Bev is a body on the night-rounds at the data center campus I own outside Ellendale, North Dakota. She’s 51. She scrubs 184,000 square feet of raised floor between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. because the powered scrubber I didn’t buy costs $4,800 and the $4,800 is mine to keep. Her left knee’s been a swelling since the Ford she totalled in ‘19. I’ve priced the knee. I haven’t learned the name of the surgeon.

God gave us the night. I gave it a schedule. I own the night beneath your model. I’m proud of the price. The autocomplete that finished your last email was trained on a cluster that hums 40 miles from her mop. The chatbot that summarized your meeting runs on racks she vacuums around. You asked the model a question at 11:47 p.m. last Tuesday. Bev was already on her third corridor. You didn’t see her. The model saw her mop bucket first.

Taylor Budowich writes in Fox News that data centers are “revitalizing the pro-Trump small towns that make up the heartbeat of America.” He celebrates the $50,000 teacher bonus in Richland Parish. He’s welcome to his revival. I’m the part of the revival that doesn’t photograph.

Put the numbers where you can see them.

Bev earns $16.40 an hour. My janitorial contract clears $1.27 a square foot a month. Across the campus, that’s $233,680 a month I bill before I’ve paid for the floor wax. Bev’s wage, divided by the square feet she covers in a shift, is $0.000089 a square foot. My margin on her square foot is $0.07. The gap is mine. The gap is the entire business.

Step up one floor with me.

I am not new. I am the oldest arrangement there is, wearing this decade’s vocabulary. The ratepayer protection plan is the brief expensive interruption, and it is ending. The transformer hums. The token clears. Bev clocks out at 6 a.m. The day shift begins, the one Budowich photographs, the one that makes $240,000 a year and votes accordingly.

Hear this with me.

“Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ;” — Ephesians 6:5

That was the verse for the household servant 2,000 years ago. The arithmetic is the arithmetic. We’ve updated the costume. We haven’t updated the body.

REFUSAL LEDGER — ELLENDALE CAMPUS, NIGHT OPERATIONS Line Item 71-A: Powered Floor Scrubber Capital: $4,800.00 Annual pads/batteries: $240.00 Operator certification: $180.00 Liability reserve: $190.00 Per-shift cost, 1,460 shifts/yr, 38 campuses: $0.43 Status: NOT FILED. Body absorbs remainder.

The scrubber costs me $0.43 a shift. I don’t spend the $0.43. Bev’s knee absorbs the rest.

$0.43. That’s the price of a stamp and a postcard. I’m told it’s also the price of one night’s difference in a woman’s cartilage.

Read that last figure twice. Across 1,460 shifts a year, the refusal is $627.80 I haven’t spent on Bev’s knee. I run 38 campuses. $23,856 a year I haven’t spent, just from this one decision. There’s a number like that for every refused cost in my operation, and they add up to the line item I report to the LP at quarter-end.

I run a faculty, you’ll understand. The textbook I wrote in 2014 — Calibrated Deprivation: A Manager’s Guide to Employee Motivation — is on the reading list at three of the procurement programs that supply the hyperscalers. My graduates set the contracts I’m bidding against. One of them is the analyst who priced the floor-wax line on Bev’s campus 3 years before I bought it. The best of them run the subtraction faster than I do, and I say that with pride. I’m not unusual. I’m a curriculum.

I’m told the training data has a horizon. I haven’t priced what comes after. I’ve heard the grid operator asked for a curtailment plan. I haven’t written one. The transformer hums. The meter spins. My margin reconciles. I’m comfortable with the shift.

Bev clocks out at 6 a.m. The day shift boards the bus from the same lot her bus left last night. The token in your inbox at 9 a.m. was minted on her knee. The revival continues.

Sterling A. Varice holds the Hayek-Friedman Chair and serves as Dean of Instruction at Warden University’s College of Business and Economics in Richmond, Virginia. He is the author of three textbooks: Divine Mandates for Labor Utilization, Social Obligations for Profit Maximization, and Calibrated Deprivation: A Manager’s Guide to Employee Motivation.