"No, it's just not very intuitive in some ways and I've been reading enough to see that your world's system was different.  The short version is: a gold is eight silver, a silver is eight copper and is allegedly kept at about a basic day's wage but is in practice usually a bit higher, coppers can be physically broken in eight and also are tied to a fluctuating number of black pieces so that inflation and whatnot can happen."

If Cam were to do the math on converting the contents of the bag Jordan gave him into the 2022 USD of an alternate alternate universe which he has no reason to have ever heard of, he would find himself in possession of about six and a half thousand dollars.

"Cool, thanks. I guess it makes sense I have a lot, I sold the guy a motorcycle."

"Right, Jordan mentioned before you came on up."

"Cool. Ballpark how big will the power plant model have to be, I don't know if we can do it in here."

"Uh, at what scale?  And if you can do different ones how much detail do you need to see."

"...at whatever scale? I don't know how big it is in real life either. But I can make us loupes if there's important tiny details."

"Okay.  It can probably go on the bed."

"How will we get rid of it afterwards if I put it on the bed?"

". . . . cleaning crew?  Me taking it to a dumpster in pieces?  I'm sorry.  - Or should we just start with a layout map."

"Map sounds good, is there an existing one somewhere I can copy?"

"There are definitely drawings an architect made in order to build it.  I don't know how much information you need."

"I just want a reference for you to use when you're telling me how the inputs and outputs of the plant as a whole work, the blueprints will do." Blueprint?

Blueprint!

" - Sure.  Um, so here's the entry and the offices, where we do our calculations for how long an array can safely be up and track scheduling for current and planned arrays and whatnot, and next to that is where the kids stay when they aren't doing other stuff, or if an adult needs to look something up for some reason it's also where the more obscure reference materials are.  Here's the cooldown pools for crystals that are just coming out of active arrays, and the room for recharge arrays, and safe storage for charged but currently unused crystals.  And then the active arrays go in these ones, not all of which might be in use at any given time."

"Why can't arrays be up indefinitely? They just get too hot?"

"And then explode, sometimes.  And the farther you let them go, the more recharge and the longer a rest they'll need before they can be used at all efficiently again."

"Huh. Electrical plants mostly don't have that problem. Can you tell me about the output - does it go through, like, conductive wires -"

"Mmhm, and there are a few different ways of doing that; some magnetically or magically spin generators directly, some heat water to make steam to do the same, some give off concentrated light onto something that turns that into electricity, uh, somehow, I'm not specialized towards that in particular - "

"Huh. What are the advantages of those different ways?"

"A lot of it is honestly availability of crystals and what the state of the art was at the time the plant was built.  We're on all direct generator manipulation here; older places tend to heat water and newer ones are sometimes doing light but it's kind of niche because the receptive electrical panels aren't very reliable yet."

"Okay. But the receptive electrical panels and everything else just put watts into wires? Do the wires then go to a transformer? How much variance in output can the transformer handle?"

"Put whats into wires?"

"I don't know your units, do you want to, like, get electrical engineering 101 from my universe and translate or try the reverse?"

". . . I can take a look, sure.  I know comparatively little about the electrical side specifically but it might be enough."

Cam introduces her to the concepts of watts and volts and so on.

Something appears to occur to Ellie midway through.  " - Could you just make, like, thousands or millions or however many batteries.  Uh, those being little delicate arrays that only need to be swapped out on the scale of years to centuries."