What the Central Union government found hardest to tolerate was not the photon deficit itself, but accounting books whose numbers no longer balanced exactly. When energy produced at a power plant was sent to another star system, the amount measured at the destination was slightly smaller. When the difference was small, it was recorded as transmission cost or equipment loss. As deficits recurred across multiple facilities, power companies could no longer explain the amount remaining between production and sales under existing expense categories. If it had become heat, it could have been recorded as waste heat. If it had been absorbed by a wormhole stabilization field, it would have been an equipment cost. If it had been stolen, the loss could have been offset by a claim for damages. The deficit could not be identified as any of these. Early regulations treated differences of unknown cause as losses. As the deficit rate increased, the financial condition of power companies deteriorated. One major company went bankrupt because its liabilities exceeded its assets on paper even while its power plants operated normally and continued supplying customers. Passage companies and local governments that had borrowed against energy-supply contracts were affected as well.
The Emergency Accounting Committee included physicists, power companies, passage companies, the Life Protection Coalition, and the auditor Sundar Patel. The first question it considered was not the cause of the deficit, but whose books should record the loss. Power companies argued that because the deficit occurred after energy had been sent into a passage, the transport companies should be responsible. The transport companies replied that their duty of carriage began the moment the energy was delivered to the entrance, while confirming the amount received at the destination was the recipient’s responsibility. The recipients argued in turn that because they had not received the contracted amount of energy, the loss belonged to the supplier. All three arguments relied on different clauses of the contracts. Before responsibility could be divided, the committee had to decide what to call the missing amount. The physicists explained that the fact that the energy could not be found within the observed domain had to be distinguished from the conclusion that the energy had ceased to exist. Another form or an unobserved route might still remain. The auditor proposed a category called “unidentified recoverable energy.” It was soon shortened to “energy receivables.” The proposal was to record energy that had been produced but whose whereabouts could not be confirmed as a provisional asset rather than a realized loss.
If a power plant produced 100 units and 99 units were received at the destination, the 99 units became sales. The remaining one unit was recorded separately as energy receivables. This did not mean that the energy could be used immediately. It was a rule for how the financial position should be represented until the cause and possibility of recovery became known. There were objections that something for which no method of recovery existed could not be recorded as an asset. The committee distinguished between not yet having found a method of recovery and knowing that recovery would never be possible. To reflect the uncertainty, the first accounting revision proposal required 90 percent of energy receivables to be held in reserve and recognized only 10 percent as assets. It was a temporary rule to remain in effect until the cause was identified. The market stabilized quickly. Contracts with power companies were renewed, and suspended wormhole construction resumed. The amount of power available to settlements did not immediately increase, but supply networks were prevented from collapsing because of bankruptcies that existed only on paper. As time passed, research institutions announced the possibility that recovery technology might be developed. The Central Union government issued recovery bonds entitling their holders to a specified share if the energy was found in the future. The bonds were traded on exchanges, and whenever unexplained deficits increased, the estimated total amount of recoverable assets increased as well. In one year, actual energy supply declined because stellar output had fallen, yet company valuations rose because the energy-receivables entries on their books had grown. Regulators prohibited deliberately increasing deficits in order to inflate assets. Inspections distinguishing transmission deficits from equipment losses were also strengthened. Yet no method emerged for determining where the differences that had already occurred had gone.
Beginning with the second accounting revision proposal, the reserve ratio was adjusted according to need. The original 90 percent became 70 percent, then 50 percent. Later, companies with high creditworthiness were permitted to hold only 10 percent in reserve. The amount of energy receivables a company held became one of the factors used in assessing its creditworthiness. The Central Union government issued additional bonds backed by recovery bonds. The money was used for new power plants and passages. The facilities that were built supplied real energy, and living conditions improved. At the same time, the number of facilities requiring maintenance and the amount of energy passing through the passages also increased. Before anyone knew where the energy receivables had gone, a larger civilization was built on the possibility that they could someday be recovered. Energy-receivables entries appeared in personal accounts as well. A portion of the deficit generated during long-distance travel was credited to travelers as mileage. The accumulated mileage could be exchanged for recovery bonds. The tourism industry advertised that energy lost during travel was being accumulated as an asset of the future.
Criticism of the accounting revisions continued. One side argued that the value of the assets was exaggerated; the other replied that eliminating the category would immediately collapse supply contracts for settlements whose citizens were still alive. The first side argued that the books were recording future recovery in advance. The second answered that those books were what kept present facilities operating. Neither side could call the lives the other was trying to protect imaginary. As the deficit rate increased, the decline in actually available energy outpaced the growth of energy-receivables assets. Companies possessed assets on paper while lacking the power needed to cool their power plants. When financial institutions tried to sell recovery bonds in order to obtain energy that could be used in the present, the number of buyers declined. The government guaranteed eventual recovery, but the amount it guaranteed exceeded the total energy then available in the galaxy. Part of the energy recorded as receivables eventually accumulated in the storage space created by the last scientist. Neither the auditors who devised the accounting revision nor the companies and citizens holding recovery bonds could have known this, and none of them could access it. No one at the time could know that the fact that energy had not ceased to exist did not mean that anyone would ever be able to get it back.
Sundar Patel was investigated several times, but no evidence was found that he had profited personally. He donated the various awards he received for the accounting revision to photon-deficit research and did not purchase recovery bonds. Without his revision, energy-supply contracts would probably have collapsed earlier, and more colonies might have disappeared. The accounting revision extended the life of civilization. During that time, civilization built more facilities and used more energy. Energy receivables remained on the final balance sheet of galactic civilization. The amount was enormous, but little usable energy remained. The provisional-asset account first proposed by the auditor was never reclassified as a realized loss.