Fear is a great editor.
I sat in the middle row of Class Six. My posture was perfect. My uniform was clean (Liyen had scrubbed the zinc stains out with lemon juice). My hands were folded on the desk.
Mr. Ngu walked the aisles with a red pen. It looked like a dagger.
We were doing Arithmetic Progression. It was easy stuff. 2, 4, 6, 8... But for me, it was a minefield.
"Question 4," Ngu announced, stopping at my desk.
I looked at my exercise book. I had written the answer: 42. But above it, I had written four lines of unnecessary working. First term = 2. Common difference = 2. Formula: Tn = a + (n-1)d.
I had stripped all the elegance out of the math. I had made it clumsy, plodding, and safe.
Ngu looked at the book. He tapped the page with the red pen. Tap. Tap.
He was looking for a mistake. A missing bracket. A sloppy equals sign. He was looking for the excuse Abang wanted.
I held my breath. Ngu drew a checkmark. Tick.
"Adequate," Ngu whispered.
He moved on. I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding.
This was my life now. I couldn't be the Wizard. I couldn't be the Solar Boy. I had to be the Decimal Point. Small. Essential. Invisible. And perfectly placed.
10:30 AM
The bell rang. The yard filled with dust and noise.
I sat under the flamboyant tree. Collins was playing football with a tennis ball near the Class Five block. He wasn't the goalkeeper anymore. He was a defender. He used his shoulders, his weight. He played ugly, but he didn't drop the ball.
A shadow fell over my knees. Junior.
He sat down next to me. He didn't check for dirt. He was holding a small black box. A Sony Walkman. It was the holy grail of 1999 portable tech. Auto-reverse. Mega Bass.
He put the headphones on his ears. He closed his eyes. He looked peaceful. Isolated from the dust and the poverty.
Then, without opening his eyes, he took the headphones off. He handed them to me.
"Listen," Junior said.
I hesitated. "What is it?"
"Just listen."
I put the foam pads over my ears. The world disappeared. Westlife flooded my brain. Flying Without Wings. The sound was crystal clear. Stereo separation. Deep bass. It sounded like money.
I listened for thirty seconds. It was beautiful. It was also painful. It reminded me that there was a world outside Bamenda. A world where boys didn't plate rusty bolts in vinegar. A world where the biggest problem was a girl breaking your heart, not a Headmaster erasing your name.
I took them off. "It's clear," I said. "Good frequency response."
Junior took the headphones back. "My uncle brought it from Dubai."
He looked at the Walkman. He pressed the Eject button. Click. He flipped the cassette tape.
"He asked about the receipts," Junior said casually.
I stiffened. "Who?"
"My uncle. The Bookman. He asked Abang why the Class Six ledger had so many corrections."
"And?"
"Abang told him it was clerical errors. He said he fixed it."
Junior looked at me. "Abang didn't tell him about the wrench. He didn't tell him about Tashi."
"Why?"
"Because Abang is afraid of my uncle more than he is afraid of your father," Junior said. "If he admits he stole the fees, my uncle will fire him. So Abang eats the secret."
Junior pressed Play. He put the headphones back on.
"You are safe, Nkem," Junior whispered over the music. "For now. But don't make him look stupid again."
He closed his eyes. He went back to Westlife. I went back to the dust.
The shop was in "Cruise Mode."
The Flywheel was spinning. Whir-Whoosh. Whir-Whoosh.
Collins was pedaling. He wasn't sprinting anymore. He had found a rhythm—a slow, steady cadence that he could hold for hours without cramping. I was feeding bolts into the polisher. Tashi was organizing the finished stock into bags.
There was no crisis. No rush order. No inspector banging on the door. Just the work.
Liyen walked in. She was carrying a tray. Tea. And Gateau (fried flour balls).
"Break," Liyen announced.
Collins stopped pedaling. The flywheel hissed as it spun down. We sat on the floor. The tea was hot. The gateau was sweet.
"How is the Union?" Tashi asked, blowing on his tea.
"Quiet," Liyen said. "Florence came back. She bought five more spools. She asked if we can do Navy Blue."
"Can we?"
"I told her Blue takes longer," Liyen said. "I told her the 'chemicals' are imported. She paid a deposit."
Liyen put a 500 franc coin on the counter. "Income," she said.
It was peaceful. For the first time in weeks, my heart rate was below 100. We were drinking tea in a dark shop, surrounded by buckets of acid and scrap metal. But we were drinking tea.
The peace broke at 5:30 PM. A car pulled up. A yellow taxi. But it wasn't a wreck. It was clean.
A man stepped out. He wasn't a mechanic. He wore a shirt and trousers. A civil servant type. He walked into the shop, squinting in the gloom.
"Mr. Tashi?"
Tashi stood up. He put on his Manager face. "I am Tashi."
The man looked around. He saw the bicycle rig. He saw the plating tank. He didn't look impressed. He looked desperate.
"Massa Joe sent me," the man said. "He said you perform miracles on metal."
"We do refurbishment," Tashi corrected.
"I don't need refurbishment," the man said. "I need repair."
He reached into his pocket. He pulled out a Casio Calculator Watch.
It was a classic. The kind with the tiny keypad. But the strap was broken. And the display was blank.
"It fell," the man said. "I took it to the watchmakers in the market. They said throw it away. They said the screen is cracked inside."
He looked at Tashi. "I need the data. I have phone numbers saved in there. Contacts. My entire business is in this watch."
Tashi looked at the watch. "We are industrial platers," Tashi said. "We don't do watches."
"Joe said you fixed his German truck with a flashlight," the man insisted. "He said your boy is a wizard."
Tashi looked at me. I looked at the watch. It wasn't a plating job. It was surgery. If the LCD was cracked, it was dead. But if it was just the connector...
"Let me see," I said.
The man handed it to me. I put on my loupe (which I had salvaged from a broken camera lens). I looked at the screen. No cracks. I shook it. A tiny rattle. The battery contact had snapped. A common failure.
"The brain is alive," I said. "The connection is broken."
"Can you fix it?" the man asked.
"It requires micro-soldering," I said. "And we have no electricity."
The man looked deflated. He reached for the watch.
"But," I said. "We have the Flywheel."
I looked at Tashi. "We can run the generator."
The Generator
We hadn't used the generator since the Eclipse. It was a small 12V DC motor scavenged from a car cooling fan. I had wired it to the bicycle rig as a test, but never used it.
"Collins," I said.
Collins groaned. "More pedaling?"
"Just for ten minutes," I said. "High RPM."
I wired the motor to the flywheel rim. I connected the output to my soldering iron. It wouldn't get fully hot, but it might get hot enough to melt a tiny dot of solder.
"Spin it," I commanded.
Collins pedaled. The flywheel roared. The motor whined. The voltmeter climbed. 8V... 10V... 12V.
My soldering iron tip began to smoke. It was weak heat. But it was heat.
I opened the watch. I found the broken contact. I touched the solder to the joint. Sizzle. It flowed. Just barely.
I closed the case. I pressed the AC button. Beep. The screen flashed: 12:00 01-01.
"It's alive," I said.
The man gasped. He grabbed the watch. He pressed a button. CONTACTS: 50.
"My numbers!" he shouted. "They are there!"
He looked at me. He looked at the bicycle machine. He looked at Collins sweating on the saddle. "Wizards," he whispered.
He reached for his wallet. "How much?"
Tashi stepped in. "For data recovery?" Tashi said smoothly. "Standard rate is 5,000."
The man didn't blink. He handed Tashi a 5,000 franc note. "Thank you," he said. "I will tell my colleagues."
He left.
We stood in the shop. The flywheel spun down into silence.
Tashi held the 5,000 franc note. It wasn't sweat money. It wasn't "rat money." It was Expert Money.
"He called us Wizards," Tashi said quietly.
"Massa Joe told him," I said.
"Reputation," Liyen said from the shadows. "It travels faster than electricity."
I looked at the bicycle rig. We had built it to plate rust. But today, it had powered a computer. We weren't just the "Plating Division" anymore. We were the people you went to when the city said "No."
I opened the ledger. I turned to a new page. I wrote: Asset: Trust. Value: Infinite.
The siege was still there. The batteries were still dead. But the walls felt a little less solid. We were digging sideways. And we were hitting gold.