The Cracked Battery Plate, Split Like a Soaked Tile

The cracked battery plate had split apart like a roof tile soaked with rain.

Baek Mujeong pressed the zinc scrap wedged into the crack down with a pair of tongs. The black battery fluid hissed and boiled. Blue sparks jumped from the contact point, and his apprentice Seok Beom reached out a hand.

"Don't touch it."

Mujeong pushed his wrist away. The telegraph machine had just tapped out the first character of Im Gwanpil's reply, but the line had gone dead again. If they pushed more current through now, the cracked plate would split further, and whoever stood close could be splashed with the fluid.

"Twice."

Mujeong drew two chalk marks along the edge of the workbench.

"Not one long telegram sent in a single go?" the telegraph operator asked.

"Two connections. The line decides the character count. I decide the plate."

He detached the battery jar. When he pulled out the zinc scrap, the edge had already corroded black. It wasn't a piece cut from a standard plate. It was a scrap of discarded roof gutter, flattened and trimmed at the corners. The thickness was uneven, so the force gathered on one side of the contact point.

Seok Beom held out a new screw. Mujeong didn't fit it in. He scraped his thumbnail along the threads first.

"It doesn't match."

"It fits the hole."

"Fitting and holding are different things."

The original screw had a narrow thread, and the new one was coarse. Forcing it in would ruin the hole too.

The parts crate under the workbench was nearly empty. The ledger said four standard battery plates, six coils of copper wire, and twenty matching screws remained. In reality there were no battery plates, only two bent scraps of copper wire. The three screws all had different threads.

Yun Haejun came into the repair room. He looked at the chalk marks before he looked at Mujeong's hands.

"What's left?"

"Two connections. After that, I don't know."

"There are three telegrams about army provisions. The western cart's return, the dock distribution, the north gate garrison."

"Then drop one."

The operators looked at Haejun. Mujeong wiped down the battery plate. Which one got sent first wasn't his job to decide. But lying that the plate would hold for three connections would have been a sin on his own hands.

Haejun opened the ledger.

"Who confirmed the six coils of copper wire?"

The warehouse clerk answered.

"It's the carryover quantity from the previous repair officer. I took over the sealed crate."

"Did you open the crate?"

"The seal was intact."

Mujeong flipped over the crate lid. The seal paper was stuck to an iron ring, and one of the two iron rings was new. On the inside of the wood there was a scrape mark where something wide had been dragged out at an angle.

"The paper wasn't torn," Mujeong said. "The ring was pulled out."

The clerk's face went white.

"I didn't open it."

"I didn't say you stole it."

Mujeong laid the two scraps of copper wire side by side. One had a deep red color and an even thickness. The other had turned yellowish, with solder marks scattered across it. In the ledger's specification column, both were written simply as "copper wire."

"These aren't from the same coil. This one is for telegraph contacts. This one was pulled off a lamp wick holder."

Haejun asked.

"Who separates them when counting?"

"Until now, me."

"And if you're not here?"

Mujeong's hand stopped moving. The government office took the specification sheets and told the workshop to build things for cheap wages. If something went wrong, it was the craftsman's fault. If it went right, the knowledge became the office's.

"My apprentice measures it."

"Only Seok Beom knows?"

"Why do you need to know that?"

Haejun pointed at the empty parts crate.

"Because the specification was known only to you, the ledger ended with a single column marked 'copper wire.' That's why no one else could confirm what was missing."

"Did the government office steal it because it didn't know the specification?"

"That's a separate matter. Whether it was theft at all is still unknown."

Mujeong slammed the tongs down on the workbench. Seok Beom flinched.

"Get out."

Haejun stepped back but didn't leave.

"I'll stand outside the workbench. I'll send the repair limits first."

"Send the army provisions first and this is over."

"That's exactly why I'm sending the limits first."

Haejun set down the three army provision telegrams and took out a new sheet of paper. "Current line guarantees only two connections. Stop immediately after the second. No further transmissions." He wrote it in short sentences so every operator could read it.

Mujeong snatched the paper and drew a line under "guarantees."

"What I guarantee is two connections while the plate holds together. There's no guarantee the second sentence will finish."

Haejun revised the wording.

"Two temporary connection opportunities. Each connection may be interrupted. Battery to be dismantled after the second attempt."

"Who signs it?"

"I sign the work stoppage. You decide the transmission order."

Mujeong wrote his name first. Haejun signed below it. The three operators each copied out their own copies and posted them in front of their stations. It meant that even if one person shouted success, no other operator could try dialing a third telegram.

When Haejun posted the limit notice on the first connection, one operator tried to stop him.

"If you send that, we can only send one army provisions telegram."

"If we send the army provisions first without the notice, the other bureaus will think the line has come back and keep calling."

"The western cart is waiting."

"We'll write down the time it's been waiting. We won't pretend the line is alive when it isn't."

Mujeong ground down the thicker side of the zinc and propped paper under the thinner side. He sealed the edges with wax. It was a support meant to briefly divide the pressure.

"Seok Beom. Measure it again."

Seok Beom measured the thickness at three points on the zinc scrap. At first he only called out the middle. Mujeong didn't answer, just handed the ruler back.

"Two at the edges, one in the middle. If only the middle matches, it'll warp."

Seok Beom read the numbers again. One side was thicker by about two hairs' width. He ran the whetstone over it twice and stopped. Mujeong ran his finger over the surface.

"Good. You fit it in."

Seok Beom's eyes widened.

"Me?"

"Next time I'm not here, who's going to do it?"

The apprentice gripped the scrap with the tongs. On the first try, the contact point tilted. Since the current hadn't been switched on yet, there was no accident. Mujeong didn't put his own hands on it.

"Take it out. Again."

Seok Beom propped the paper again and stopped the screw at the point where the plate didn't wobble.

Mujeong wiped away one chalk mark with his palm.

"We haven't connected yet," Seok Beom said.

"I used up one test piece. If we only count the material and not the person's time, we end up the same as the government's ledger."

He sketched the three measurements, the position of the support, and the point where he'd stopped the screw. He also wrote down his own error, that one side of the first scrap had been too thick.

When Haejun reached to pick up the paper, Mujeong pressed down on the back of his hand.

"Leave the original in the workshop."

"Every operator needs to know it."

"You can take the measurements. Don't leave out who fixed it and who got hurt."

"I'll attach the wages and the accident record too."

Mujeong withdrew his hand. It wasn't a standard where only the dimensions got taken away. It was a process copy with the worker's name and the cost of failure attached. Seok Beom copied out the first duplicate himself.

The first connection began. Small bubbles rose between the zinc and the battery fluid. The telegraph's arm trembled, then found a steady rhythm.

Haejun tapped out the notice first: two connections, interruption possible, dismantled after the second. Two nearby stations confirmed receipt. One far station never sent back the end code.

Mujeong wiped away one chalk mark.

"One left."

Haejun spread out the three army provisions telegrams. He started to merge the western cart's return order with the feed purchase approval into one sheet, then stopped.

"If we merge them, it blurs who signed off on which item."

"That's why I told you to choose."

Haejun set aside the dock distribution telegram. He set aside the north gate garrison telegram too. He picked only the western cart's return feed approval. If the horses and drivers already on the road couldn't come back, the next shipment itself would break down.

"For the dock and the north gate, I'll write the hold time for transmission on the public copy."

"That's not something electricity carries. A person has to take it."

Two messengers took the papers and ran. Even after the line came back to life, they still needed feet.

On the second connection, the battery plate let out a low groan. Seok Beom immediately slid a sand box under the battery jar. Mujeong watched the zinc scrap bend and lowered the current. The gaps between codes grew longer.

"It's cutting out," an operator said.

"Keep it short," Haejun answered.

He didn't repeat the feed quantity, sending only the approval item and the return priority code. He didn't change the restricted route conditions for Jodokgu either. When the receiving confirmation was about halfway through, a spark jumped from the contact point.

"Hands off."

Mujeong cut the battery line. The final confirmation code never came through. The only thing that could be called a success was that the body of the approval had gotten across. Whether the other side had read it through and acted on it would only be known once word came back.

Seok Beom pulled out the battery plate. The zinc scrap had bent in the middle, and the paper support had gone soft and black. If they used it again, even the cracked plate looked ready to shatter.

"Dismantle it," Mujeong said.

One operator protested.

"The north gate telegram is still left."

"We used it twice."

"One of those was just the notice."

"It's because of the notice that you're not dialing a third time."

Mujeong detached the battery plate and set it on the workbench. Haejun also wrote down the two held transmissions below his work stoppage signature. He left no blank space where the temporary repair could be rewritten as a victory.

Now the copper was the problem. Mujeong carried the empty crate and the two remaining scraps out to the yard. He had the ledger quantity read aloud in front of the operators, the clerk, and the workshop laborers.

"You wrote down six coils."

The clerk nodded.

"What actually exists is one scrap of telegraph specification, one scrap of a different specification. No battery plates. Three screws, all different."

Mujeong showed them the cut ends of the copper scraps. The telegraph copper had a blade cut straight through, while the yellowish scrap had marks where it had been twisted off. That alone couldn't tell them who had taken it. The scrape marks inside the crate and the swapped iron ring didn't settle the question between theft and a mistaken carryover either.

Haejun stopped the clerk's brush as it began to write "embezzlement."

"Shortage confirmed. Cause undetermined."

Mujeong added.

"Write the specifications separately too. It's not the same copper."

In the three public copies, they wrote down the length, thickness, cut face, and crate ring. Where Mujeong's and Seok Beom's measurements differed, they left both, and the clerk signed a note promising to bring the previous handover record.

Outside the yard, the sound of hooves stopped. A messenger in black official robes dismounted holding a sealed letter. When he heard that the repair limit notice had already spread, his face hardened.

"Who decided the line's permitted telegrams?"

Haejun held out the work stoppage record.

"The repair limits were signed by the workshop chief, and the transmission order by me."

The messenger stared longer at the phrase "disclosed to every operator" than at the north gate hold item.

"From now on, word will come down that any transmission on the line must first get permission from the designated government office."

As he turned to leave, another messenger came running from the alley. It was a short letter stamped with Yi Gyeom's seal.

Haejun broke the seal. The first line said that unless the line was kept from falling into a single faction's hands, a reform alliance would be needed. Below that, the time and place to discuss the price were left blank.

Mujeong didn't look at the blank space. The red cord on the permission order the messenger had brought was wound once around the very battery line they had just dismantled.