One Charger, One Gavel, and the Maple Lane Outlet Olympics

Memo 212 Goes to the Chat

The evening is best reconstructed from the group chat, "Maple Lane (no politics)", which recorded it in real time and with poor punctuation.

Mags: MEMO 212. Contest begins at dusk. Per section four, the judge's decision is final and the judge is me.

Gus: Three chargers. Three. I don't see what the kid thinks she's doing with one.

Tamsin: It's an Anker Prime. Three ports, one hundred sixty watts total. I brought my own cables because the box doesn't include any.

Gus: Nobody asked about cables.

The narrator notes that this was the first of several things Gus would shortly ask about.

Brenda Makes a Short Trip

At 6:55 Brenda came out from under the porch at No. 2, walked the length of the front step and went back under, and the lane agreed that a domesticated bear who makes a short trip is forecasting a short contest.

Wendell: Out and back. Quick one tonight. I'd bring a sweater.

Nobody asked what the sweater was for. Wendell has carried the lane's mail for twenty-two years, and the lane has learned to take his weather as given.

Gus looked at the screen the way a man looks at a level that disagrees with him.

One Brick Against Three

Tamsin plugged the Anker Prime into the power strip and ran one cable to the laptop, one to the phone and one to the tablet. She did not ask which port suited which device, because the charger divides its power on its own and has no preference.

Gus, meanwhile, needed three outlets, a lecture on cable routing and a second strip. He said, "I could build that," which is true of almost everything he says it about and untested in this case.

Then the charger's little screen lit up, and Tamsin read it out like a nurse reading a chart. It showed live power to each port. The laptop was drawing the full one hundred forty watts on its single port, with no slowing down, which is the part that matters for anyone who works at a laptop for hours. A 16-inch MacBook Pro, she explained, can go from empty to half full in twenty-five minutes at that rate.

Gus looked at the screen the way a man looks at a level that disagrees with him.

Gus: What's the app for.

Tamsin: Bluetooth. You can watch the same numbers on your phone and set custom modes.

Gus: I don't need modes.

Tamsin: Nobody said you did.

The Gavel Problem

The verdict was straightforward, and so it was held up for twenty minutes by the Caucus. The Caucus, whose members hold that living with a cat is the highest form of human existence, requires that every verdict be sealed by the ceremonial gavel, which no hand may touch but which the Admiral may strike by accident, in his sleep.

Admiral Biscuit was asleep on a sofa at No. 11, two houses from any cord, which the bylaws take as a point in his favor. Mags carried the gavel on its velvet cushion to his window, held it a respectful distance from his tail and waited.

ORACLE, asked only to confirm the rules, cited the Halvorsen Protocol, a treaty it said was signed by the Swiss Navy, and announced that under it every outlet contest is won by whoever finishes last.

Gus: Then I win.

Mags: ORACLE's remarks are entered under Miscellaneous.

At 7:21 the Admiral's tail moved an inch against the cushion. It was ruled a strike.

Signed For

The Anker Prime won on the numbers. One small gray block had kept three devices charging at the same time as three bricks would have, and it had done it while taking up a hand's width of table.

Gus asked, with great dignity, whether the winning cables could be lent to him for the weekend. Tamsin said they were labeled, and that he could have them back to her by Monday, and that she would be counting.

Wendell: Short contest, as forecast. Signed for, as always.