Success acts like a beacon. It shines a light into the dark corners of a city, and while it draws in customers and admirers, it also attracts predators who do not need to shout to be heard.
The Saturday afternoon sun was beginning to lose its harsh edge, casting long, golden parallelograms across the tiled floor of the shop. The frantic rush for the cheap thread had finally subsided. The shelves were stocked. The solar inverter hummed with a contented, rhythmic click. Tashi was behind the counter, humming a Makossa tune, wiping down the glass with a rag. He looked like a man who had conquered his world.
I was in the back room, seated at my workbench. My hands were busy with a coil of copper tubing, but my mind was wrestling with the thermodynamics of gas compression. I was trying to design a way to retrofit a vehicle compressor to run on a static solar bank. It was an engineering puzzle that required absolute focus.
Then the bell chimed.
It was not the erratic jangle of a customer in a rush. It was a single, deliberate note.
The atmosphere in the shop shifted instantly. It was a change in pressure, sudden and absolute, like the air drop before a thunderstorm. Tashi stopped humming. The click of the inverter seemed to grow louder in the silence.
I put down my wrench. I stood up and looked through the wire mesh partition.
A man had walked in.
He did not look like the people of Bamenda. He did not have the dust of the red earth on his shoes. He did not have the frantic energy of the market. He was clean. Impeccably, terrifyingly clean.
He wore a grey suit cut from fine wool, despite the tropical heat. It fit him with a tailored precision that spoke of money, but not the flashy, loud money of the Bookman. This was old money. Government money. He wore wire-rimmed glasses that caught the light, hiding his eyes. He carried a leather folio tucked under his arm, thin and elegant, nothing like the battered briefcases of the Council tax collectors.
He stood in the center of the shop and simply looked.
He looked at the solar panels visible through the window. He looked at the row of sewing machines waiting for pickup. He looked at the queue of batteries charging on the back wall. He did not look impressed. He looked clinical. He was observing the shop the way a biologist observes a petri dish.
Tashi straightened his shirt. He sensed the danger. Tashi had the street instinct of a gambler; he knew when a shark had entered the water.
"Welcome, Sir," Tashi said. His voice was a little too high, a little too eager. "Can I help you? We have lights. We have batteries."
The man turned his head slowly. He looked at Tashi, but it felt like he was looking through him.
"I am looking for the Engineer," the man said.
His voice was soft, barely a whisper. It carried a heavy French accent, the clipped, precise diction of the administration in Yaoundé. It was the voice of the Capital.
Tashi hesitated. "I am the Manager. Tashi Mbua."
"I know who you are, Monsieur Tashi," the man said polite but dismissive. "I did not ask for the Manager. I asked for the Engineer."
Tashi swallowed hard. He pointed a trembling finger toward the back room.
"Nkem!"
I took a deep breath. I wiped the grease from my hands onto my shorts. I walked out from behind the partition.
The man turned his gaze on me. He didn't smile. He didn't frown. He didn't show the usual surprise adults showed when they realized the "wizard" was a child. He studied me. He looked at my hands, calloused from the soldering iron. He looked at my eyes.
"I am Monsieur Emile," he said. "I work for the Bureau of National Documentation."
< Intelligence Alert: > Gemini's voice exploded in my mind, flashing a bright, urgent red across my vision. < CNER. Centre National d'Études et de Recherches. Designation: Domestic Intelligence. The Secret Police. Threat Level: Severe. >
My heart slammed against my ribs. This was not the police. The police wanted bribes. The Gendarmerie wanted order. The CNER wanted silence. They were the eyes and ears of the Regime. In the political turbulence of the 1990s, when people were invited to visit the CNER, they often did not come back.
I forced my breathing to slow down. I forced my face to remain a mask of childish innocence, though I knew, deep down, he could see right through it.
"Good afternoon, Monsieur," I said.
Monsieur Emile walked over to the counter. He placed his folio on the glass. He opened it. There were no papers inside. Just a gold pen and a small notebook.
"We have been watching your... progress," Emile said. He chose his words like he was selecting surgical instruments. "The village lights in Bamendankwe. The modification of the Gendarmerie radios. And now," he gestured vaguely to the stack of Union ledgers, "this organization of labor."
"It is just a business, Sir," Tashi stammered. sweat was beading on his forehead. "We sell lights. We fix radios."
"No," Emile corrected him gently. "A business sells commodities. You are building infrastructure."
He leaned forward, resting his weight on his knuckles.
"An organization that controls energy independent of the state utility. An organization that secures its own encrypted communication. An organization that mobilizes labor unions."
He paused, letting the silence stretch until it was painful.
"That is not a business, Nkem. That is a political entity. That is a shadow state."
The accusation hung in the air like smoke.
"Bamenda is a sensitive region," Emile continued, his voice dropping lower. "You know this. The Opposition is strong here. The SCNC talks about separation. They talk about a new country. They look for leaders. They look for symbols. They look for people who can organize the masses to live without Yaoundé."
He was implying that Liyen's Union and my solar grid could be interpreted as a front for rebellion. He was suggesting that by making the people independent of SONEL, I was making them independent of the Government.
It was a lethal logic.
"We are loyal citizens," I said, my voice steady. "We work with the Gendarmerie. Ask Colonel Lucas. We are helping the government reach the villages."
"I know Lucas," Emile said dismissively. "He is a soldier. He sees a gun, he shoots. He is a blunt instrument. I am not interested in the blunt instruments. I am interested in the future."
He took off his glasses. He began to clean them with a silk handkerchief from his pocket. His eyes, naked now, were pale and terrifyingly intelligent.
"You are building a network, Nkem. A network is power. The State does not like power it does not control."
He put his glasses back on.
"However," he said, shifting his tone slightly. "The State also appreciates genius."
He reached into his folio. He pulled out a small, white card. It had no name. It had no crest. Just a telephone number in Yaoundé.
"The State is interested in your talents. The efficiency of your Solar Hubs. The signal compression on the radios. We have laboratories in the Capital. Real laboratories. Not a yam store behind a kitchen."
He slid the card across the glass.
"Scholarships. Full funding. Access to technology you cannot imagine. You could be the youngest engineer in the history of the Republic. You could build the future of Cameroon. But you would build it for us."
He was offering me the Golden Cage.
It was a tempting trap. I looked at the dusty street outside. I looked at the poverty of Bamenda. Then I imagined a clean lab in Yaoundé. I imagined high-speed computers. I imagined safety.
But I knew the cost. If I took that card, I would belong to them. My inventions would not belong to the people; they would belong to the Bureau. The solar lights would not go to the villages; they would go to the VIP bunkers. And I would never be free again.
"I am ten years old, Monsieur," I said, pushing the card back slightly. "I have to finish primary school. My mother would be angry if I missed my exams."
Emile smiled. It was a thin, dry expression that did not reach his eyes.
"You are not ten, Nkem," he whispered. "Maybe your body is small. Maybe you wear shorts and carry a school bag. But your eyes? Your eyes are old. They have seen things a child should not see."
He knew. He didn't know about the time travel, perhaps. But he knew I was an anomaly. He knew I was something that didn't fit the pattern.
He left the card on the counter.
"Keep it," he said. "The Eclipse is coming. August 11th."
He paused at the door.
"The Bookman predicts chaos. He thinks the darkness will bring him profit. The State predicts stability. The State requires stability. If the lights go out, Nkem... if there are riots... if the people panic..."
He looked at me one last time.
"We will not arrest the Bookman. We will not arrest the looters. We will look for the person who promised the light and failed. Make sure you are on the right side of history."
He opened the door and walked out into the sunlight. He moved through the crowd like a ghost, untouched by the dust or the noise.
Tashi stared at the card on the counter as if it were radioactive. He was shaking.
"Who was that?" Tashi whispered. "He... he smelled like death."
I picked up the card. It felt heavy.
"That," I said, "was the most dangerous man in Cameroon."
The game had changed levels.
The Bookman wanted money. He was a criminal. I could fight a criminal.
Razor wanted blood. He was a thug. I could fight a thug.
Monsieur Emile wanted my soul. He was the System.
And he had just given me a deadline.
The Eclipse wasn't just a celestial event anymore. It wasn't just a battle for market share against kerosene. It was a political test. The State was watching.
If I kept the lights on, I was useful. I was a "Patriot."
If the lights failed, I was a saboteur. I was a "Rebel."
I looked at the solar panels on the roof. They suddenly felt very small against the weight of the entire government.
"We cannot fail, Papa," I said. "If the power drops for one second during that eclipse, we are finished."
"What do we do?" Tashi asked, panic rising in his voice. "The sun will be blocked! How do we charge the batteries without the sun?"
"We need storage," I said. "And we need to control the panic. If the people are hot, they get angry. If they are angry, they riot. If they riot, Emile comes for us."
I looked at the schematic on my desk. The fridge.
"We need the fridge," I whispered. "We need to show them that we can keep the cool heads. We need to freeze the fear."
"The fridge?" Tashi asked, confused.
"Yes. A solar-powered cold chain. Ice. Cold water. Vaccines. We show them that even when the sun dies, the cold remains. We prove reliability."
I grabbed my wrench.
"Tomorrow is Sunday," I said. "I am going to the Scrap Yard. And this time, I need Collins. And I need the truck. We are going to build a machine that defies the heat."
I looked at the white card one last time, then shoved it into my pocket. I wouldn't call the number. Not yet. But I would keep it. Because in a war, you never throw away a line of communication with the enemy.
The Bureau Man had come to inspect his specimen.
He was about to find out that the specimen had teeth.