How I Built a Power Company in South America (4)
With Christian Silva's inauguration as its first CEO, the San Marcos Electric Power Corporation (SMEPC) officially came into being.
In truth, San Marcos already had an organization filling this role. The Ministry of Industry had been running two thermal power plants, transmitting the power, and collecting the bills. The only problem was that the management was an unmitigated disaster.
Eugene, who understood the importance of electricity all too well, transferred the Ministry's functions to SMEPC in order to put real professionals in charge.
And Christian, the man now carrying the full weight of Eugene's expectations, moved as if his feet were on fire. No — he had no choice.
I can't get dragged off to a labor camp at my age.
He had already signed the contract. One way or another, he had to make SMEPC a success.
The problem was—
"...There's nobody to do the work."
He needed to get started immediately, but he was desperately short of people to serve as his hands and feet. The civil servants transferred from the Ministry of Industry were incompetent political appointees who'd been parachuted in without knowing the first thing about electricity, and civilian technicians were nowhere near enough.
At this rate, the grid modernization Eugene had ordered within six months would be impossible.
Damn it.
Christian tore at his hair in terror. He even found himself resenting the mentor who had handed over his contact information.
It was then, as he went to confront his teacher William, that the man offered a brilliant solution.
"If you don't have the people, you raise them, don't you?"
"Excuse me?"
"You've got the engineering students at San Marcos Comprehensive University, haven't you? Put those kids to work and your manpower problem is solved. They'll get a paycheck and field experience — the students will jump at it."
Hire university students who hadn't even graduated yet? Christian, bewildered by a proposal he had never heard in his life, pushed back.
"Then they wouldn't be able to attend school, would they?"
William offered something even more radical.
"That's easily solved by switching them to night classes."
The system he proposed was this: work as SMEPC technicians during the day, accumulating field experience, then convert to night university in the evening to keep up with their studies.
"Just make sure you pay them well. Most of them come from tight households — they're barely scraping by."
In fact, this wasn't the first time such an approach had been used. When Tortilla Bank was founded, business and economics students had been hired as employees before they even graduated. William was drawing on that memory, but to Christian it was utterly foreign.
"I'd be grateful if it worked out, but would the students even want to join? It's a brand-new company, and the work itself is pretty rough."
"I think you'll be surprised by the response. I'll set up an information session for you — just do a good job of reeling them in. Hahaha."
Just as William had said, the response was good. No — it was explosive.
The moment the information session announced that SMEPC had been established by presidential order and that they needed people to climb utility poles and get to work immediately—
"His Excellency is calling us!"
"We're unclogging the nation's arteries!"
"Let us all follow His Excellency's will!"
Students who worshipped Eugene as a living god rushed to submit their applications. Even after the nature of the work was explained, young women put their names in as well.
In the end, Christian selected three hundred people, primarily young men, and only then did SMEPC begin to take on a proper organizational shape. The civil servants from the Ministry of Industry were assigned to support departments, and the students were sent into the field.
With the situation finally taking shape, Christian's drive caught fire. Eyes bloodshot, he declared to his staff:
"Listen up. From this day forward, you are not students. You are warriors! Let us give everything we have to light up the nights of Libertad!"
"Waaaaaah!"
The students, who had become employees overnight, were moved by Christian's grim intensity, and their passion blazed.
And so a massive surgery on the power grid began across the whole of San Marcos.
The first thing they tackled—
"Why the hell is a country that doesn't even have enough electricity using 110V?!"
—was converting the outdated 110V system to 220V.
"Change it all! Rip everything out and start over!"
Even Korea — a country famous for getting things done at breakneck speed — had taken thirty-five years for a project of this scale. But with Eugene's full backing, Christian boldly ordered the conversion, and a legion of three hundred descended upon downtown Libertad.
"It's His Excellency's order! Pull down those old transformers!"
"Tear out the old wires and lay new ones!"
The students scaled the utility poles as if they were enemy high ground to be taken. They stripped away the old, rusted transformers and replaced them with the latest high-efficiency models. Every last wire that had been tangled like a spider's web was pulled down, and in their place thick high-voltage cables were stretched taut and laid clean.
It was a forced march that knew neither day nor night. Citizens clicked their tongues in amazement as they watched young men hanging from utility poles late into the night, sparks flying.
The one silver lining was that the power situation was such a mess that there weren't that many transformers to replace — and that all of San Marcos's electricity was concentrated in the capital, Libertad.
Even as the 110V to 220V Voltage Step-Up Project proceeded, Christian launched the next one.
"We need to catch the people stealing electricity."
Power-theft enforcement. It was only natural. Even in developed countries, illegal electricity theft was far from uncommon. In a developing nation in Central and South America? All the more so.
And so Christian set out on a field inspection with grim resolve. Just in case, he brought along a few of his larger employees and headed for the most dilapidated section of the slums.
They'll definitely have tapped the lines all over the place.
Tense and on edge, Christian stepped into the alley — and had to doubt his own eyes.
"...Huh?"
Not a single electricity thief turned up. The meters stuck to the walls of the shacks were ancient, sure, but they were ticking away honestly.
"Does this... make any sense? Why isn't there a single trace of theft?"
He couldn't believe it, and asked the employee beside him. Only then did the employee understand why they'd come here. His eyes went round.
"Stealing electricity, sir?"
"Yes! That's a common thing in neighborhoods like this."
"Sir, nobody in San Marcos does that kind of thing."
The employee answered in a firm voice.
"Since His Excellency took office, all crime has disappeared."
"Crime... disappeared?"
"Yes. His Excellency gave us bread and built us schools — and someone would dare commit a crime? That's something only an animal would do."
He said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Christian's body trembled as he thought:
This country... is insane.
Five months later. The solar power complex.
Endless dark-blue solar panels blanketed the plains as far as the eye could see. It was a construction site that was nothing short of a miracle — completed in a mere five months, a full month ahead of the promised six.
Below the podium stood James, the CEO of Perfect Solar. After five months of eating and sleeping on-site, he was skin and bones — but his eyes were drunk on victory.
We did it. We actually did it.
They had shaved a full month off a timeline he had thought would be razor-tight even at six months. Of course, what had made it possible was the fanatical devotion of the local workers, who would have leaped into a fire if His Excellency ordered it. Still, completing a 5-gigawatt-class solar power complex in five months would elevate Perfect Solar's reputation to an entirely new level.
As James stood there with a satisfied expression, Eugene approached with his bodyguards.
"Mr. James."
Eugene extended his hand.
"You've truly worked hard."
"...Thank you."
James clasped Eugene's hand with a dazed look on his face.
"You've truly... created a miracle. I'm in awe of Perfect Solar's technical capabilities."
At Eugene's sincere praise, James shook his head.
"You're too kind."
"No need for modesty. Covering this vast area with panels is no small feat."
"No, I mean it. This wasn't accomplished through our technology."
James looked back at the thousands of San Marcos workers lined up behind him. Their faces, too, were stained with sweat and grease, but their expressions shone brighter than they ever had.
"The people of San Marcos did this."
James's voice trembled slightly. He had overseen construction in countless countries over the course of his life, but he had never encountered workers like these.
"There was a storm. I shouted at them to stop work and evacuate because it was dangerous. But instead of pulling out, the workers said they had to fulfill His Excellency's will, tied ropes around their bodies, held onto each other, and installed the panels no matter what."
What worker in the world would risk their life for a job?
"I mean, why would they risk their lives..."
"You have truly remarkable people."
At those words, Eugene fell silent for a moment, then nodded.
"Our people... are pretty extraordinary, in some ways."
Even though he had grown somewhat used to this sort of thing by now, Eugene let out a sigh.
"Shall we head up? Everyone's waiting."
When Eugene took his place at the center of the podium, countless camera flashes went off. Through the state broadcasting network and radio, this historic moment began to go out live across all of San Marcos.
"My respected fellow citizens."
His voice spread across the whole of San Marcos.
"We have lived in darkness for far too long."
A low, powerful voice. The citizens gathered in Libertad's plaza, the rural farmers with their ears pressed to the radio — all of them stopped what they were doing and listened.
"When the sun went down, we had to light candles. We had to shut down the factory machines for fear the power would cut out. We spent our nights worrying that the food in the refrigerator would spoil. That darkness, born of poverty, has crushed us for the past forty years as if it were our destiny."
At Eugene's words, pointing to a painful reality, people's eyes grew red.
Eugene raised his hand and pointed to the vast power plant. He paused, then looked directly into the camera.
"This enormous generation complex, built by the sweat and faith of the people, will drive the darkness from Libertad. And the sun that once beat down upon us so fiercely will no longer be a disaster, but a blessing."
His eyes were filled with certainty.
"When I throw this switch, the light will reach everyone equally. Whether a mansion of the wealthy or a shack in the slums — if you are a citizen of San Marcos, you have the right to cheap electricity."
Eugene's hand came to rest upon the great ceremonial lever.
A deep rumble rolled through the complex as Eugene yanked the lever down with all his strength. At the same instant, the needles on the gauges in the central control room began to dance.
"Waaaaaaaaah!!"
The citizens gathered in the plaza roared. Someone hurled the ice cream they had been holding to the ground. Others threw their arms around each other and danced.
"Viva el Presidente!"
"Viva Eugene! Viva San Marcos!"
From every brightly lit street, Eugene's name erupted.