Chapter Five: Backup Power for 130 Million People

“Then trust the batteries sitting beside 130 million people.” At second seven, Wildfire storage cabinets discharged. At second eight, three hundred thousand parked cars returned power through their chargers. At second nine, data centers reduced computation, trains fed braking energy into rails, and shopping centers raised thermostats by one degree. At second ten, millions of tiny power traces appeared on the map, fireflies waking in darkness. The oscillation struck a network without a center. It searched for a master node and found none. It corrupted dispatch commands that did not exist. Every battery answered only to the voltage physically present beside it. Vaughan had enough computation to capture a national system.