew and old sweat. The air in the room was stagnant dead still.
For two months, I had slept to the sound of the future: the hum of the inverter, the whir of cooling fans, the rhythmic thump-thump of the compressor. It was the white noise of success.
Now, there was only silence.
I sat up, my joints popping. I looked at the Battery Bank.
It was a graveyard. The six heavy-duty CAT batteries were silent, swollen corpses. The grey plastic casings were distended, bulging outward like bloated bellies from the heat of the Eclipse discharge.
I crawled over and touched the side of Cell #1. It was still warm.
"Gemini," I whispered, my voice thick with sleep. "Autopsy."
< Analysis: Critical Failure. > The blue text floated in the gloom, indifferent to my despair. < Electrolyte levels in Cells 1 through 6 have boiled off. Plate warping detected. Sulfation levels are catastrophic. We didn't just drain them, Operator. We cooked them. >
I rested my forehead against the warm plastic.
We had burned the furniture to heat the house. We had survived the night, but we had destroyed the engine. To replace this bank would cost two hundred thousand francs.
I looked at the petty cash tin on the desk.
Contents: 1,500 Francs.
The sound of the front padlock rattling echoed through the shop.
I walked out. Tashi was pushing the door open. The morning light hit him, ruthless and revealing. His "Manager" shirt usually starched stiff enough to cut butter was limp and wrinkled. He hadn't shaved.
He looked at the dead fluorescent tubes overhead.
"Can we turn them on?" he asked. His voice was small.
"No, Papa. The bank is dead."
Tashi nodded. He swallowed hard, composing his face into the mask of the 'Big Man.'
"Open the shutter," he said. "The world is watching."
He hauled on the chain. Clatter-crash.
The shutter rose. And the shame began.
They were waiting. A line of six people.
Pa Oben, the taxi driver.
A young barber with his clippers.
Two students.
They stood with money in their hands, their faces lit with expectation. They were here for the magic.
"Massa Tashi!" Oben shouted, stepping onto the veranda. He held up a motorcycle battery. "You see me? First in line! My taxi die for Hill Top. I need the fast charge. The 'Solar Juice'!"
Tashi stepped out. He looked at the coin in Oben's hand. 500 francs.
I saw Tashi's Adam's apple bob. He wanted that coin. He needed that coin to buy bread.
"Pa Oben," Tashi said, forcing a smile that looked painful. "My brother. We... we are resting the machines today."
Oben froze. "Resting?"
"Maintenance," Tashi lied, wiping his sweaty palms on his trousers. "The sun was too strong yesterday. We have to... calibrate."
"Calibrate?" Oben frowned. "But I have a charter to Bafut. I cannot drive without a battery. Tashi, I relied on you."
"Come back Monday," Tashi pleaded.
Oben looked at the dark shop behind Tashi. He looked at the dead lights. He looked at me, standing in the shadows with soot on my face. The reverence in his eyes from last week evaporated, replaced by the sharp annoyance of a working man inconvenienced.
"You hold the sun last week, Tashi," Oben spat, turning away. "Today you cannot charge a 12-volt battery? Make you no waste my time."
He walked back to his taxi.
"I go to the Bookman's station," Oben shouted back over his shoulder. "His generator is loud, but it works!"
The other customers looked at each other. They pocketed their money. They walked away.
Tashi stood there, watching the dust settle. He looked like a statue cracking under its own weight.
"It takes months to build a customer," Tashi whispered. "And one morning to lose him."
At 08:30 AM, Liyen stormed in.
She didn't bounce. She marched. She was wearing her Union sash, but her face was a mask of cold fury. She slammed her handbag onto the glass counter.
"They know," she said.
Tashi looked up from his empty ledger. "Who knows?"
"The traders," Liyen hissed. "I went to Emeka at the Old Park. The Nigerian distributor."
"He refused to sell?"
"He tried to hide," Liyen said. "I walked into his warehouse. I saw the Moon Brand thread. Stacks of it. Floor to ceiling. I put the cash on the table. I said, 'Five boxes, Emeka.'"
She leaned over the counter, her eyes blazing.
"He wouldn't look at me, Tashi. He started wiping a clean spot on his desk. He said, 'Madame, that stock is sold.' I said, 'To who? I don't see anyone loading it.' He said, 'It is spoken for.'"
"So he is holding it," Tashi said.
"I didn't stop there," Liyen continued. "I went around the counter. I grabbed his shirt. I said, 'Emeka, look me in the eye. Who bought the thread?'"
"Liyen!" Tashi gasped. "You grabbed a man?"
"He was shaking, Tashi! A grown man, shaking like a leaf. He whispered to me. He said, 'The Chairman. He sent his brother. They paid double, Madame. Cash. For everything. Thread. Needles. Elastic. And they told me if I sell one spool to the Union... my warehouse burns down tonight.'"
The silence in the shop was heavy.
This wasn't a shortage. This was an embargo.
"He has circled the wagons," I said. "He knows he can't fight the light, so he is fighting the logistics."
At noon, Collins arrived, sweating and pale.
"Don't go outside," he panted.
"Why?" Tashi asked.
"Just don't. It hurts to look."
We walked out anyway. Fifty meters down the street, at the Bookman's kerosene kiosk, there was a riot. Not of anger, but of commerce. A line of a hundred people snaked down the road.
A new sign had been nailed to the kiosk. Fresh white paint on black wood:
ECLIPSE SPECIAL
KEROSENE: 150 FRANCS
LIGHT FOR THE POOR
150 Francs.
My stomach dropped. That was below the wholesale cost.
"He is dumping," I whispered. "Predatory pricing."
Tashi looked at the sign. He looked at the line of people our people queueing up to buy the cheap fuel.
"He is bleeding money," Tashi said. "He loses 100 francs on every liter."
"He has millions to lose," I said. "We have 1,500 francs."
"He is suffocating us," Tashi said.
We retreated into the shop. We locked the door. The mood was funeral.
"We need power," I said. "If we sit in the dark tonight, we admit defeat. The people will say Tashi's magic was a one-day wonder."
"The batteries are dead, Nkem," Tashi said, sitting with his head in his hands.
"Not dead," I said. "Sulfated. The lead sulfate crystals have hardened on the plates. It's like... arterial plaque in a heart."
"Can we fix it?"
"We can try Chemical Desulfation," I said. "But we need chemicals. Specifically, Magnesium Sulfate."
"What is that?"
"Epsom Salt," I said. "It dissolves the crystals. And we need distilled water. And we need fresh acid."
Tashi checked his pockets. He pulled out a crumpled 500 franc note. Liyen added 1,000 francs.
"1,500," Tashi said. "Is it enough?"
"For real chemicals? No," I said. "For the pharmacy stuff... maybe."
I sent Collins to the mechanic shops to beg for "old battery water" acid drained from dead car batteries. It was dirty, full of lead particles, but it was acidic.
I took the 1,500 francs and went to the Mission Pharmacy.
It was a clean, cool place that smelled of antiseptic. The pharmacist, Mr. Agbor, looked over his glasses at me.
"Epsom salts?" he asked. "For a bath? Or for a laxative?"
"For a project," I said. "I need a kilo."
"A kilo? Boy, Epsom salt is imported. A small packet is 800 francs."
I looked at the money in my hand. 1,500 francs. If I bought two packets, we would have no money for food.
"Give me one packet," I said.
I bought one packet of Epsom salt (800 Frs).
I bought a bottle of distilled water intended for mixing baby formula (500 Frs).
Remaining balance: 200 Francs.
I walked back to the shop. I felt heavy.
One packet wasn't enough for six huge truck batteries. It was barely enough for one.
By 4:00 PM, the backyard of the shop had been transformed into a hazardous waste zone.
We laid out plastic sheets. We lined up the six swollen batteries.
Collins returned with a jerrycan of black, murky liquid.
"The mechanic gave it for free," Collins said. "He said it is poison."
"It is," I said.
I looked at Tashi. "Papa, we have to filter this. We need to get the lead chunks out."
We used an old t-shirt stretched over a bucket. We poured the black sludge through it. The smell was overpowering rotten eggs and stinging sulfur.
< Warning: > Gemini flashed. < Hydrogen Sulfide gas detected. Prolonged exposure causes dizziness and pulmonary edema. Ventilation required. >
"Tie your shirts over your faces," I commanded.
We worked in the mud. Me, Tashi, and Collins.
We tipped the heavy batteries over, draining the remaining electrolyte. It hissed when it hit the ground, killing the grass instantly.
Then came the "Wash."
I mixed Liyen's baking soda with water.
I poured it into the first battery.
WHOOSH.
Grey foam erupted from the vents. The battery shook.
"It's exploding!" Collins yelled, jumping back.
"It's neutralizing!" I shouted. "Hold it steady!"
We did this for hours. My back screamed. My hands, covered in heavy rubber gloves, were sweating and cramping.
We were not engineers. We were alchemists playing with death in the mud.
By sunset, we had "washed" three batteries.
But we had run out of distilled water.
And we had used all the Epsom salt on the first battery.
"What do we do?" Tashi asked, looking at the empty packet. "The other two?"
"We use boiled rain water," I said. "And... we pray the baking soda was enough."
It was a compromised solution. A hack on top of a hack.
"This is dangerous, Nkem," Tashi whispered, looking at the bubbling cells. "If we charge these... and the pressure builds..."
"We have no choice, Papa," I said. "We need light."
We hooked the first battery up to the charger.
I set the voltage to 15V a high-voltage pulse to break the crystals.
The battery began to hum. A low, angry sound.
Inside the plastic casing, I could hear bubbling. Gloop. Gloop.
"It is eating," I said.
We sat in the dirt, watching the black box.
We were tired. We were broke.
And we were waiting for a bomb to either detonate or deliver salvation.