The first shift
An apprentice runs her own line for one night and learns what power costs.
“I built beautifully. I just built it cold.”
Too much line
They give you the north terrace and an allocation and they do not tell you which is the constraint. I laid eleven drill heads because eleven fitted. Master Edda watched me do it, said nothing, and made a mark in her book. By the time the belts were down, the board showed my draw at a hundred and forty per cent of what the Basin had promised me.
The offer
Eleven minutes in, the Stacks bid for my block. A gatehouse terminal, a number four times what a furnace can pay, and one shift to decide. Everyone in the Reach has taken that money at least once. Edda finally spoke: “Take it if you have already banked something. You have not banked anything.”
Dawn
I refused the bid, shed four drills, and ran two furnaces instead of five. Two bars by dawn. The crew on the east terrace took the money and struck nothing, and when the jumpers came down their haul road their fences were dark, because they had sold the power that ran them. They still made more that night than I did. They will not make more this season.
A note in the margin
Edda corrected one detail in this account. She did not watch me place eleven drills out of patience. She was counting how long it would take me to notice. Eleven minutes, she wrote. Same as the bid.