thor

An electricity monitor — the meter that counts the thunder of the household: the current passing through the walls of an Athlone kitchen, strike by strike, storm or no storm. It is written in Python, an elder of the home lab raised in 2021, and it has kept the tally of the house's levin ever since — the out-goings and the returns, the quiet strikes and the loud. It exists because power that is not counted is power that is guessed at, and no house run by a descendant of tellers has ever settled for the guess.

Every current that goes out must return — that is the first law of the lightning's household, and the red-bearded smith of the north who threw the hammer understood it best: the great weapon left the hand like a spent thing and always came back, and the coming back was the proof the throw had been true. The river-folk of the middle island knew the same law in a calmer form: what the Shannon gives the mill, the mill gives back to the Shannon, and the ford-keeper's whole occupation is the counting of the passage. This monitor is the ford-keeper: a Python watcher set at the wall of an Athlone kitchen, counting the current as it goes out and as it comes back, strike by strike, storm or no storm. It was raised in 2021, when the household first wanted the thunder of its own walls read back to it, and it has kept the tally since without one missed round. The ancients hurled their lightning and trusted the count to the gods; this house prefers the count where it can be read. The moss on the stone is greenest after the storms, which is the meter's way of keeping score.

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