The zipper gave up before I did.

Not dramatically. No cinematic rupture. Just a quiet mechanical surrender somewhere in a parking lot behind a thrift store while I was digging for an ESP32 board wrapped in anti static foam and a USB cable that smelled faintly like burned dust. The bag split slightly near the seam and a small avalanche of adapters, batteries, RFID cards, and tangled wires spilled into the passenger seat like electronic organs.

That was the moment I realized my backpack had stopped being a backpack a long time ago.

It had become infrastructure.

Not polished infrastructure. Not the kind with Pelican cases and color coordinated inserts and little labels made on a Brother printer. Mine looks more like somebody robbed a RadioShack during a geomagnetic storm. But piece by piece, it started forming into something coherent. A portable recon environment. A moving workstation for curiosity.…