A week later, Floyd stepped outside with his morning coffee.

  The air was cool, the sun creeping up over the ridge.

  The first thing he noticed was an envelope on the table.

  Then he looked to his right—and saw it.

  A neat pile of steel beams, roofing sheets, and wall cladding, stacked just where the snow had melted clear. No tracks. No vehicle. Just steel and silence.

  Floyd opened the envelope.

  Inside: $10,000 and no note.

  But he didn’t need a note. He knew the drill by now.

  “Here we go again,” he muttered.

  An hour later, he was in his truck, heading for a building supplier fifty miles down the road. He bought an electric concrete mixer and a stack of bagged cement powder.

  He still had sand and gravel left from the weir project—enough to lay a good solid base.

  By noon, he was back, mixing concrete beside the outhouse. He framed and poured the slab, smoothing it out with practiced hands. Then he left it to cure for 48 hours.

  The steel had arrived precut. All bolt holes aligned. It was ready to assemble like a Meccano set, minus the instruction manual.

  Floyd bolted the frame together, then started fixing on the wall cladding, panel by panel.

  He had just finished the last sheet when he heard a truck rumbling up the track.

  Oddball pulled up, stepped out, and gave the new building a long, squinty look.

  “What’s all this in aid of?” he asked, wiping his hands on his jeans.

  Floyd gave a noncommittal shrug. “I don’t know yet—but I expect I’ll find out soon.”

  “Oh. Your mysterious acquaintance again.”

  He looked at the concrete mixer. “That’s a nice unit. I might borrow it sometime.”

  “No problem,” said Floyd. “Just got the roof and door left now.”

  Oddball poked his head inside. “You might want insulation for the roof and walls. Unless this is your new meat locker.”

  “I have a feeling insulation won’t be needed,” Floyd replied.

  They sat on the veranda for a bit, sharing a cigar and a few beers, shooting the breeze.

  The next day, Floyd finished the roof and hung the door.

  The shed was complete.

  Two mornings later, Floyd opened the back door and sighed.

  More cardboard boxes. Stacked neatly on the veranda. As always—no markings, no delivery truck in sight.

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  He opened the top box.

  Electronics. Wires, boards, modules. Clearly sensitive, clearly advanced. He knew exactly where they were meant to go.

  “I knew I wouldn’t have to wait too long,” he said to himself.

  That afternoon, Floyd drove into town to see Oddball.

  “I’ve got some assembly work for you at my place,” he said casually.

  Oddball raised an eyebrow. “Sure. I’ve got two Harleys coming in today for water conversion. There's a big engine kit out now—I ordered the parts, but they won’t arrive until late tomorrow. I’ll be out first thing in the morning, if that works.”

  “Works for me. See you then.”

  The next day they got started in the new shed.

  Whatever they were building, it was complicated.

  Oddball stood over a circuit board, peering at the dense nest of components. “There’s a hell of a lot of electronics in this thing—whatever it’s for.”

  “Yeah,” Floyd agreed, screwing in a panel. “Feels bigger than the engine somehow.”

  It was slow, careful work. No instructions, just intuition and the strange, silent guidance Floyd had come to recognize.

  By mid-afternoon, Oddball headed home. “I’ve got to be back by two tomorrow—the Harley parts are coming in.”

  “No worries. We’ll see how much we can get done in the morning.”

  Oddball was back early the next day. The two men worked steadily, syncing together like old clock parts.

  By mid-morning, the final assembly was complete.

  They stepped back and looked at what they’d built.

  Oddball didn’t have a clue what it actually was.

  But it looked important.

  And it looked ready.

  There were three components to the new device: the main unit, a starter unit, and a large cooling fan. The main unit was about the size of a chest of drawers, with sleek panels and a faint hum of latent energy about it.

  Floyd connected the starter and cooling fan to the main unit. On top, there was a wide hopper.

  Without a word, he went outside, found a bucket, and filled it with dry sand. After sieving out the larger bits, he poured the fine grains into the hopper.

  Oddball watched with bemused disbelief.

  “That’s a fancy-looking concrete mixer,” he said, arms folded.

  Floyd turned on the starter unit. A green light flicked on.

  Then he switched on the main unit.

  A red light appeared.

  “Now we wait,” Floyd said.

  A few minutes passed. The main unit began to warm up. The cooling fan whirred to life.

  Oddball wiped his brow. “How hot does this thing get?”

  “About sixty degrees Celsius,” Floyd said.

  “Yeah, no insulation needed then,” Oddball muttered. “You could keep beer in here in the summer and use the roof as a sauna in winter.”

  Ten minutes later, a second green light came on.

  Floyd shut off the starter unit and unplugged it.

  There was a voltage selector dial on the main unit—110V, 240V, and 420V.

  Floyd selected 110V, walked outside to the concrete mixer, plugged it into the convertor, and turned it on.

  The mixer rumbled to life.

  Oddball’s jaw dropped. “Bloody hell! Electricity—from sand?”

  “This thing,” said Floyd, “is a mass-to-energy convertor. Doesn’t have to be sand. Anything with mass will do.”

  Oddball took a sharp step backward.

  “So… it’s like a nuclear bomb?”

  “No, Oddball,” Floyd said calmly. “It’s far more powerful than that.”

  Oddball blinked. “More powerful?”

  “It’s safe,” Floyd reassured him. “Perfectly safe. Think of it as a miniature power station.”

  Oddball gave the machine a wary glance. “So, uh… how long will it run before it needs refilling?”

  Floyd did a quick mental calculation.

  “Well, I’m no nuclear physicist, but I reckon that bucket of sand could power Pine Bluff for a month or two. Maybe longer.”

  Oddball stared at the hopper, then at Floyd. “How the hell is that possible?”

  “You know the equation—E equals MC squared?”

  “I’ve heard of it. Never really got it.”

  “E is energy. M is mass. C is the speed of light—times itself. So: energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of light squared. That’s a whole lot of energy in every gram of anything.”

  Oddball stood there, stunned. “That… that’s insane.”

  “Yep,” said Floyd. “Just like the engine. This changes everything. And just like the engine… we say nothing. Ever.”

  “Roger that, bro.”

  Floyd shut off the mixer. They went inside for lunch—nothing fancy, just soup and sandwiches.

  Afterward, he handed Oddball $1,000 in cash.

  “For your time. And remember… not a word.”

  “Roger that, brother,” Oddball said again, pocketing the envelope. “I’ll be in touch.”

  He left to go back to his workshop

  Floyd sat back down at the computer.

  There it was: a video of the convertor’s assembly and first test.

  It had been compiled using what Floyd had seen through his own eyes. The footage had been scrubbed of identity—just like the engine video. Faces blurred, voices altered, backgrounds replaced with generic, global scenes. The shed looked like a hundred thousand others. The concrete mixer? A brand you could buy anywhere.

  Floyd watched it through. Then he smiled and clicked approve.

  That night, the convertor's full documentation—every schematic, diagram, part list, theory, and procedure—was released to the internet.

  While Floyd slept, emails carrying the plans, documents, and video were sent to every university, technical institute, and power generation company on the planet.

  And every newspaper. Every major media outlet.

  The knowledge was now everywhere.

  And no one knew where it had come from.