Bartholomew “Barty” Krum was, by all accounts, a man of profound inertia. He measured success not by ambition, but by the distance between himself and his refrigerator. His biggest daily challenge was not navigating the stock market or coding the next big app; it was the inevitable, soul-crushing moment when the universal remote’s batteries died.
This was not a rare inconvenience for Barty; it was a nightly ritual. He maintained a sprawling, chaotic ‘Junk Drawer Abyss,’ the designated graveyard for expired spices, single socks, and, hypothetically, spare batteries. Yet, when the moment of truth arrived—usually during the climactic scene of a streaming show—the Abyss always yielded a rusty teaspoon and nothing else.
One rainy Tuesday, the remote died mid-sentence during a documentary on industrial espionage. Barty’s primal scream was not directed at the fictional spies, but at the sheer, maddening inefficiency of modern life. “Why,” he roared to his uninterested tabby cat, Mittens, “is the single most necessary spare part in the house never, ever with the thing it needs to power?”
In a blinding flash of desperate genius, Barty grabbed a discarded vitamin bottle, taped it crudely to the back of the remote with electrical tape, and dumped two fresh AAA batteries inside. It was hideous. It was bulky. It was, however, always there. He called his monstrosity “The Backup Buddy.”
The initial product—a sleek, magnetic, spring-loaded plastic cylinder that adhered to the back of any remote and held two spare cells—was ridiculed. Investors scoffed. Retailers laughed, asking why anyone would pay $4.99 for "a small plastic tumor." Barty spent a year selling them out of the trunk of his battered sedan, mainly to other socially awkward men who understood the depth of the remote battery trauma.
The turning point came not in a boardroom, but on live national television. During the broadcast of the annual Puppy Bowl, the director yelled “Cut!” only to realize the battery on the main camera operator's walkie-talkie had expired. In the scramble, an assistant, whose apartment was littered with Barty’s Backup Buddies, instinctively slapped one onto the fresh walkie-talkie. When the camera went live again, the bright, neon-yellow plastic cylinder was visible for a full five seconds. The commentator, seeing it, paused his description of a Labrador-Poodle mix, leaned into the mic, and announced with palpable relief, “Well, folks, look at that! Someone finally conquered the spare battery problem. That, my friends, is why some people are just smarter than others.”
The next morning, Barty Krum’s website crashed. Within a month, “The Eternal Cell” (as the market insisted it be renamed) became a mandated component for every new remote, thermostat, and key fob sold globally. Its mundane brilliance transcended brand loyalty. It wasn't just convenient; it was existential relief.
Barty, the former champion of inertia, became a billionaire based on the universal, shared anxiety of a dead battery. He bought a massive mansion, but the greatest luxury wasn’t the infinity pool; it was knowing that in every room, on every device, his little plastic invention ensured that the mundane crisis would never strike again. He had solved a problem so petty and pervasive that the world was thrilled to pay him handsomely for the peace of mind.