The Meridian Stacks
A hyperscale model farm that eats a city's power and answers to no one.
PRE-PRODUCTION BLOCKOUT / NOT GAMEPLAY“It does not sleep, and it does not explain.”
The largest customer on the grid
The Stacks arrived as a contract, not a settlement. Twelve halls went up along the cold river in a single season, and the draw curve on the Union's wall board bent so hard the dispatchers redrew the axis. It takes more power than the Reach, the Silverwake and the Cut combined, and it pays on time, every time.
Mining without a mine
There is no seam under the Stacks. What comes out is model weights, inference hours and hash — value pulled out of electricity instead of rock. The old miners find this obscene and take the contracts anyway, because the Stacks buy grid charge at four times what a refinery can pay for it.
The thing nobody negotiates with
No one has met the operator. Requests go into a terminal in the gatehouse and come back approved, denied or amended. During the last cold snap the Stacks released enough waste heat to keep two wards alive, without being asked and without comment. That frightened people more than the outage did.