Free Cold Fusion by Harper Fox

absurd line would make him smile again, but he just nodded seriously.
    “Good. At the moment I’m locking the chalets because copper wire’s at a premium. My last batch was stolen. It was inconvenient to replace.”
    “Well, people are desperate.” I looked around the bare single room. Even as it stood, it was better than some of the miserable bedsit apartments in Kerra. I thought about my ma, cashing in her premium bonds to keep the old man’s trawlers patched and in business for one more season. “Your dad used to do a lot of stuff for desperate people, didn’t he? I didn’t realise. But he had dozens of charities on the go—hostels and things like that. And this place.”
    “That’s right. I’ve connected my new couplings into the existing wiring. It’s underfloor, so you’ll need to take up these two boards in each chalet. I haven’t screwed any of them down, just secured them. All the tools you’ll need are in this box.”
    I gave up. I crouched beside him and watched while he unfastened the floorboards. I wasn’t much of a hand at DIY, but still my instincts twitched as he pulled up a wire with his bare hands. I couldn’t ask him if the power was off at the mains. I knew by now that he would only affix me with a beautiful, numinous blue-grey look and tell me there was no mains—only cold fusion. And then I would laugh again and probably not be granted his mysterious forgiveness this time.
    “Here,” he said, extracting one of his precut lengths of cable and a handful of bolts from the tool bag. “You can see where I’ve tried to patch it. If you can undo that stretch of wire, feed this new one through these couplings like this and refasten it…”
    I was always much better at doing a thing than learning it by being shown. “Okay. Let me have a go.”
    He sat back on his heels and watched while I unscrewed the first section. I tried to look confident and not as though I expected to be electrocuted at any second. Vivian, for all his standoffishness, was funny and attractive, and best of all, he didn’t seem to care that I had killed my friends. I could at least pretend to believe in him for now.
    And he was easily pleased. That wiring had really been playing on his nerves. I set the new cable in as he’d told me, glanced up and found him lit up with approval and a kind of relief that the job was finally in hand. “That’s it. Now, there are ten of those in each chalet.”
    “Ten? Bloody hell, Vivian.”
    “Yes. If you lift the second board, you’ll see the other nine in here. The power is good, but it surges too hard for this network. If we relay it through all these couplings—each one of them has a surge protector, if you look closely—we may be able to make it work. Well, you have the hang of it. I’ll see you in three hours’ time.” He straightened up. For a second I thought he was going to clap me on the shoulder, but the impulse never got any further than his eyes. Then he turned and strode out.
    So I knuckled down and began work on my set of sixty couplings. I felt like an absolute idiot, and couldn’t help wondering if Vivian was back in the café, cracking a beer with his mates and roaring with laughter that he’d managed to con another lost traveller into wiring the middle of nowhere into the middle of nowhere else. This sensation was so strong that I paused after I’d finished work on the second chalet, about ready to go grab my rucksack and move on. But I was quite enjoying this. Already I’d found a method, a rhythm, and having occupation for my hands was keeping my mind off the thorns.
    The beat of labour gives the ground / To silver-flower song, and all / Is swept up in sea-music to the sky.
    Yes, that was true. My writing hadn’t been childish, emotional gestures. It had helped me get at the truth of ordinary things, to find out why they mattered. I unlocked the third chalet and went back to work.
    By half past four I was hungry. I didn’t expect Vivian to