The Drip, a novel by Michael Gullo
“Hey.”
“Okay, so you’re not being robbed. That’s good. Why did you just withdraw six thousand dollars - at the bank counter - in Farragut?”
“Just so you know, I drove straight from the bank, to Jimmy John’s – and that’s right in the same parking lot, so your call is freaky fast.”
“Nope. You’re not funny. Six thousand. Go.”
“I’ll do it right.”
“Nope. No parables.”
“That’s what I meant. No parables. So, this one time, at bandcamp.”
“Michael, I have my state radio right here. I won’t even call dispatch. I’ll key up, 342, and I’ll put out the BOLO.”
“Ouch.”
“Michael.”
“I’m giving it to the guys.”
“I bet there’s a reason coming that I can’t argue with.”
“I think so.”
“Will I think so?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
“Okay, go.”
“You’ll have questions that…”
“Nope. Start at why, not at preamble.”
“Preamble is how I get places.”
“That’s amble – like an old man. Fine. Tell it your way.”
“So you’re going to have questions, and you need to know I already heard this thing in your skull, so I know what you want to know, and I have to admit up front – I don’t know the answer to all the obvious questions that I do not answer in my explanation.”
“Revoked. Tell it my way.”
“Rusty and all his girls have been staying at his brother’s place.”
“Does his brother have kids too?”
“Aw, hell. I didn’t even think of that one.”
“Didn’t think. I wish that was the case.”
“Now, honey. Don’t be sore.”
“I swear to all that’s holy…”
“Somehow DCS got involved. I don’t have that data yet either. He has a week to get a place to live where the girls get their own room.”
“Are we buying them furniture too?”
“No. I can’t give Rusty two thousand dollars without giving two thousand to the other two also.”
“Papaw, they’re not your grandchildren.”
“That’s not your best work.”
“Oh, forgive me my poor humor. I’ll forgive you your hallucinations. I agree that we have to help Rusty. If you didn’t I would. But why do you have to keep the books fair – that’s what you’re doing, right, balancing the books?”
“Yes. I’m glad you see that. What you’re missing is that it’s not a gift. It’s advance pay.”
“They’re not your employees, Michael.”
“I know, Margot – listen, I got this figured out. They will work the concrete pad for the workshop, and this is the downpayment for that.”
“But the workshop has to wait until we get the house done so that we don’t run out of money.”
“I know. You’re misunderstanding. This is a prepayment for that job whenever it comes in.”
“Okay, okay. You think you’re in the clear. Advance invoice. Then explain to me this. Why cash?”
“Well, I need it to have most effect. Plus, it will go on their paychecks when they actually account for it, so they’ll pay the tax later. Look, I gotta get back. I’ll come to Wares Valley tonight after work. Let me get this done.”
“Love.”
“Love you too. It’s the right thing to do.”
“I know.”
“Did you handle it?”
“I did. They’re at lunch now, but he asked what you were leaving for, and I told him that I told you about the apartment and that you were heading to the bank to get money.”
“Was he mad at you?”
“Relieved, just like I thought.”
“Now it gets interesting. Listen. I’m doing this as advance pay. It’ll go toward the workshop pad and a couple other small projects until we cover something like two weeks of work. That notebook just earned its keep.”
“So, that’s a good idea. I’ll keep track and keep you posted.”
“No need for that. I keep track. What you need is to keep records. This is just the kind of larger sum that gets you attention. That’s why I did it in cash. Here.”
“Wait, this is more than two thousand.”
“It’s two thousand each. I can’t give advance pay to one and not to the others.”
“That don’t make sense.”
“It does. This corporation is a gift, which means that the benefits of a corporation are the same for everyone.”
“I won’t take it.”
“Then Rusty can’t have it.”
“I could call that bluff.”
“Ouch. And you’d be right, but I’d be very bothered. I thought this through, and it’s the way I need to do it – and giving is receiving. Let me receive my way. It’s advance pay. Last time you had a nut to work with, you changed your life. I’m sure you can figure out how to use this too.”
“I could pay my taxes.”
“Two cover the whole thing?”
“I’ll get a couple car payments ahead too.”
“What’s the interest on that ring?”
“They bury that in the payment talk.”
“Yeah, buying shit is one of my specialties. Those companies use a bank like Comenity, and they’re the modern day pawn shop, which without them the normie world wouldn’t have a thing in life until they scrimped and saved, but if they scrimped and saved the whole extraction economy goes belly up. So, bring on the retail credit card banks and all that they give to the world, higher stock prices, more customer stickiness, and much higher credit scores for the responsible buyer that sincerely does appreciate the trust.”
“Payment ain’t so bad.”
“Pay ahead. They literally make sure that if you only pay the minimum, you will still owe past the maturity date, so that on the date that you’re supposed to pay it off in order to owe only the introductory interest, you still owe, and that real interest rate comes into play and fully retroactive.”
“I read that.”
“Good. Pay them extra. Pay early. Pay them, and they will reward you for it. And they can afford to reward you because some people do not, and they make a lot of money on those few fish – enough even to not only afford your reward, but they can afford the few fish that don’t pay at all too.”
“I can’t give them theirs.”
“You have to.”
“That’s you work.”
“Okay. I see you. You’re probably right. Take out twenty and give me the rest.”
“Thanks, man. I’ll keep the records.”
“Thanks, Tanner. This has to be accurate, and I can’t let the new guys handle it.”
“New guys.”
“Now, batteries. Turn on all eight of those.”
“Are they connected?”
“No, and that’s the point. If they were not balanced, and one of them was pretty far apart from the other seven, having them connected would crash amps into the under-charged one. We need – you need – I already know. You need to know how these work.”
“Notebook, check.”
“Yeah, but not really. This is pretty straight forward. Look at those green lights in the meters. Five lit in every one of them.”
“Fifty percent.”
“Close. Look at the four that are installed. Do you see how the sixth block is blinking?”
“Yes.”
“That means those are in the fifty percent range and charging toward sixty. When they hit sixty percent, they will light that seventh, and so on. Do you see it?”
“So these are in the fifties and those are in the fifties.”
“Correct. And most important, those lights are just a guess. They’re a rough estimate based upon the battery management system’s algorithm of all the individual cells in the pack of cells inside of each battery. Roughly stated, it’s showing you a math guess of voltage across sixty-four individual cells in those four connected batteries.”
“Wait. Do it general. The specifics are too much for the big picture.”
“You’re right. Let’s do this first. Take this volt meter. Put the probes on any one of those four batteries.”
“53.2 Volts.”
“Okay, now turn off that dial on the side of the inverter.”
“The solar disconnect.”
“That’s it. Now measure the same battery.”
“53 volts.”
“When the current goes away, the voltage drops a little.”
“So that’s supposed to happen.”
“Physics. So, there are two sets of lessons here. We need to build this, so you’re only getting the one. This lesson is about top-balancing. Simply stated, solar batteries are top balanced. Each battery has cells, and those cells each have a permanent volt meter, and that volt meter reports back to a program in the computer. It is programmed to manage the resistors with special attention paid to the highest voltage cell. When one cell gets near a programmed voltage, changes are ordered for the entire pack of cells. If something happens to one cell, it happens to all of the cells.”
“That’s easy enough, but why?”
“We need to get this solar battery pack built and operating, so I can answer that question, but then we have to get back to work. Solar batteries are top balanced – managed for peak highs. But electric vehicle batteries are bottom balanced, managed for peak lows. Bottom balanced batteries keep all of the cells from crashing on the low side.”
“But why?”
“Both conditions risk thermal runaway.”
“Fire.”
“In lithium batteries, fire that feeds itself.”
“Chimney Tops fire.”
“Worse. If we could have taken the oxygen out of Chimney Tops, the fire would have died. The cathode in lithium batteries makes its own oxygen. You cannot put it out by smothering it. Simply stated, it will burn until it runs out of energy, or you have to cool it with absurd measures.”
“What are those?”
“If one of these batteries started on fire, throwing it in the lake would not immediately extinguish it. It would continue to burn until the water cooled every cathode, and the water around the battery would be coffee hot by the time that happened.”
“They’re everywhere though.”
“And they all have a battery management system. That’s the key.”
“Questions, but I’m listening.”
“Questions can come over time, but today the idea is balance, why, how, what if. All of that delivered – maybe a little too well-done on the what if. So one last beat there. The world is full of these little mini monsters. They’re forgotten under beds in old phones. They’re laptops in a closet. They’re a shed full of forgotten DeWalt batteries. They’re everywhere, yet you very rarely hear a thing about some catastrophe, large or small. This whole lesson is about potential, not about likelihood. And this is just the battery side.”
“It’s a pretty big side.”
“There’s also a solar panel side, a charge controller side, an inverter side, a programming side; hell, there’s a dumb luck side. And most important, there’s a human side. Every side managing its own current and power, and most of all, they’re own speaking their own physics. All of this is to take DC power and turn it into usable AC power. Two similar but very different products.”
“So batteries.”
“Okay, you want me to focus, but not yet. There’s one little cruel irony that makes it all – you decide. All of that DC power, the solar panels, coming to the charge controller and into the inverter, the solar panels and the batteries, that all gets converted to AC power and sent out to the load center and then to the loads where the actual devices convert it back into DC power to use it at the source.”
“Wait, what?”
“Yup. All the stuff that the AC power goes into converts the AC to DC in order to use it.”
“Why?”
“Short answer, because power is created farther away than this current price point can afford to deliver the supply to the demand.”
“You’re losing me.”
“To send DC power from far away – batteries. This is getting far afield. Summarize this whole thing: Sending electricity to your home from twenty miles away is the direct equivalent of sending air conditioning from the same place. The loss is enormous, and AC power solved enough of the loss calculation to make electricity the ultimate extraction economy.”
“Are we still on the ring?”
“Everything around you is on the ring, these batteries included. I could keep up the analogy, but for now I’m going to summarize. Each battery is top balanced. The battery management system concentrates on the fractional voltages at the top and very generally manages those voltages at the bottom. You and I will be managing a top balanced pack of batteries.”
“Top balanced. Check.”
“Right now each of these eight are individual batteries, and those four installed ones are one battery. We need to make two packs of four new ones, and then we need to put all three packs together to make one battery out of the twelve batteries.”
“That’s what all these bars are for, right?”
“Yes. Pytes batteries come with these purpose-built insulated copper straps to connect the batteries. We connect the four individual batteries in parallel using these straps, and then we connect the three packs to this Victron.”
“What’s this Victron?”
“It’s a battery combiner box. Once we get all of the batteries connected here, we take two cables and land those in the inverter just like that pack is connected now.”
“How’d you learn all this crap?”
“Baptism without the fire. Just like you.”
“How do you know what to buy, where to buy it from, and what to do with all the parts when the pallet comes rattling up the road on the skid steer?”
“The confidence of disposable income. You buy it, you find out what’s wrong with what you bought, and then you try again.”
“That’s why you had so much shit to move. Garage doors, bro. Who has an extra set of garage doors laying around?”
“I came by those honest. I bought them, and I decided I want windows in the door all the way down. The company wouldn’t just replace the panels, they made me buy all new doors, and I planned to sell them – who wouldn’t want cedar garage doors? Turns out, I had one built at eight feet tall and the other at seven feet because it matched the house. Nobody wanted both.”
“Pricey lesson.”
“College costs money, and graduate school was outrageous, but at least I learned to hire hands to carry the load. You will too.”
“A lot of that stuff looked – forgotten or whatever.”
“Everything eventually does – even the precious ones. That ring you bought for Emily will one day be a forgotten thing.”
“Not to us.”
“Truth. But that is the procurements lesson. If I teach you the entirety of the degree in one sitting, you’ll retain the typical twenty percent, and I will spend a fourth night in a shed without heat. For now: Those toilet seats will look forgotten before we use them too.”
“Questions pertinent to progress, got it.”
“We’ll use this wire to connect these three battery packs once they’re complete, and then we’ll use those four-aught wires from the combiner box to the inverter’s battery lugs.”
“So, strap this stack?”
“There’s Rusty and Cody back, yes, strap that stack, and I’ll strap this one, and when they get up here, I’ll give them the money --- witness. Shill. Good?”
“Shill, maybe. Witness, sure.”
“Bossman.”
“Hey, Cody. Good lunch?”
“Hell, yeah, White Star hot dogs. Follered a bear up the driveway on the way back.”
“Was it the fat one?”
“Fat, but not the sow. A male - got an ear tag, too.”
“Get the number?”
“Too far off. Can’t read them lest you got binoculars.”
“So, White Star. Boyd’s Creek’s a strange road, two gas stations each with great food. One a convenience store hot dog and the other a whole Italian restaurant, with veal.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Rusty. I got you two thousand dollars here. Go home early. Get an apartment for the babies. And before you speak, Cody, here’s two thousand for you. Already gave Tanner his. This is advance pay, but we’re writing it as a loan to start. It will get paid back in payroll when we pour the pad for the workshop.”
“Michael. I’m not sure I know how to thank you.”
“Jeez, Rusty. Don’t get all high diction on me. We talked about this. I said if you come up short, and the team is not ready, then I am here. But, blame it on Cody. If he hadn’t voted against leaving some funds as operating account, you would have had it in company funds.”
“Bossman.”
“Shutup Cody.”
“Take the money. Don’t suck. Where’s Devin?”
“Devin had a doctor’s appointment. He left at lunch time.”
“Alright, now get out of here Rusty. Cody…”
“Rusty’s my ride today.”
“Fine. Both of you get out of here. Tanner, do you have any pressing appointments?”
“I’m good.”
“Okay, guys. Seeya Monday.”
“Michael --- thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Leave that door open. Hey. Leave the door open, it’s fifty-five out there.”
“So, this is done.”
“You got both of them finished in that time –”
“Head down, mind my own business. Yeah, that’s about sixteen bolts worth – but why did you let Cody leave early?”
“I’m not Cody’s boss. You three are, and nobody overruled him. Besides, the boy just got two thousand dollars cash. I’m curious to see what the most found-money he ever got in his whole life grows into, and I’m sure he is too.”
“When I dropped off the computer, he let slip that the court has been garnishing his wages, so I’m sure he’s flabbergasted from pauper to paper money, just like he wanted.”
“Okay, let’s put this together. There’s a couple hours of daylight left, and we can store a little energy.”