The winter arrived early—and hard.

  By mid-November, snow had buried the woods, the trails, the turbine, and the garden under a thick white blanket. Floyd had prepared well during the fall: shelves were heavy with supplies; the woodshed was packed tight with split logs. Even the trout pond was snug beneath a thick coat of ice.

  One night, over three feet of snow fell. In the morning, Floyd woke, made coffee, and turned on the computer.

  “Here we go again,” he muttered.

  The rhythm was familiar now. A deal made with himself: 12 hours on the computer, 4 hours for cooking, chores, and the odd bit of television, followed by 8 hours of solid sleep.

  The moment the machine hummed to life, the data began to arrive. It flowed into his mind and out through his fingers, a quiet ballet across the keyboard.

  Just like the engine.

  First came the documents: technical specifications, theory of function, the mysterious how and the elusive why. Then spreadsheets, flow charts, maintenance schedules, repair procedures. Charts stacked like firewood—pie, bar, scatter—each one more obscure than the last.

  Time blurred. Days folded into one another. He had installed a timer on the computer to break the trance, to remind himself to eat, clean, rest, and occasionally blink.

  Next came the drawings: detailed schematics of electrical systems, mechanical parts, assembly diagrams, subassembly sketches. It took him three full weeks.

  Then he began the final documentation.

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  Halfway through typing the title of one file, he froze.

  “Bloody hell,” he whispered. “This is fantastic.”

  A slow smile crept across his face. He shook his head in disbelief and kept typing.

  Near the end of winter, the final files were uploaded. They were inspected and—like the engine and the convertor before—approved.

  Outside, nothing had changed. Three feet of snow lay heavy over everything. The shed that held the mass-to-energy convertor was surrounded by four feet of ice—the heat from inside had melted the snow, which had refrozen into a wall of white glass.

  Floyd stood staring at it, rubbing his chin.

  “Maybe an extractor fan and some insulation wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

  There had been no thaw, so Oddball had yet to visit. The road would still be a death trap.

  ***

  Far to the north, in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, Bernard Flynn had also been snowed in.

  He’d moved to a small cabin outside Saskatoon three years ago, after retiring from a long career in the aerospace industry in Vancouver. He was no stranger to hard winters or long projects.

  Before the snow set in, Bernard too had received a visit.

  He had followed the same path as Floyd—set up the gear, made a time deal with himself, and gone to work. His fingers moved with the precision of a man who had spent decades debugging flight control systems and interpreting wiring schematics.

  Documents. Drawings. Parts lists. Theories. Schematics.

  Everything filed, structured, reviewed, uploaded.

  As the weeks passed, Bernard’s curiosity grew. This was no ordinary device. He felt the pull to work late, to push harder—but experience had taught him better. He stuck rigidly to the schedule. The project would still be there in the morning.

  When the final piece clicked into place and the full picture became clear, Bernard leaned back in his chair, smiling.

  “That should shake things up upstairs,” he muttered.

  Then, with nothing left to do, he flopped onto the couch, turned on the TV, and binged every documentary, crime drama, and nature show he’d missed over the last year—until the snow began to melt.

  ***

  Oddball finally arrived two weeks after Floyd had finished.

  “That road’s still a mess,” he said, stomping snow off his boots. “Be another week before it’s fully clear.”

  “Good to see you again. Must be nearly four months.”

  “Thereabouts. So, what’ve you been up to?”

  “Another project. A big one, by the looks of it. You and I won’t be involved this time. This one’s for the big boys.”

  “Any idea what it is, or is it hush-hush?”

  Floyd smiled. “It hasn’t been released yet, so I can’t say much. Let’s just say... it’s a type of elevator.”

  Oddball frowned. “Elevator? I wouldn’t have thought elevators needed much improving.”

  Floyd just kept smiling.

  On the 9th of April, the information from Bernard and Floyd’s projects was released.

  This time, it wasn’t dumped onto the internet. No anonymous emails to universities, no social media leaks, no flashy videos. This release was quiet, deliberate, and highly targeted.

  And it triggered a chain of events that would soon ripple across the North Atlantic Ocean—straight into the heart of England.