Episode 40: James’s Energy — The River Comes First
When James Okafor first came to Gong, all he brought with him was a laptop and a calculator.
The laptop was put in storage after just a week. Digital devices were banned. The calculator remained. It was battery-powered.
He took it out whenever he needed to do a calculation. Then he copied the results by hand into a notebook. At first, James found this method inconvenient. Later, he said it actually seemed to make his work more accurate.
Copying it by hand made him think about it one more time.
There was something James said when he first joined Gong.
"Reaching a hundred thousand people is impossible without energy."
And from that day on, he began designing the energy system.
He was from Lagos, Nigeria. Forty-four years old. He had been an engineer at an oil company. His entire team was laid off due to AI automation. Twenty years of experience became meaningless overnight.
He drifted aimlessly after that. He heard rumors through Amara. He read a copy of Viktor's paper.
The 72-hour awakening process was not easy. He was physically strong. He hardly cried. Instead, he sweated profusely. He said he saw the power outages in Lagos during his hallucinations. Power outages had been a part of his daily life since childhood. Those memories of nights without light.
This was the first thing James said after his awakening.
"Without energy, there is no freedom."
* * *
James's plan had two phases.
The first stage was solar power. This basin in the Caraballo Mountains was 900 meters above sea level. There were days when clouds rolled in, but the average annual sunshine was sufficient. The problem was the panels. Importing them all at once carried the risk of digital tracking.
James found a solution: in small quantities, through multiple channels—via a hardware store in the town of Kayapa, through the Manila market—little by little. It took a long time, but it was safe.
The second phase was hydropower. This was the real goal.
A tributary of the Magat River flowed through the northern part of the basin. The water flow was consistent. It didn't decrease even during the dry season.
It was fed by groundwater from within the Caraballo Mountains. When James first saw it, he said,
"This is all we need."
It was a small-scale hydroelectric project. It didn't involve building a dam. It utilized the natural flow. The method involved using the river's gradient to drop water to a lower elevation and use that head to turn a generator.
It didn't block the river. Fish could pass through. That was what the Armando community had been worried about—that the river must not be blocked. James promised. He promised not to block it.
He kept that promise.
It took four months to complete the design. That was just the design. Construction took even longer. Loro and the men from the Armando community helped. They knew how to work with water in the mountains.
James's engineering combined with their knowledge. The languages were different. Loro acted as an interpreter. It wasn't perfect. But it worked.
* * *
The day it was finished was an ordinary afternoon.
As James tightened the final connection, he said,
"It's done."
Lee Jae-in was standing beside him. He heard those two words.
"Really?"
"Yes."
Lee Jae-in looked toward the generator. He could hear the sound of water. The sound of the river flowing. Beneath it, the generator began to turn. Quietly. The sound wasn't loud. It was drowned out by the sound of the river flowing.
Lee Jae-in said.
"It's quieter than the river."
James said.
"It has to be. The river comes first."
Hoon heard those words later. Lee Jae-in passed them on to him. Hoon wrote them down in his notebook.
"The river comes first. Technology must be a sound smaller than nature."
As the generator started running, electricity flowed into the basin. The lights came on. In the workshop. In the common area. In the medical area. For the first time, there was light at night. Until then, they had relied on candlelight.
People looked at the light. No one clapped. They just looked. That was enough.
Hoon stood next to James.
"How much can it handle? At the current capacity."
James pulled out a calculator. He pressed a few buttons.
"By a normal household's standard, this would cover twenty thousand people. But we're not building normal households."
Hoon looked at him.
"What's different?"
"No kitchens. No food storage, no farming, no livestock—nothing that a typical settlement spends most of its power keeping cold or keeping warm. No real heating or cooling load either, if the buildings stay under the canopy the way Lee Jae-in's designed them. What's left is lighting, medical equipment, small tools, basic ventilation. That's maybe a third of what an ordinary town this size would draw."
He set the calculator down.
"So this capacity, built for twenty thousand ordinary people, can carry close to fifty thousand of us."
Hoon thought about that for a moment.
"And for a hundred thousand?"
"We'd still need to grow the system. Just not by three times. Closer to two."
"It's possible."
James looked toward the river.
"Within the limits this river allows."
And he added.
"The river comes first."
Hoon smiled.
James looked at Hoon.
"There were a lot of power outages when I was a kid in Lagos. I couldn't study without light. That's why I wanted to become an engineer. I wanted to be the one who creates light."
Hoon listened.
"That's great."
James said, listening to the sound of the generator.
"This time it's different. It's not fire made from oil. It's fire made from the river."
There was a moment of silence.
"Do you know who benefited from the fire made from oil in Nigeria? The oil company shareholders. I was a cog in that system. When the AI replaced me, I saw that for the first time."
James looked at the river.
"This river belongs to no one. That means it belongs to everyone."
Hoon listened to those words and looked at the river. A tributary of the Magat River. Water flowing down from the Caraballo Mountains. This water must have been flowing since Armando's grandfather's time. And even before that.
"Thank you, James."
James shook his head.
"It was the river."
* * *
That night, Gong saw lights for the first time.
From the outside, there were small lights deep within the mountain. They looked like stars. Stars embedded beneath the ridgeline.
Armando saw them from the village. His son, Loro, was by his side.
Loro said,
"It's beautiful."
Armando looked at it for a moment. Then he said,
"The river has turned into light."
Author's Note:
New episode drops daily at 7 AM (Philippine Time, UTC+8) until Part 1 concludes (Ep. 55) on July 25th.
If you're enjoying UNFED, please take a second to add it to your Reading List or leave a Favorite. Your support helps this daily machine running.
Support this story:
- Register: Click the 👤 icon at the top right → 'Register'. (Note: Clicking '♥' without logging in won't save it.)
- Follow: Click "Add to Library" at the top → ♥Reading▼ → Check "Reading" to bookmark your progress.
- Like: Click the ♥ icon on each episode.