The first few minutes of the drive passed in silence.
Jaylen stared at the SUV’s dashboard with intense curiosity.
Not envy.
Curiosity.
His eyes moved from one digital display to another as though he were trying to figure out how every component communicated.
“You really built a company?” Jaylen finally asked.
“I did.”
“What kind?”
“Renewable energy. Battery systems. Solar storage. Managing power grids.”
Jaylen turned toward him.
“Batteries that talk to each other?”
Wendell glanced over.
“That’s one way of describing it.”
“If one battery fails, the others shouldn’t all stop working,” Jaylen said thoughtfully. “The power should just go around it.”
Wendell tightened his hands on the steering wheel.
“Go around it?”
Jaylen nodded.
“Like ants.”
“Ants?”
“Ants don’t have one ant telling every other ant exactly what to do. They leave little signals. The others respond. If one path doesn’t work, they find another.”
Wendell stared at the road.
For eighteen months, Hayes Renewables had been spending tens of millions of dollars trying to solve a strangely similar problem.
Their battery networks performed beautifully in laboratories and cities.
But rural environments were different.
Heat.
Dust.
Humidity.
Poor connectivity.
Unreliable equipment.
Sometimes one faulty reading caused an entire local energy system to shut itself down even when most of it was perfectly functional.
The company’s engineers had developed increasingly complicated solutions.
More sensors.
More software.
More central control.
More expensive hardware.
Yet the problem kept returning.
And the largest infrastructure contract of Wendell’s career depended on fixing it.
“How old are you again?” he asked.
“Thirteen.”
“You sound like one of my engineers.”
Jaylen smiled faintly.
“Maybe your engineers sound like kids who read books about ants.”
Wendell almost laughed.
Then the road narrowed.
The houses became smaller.
Cars sat motionless in yards with weeds growing around the tires.
Porches sagged.
Laundry hung still beneath the oppressive heat.
Jaylen pointed ahead.
“Here.”
Wendell slowed beside a small blue house behind a wire fence.
The paint was peeling.
One window had cardboard covering part of it.
