Three houses down, a woman answered, holding a toddler on her hip. She'd gotten a $900 fine last month for a playhouse that was non-approved yellow. She'd be there.
The 20th house: a guy in his 30s who worked tech from home, answered the door holding printed spreadsheets. "Already downloaded everything from your website," he said. "I'm an accountant. This embezzlement is amateur hour. I'm bringing copies for anyone who wants them."
By 8:45, Rocky Mountain Power's utility van arrived at the transformer site. White truck, orange cones, two engineers in hard hats.
I watched from my driveway while pretending to organize my garage. They spent 90 minutes taking readings, consulting tablets, pointing at corroded connections and overgrown vegetation.
The body language told the story before any tags went up: lots of headshaking, serious phone calls, that specific way engineers look when they're about to shut something down.
At 10:20, they zip-tied a red tag to the chain-link fence: "Equipment condemned. Unsafe for operation."
I photographed it before Brin could rip it down. The notice cited obstructed access, inadequate clearance, and, here's the kicker, load capacity concerns, requiring immediate remediation and full transformer assessment.
That transformer was installed in 1998, 27 years old. Standard transformer lifespan: 25 to 30 years.
If the utility decided it needed replacement during their assessment, the neighborhood would go dark for 2 to 3 days during installation.
My solar setup with the Powerwall battery could keep my house running for 72 hours easy. The optics would be perfect: Brin's house dark while mine stayed lit.
Timing so perfect it felt like a movie script, except I'd just filed safety complaints and let physics and bureaucracy do their thing.
I texted the group: "Transformer failed. Power out at two. Town hall still on. Bring flashlights."
Marian responded: "You beautiful bastard."
Harlon sent a gif of fireworks.
Greta wrote: "I need to learn chess from you."
At 11:30, my doorbell rang. Three women I didn't recognize stood on my porch in matching athletic wear—Brin's yoga cavalry. The lead woman was maybe 40, blonde highlights so precise they looked drawn with a ruler, holding a Starbucks cup like a shield.
"Mrs. Keller authorized us to extend a settlement offer," she announced. "$15,000. You drop all claims and sign a nondisclosure agreement."
Where's Brin?
"Preparing her presentation for this afternoon. She's documenting every false allegation you've made."
Tell her I'll see her at 2 p.m.
The woman's smile could have frozen helium. "You're destroying this community. We had a nice neighborhood before you moved in with your panels and your attitude. You don't even fit here."
The subtext was clear: My house was too small. My truck too blue-collar. My unwillingness to bow and scrape too offensive to their manufactured order.
You're right, I said. I don't fit. I actually read the bylaws. Now get off my property before I add trespassing to the harassment report.
They left in a white Mercedes that smelled like expensive candles and manufactured superiority. I watched them retreat and felt something settle in my bones.
This wasn't about solar panels anymore. This was about people who'd been stepping on others' necks for years. And today, someone was standing up.
At 12:30, I arrived at the pavilion. Harlon had the projector running, testing Luther's deposition video. Greta arranged printed financial documents on a table like evidence at a trial.
Marian showed up at 12:45 with a Channel 9 news crew. Nia Park's editor approved it, Marian said. We're live streaming on their Facebook page.
The reporter, young, hungry for the story, interviewed Marian while his cameraman captured empty chairs that wouldn't stay empty long.
People started arriving at 1:15: the Hendersons, the woman with the yellow playhouse fine, the tech accountant with his briefcase full of highlighted spreadsheets, families, retirees, people I'd never met who'd been quietly suffering under Brin's regime for years, finally ready to watch someone fight back.
By 1:40, 63 people packed the pavilion. Every chair filled, people standing three deep along the sides. The air hummed with nervous energy and suppressed anger, finally finding an outlet.
At 1:50, the TV crew positioned cameras with sight lines to both podium and crowd. Harlon queued up the first slide: a giant number in red, $28,000.
At 1:58, Brin arrived. Navy blazer, cream blouse, hair shellacked into submission. She walked in like she owned the oxygen we were breathing.
A new lawyer followed: expensive suit, $400-an-hour posture, the kind of attorney who drinks single malt scotch and loses.
Anyway, they took front row seats, spines rigid, faces made of marble in denial.
At exactly 2:00 p.m., the lights died. Every street light winked out. Every house went dark. The community center killed mid-hum.
The only sounds were Harlon's generator powering our PA system and 63 people gasping in unison as reality hit them.
Then someone pointed. Through the pavilion's open sides, three streets away: my house glowed. Lights blazing. AC unit humming. Solar panels catching the afternoon sun like they were waving.
The visual metaphor was so brutally perfect I almost felt bad. Almost.
I stepped to the microphone. The generator-powered speakers crackled. "Thanks for coming," I said. "Let's talk about where your money went."
The TV camera's red light blinked on. 63 witnesses streaming live. No turning back now. This was justice served cold with a side of infrastructure failure.
The silence after the power died felt like the neighborhood holding its breath. Then the pavilion erupted—whispers building into conversations building into controlled chaos.
Harlon's generator chugged away, keeping our PA system and projector alive, the only electronics working in the entire neighborhood besides what was humming in my house three streets away, glowing like a lighthouse while everything else drowned in darkness.
I let the moment breathe, gave people time to look at the dead street lights, then at my lit windows, then at Brin sitting front row with her $400-an-hour lawyer. Her hands were clenched so tight her knuckles had gone white.
She leaned over and hissed something to her attorney. He shook his head, looking like a man realizing he'd brought a knife to a tank fight.
"Good afternoon," my voice crackled through the speakers, echoing off the pavilion roof. "I'm Dex Monroe. Some of you know me. Some got Brin's email this morning claiming this meeting was canceled. As you can see," I gestured at the 63 people packed into every available space, "we're still here."
Nervous laughter rippled through the crowd. The TV camera panned across faces—angry, curious, afraid, hopeful.