<span style="font-family: 'Georgia'">A small clog revolved in a rapid stream flowing down from the bosky hills. The water was crystal clear, but that also meant it was ice cold. Last rays of the descending sun made it seem otherwise, and the stream was pretty successful with this cheap lie: it invited someone to bathe in it’s golden brown shine, or at least to chill of your feet against all the pebbles clearly visible beneath it. But the men standing on the bank were not easily fooled.<br/>
<br/>
The two men were busy, anyway, for their attention was glued onto the apparition which the revolving clog was attached into. The New-Great-Thing they had named it: the clog was attached into a heavily modified bicycle frame, and the stream revolved a nape-dynamo, which was attached into a set of car-batteries and in the very end of the batteries: there was a small light-bulb.</span><br/><br/><span style="font-family: 'Georgia'">The construction was more of art than a carefully engineered machine. Especially due it didn’t work, and that was the interesting part.<br/>
There was actually no logical explanation why the machine did not work. It’s principle was simple: a small magnet revolved inside a coil, creating electricity as explained in the principles of electromagnetism, as proven by Michael Faraday. The direct current produced by the bicycle dynamo was, at first, attached straight to the lamp. The filament would heat up as the current went through it, and the resistance would cause the filament to heat up, and finally to produce light. But it did not. The magnet did revolve inside the coil, and the circuit was closed and secure, but it did seem like there was no current to work with.<br/>
At first they changed the lamp. Then they changed the dynamo. Then they added self-made coils and even some capacitors, LED-lights from their old stuff, some car-batteries, chargers. They even tried a hand-crank light, numerous of hand-crank lights in fact, but alas, none did work. The two men had now done everything they ever could, but even due all months of tireless work, they couldn’t get even a simple bicycle lamp work.<br/>
The two men had tried to pinpoint cause of this problem, but due none of their multimeters worked, they couldn’t.<br/>
<br/>
“I told you.”, Thomas cramped his spade-like hands on his pockets to dig out a black woolen cap, puffing out a thick fume of vapor. “It didn’t work a month ago, it doesn’t work now, either.”<br/>
The descending sun threw out rays of golden light on his noble features. The light toyed with his dark hair and stubble, and made all the colors of his red-black jacket bloom. The autumn sun filled the world with rich color. The two men stood in silence for a while.<br/>
“Oh well, you always were a bit incompetent as an electrician.”, it took a moment before Wullie finally shooed off the descended silence, disturbed only by the constant sploshing of the self-made waterwheel and the ever-gurgling sound of the busy stream. “Couldn’t get a single luminator work..” <br/>
“Luminator ain’t even a word, Wullie.” <br/>
“A luminary?”<br/>
“Well that is, but no-one calls it like that. It’s a lamp.” <br/>
“Oh, you fucking Canadians.. And don’t call me Wullie. Call me Wall-B, Willie, Wallie, Wall, Wallenberger or Wallenström, but don’t call me Wullie.”<br/>
“Okay, Wullie. Let’s head back. It’ll be dark in a moment.” <br/>
“What if I don’t feel like heading back?”, the taller, but considerably thinner man drove his long fingers amidst the blonde-gray thicket on top of his head.<br/>
“Is that why you didn’t come to the friday congregation?”, Thomas dropped it down, even though he knew what Wullie was going to say. <br/>
“I’m much closer to God down here than in a damn wooden structure made by folks who think they understand life more than everybody else does.”, the tall foreigner said with his funny accent. The scenery did argue for Wullie, Thomas had to admit. It was beautiful out here, amidst the tall trees filled with golden green and brown, the sparkling little stream, and the hushing brushing of pine-twigs.<br/>
“And the answer to this..”, Wullie nodded at the half-waterlogged apparition while brushing his arms together to rub off the cold. “.. doesn’t come up from a two-thousand-year old lifestyle book, I’ll bet on that.”<br/>
“They are starting to ask questions.”, Thomas said startling the drape of silence had crept around them. <br/>
“What questions?”<br/>
“I don’t know. Questions.. Like, why are you wandering to the woods every evening, and why ain’t you joining the congregation. That do you have something to hide.” <br/>
“Sure, I’ve got things to hide. My treasure.”, Wullie flashed out a canted grin and nodded at the apparition once again. <br/>
“No, I’m being serious, Wullie.”<br/>
“Tell ‘em that I’m doing sin out here. Wanking off, throwing my seed on the damn river hoping to fertilize any fair maiden that bathes on the stream. Fuckin’ tell ‘em that. Or that I’m here worshiping ancient gods of the forest. What are they gonna do, burn me on a stake?”<br/>
Thomas’ only reply was a deep inhale and a sharp exhale of a sigh. Wullie was pursing his lips and murmuring something in foreign.<br/>
<br/>
The tall blonde wasn’t far for the truth, Thomas thought. Though it was Wullie who had said to him that it wouldn’t take long before people would start to ask questions and do stupid things. People were animals, Wullie had always reminded Thomas, sheep with no deep thoughts. It’s all just surface-surfing: reading orders from the social media, listening to the radio programs, going to the bank, going to the shop, buying what you are told to buy, reading what you are told to read, speaking what you are told to speak. Trained sheep, Wullie called them.<br/>
As an entrepreneur and as a CEO of two-man electric-company, Wullie found proof of this nearly every day. People knew what a microwave oven was supposed to do, but they didn’t know how it did what it did. 99% of the people didn’t have a clue. And if it didn’t work: panic would ensue. Wise people read the manuals, but if there were no manuals or diagrams, most of the people were completely lost. <br/>
Wullie wasn’t those folks, Thomas knew. He hardly ever even looked at the blueprints when they were working together. He just knew what needed to be done and spent most of his leisure time in denouncing engineers that “didn’t have a clue”. <br/>
The congregation was a red drape for a guy like Wullie, a slap in the face. He hadn’t participated in any of the meetings, and as a vocally powerful man he had shooed off any who tried to speak him into joining it, including Thomas. Wullie respected his ability of “independent thinking, a trait that the 99% does not possess.”. “You should try it.”, he had advised Thomas the last time his old employee had came to have this same old conversation.<br/>
<br/>
“It’s socialist time, as you say it.. The friday afterparty. Come on. Let’s get back.”, Thomas patted his former boss on the shoulder. “Before it really gets dark.” <br/>
“It’s already dark.”, Wullie murmured. “You just don’t see it yet.”<br/>
<br/>
The two men walked down the narrow path Wullie had stomped on the forest-floor in all of those weeks of trying to get ‘the laws of physics to work again’. The silence amidst the darkening woods was impenetrable: no airplane-roaring. No distant humming of cars from the near-by junction. No cheerful chirping of nesting birds. Just occasionally cracking twigs under their boots, huffing and puffing of Wullie, and sniffs of a dripping nose. The silence would make a man mad in days, Thomas thought. It crept all around them, a hunting beast that needed to be hushed off time after time again.<br/>
So Thomas spoke. He spoke about how the day had passed by. Foraging, hunting some game - they caught a moose, a rare catch these days, and the never-ending chore of gathering firewood. Only the moose got Wullies attention. That would mean a nice dinner on Sunday, Thomas dreamed out loud. <br/>
“Idiots!”, Wullie sneered. “You slaughter the damn thing, and cut the meat into long strips of meat. Like jerkey’s, you know? A feast on Sunday will kill us all in three months. If we don’t get that damn power back, and this damn ball doesn’t fix itself, January is going to smash us all.”<br/>
“Well, we were talking about this on the church-” <br/>
“Those morons know nothing from anything! Hell!”, Wullie got new power on his long legs and ploughed through the shrubbery to pass Thomas-The-Roadblock. “They’re gonna starve us all!”<br/>
“Yo! Hold up!”, Thomas sped up to catch his former boss. <br/>
“I ain’t holding nothin’ up!”, Wullie roared. “I have a moose to save! You go along and play with the Zealous Communists, I’ll catch you up there after!” <br/>
“After what?”<br/>
“After I’ve told them where I’m going to cramp the antlers if they are really going to spend it on a fucking Sunday Feast!”<br/>
<br/>
Wullie was the only one who actively stood up against the town executives. The old mayor, the priest, the sheriff and other officials that kept order around the town. Well, not the only one but certainly the most vocal one. With a yet another deep sigh, Thomas went on with it, to the Friday meeting. The two men split up, Wullie heading onto the road leading towards the town hall and storage areas of their small commune, and Thomas dragged himself towards the church.<br/>
<br/>
Wrapping himself deeper within the red-blue lumberjack-shirt he never thought he would wear outside of work, he couldn’t help shuddering when glancing at the tall tower of the church. It loomed. Like it stared at you. He brushed it off. <br/>
A warm breeze brushed off the cold as he stepped inside.<br/>
Thomas revealed his dark, short-ish hair under the black cap and tried to comb it straight with few quick brushes of his fingers. There was Beth, and Tatum Cleary, thank goodness. He quickly waved for the two like trying to reserve himself a spot while he was being occupied with his jacket.</span>