The box was heavy, but it wasn't the weight of the metal that made my arms tremble; it was the weight of potential.
To the hundreds of children screaming and kicking up dust in the playground, I was just Nkem Mbua, the skinny boy from Class 5 who had been sent to the Headmaster's office for punishment and had somehow returned carrying the trash.
To me, I was carrying the seeds of the Industrial Revolution.
I hugged the cardboard box to my chest. It smelled of mildew and cockroach droppings, a scent I would later associate with the smell of money. Inside, nestled among tangled wires and broken plastic casings, were the organs of dead machines:
Two broken transistor radios (harvestable capacitors).
A cracked motherboard from an ancient calculator (LED display intact).
A tangled mess of copper wire (The Holy Grail).
Three dead speakers (Magnets).
A handful of corroded batteries (Zinc and Carbon paste).
< Inventory Analysis complete, > Gemini murmured, the text scrolling across my peripheral vision like subtitles in a movie only I could see. < Resource Grade: D-minus. However, for 1999 Bamenda, this is a Tier 1 stockpile. The copper purity in the speaker coils is approximately 98%. >
We can work with this, I thought, stepping off the Headmaster's veranda and into the blinding sun.
"Eh! Nkem!"
The voice was loud, cracking with puberty. It came from the direction of the mango tree where the "Big Boys" of Standard 6 usually held court.
I didn't stop. In prison and primary school is just a prison with recess you don't stop for the sharks.
A hand grabbed my shoulder. It was heavy and rough.
I stopped. I turned slowly.
It was Edwin. He was fourteen, held back two years. He had a shadow of a mustache and the kind of muscles you get from carrying cement blocks after school. He was the king of the playground.
"I hear say Headmaster give you meat pie," Edwin said. He didn't speak English. He spoke the deep, aggressive Pidgin of the bully. "Weti the pie dey?"
He looked at my hands, expecting food. He saw the box of junk instead. He frowned.
"I chop am," I lied calmly. "It was sweet. Meat plenty inside."
Edwin's eyes narrowed. He pushed my shoulder. "You chop am alone? You no keep for your senior brother?"
He loomed over me. A circle of his sycophants formed around us, eager for blood.
In my past life my future life I had negotiated with warlords in the Congo for coltan mining rights. I had stared down corporate sharks in boardrooms in Lagos. Edwin was just a boy with insecurity issues and a Vitamin D deficiency.
< Threat Assessment: Moderate. > Gemini intoned. < Opponent: Edwin Tita. Height: 5'6". Weight: 60kg. Weakness: Left knee injury sustained during football last term. Psychological Profile: Needs validation from peers. >
I didn't look at his face. I looked at his knee.
"Ashia for your leg," I said softly in Pidgin. "I see say you di limp small."
Edwin blinked. The aggression faltered for a micro-second. "Weti you talk?"
"The Headmaster said he is looking for the boy who broke the window in Class 3," I said, my voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "He is holding the cane. He said the boy was wearing a red wristband."
I looked pointedly at the dirty red string tied around Edwin's wrist.
It was a lie. A complete fabrication. But misinformation is a weapon.
Edwin covered his wrist instinctively. Fear is a faster reflex than anger.
"You... you tell am say na me?" Edwin stammered, his bullying persona cracking.
"No," I said. "I tell am say I no see anybody. But if I were you, I for go hide that wristband quick-quick."
Edwin looked at the Headmaster's office. He looked at the cane leaning against the window inside. He looked at me.
"You get luck say you chop that pie," Edwin muttered, trying to save face. He shoved me one last time, but it was weak. "Comot for my face."
He turned and limped away, tearing the red string off his wrist as he went. The circle of boys dispersed, disappointed there was no fight.
I walked on.
< Psychological manipulation successful, > Gemini noted. < Cortisol levels stabilizing. You are ruthless, Operator. >
I am efficient, I corrected. I don't have the calories to fight. Talking is cheaper than punching.
I made my way to the back of the school, past the latrines that smelled of ammonia and lime. There was a gap in the fence—a rusted section of barbed wire that had been pulled apart by generations of truants.
I slipped through.
I wasn't going home. Not yet.
If I went home, Tashi would ask what was in the box. He would see "rubbish" and throw it away, or worse, try to sell the copper for beer money.
I needed a laboratory.
The Unfinished Palace
Commercial Avenue Extension
Bamenda is a city of skeletons.
Everywhere you look, there are unfinished houses concrete pillars rising into the sky, steel rods rusting in the rain, grey blocks waiting for money that never comes. They are the monuments of dreams that ran out of cash.
My destination was one of these skeletons. It was meant to be a hotel, abandoned in 1995. It sat on a hill overlooking the Commercial Avenue, a concrete shell reclaimed by weeds and lizards.
I climbed the rough concrete stairs to the second floor. It was cool here, shaded by the slab above. The floor was covered in dust and dried leaves.
This was my office.
I set the box down. I sat on a broken cinder block and wiped the sweat from my forehead.
My stomach growled. The Kumba bread from Auntie Manka had burned off hours ago. The hunger was a dull ache now, a constant background noise like the hum of a refrigerator.
< Energy Warning: Reserves at 22%. > Gemini reminded me. < Recommendation: Conserve movement. Focus on fine motor skills only. >
We work until we drop, I told the AI. Scan the box. What can we build that solves a problem today?
< Problem Identification: >
< 1. Darkness. The local power grid (SONEL) is unstable. Load shedding is frequent. Kerosene is expensive (150 CFA per liter). >
< 2. Battery Cost. Disposable batteries (Tiger Head brand) cost 100 CFA per pair. They last 48 hours in a radio. People throw them away when they drop below 1.1 Volts. >
< Solution Proposal: >
< Construct a Joule Thief circuit. >
I smiled. The Joule Thief.
It was one of the first things I learned in engineering school. A simple, self-oscillating voltage booster. It could take a "dead" battery one with only 0.5 Volts left and step it up to the 3 Volts needed to power an LED.
It was basically a vampire circuit. It sucked the last drops of life out of a battery that everyone else thought was useless.
"Okay," I whispered to the empty concrete room. "Let's make some juju."
I dumped the box out.
Step 1: The Toroid.
I picked up the broken radio circuit board. I needed a ferrite core a small magnetic ring. I found it wrapped in copper wire near the antenna coil.
I used the knife I had stolen from the kitchen (sorry, Ma) to pry it loose. It was a small, dark grey donut, no bigger than a fingernail.
Step 2: The Transformer.
I needed wire. I took the dead speaker. I stabbed the paper cone with my knife and ripped it open. Beneath the magnet was a coil of hair-thin copper wire.
I unwound it carefully. If I snapped it, I was done.
My hands were steady. Gemini was regulating my nervous system, keeping the tremors at bay.
I took two strands of the wire. I wrapped them around the grey donut. Seven turns.
Over, under, through. Over, under, through.
It was meditative.
Step 3: The Transistor.
This was the hard part. I needed an NPN transistor.
I scanned the calculator motherboard.
< Target identified: 2N3904 or equivalent. Quadrant 3. > Gemini highlighted a tiny, three-legged black component on the green board.
I didn't have a soldering iron to desolder it.
I had to be brutal.
I used the knife to carve into the circuit board, cutting the tracks around the transistor. I popped it out, keeping the legs attached to small scraps of the board.
Step 4: The Resistor.
I found a 1k Ohm resistor (brown-black-red stripes) on the radio board. I twisted it off.
Step 5: The Light.
I needed an LED. The calculator had a red LED display, but that wasn't bright enough for a torch.
I dug through the bottom of the box.
There.
Inside the broken casing of a toy car a cheap Chinese import was a single, clear white LED meant to be a headlight.
I ripped it out.
Now, I had the parts. But I had no solder. I had no board.
I had to "Dead Bug" it. (Soldering components directly to each other in the air).
But without solder?
I had to use the "Bamenda Weld" again.
I scavenged a discarded plastic lighter from the floor of the abandoned building. It had a tiny bit of gas left.
I stripped the ends of the wires with my teeth, tasting the bitter copper varnish.
I twisted the transistor legs to the resistor. I twisted the coil wires to the collector and base.
I heated the twisted copper with the lighter until it was red hot, then crushed it together with a flat stone. It wasn't a solder joint. It was a pressure weld. It was ugly. It was fragile.
But physics doesn't care about pretty. Physics only cares about connection.
It took me two hours.
The sun moved across the sky. The shadows in the concrete room grew long.
Finally, I held it in my hand.
It looked like a spider made of copper wire and trash. A tiny, chaotic knot of components.
"The Test," I whispered.
I picked up one of the dead batteries from the box. It was a corroded 'Tiger Head' cell. I had found it in the dust. It probably had 0.6 Volts left. Useless for a radio. Useless for a clock.
I pressed the wires to the top and bottom of the battery.
Flicker.
Then... Light.
A brilliant, piercing white light erupted from the LED. It was blinding in the dim room.
I laughed. A dry, rasping sound.
I had just turned trash into light.
I had built a machine that could run on garbage.
< Circuit efficiency: 78%, > Gemini analyzed. < Output: 15 Lumens. Estimated runtime on dead cell: 48 hours. >
"It's not a circuit," I said, holding the glowing light up like a star. "It's a business."
The Street
6:00 PM
The sun sets fast in the tropics. One minute it's day, the next minute someone has thrown a blanket over the world.
I walked down the Commercial Avenue extension. The streetlights (the few that existed) were dead. NEPA (National Electric Power Authority though we called it SONEL in Cameroon) had taken the light. The whole neighborhood was plunged into darkness.
This was my marketing campaign.
I didn't go home yet. I went to the junction where the Buyam-Sellams (market women) set up their evening tables.
They were selling roasted fish, plantains, and plums. They worked by the light of "Bush Lamps" kerosene tins with a wick that smoked and smelled terrible. The wind kept blowing their flames out.
I walked up to a woman selling roasted corn. Her name was Ma Fomunyuy. She was fanning her charcoal fire, squinting in the gloom.
"Good evening, Ma," I said in polite Pidgin.
She looked down. "Nkem? Weti you di find for night? Go house."
"Ma, darkness too much," I said. "Your lamp di smoke your eye."
"Na so life be, my pikin. Kerosene don dear (expensive)."
I held up my device. I had taped the mess of wires to the dead battery with a piece of old masking tape I found.
"Ma," I said. "I get light. Electric light."
She laughed. "You get torchlight? Battery cost pass gold."
"No be new battery," I said. "Na dead battery. The one you throway yesterday."
I pressed the wire.
Beam.
The white light cut through the smoke of the charcoal fire. It illuminated her tray of corn like a spotlight. It was steady. It was windproof. And it was bright.
Ma Fomunyuy gasped. "Eh! Mami Wata!"
Other traders turned their heads. Light attracts people like moths.
"Weti be that?" a man selling cigarettes asked, stepping closer.
"Na magic lamp," I said, keeping my voice calm. "It eats dead batteries. You know those batteries inside your radio that stop talking? Give them to me. This lamp will eat them and give you light for two days."
"Lie-lie," the man scoffed. "Dead battery na dead battery."
I pointed the light at his face. He shielded his eyes. "True to God, Pa. Bring me a dead battery. I will show you."
He dug into his pocket and pulled out a battered battery from his small radio. "This one die this morning."
I took it. I swapped it into my rig in three seconds.
I pressed the wire.
Light.
The crowd that had gathered went silent.
In a world of scarcity, resurrection is a miracle.
"How much?" Ma Fomunyuy asked immediately. Her business mind was sharp. She saw the value. No kerosene. No buying new batteries. Just using the trash.
I hesitated. I hadn't priced it.
< Valuation Analysis, > Gemini interjected. < Cost of materials: 0 CFA (Scavenged). Labor: 2 hours. Value of Kerosene saved per week: 500 CFA. Market Price Recommendation: 1,500 CFA. >
"One thousand five," I said.
"Eh! You want kill person?" Ma Fomunyuy shouted, but she didn't look away from the light. "I pay 500."
"Ma, this light will save you 500 francs of kerosene in one week," I argued, channeling my inner 2025 salesman. "And it does not smell. It does not blow out in the wind."
"800," she countered.
"1,200. Last price. Or I give it to Pa here." I pointed to the cigarette seller.
"Bring am," she snapped. She reached into her wrapper and pulled out a wad of greasy notes.
She counted 1,200 francs.
She handed it to me.
I handed her the light.
She shone it on her corn. "Eh, see my corn! Customer go see am fine now."
"But Ma," I warned. "Be careful. It is naked wire. Don't pour water on it."
"I sabi, I sabi. Go."
I walked away.
I had 1,200 francs in my pocket.
It wasn't a fortune. It was about $2.00.
But I had made it from trash.
And I still had enough parts in the box to make two more.
< Transaction complete, > Gemini said. < Capital acquisition successful. Current funds: 1,200 CFA. Suggestion: Purchase food. >
No, I thought. We reinvest. Tomorrow, I buy real solder and a soldering iron. Then we mass produce.
The Compound
8:00 PM
The house was dark. The power was still out.
I walked into the parlor. Tashi was sitting in the dark, smoking a cigarette. The cherry of the cigarette glowed red like a demon's eye.
Liyen was sitting on a stool, trying to mend a torn shirt by the light of a single candle.
"You are late," Tashi said. His voice was thick. He had been drinking.
"I was at school," I said. "Studying."
"Studying in the dark?" Tashi scoffed. "You think you are white man?"
I didn't answer. I walked to my corner and put my bag down.
I felt the money in my pocket. 1,200 francs.
If I showed Tashi, he would take it. He would say, "A child does not hold money." He would add it to his gambling fund for Saturday.
I had to hide it.
"Did you bring the book?" Tashi asked.
"What book?"
"The football book. For Saturday."
"I told you, Papa. It is in my head. Manchester United. 2-0."
He grunted. "Razor came to the market today. He was laughing at me. He said I ran away."
I felt the tension in the room. Tashi's pride was bleeding. A man like Tashi would burn his own house down to save face.
"Let him laugh," I said. "On Saturday, you will laugh."
"If you are wrong, Nkem..." Tashi's voice dropped. It was a threat. "If I lose that money... if I look like a fool..."
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to.
The violence was there, hovering just under the surface.
Liyen looked up from her sewing. "Leave the boy, Tashi. He is tired."
"He acts like he is the man of the house," Tashi muttered. He stood up and stumbled into the bedroom. "I am going to sleep. This darkness is useless."
The door slammed.
I let out a breath.
I went to my mother. She was squinting, struggling to thread the needle in the flickering candlelight.
"Ma," I whispered.
She jumped. "Nkem. You scared me."
"Close your eyes," I said.
"Why?"
"Just close them."
She closed her eyes.
I reached into my pocket. I hadn't sold all the lights. I had built a second, smaller one using the last transistor.
I placed it on the table next to her sewing machine.
I touched the wire to the battery.
Light.
"Open."
Liyen opened her eyes.
She gasped. The room was suddenly bathed in a cool, clean light. It illuminated the fabric, the needle, the dust on the floor.
"Nkem..." she whispered. "What is this?"
"It is a Zombie Light," I said. "I made it at school."
She touched the glowing LED with a trembling finger. "It is electric? But we have no power."
"It runs on the dead batteries Papa throws away," I explained.
She looked at me. Her eyes filled with tears. Not of sadness, but of shock. She was seeing me. Really seeing me.
She realized, perhaps for the first time, that her son was not just a child. He was something else.
"You made this?" she asked.
"Yes, Ma. For you. So you can sew."
She grabbed me and pulled me into her arms. She buried her face in my neck. She was crying.
"You are too smart," she whispered into my ear. "You are too smart for this place, Nkem. They will eat you alive."
"No, Ma," I said, hugging her back, feeling the sharp bones of her shoulders. "I will eat them."
She pulled back and looked at me, wiping her tears. "Hide it. If your father sees it, he will sell it."
"I know."
"Go to sleep."
I went to my mat.
I lay down in the dark, watching the beam of the light I had given her. She was sewing faster now, the needle flashing in the white glow.
I was exhausted. My body felt like it had been beaten with sticks. The hunger was back, sharp and biting.
Gemini, I thought. Status.
< Energy critical. Body mass index falling. You are cannibalizing muscle tissue for glucose. This is not sustainable, Operator. >
I know, I thought. But we have 1,200 francs. Tomorrow, we buy solder. We build five lights. We sell them for 6,000. We buy food. We buy tools.
< And Saturday? >
Saturday is the tipping point, I thought. If Tashi wins, we survive another month. If he loses...
I closed my eyes.
I drifted into a restless sleep, dreaming of 2025.
In the dream, I was back in the riots. The tear gas was white. The soldiers were shouting.
But this time, when I looked down at my chest, I didn't see a bullet wound.
I saw a hole filled with copper wire and a glowing LED, powered by a heart that refused to stop beating.