The shop was no longer a quiet laboratory. It had become a hive.
Six sewing machines sat on the floor, their black iron bodies reflecting the cool light of the solar tubes. Tashi was busy with a rag, polishing the wood of a customer's machine while explaining the "miracle of the electrons" to a group of men who had gathered to watch.
But the real action was happening in the street.
Liyen had organized a meeting. She didn't call it a protest, but in Bamenda, when forty women sit on wooden stools in a circle outside a shop, the authorities take notice. They were the "Power Seamstresses." They had come to hear the new rules of the market.
"If we have the motor," Liyen said, her voice carrying over the noise of the traffic, "we have the speed. But speed without a plan is just a race to the bottom. If Ma Mary sells a school uniform for 2,000, and Auntie Manka sells for 1,500 because she is faster, by next month, we will all be begging for bread."
She held up a piece of paper a list of fixed prices we had drafted together the night before.
"We stand together," Liyen declared. "One price for the town. And one day a week, we use the motors to sew for the orphans at the Mbingo mission. For free. We show the town that this light is a blessing, not just a business."
The women cheered. It was a rhythmic, clapping sound that felt like the beating heart of the quarter.
< Sociological Impact: > Gemini noted. < You are witnessing the formation of a guild. This is the foundation of middle-class stability. By stabilizing the price, Liyen is ensuring the technological gains aren't swallowed by a price war. >
I sat at my bench, working on Auntie Manka's machine. I was installing a "Safety Cut-off" a simple fuse I'd made from a thin strand of copper wire.
"Nkem," a voice whispered from the back window.
It was Collins. He looked dusty and out of breath. He had been running.
"The Yamaha boys," Collins gasped, leaning against the frame. "They no di look the shop again. They di look the houses."
"What do you mean?"
"They di ask which compound get the motor machine," Collins said. "I see Razor for Small Market. He di talk with the kerosene boys. They carry bottles, Nkem. Not for drinking. For fire."
I felt a cold shiver. Sabotage.
The Bookman realized he couldn't stop the shop Uncle Lucas had too many guns for that. But the individual houses? The sewing machines in the dark corners of the rented compounds? Those were soft targets. If a few machines "accidentally" caught fire, the women would be terrified to use them. The "Wizard Boy's Magic" would become a "Curse of Fire."
"Collins," I said, putting down my iron. "Who is the first woman on the list to get her machine today?"
"Ma Mary," Collins said. "She live for the compound behind the Total station."
"Go there. Now. Tell her to lock her door. Tell her not to use the machine tonight."
"I go go!" Collins turned and vanished into the crowd.
I couldn't tell Tashi. He was too happy, too busy being the "Manager." I couldn't tell Liyen; she was too invested in her Union. If I told them, the panic would destroy everything we had built in a week.
< Strategy: > Gemini pulsed. < We cannot guard forty houses. We need a 'Honey Pot'. We need to lure them to a place we control. >
I looked at Liyen's machine. It was sitting in our parlor at home. It was the most famous machine in town. If the Bookman wanted to send a message, he would strike the source.
That night, I didn't sleep.
I stayed in the parlor, sitting in the dark. I had disconnected the motor from the machine and replaced it with a dummy a hollow plastic shell I'd molded. Inside the shell, I hadn't put a motor.
I had put a Capacitive Discharge Alarm.
If anyone touched the metal casing of the machine with a conductive tool like a knife or a crowbar it would trigger a 110-decibel siren I'd harvested from a broken car alarm.
< Audio frequency: 2.5 kHz. > Gemini noted. < Sufficient to cause physical pain in a confined space. >
The hours crawled by. The only sound was the scratching of a mouse in the thatch and the distant, lonely howl of a stray dog.
Then, at 2:15 AM, the gate creaked.
It was a slow, deliberate sound. Not the wind.
I moved to the shadows behind the cupboard.
The parlor window shifted. It was a jalousie window easy to pry open from the outside if you knew how to tilt the glass. A hand reached in. I saw the glint of a blade in the moonlight.
Two shadows slipped into the room.
They smelled of kerosene.
"Fast-fast," a voice whispered. It wasn't Razor. It was a younger boy, probably one of the "market rats" Razor used for dirty work. "Pour the oil for the machine. Light am, make we comot."
They moved toward the table. They didn't see me.
The boy with the kerosene bottle reached out to steady himself on the machine. His hand gripped the metal "motor" casing.
SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
The siren exploded in the small room. It wasn't just loud; it was a wall of sound that felt like it was ripping through my eardrums.
The boy screamed, dropping the kerosene bottle. The liquid splashed across the floor thankfully, it hadn't been lit yet.
"Juju! Juju!" he shrieked, clutching his ears.
The second boy turned to run, but he tripped over Liyen's footstool in the dark.
I stepped out from behind the cupboard, shining a high-intensity LED torch directly into their faces.
"The light doesn't like thieves," I said, my voice barely audible over the siren, but the light was enough to blind them.
Tashi burst out of the bedroom, holding a heavy wooden club. He was shouting, confused and terrified. Liyen was right behind him, clutching her wrapper.
"Nkem! Weti be that?" Tashi yelled.
I switched off the siren. The silence that followed was even more painful than the noise.
The two boys were curled in a ball on the floor, weeping from the shock and the ringing in their ears.
Liyen looked at the spilled kerosene. She looked at the boys. She recognized one of them he was the son of a woman who sold pepper in the market.
"Sunday?" Liyen whispered, her voice trembling. "You come for burn my house? Your mother is in my Union!"
The boy, Sunday, looked up, his face wet with tears. "Razor... Razor say if we no do am, they go kill us. He say the machine na devil thing."
Liyen didn't scream. She didn't hit him. She walked over, picked up the kerosene bottle, and handed it back to him.
"Go," she said.
"Mami?" Tashi asked, shocked. "We must call the police!"
"No," Liyen said, her eyes hard. "Let him go. Let him go back to Razor and tell him that the Union does not burn. Tell him that if he wants to fight, he should fight me, not the machines."
The boys scrambled out of the window, vanishing into the night.
The next morning, the story was different.
It wasn't a story of a fire. It was a story of the "Machine that Screams."
Liyen didn't wait for the rumors to grow. She marched to the market at 8:00 AM, leading forty women. They didn't go to their stalls. They went to "The Spot" the bar where Razor and the kerosene boys hung out.
They stood outside in total silence.
The men inside the bar, the tough guys with the gold chains, looked out the window. They saw forty mothers, forty grandmothers, forty sisters. They saw the women who cooked their food and sewed their clothes.
Liyen stepped forward.
"Razor!" she shouted.
Razor stepped out onto the veranda of the bar, his eyes still red and irritated from the chili spray I'd used on him days before.
"Weti you want, woman?"
"I have a message for the Bookman," Liyen said. "Tell him that we are the Union. We have the light now. If he tries to burn one machine, he burns us all. And if he burns us, who will sew the uniforms for his children? Who will sell the food in the market? We will shut this town down."
The market women behind her let out a low, vibrating hum a traditional sign of female defiance.
Razor looked at the crowd. He looked at the women's faces. He was a thug, but he wasn't stupid. He knew that even the Bookman couldn't survive a total boycott by the market women.
He didn't answer. He turned and went back inside the bar.
Liyen turned to her Union.
"Back to work," she said.
That evening, I sat with Liyen in the shop. We were working together. I was soldering, and she was using her notebook to track the payments of the women.
"You did well, Ma," I said.
"We did well, Nkem," she corrected me. She looked at her motorized machine. "But this is just the beginning. The Bookman is like a weed. You cut the top, but the roots are deep."
"We'll pull the roots," I promised.
< Evolution Update: > Gemini noted. < Liyen has achieved 'Political Capital'. Tashi has 'Social Capital'. Collins has 'Information Capital'. You are no longer just a boy with a gadget; you are the architect of a rising class. >
I looked at the "Millennium Hub" blueprints on my desk.
The sewing machines were the first wave. But to really win, I needed to give the town something the Bookman couldn't touch.