Fic: The Future Soon
Sep. 7th, 2010 07:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalA scene set sometime in the "future" of the universe I'm contemplating writing about for my Nanowrimo, using a fantasy version of my Wazagans
The teacher ducked his head through the low sill of the door leading into the old converted mill, his tail swishing along the dusty floor. The mill wheel was gone, replaced by a great iron drum wrapped in copper wire, connected by cog gears and leather belts to the mill wheel’s axle. “So what is this great project which so consumes you?” he asked. “Why have you begged so meekly for me to come?”
“Teacher, I am tormented,” his student replied. One the rich son of a prominent House, he wore beggar’s rags and had a face thin with malnutrition. “God has let my create lightning, but I know not why!”
“Create lightning? With this?” His teacher pointed to the drum.
“Yes, yes!” the student cried. He dragged over a step stool. “Look inside, observe the iron wheel within.” His teacher looked down. A spoked iron wheel, wrapped in more of the hideously expensive wire, sat within the drum. Heavy bricks of magnetic iron lined the drum’s interior, barely a finger’s width from the wheel. “Now! Take off your jewelry, anything metal that you might wear!”
His teacher gave him a look of pity. “This is what you have spent your inheritance upon? Magnets and wire?.”
“Please! Please just do it! Let me show you! God be merciful, you of all people will understand!”
“Mercy upon you, I shall.” He removed his amulets and rings, setting them aside on a table miraculously free of papers or books.
“Now, observe the interior of the wheel.” His student pulled down a wooden lever and water began to flow from the spillway over the water wheel. This turned the axle, to a cog, to another axle, to a leather belt, each wheel smaller than the last, increasing the speed of the rotational force, until at last the iron wheel began to turn. Faster and faster it turned as the flow of water increased.
A strange smell began to the fill the air and the teacher's ears pricked up as a humming sound filled the air. Then, to his astonishment, he saw blue sparks, little flashes of lightning cross between the drum and the wheel.
“Extraordinary!” he exclaimed.
“There is more,” his student told him. “It travels! It can be directed! It was your lightning rod that showed me how. Attach a wire to the edge of the drum and it will flow wherever you desire.” He pushed the control lever upward and cut off the flow of water, letting the wheel gradually slow down.
The teacher set aside a pile of books from a chair and sat down, putting his rings and amulets of office back on, feeling his hands shake in excitement. “What do you intend to do with such extraordinary power?”
His student wailed. “I do not know! What good is lightning? Strike a creature of God with it and they will be dead, when a sword or gonne would do the same. Set it to a piece of parchment and it will catch a'flame, when a hot coal will do just as well. I have created an element of nature, but it does no good.”
The teacher touched the edge of the now stilled wheel carefully. “The magnets and wire create the lightning when you turn it, yes? Would the reverse be true? Would transmitting the lightning to a stilled wheel, the magnets on the wheel itself, make it turn?”
The student rubbed his face, thinking. “It would. That is why I had you remove your jewelry. The magnetic force created in the wrapped wires is extraordinary.”
“Just so.” The teacher traced the lines of of the cogs and belts. “Much energy is lost in the transition from the water wheel to your drum of lightning. What if the iron wheel was attached to it directly, and lightning run along the wires to a turning wheel. Any miller would welcome the improvement.”
“I suppose,” his student admitted. “But no miller would pay for such huge amounts of wire that would be necessary.”
“That is just one example. Try this one. Attach it to an Inglashi boiler, using the steam to turn the drum, the wires running to lightning wheels. Would that not be more efficient and less complex than one of their steam trains?”
“It would... it would...” Cheered by the thought, his student's expression brightened. “Give me a large enough wheel, I might set the world itself turning faster.”
Neither student nor teacher could have foreseen how right they were.
The teacher ducked his head through the low sill of the door leading into the old converted mill, his tail swishing along the dusty floor. The mill wheel was gone, replaced by a great iron drum wrapped in copper wire, connected by cog gears and leather belts to the mill wheel’s axle. “So what is this great project which so consumes you?” he asked. “Why have you begged so meekly for me to come?”
“Teacher, I am tormented,” his student replied. One the rich son of a prominent House, he wore beggar’s rags and had a face thin with malnutrition. “God has let my create lightning, but I know not why!”
“Create lightning? With this?” His teacher pointed to the drum.
“Yes, yes!” the student cried. He dragged over a step stool. “Look inside, observe the iron wheel within.” His teacher looked down. A spoked iron wheel, wrapped in more of the hideously expensive wire, sat within the drum. Heavy bricks of magnetic iron lined the drum’s interior, barely a finger’s width from the wheel. “Now! Take off your jewelry, anything metal that you might wear!”
His teacher gave him a look of pity. “This is what you have spent your inheritance upon? Magnets and wire?.”
“Please! Please just do it! Let me show you! God be merciful, you of all people will understand!”
“Mercy upon you, I shall.” He removed his amulets and rings, setting them aside on a table miraculously free of papers or books.
“Now, observe the interior of the wheel.” His student pulled down a wooden lever and water began to flow from the spillway over the water wheel. This turned the axle, to a cog, to another axle, to a leather belt, each wheel smaller than the last, increasing the speed of the rotational force, until at last the iron wheel began to turn. Faster and faster it turned as the flow of water increased.
A strange smell began to the fill the air and the teacher's ears pricked up as a humming sound filled the air. Then, to his astonishment, he saw blue sparks, little flashes of lightning cross between the drum and the wheel.
“Extraordinary!” he exclaimed.
“There is more,” his student told him. “It travels! It can be directed! It was your lightning rod that showed me how. Attach a wire to the edge of the drum and it will flow wherever you desire.” He pushed the control lever upward and cut off the flow of water, letting the wheel gradually slow down.
The teacher set aside a pile of books from a chair and sat down, putting his rings and amulets of office back on, feeling his hands shake in excitement. “What do you intend to do with such extraordinary power?”
His student wailed. “I do not know! What good is lightning? Strike a creature of God with it and they will be dead, when a sword or gonne would do the same. Set it to a piece of parchment and it will catch a'flame, when a hot coal will do just as well. I have created an element of nature, but it does no good.”
The teacher touched the edge of the now stilled wheel carefully. “The magnets and wire create the lightning when you turn it, yes? Would the reverse be true? Would transmitting the lightning to a stilled wheel, the magnets on the wheel itself, make it turn?”
The student rubbed his face, thinking. “It would. That is why I had you remove your jewelry. The magnetic force created in the wrapped wires is extraordinary.”
“Just so.” The teacher traced the lines of of the cogs and belts. “Much energy is lost in the transition from the water wheel to your drum of lightning. What if the iron wheel was attached to it directly, and lightning run along the wires to a turning wheel. Any miller would welcome the improvement.”
“I suppose,” his student admitted. “But no miller would pay for such huge amounts of wire that would be necessary.”
“That is just one example. Try this one. Attach it to an Inglashi boiler, using the steam to turn the drum, the wires running to lightning wheels. Would that not be more efficient and less complex than one of their steam trains?”
“It would... it would...” Cheered by the thought, his student's expression brightened. “Give me a large enough wheel, I might set the world itself turning faster.”
Neither student nor teacher could have foreseen how right they were.
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no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 01:05 am (UTC)Are you planning to set the story at the dawning of the industrial age or is this a prelude.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 01:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 06:09 am (UTC)Makes me wonder how he got the idea, and why he didn't build a smaller (and cheaper) model to show his teacher first. And how the teacher could tell the iron "bricks" were magnetic.
Also, I was a bit confused at the very beginning... "The mill wheel was gone, replaced by a great iron drum wrapped in copper wire, connected by cog gears and leather belts to the mill wheel’s axle." - I get the feeling you meant "millstones" the first time you wrote "mill wheel".
One typo I noticed: "Once the rich son..."
no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 07:24 am (UTC)And I agree with Anke, how did he came up with an idea like that?
mjkj
PS: Maybe typo, maybe wanted slang (but for a rich boy who speaks more formal in the first sentence?)
“God has let my create lightning,..." should read "me"