I dropped the crate in front of Summer with a loud thud. “How do you like them apples!” I crowed.

But she didn’t seem as pleased as I expected. In fact she didn’t seem happy at all.

“This entire crate is full of their accounting records?” she asked.

“Well, it’s not like I had time to check every single book. It was pretty dangerous up there, dodging mafia goons while swinging from an airship in mid flight”-I couldn’t resist bragging a bit-”But from what I saw, every book and ledge in here has accounting records in it.”

“Eddie—that’s not good!”

I was taken aback. Wasn’t this exactly what she wanted?

Summer started flipping through the contents of the crate, and explained as she did so: “I just wanted the summarized version of their records. That should have been in a single ledger, maybe a couple of books at most. This is the detailed version, with every single transaction down to the penny. It will take me months to go through all this!”

“That is far too long,” said Akari.

“Yeah,” said Vera, “They were already looking for us, but once they discover we stole their records, they’ll really be pissed off. We need to get some dirt on them to the police, stat.”

“Can’t we just find a few illegal transactions in here?” I suggested. “It’s not like we need to uncover everything they ever did.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Summer shook her head. “They’re not going to list something in here like ‘secret illegal money from protection racket.’ It’ll just be mysterious revenue that doesn’t add up. But with this much detail, I’ll have to redo all the calculations to find the discrepancies.”

My heart was sinking. Had we really come this close, only to be foiled in the end by bad accounting? “Why does it take so long?” I asked. “Is there any way to make it go faster?”

Summer sighed. “It’s mostly the calculations. I’m really fast at reading accounting statements, but it still takes time to do all the arithmetic. Every single calculation has to be precise down to the penny, or it will throw the whole thing off. It takes me about an hour to do one page’s worth of calculations.”

“I see… you’re just doing the arithmetic by hand.” An idea was starting to come to me. “You don’t have any machines for doing arithmetic, do you.”

“No, of course not.” Summer looked at me like I was speaking nonsense. “A hydrogen engine can’t do math.”

“But this can!” Triumphantly, I pulled out my only functional piece of equipment from my world—my beloved Nintendo Switch.

“What the hell is that?” asked Vera.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

I had never showed it to anyone except Summer, and I didn’t feel like explaining now. “Long story, I’ll tell you later.”

“Isn’t that just a toy?” said Summer. “You showed it to me once, and it was amazing, but it seemed completely useless.”

“It’s mostly a toy,” I said. “But they did add one utility to it—the Nintendo Switch Calculator. Everyone made fun of it, saying ‘why does a Nintendo need a calculator?’ and ‘why are you charging ten dollars for it when every phone has one for free?’ Well, I’m going to show those haters why this app is worth ten dollars! It’s going to save our lives!”

“I think perhaps he has gone insane,” said Akari.

“Yeah, I gotta agree with Akari on this one,” said Vera.

“No! I’m not insane, look!” I hit the power button on the Switch and…

…And nothing happened.

Right. I forgot that it was out of battery. I tried to conserve the battery as much as I could, but it had still run out since I didn’t have any means of charging it here.

Summer tried to console me. “Eddie… it’s OK. You did your best. We’ll think of something else… I hope. Maybe you should lie down.”

“No!” I stood up. I was having another idea, based on something I had learned in my airship apprentice classes. “This will work, we just need a power source! And I think I know where we can get one. Come with me!”

The girls were all giving me strange looks, but they reluctantly followed me outside. I walked down the street, headed for the closest air trolley. Luckily there was one not too far away.

As I approached, I realized that the driver was none other than the mousy girl who had taken me on my first ever ride, back when I first got here.

“Hi!” She greeted me. “I remember you. Back for another ride with lil’ ol’ me?”

“No time for a ride! I’m just here to use your batteries,” I said.

“My batteries?”

She was obviously, confused, but I didn’t bother to explain. Instead I pushed my way past her and started fumbling with the engine compartment of the air trolley, looking for a way to open it. She tried to stop me, but Vera and Akari managed to convince her otherwise.

“Let him do what he wants,” Vera said with just a hint of menace, as she put her hand on the trolley driver’s shoulder. Akari didn’t say anything, but she flashed her katana a little. I felt a little bad for the driver, but this was no time for moral qualms.

After some fumbling, I got the engine compartment open. Inside was, just like I expected, a set of batteries to power the propeller. They didn’t look anything like the batteries from my time—they were just wooden boxes filled with fluid—but they were still recognizable. I disconnected one from the engine, pulled apart the copper wire, and threaded it into the power outlet of my Switch.

… And it still didn’t turn on.

Maybe it just needed more power? That was my last hope. So I disconnected all the rest of the batteries, and threaded them all into my Switch in the same way.

One by one I put them in… nothing… nothing… still nothing… but finally with the last one, it came alive with the familiar startup sound. Success!

The women were still looking at me like I was insane, but now I had something to prove myself. “Give me one of the record books,” I said to Summer.

She handed it to me. “All the numbers on this page need to be added together, and then divided by 365. You see how difficult this is?”

Difficult for a human maybe, but not for my trusty Switch Calculator app! I entered in all the numbers (slightly awkward on the console controls), punched the division buttons, and flashed the result to Summer.

“See! No problem. This thing can do all the arithmetic you’d ever want, instantly.”

“Is that… accurate?” asked Summer. She seemed dumbfounded.

“Yep! Well, unless I hit a wrong button. We should run it twice to make sure. But machines like this never make mistakes with arithmetic.”

“Sugoi…” said Akari.

“That thing must be worth a fortune!” said Vera.

“Haha, well… I did have to save up to buy it…”

It took some more demonstrations for me to convince them that my calculator app was actually accurate. But once I did, they were suitably amazed. Even the trolley driver was impressed, although she was still mad about how we had hijacked her vehicle. We waited until the Switch was recharged, and then rushed back to our warehouse hideout where Summer and I quickly crunched all the necessary accounting figures. My plan had worked perfectly! For the first time in my life, I felt like genius.