My eventual departure from North Cove was rapidly approaching while I was buried in the work of building the most incredible place on Marth. And now only a few days remained, and I felt like it wasn’t nearly enough time.
I had personally been reviewing projects and attending every class I could on subjects being taught. A lot of the things they were discovering were thing I had known but forgotten. It was like refresher courses. Most of the higher-level classes were just groups of people throwing ideas around, but we had a few basics, like metallurgy, glassmaking, papermaking, surveying, general mathematics, and clothmaking. I wanted to know everything, but unfortunately, there just wasn’t enough time.
I would say the one field that was most fascinating, and that had really taken off without much help from me, was mathematics.
Once we identified three individuals who could grasp all the concepts I showed them relatively easily, I started introducing more things like the coordinate plane and graphing to them.These were born math nerds who saw the world as numbers.
Then they began unraveling the twisted knot that was higher math faster than I could keep up. I showed them the only geometry I could remember about lines that passed through two parallel lines and asked them to figure out all the truths they could about geometry. I asked them to figure out how to find the slope from two points on the coordinate plane, and they went further and realized they could use two equations to solve for the point where the two intersecting lines cross. I didn't remember what side-angle-side was supposed to prove, only that it had something to do with triangles. Two weeks later, they returned, bleary-eyed and looking like they hadn't slept. They proudly informed me that side-angle-side proved two triangles must be equal if two sides and the angle between them were equal.
To me, that sounded stupid and obvious. I couldn’t even understand why that was needed, but the survey team latched onto the information like a dog being given a bone.
And I guess that was a really interesting thing. How the math being developed started branching out into everything else. They took all the information from the surveyors, crunched the numbers, and produced maps far more detailed than anything we had before. Now they were working with them to figure out how to make them even more so: elevations, river bends, and most effective routes for roads and bridges. I think we accidentally created our first true civil engineers.
The measurements in chemistry were becoming more precise and although we didn’t really have a way to accurately measure everything yet, my explanation of the atomic theory, which was probably done as well as a sixth grader and my sketchy knowledge of chemical equations created a whole new group of people trying to puzzle out how exactly they could find out how many electrons each atom had and how they linked.
Their blind faith in me played a part. They accepted what I said as truth, even when I told them these were just ideas and may not be exactly true. Sooner or later, it was going to backfire but for now, it was causing rapid advancement. At least I think it was. I really was not sure which of the things these guys were doing would be most useful.
My thoughts were pulled back to the present as the cloth makers finished their report at the latest meeting of the Reality Benders. I hadn't meant to let my mind wander, but there just wasn't anything particularly exciting about listening to the women discuss different stitching patterns and different blends of fibers.
That was my fault.
I had suggested they experiment with different stitching patterns to see if some held better than others in different situations. There were already plenty of stitches in use, patterns that had been passed down from generations, but the women had taken it as a challenge. Ever since the smiths learned to make extremely fine steel needles with tiny eyes, it had become something of a competition to discover new patterns. So far, they hadn't found much that was truly better than the stitches they already knew. The biggest improvement had simply been the ability to sew much tighter, cleaner stitches with the finer needles and stronger thread. That became a competition in and of itself.
The water-powered spinning wheel, however, had been a genuine success. The continuous rotation produced a tighter, more uniform thread than a person could maintain by foot, and the newest machine spun four threads at once from a single wheel. The engineers were already designing an eight-spindle version. Between the higher-quality thread and increased production, it had nearly eliminated the bottleneck in cloth manufacturing.
Unfortunately, I had already seen the machine in operation several times, so hearing another recap of its performance wasn't exactly captivating.
The sewing machine was another matter entirely.
I had suggested building something similar to the mechanical spinning wheel—not to spin thread, but to drive a needle through cloth mechanically. I remembered from my home economics class—the one I had to take because I forgot to sign up for classes early and all the other easy ones were already full—that the sewing machine used a top thread and a bottom thread that somehow linked together to form the stitch. The rest was a complete mystery. I drew pictures of the little I could recall and left the rest for the Reality Benders to solve.
The idea had fascinated them.
Months later, it was still one of the greatest engineering puzzles in North Cove. Nobody could figure out how to make it work, but they kept promising they were getting closer. We were having more success with developing a better loom, but it was still slow.
“Thank you for your report, Seeker Wendy,” I said as I stood up. “Has anyone had any thoughts or inspiration on how to help the fabric and fashion division or how what they have been working on might be helped by their progress?”
The room full of Reality Benders was quiet for a full minute before I continued. I looked down at the sheet in front of me to make sure I had the order of the speakers giving reports right.
“Seeker James of the division of Steam Power. You are up.”
I had introduced the title "Seeker" to the reality benders to increase unity. I thought about Brother and Sister, but that felt too religious, like I was trying to form a cult. Though with how fanatical some of them were, I might have done it by accident.
James stood and bowed. “My Lord, we have managed to get a tighter seal on the pressure gauge. We can now measure pressure up to two kilograms per square centimeter, though it is only practical in the lab since all our attempts at harnessing the boiler steam beyond 1.2 kilograms per square centimeter have resulted in a rupture or catastrophic failure.”
“Where are the ruptures taking place?”
“Same as always, along the riveted seams and welds. The new design using a cylinder rather than a box has given us an additional 0.3, but we need stronger metal.”
“Have you tried the shear or crucible steel?” I asked.
“No, my lord. The amount we would need would be very large. Even if we could make one out of the steel, the metallurgists say carbon content is uneven. It wouldn't be something we could replicate efficiently unless we had greater uniformity. And as you have said, nothing is good until it is repeatable."
Jorb spoke up. “The steel would be extremely difficult to roll or even to hammer out into the sheet we would need.”
It was a frustrating conundrum. I figured that once we were able to build a Bessemer furnace, we could produce large quantities of steel, and it might be the right type for making boilers. But to do that, we needed pumps capable of generating enough K/cm to push air through iron.
The basic pumps that we were creating were a direct upgrade from the dual bellows system for pushing a steady stream of air into the coke furnace, but they failed to compress the air enough so that it could push through thick molten steel. I was sure once we found out how to do that we would be only a few steps away from creating the steel I had learned about from those student thesis videos on the History of Iron I had created. That would give us the metal we needed to make these boilers work.
Things were lining up; we just needed a few more technological leaps to propel us into a quasi-18th century industrial revolution. It was happening, though. Whenever I took a step back and looked at the whole picture, I could see a patchwork of technological advancements that would eventually all come together to make this world better.
Once James’ report wound down and he ran out of steam, we went on to a one-man team that had latched on to my electric generator like a man who had been starving his whole life. The only thing he had figured out so far was that the strength and number of the magnets mattered in the amount of electricity generated. The magnetic rocks we had dug up in our own iron mines did not work as well as the stronger magnets that I had gotten from Vaspar last year when I had gone to meet Count Vaspar. This had caused me to request stronger magnets from any of my trading partners.
But the stumbling block led him to find out that if he put four weak magnets around the spinning wire, he got a better result. Now it was time to try eight. I was excited to see what eight of the stronger magnets would do. The more people spoke of the things they discover the more memories it unlocked in my mind.
I remembered seeing the inside of an RC car that Nathan had pulled apart when we were younger. I really didn’t know what I was looking at, and now I wish I had taken the time to figure it out. From the image in my mind, it had metal wires tightly wrapped around another metal.
From its color, I assumed the wire was copper. It made me think that if an electric motor worked in reverse of an electric generator, then maybe we should have the wires on the outside and the magnet spinning in the middle.
It was an idea that I floated to the guy, but he couldn’t make it work, and since he was having success the other way, he asked if he could finish what he was doing first. Maybe he could eventually get some more people to work with him, but right now, people were more interested in other projects.
The chemistry team had grown quite a bit, even though the risk of working with them was high. We had created a certification program after chemical burns and gas exposure caused several injuries. The new glassware was a huge improvement when it worked, but it had a tendency to explode. Well, everything had a tendency to explode in the Chemistry lab. If Pine Ridge was our secret facility to research new products, disguised as a mining town, then the chemistry lab was a super-secret facility that didn’t even exist. It was located closer to the ocean near the hot springs where Kylie had found the first sulfur for our gunpowder. It ended up being a great location for the lab since it had access to a lot of different minerals. The passage to it was difficult and easy to guard.
I focused my mind again as Tumlus stood and gave his report. The shy young Rabiss I had first brought back from Kimton was gone. In his place stood a confident young man addressing the rest of the Reality Benders.
“As many of you know, we have developed several varieties of what our lord calls stained glass. Recently, however, we discovered another color.” He held up a small shard of beautiful purple glass that shimmered as sunlight poured through the windows.
Setting it down, he picked up a soot-black stone. “This mineral, however, is even more interesting then just making glass purple. When ground into a fine powder and added to the glass in very small amounts—roughly enough to balance the natural iron found in the sand—it neutralizes much of the green tint. The result is a much clearer glass with less processing beforehand.”
He held up another piece of glass, this one as clear as the best we had created so far. If they could get this down to a science, the last step would be consistently removing all the small bubbles and streaks.
The jeweler had ended up being worth his weight in gold for the knowledge he brought with him. We now had polished lenses cut to the right curvature and small enough to see small things swimming in the water. Giving more validation to my germ theory.
Once again, we had moved into territory that I had already reviewed with them, and so my mind began to wander until Preston, of our mad scientist division, stood up.
“First, I have to give credit where credit is due. Mostly to the glass makers. The glassware they have provided has sped up our research significantly. It allows us to see how much liquid we are losing as well as the separation of various liquids or precipitates.”
Also, after discussing the problem we were having with glass breakage, they postulated that the cause was from uneven heating of the glass vessels. Nicholas found that heating the glass in a liquid bath of water or linseed oil significantly reduced the breakage.”
He paused for dramatic effect, “Now, for what we have actually discovered this month. First, we experimented with adding seawater, rather than the distilled water to our experiments and found we got several new interesting results. This, of course, causes inconsistency due to the unquantifiable amount of salt in each batch. So now we add pure salt to distilled water in various amounts.”
Preston was not really what I would call a nerd. He was one of the first pyromaniacs. But he had picked up a few new words from me, like precipitate, postulated, and unquantifiable, that made him sound more intelligent than crazy.
“We tend to end up with a lot of new things, and once we learned of this black rock that the glass makers were using, we created a yellow-green gas that is heavier than air. It burns the eyes and nose with a sharp smell. The rats died when the gas was put in the box with them.” He sounded much more excited about killing all the rats in our breeding pens than I thought was healthy. He held up a small jar. “Pushing it through water will capture some of it in a liquid.”
He turned to me, “Perhaps you would like to name it. Looking at it and smelling it will not harm you, as long as you do so from a distance. Without diluting it, it may irritate the lungs. Rats will even drink it if it is not too concentrated.”
Asking me to name it was not just giving me the honor of a lord. What he really wanted me to do was try to identify it. Even though I never admitted it I think everyone now prettymuch knew I had knowledge of things I shouldn’t.
“Bring it here and let me smell it.”
When he opened the jar, I was pretty sure what it might be. The description of the gas, along with the faint smell and watering of my eyes, was a good indication. I tried to think of all the things this particular liquid was used for in my life, but only two came to mind.
“Let’s call it chlorine water. Since it doesn’t harm rats when they drink it we may want to take stagnant water and add some to it. Use one of the new magnifying lenses to see if it kills the things swimming around. It might be something we can use for cleaning. The health care division might be able to use it to clean after a patient leaves.” This got a reaction from the back of the room. “Also give it to the fullers. See if it will whiten clothing.”
The last statement caused Roger the Fuller to stand up and look at the jar. Yeah, pure white cloth was going to be a game-changer for him if this was actually what I thought it was. Right now the way to bleach anything was to leave it out in the sun, and even that wasn’t perfect.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Preston said. “We mixed some of the black mineral with linseed oil, and it caused the oil to harden much faster. We thought it might make a good varnish.”
Lightning struck my brain at that statement, and a smile spread across my face.
If I was right—and I was almost certain I was—then this black mineral contained manganese.
This is what allowed us to move away from lead as a drying agent in the 1800s. And if this really is manganese, then it was also added to the steelmaking process at some point, though I cannot remember exactly when in the video it was dumped in. A few more steps and we would be there. Things might be moving even faster then I thought. And it looks like I have a better way to make my paints.
*****
“I should be going with you.” Draves' voice was firm, leaving little room for argument.
I sighed and leaned back in my chair. “Charles, you can't come, and you know why.” A map of North Cove was spread across the desk, and I tapped a finger on Bicman. “If I don't leave you here, there may not be a North Cove for me to come back to.”
Draves' jaw tightened, but he remained silent.
“I have no doubt Yarbeth will try something while I'm gone. I still don't know how far Malcomp's loyalty extends, and no matter how quickly we're expanding the army, Yarbeth could march troops up from his father's county during the winter. If that happens, I need the best commander I have here to deal with it. Besides, I have Rick”
He crossed his arms. “Rick is capable, but he isn't me.”
“No,” I admitted. “He isn't. That is why you are staying, and he is coming. He can protect me. You can protect the county.”
Draves let out a slow breath through his nose.
“You need to bring more men,” he said.
I couldn't help but chuckle. “No, I don't.”
“My lord—”
“I am already taking one hundred men. One hundred.” I did not hold back the look of annoyance on my face. “That doesn't include the servants, craftsmen, scholars, and artisans I'm bringing along to steal every scrap of knowledge I can find from the capital.”
A faint smile tugged at the corner of Draves' mouth.
“Yes, I said steal,” I continued. “If someone has a better way of doing something, I intend to learn it before they realize I've been watching.”
“The nobles may object to you stealing.”
“Then I'll call it... enthusiastic observation.”
Draves shook his head.
“Being a count is an expensive proposition, and I need to make this trip worth it’s while.
“They've provided a residence outside the city walls,” I continued, “but I still have to pay rent. Then there's food for over a hundred mouths through the entire winter, wages for everyone I bring, fodder for the horses, replacement equipment, gifts for the court, and enough coin to avoid looking like some backwater count who doesn't belong there.”
I rubbed my forehead.
“Do you have any idea how much this is going to cost me already? All so I can dress myself up like a peacock for people I don’t even care about. I have to look ridiculously wealthy so people don’t doubt my worthiness to marry a woman I have never met and who will probably be some stuck-up airhead that I am going to have to deal with for the rest of my life.”
Draves didn't answer immediately. Instead, he rested both hands on the table and looked down at the map.
“I understand your concern,” he said quietly. “But none of it matters if someone puts a knife in your back.”
I smiled.
“Are you still worried about the curse?”
“Yes, and you should too. Even if it isn’t true, it doesn’t hurt to be on your guard. That's why I still think it should be two hundred.”
“Draves, trust me. If I have survived this long, then I believe the Endless One has bigger plans for me than to die due to some woman's curse. I am more worried about her being a curse on my county.”
I have mixed emotions about this chapter. It sort of felt like an information dump when I first wrote it, so I tried to polish it up. It was a great way to show the rapid advancements but still a lot to take in. My brother liked it though, so I guess we will keep it. As long as I don't do that too often. My problem is that there is so much rapid progress that I can only show a fraction of it, or it would read like a history book.