Chương 219: Chapter 240: Prototype

"Hey Nux?"

"Stab rabbit."

"Sure buddy. Listen, if we had some assistants for you, do you think you'd be able to work with them?"

"Wall-eyed knee data stove fey says," he said after a few seconds of consideration.

"Maybe some fingers." Not the most promising responses I could have gotten from him, really, but it's all relative. We're currently working side-by-side on a pneumatic machine gun that should let a train crew defend themselves in an emergency. Basically it takes a lot of the overflow pressure from the boilers and feeds it out through a narrow tube and feeds ammunition into the stream to launch the projectiles at high velocity and rate of fire.

My skin is currently glistening because he's already tried to bite me twice but if he can see that I'm metallic and nonmasticable he's less likely to try chewing on me.

"It's just that projects like this, where just the two of us can come up with a good enough answer, those are pretty rare, you know?" I said, checking the feed ramp for the gun. We had built a tenth-scale prototype of the train boiler some time ago as a proof of concept, but after the first shakedown run to make sure it was stable we haven't applied it much.

We're not sure how many times the smaller prototype can be safely brought up to pressure, and highly-pressurized steam in untested steel cannisters is dangerous. But, that same pressurized steam is the only way we can test the steam guns- our intention is to make all this pressurized steam dangerous to the right people. And so we're out in the back of the building cranking parts together while we chat back and forth.

The hard part was the flexible hose we need to bring steam up out of the pipes and into the breach of the gun. We don't have access to rubber or petroplastics, so there's strong limits on what kind of industrialized parts we can use. For now we're just using leather, because the hose doesn't actually need to be waterproof as long as it holds almost all the pressure in.

The first iteration used stitched seams and three layers to try to hold up, but only two failures in I got frustrated and just used magic to fuse the leather to itself without stitches, and bind the three layers together into a single thicker hose. And since then it was worked perfectly. It's not a method we can replicate with machines, but it only took me a few minutes to make as much leather steam-hose as we're going to need for a dozen trains.

I'm putting the last touches on the crimped coupling, lining it up with the breech-bore, while he calibrates the pressure valves and mechanical cut-outs. We're not really a safety-first laboratory here, but it's high in our top five. We're cavalier about our experimental process but we do design the equipment to be safe to operate for the end user. Redundant breakers, fail-safe valving.

I'm not just designing a railroad, I'm designing a railroad for cargo delivery, emergency relief rescue and troop deployment to operate in blizzards, earthquakes, firestorms, and in the middle of a shooting war. We are overengineering the fuck out of every step.

"Most application design," I continued, "is about iteration. And that's not just something you can put two-to-ten smart people on and generate good results in short order. We're gonna need dozens. And I want you on the project. You grasp things right away and you're innovative. You're good at taking my cheating knowledge from an advanced society and taking the next necessary step." I held an assembly together while he turned the wrench; using the table vise was always so slow.

"But, I don't know how similar your condition is to actual mental illness. Do I need to worry that more people around would overstimulate you? That you'd go extra-bitey and be unable to get any work done? Would it require special precautions? Or are you really and truly the mad scientist who thrives best with dozens of silent assistants wearing goggles and respirators with lab coats, the high-science equivalent of faceless henchmen."

The Madman pulled his own goggles up off of his eyes and rested them on his forehead, setting the wrench down carefully next to me. He pressed his lips as he carefully considered his words.

"Twitches turning switches stern, and digging zigging learning big. Which rig earns a burning gig, stitch spurns yearning, bitching in the brig. Figure snitch, trigger glitch, vigor pitch, configure bigger picture stricture." Then he reached for me, took my hand in both of his, rough palms folded over my hand. He held earnest, soulful eye contact, then he brought my hand up to his lips and tried to bite my thumb off.

He was still gnawing uselessly at it when he reached for the wrench, hands scrabbling for it, and I sighed as I tugged him away from any potentially dangerous implements. I called out for the other scientists to make space, and I walked him back over to his orderlies for them to put him back in his straitjacket. He's very excitable today. Probably because his two-week vacation was a lot more forcibly-restrained than mine was. He's got a lot of pent-up energy, but prototype testing is a bad substitute for a dog-run.

I wonder how many other inventors had to deal with something like this.

"You know that nobody else ever has to deal with anything like this," said the woman at my side. Close enough. It was the stooped old lady that was in charge of all our chemistry development because she never forgot about goggles and gloves and would smack anyone that wasn't protected. I nodded her way as Nux's handlers got him restrained and left with him.

"Maybe not. But I think that of everyone in this department, he's probably hating this the most."

"Really? How often do you think he gets bitten?" I truly could not tell if she was being facetious or actually bitter and resentful of working with a dangerous and physically-combative coworker. She'd be well-justified, but her tone did not match either really. So without anything to say I watched his minders finish strapping him tight and securing him to his dolly cart. I let it go a long moment before I spoke.

"I'm going to be trying to get more undergrads in here, make this a regular class, an extension of the Natural Philosophy track. It's good that we have this space and this staff, it already puts us at the cutting edge of development and miles ahead of any other learning institution. But there's lots of room for improvement still.

And in a few more months when the other institutes and research groups start copying our methods and trying to steal our success, I want us to have already moved to the next stage and leave them behind again." She shrugged.

"I'm not the one to talk to about that. Corder's in charge of policy and oversight. I just work here." The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Yeah, but would you rather hear about this from Corder?"

"God no," she scoffed.

"That man is what happens when a toothache makes a wish upon the Blue Fairy to become a real boy." Which is both an amazing turn of phrase and also entirely accurate. I laughed a bit.

"Well," she said, "don't let that real boy see any of your caravan parts here in the lab. He's got a growing hunger for prestige, and he's gotten a lot of prestige because of this department and the money that the Academy brand funnels in," she pointed out.

"If he thought there was a whole new revenue stream he'd pounce like a lion. And if it was something you were already funding that he thought he could snatch a percentage from? He'd stop at nothing." I smirked just a wee bit.

"I know that this is a very well-intentioned caution you're giving me-" I started.

"It's a very necessary caution because that man's greed is growing daily," she snapped.

"- but the thing is, I'm not just already aware of those avaricious atavisms," I chuckled, "I'm counting on it." She was going to keep asking, and I was done answering questions. My mana reached for the water inside the tank and brought it up to a hard boil, the valves clack ing as they flicked from zero to yellow-zone in a second. The tank thrummed with the sudden increase of pressure against its sealed steel chassis. Turns out, sorcery is a damn fine way to operate a steam engine.

I can't design them but I sure can boil them. The professor backed away, surprised, and I stepped up to the weapon itself, connected by its sweating hose to the pressure tank. I pressed the trigger that opened the steel-marble magazine into the valve chamber. The oaken mannequins on the firing range splintered and cracked before they broke down and fell apart, as if chewed down by an invisible monster. It was weird how quiet the gun was, pfftpfftpfft instead of ratatat-tat.

It didn't sound like a machine gun, but clearly it was going to shred bad guys like one. Not bad for a one-tenth scale. I made sure Nux was there for the demonstration. He was grinning merrily when the orderlies wheeled him away. I stand on the gravel path with books in my bag and a flute case in my hands. The bag is a single-strap that dangles off my shoulder, laying flat against my back. It makes me feel like everyone else. It makes me feel, ugh, like I'm a student at this school.

For a year now I've been going through some of the motions. I show up according to my schedule, mostly, I sleep in the dorm rooms, mostly. I eat from the dining hall, I abide by the regulations that I don't mind too much. I don't disrupt most classes, I dampen sounds whenever I'm talking out of turn, I make an effort. Yes, I am more disruptive, troublesome and insubordinate than any other student here. So I'm simultaneously the worst and best student in the school, by most metrics.

But also, I've been above it the whole time. I don't do study groups. I don't dress in the school 'uniform'. I don't attend optional functions or assemblies. I blow off every school spirit event and I never even bothered to learn when our prom was. I'm gone all weekend, off-campus pass or no off-campus pass. I hardly ever even walk the grounds unless I'm making time for a chat with someone. Like right now.

"Afternoon," I said, nodding to the biggest celebrity in our kingdom. The thing is that the bookbag has been a sticking point with me this whole time. Portals and pocket dimensions, that was my answer. It felt like this was a critical border between being present at the school, and being one of the student body. It helped me feel like I was apart from it all.

It helped me feel like I wasn't being forced back into fucking high school, more like I was just part of a story that was set against the backdrop of a high school. And a critical load-bearing portion of that difference is whether I need to carry books from one class to another using my hands. It felt like the skin of my shoulder was trying to crawl away from the strap. And I guess I looked as uncomfortable as I felt.

"Ah, you are... carrying a bag? Would you, er, like me to carry that? For you?" Enefiat Trazom said, sounding more unsure of himself than I've ever heard. Now I feel bad for making him sound like that.

"No, I can carry my own," I said.

"I'm just dealing with some very Elica-like emotions around this whole situation." He touched my wrist as he walked past me and we fell in together, alongside.

"You needn't put it like that," he said.

"Elica refuses to carry things because her self-image is built entirely out of her perception of station and privilege. Telling you to avoid using magic for ordinary quality-of-life measures would be more akin to asking most of us to spend a whole day with one hand tied behind our backs."

"Kind of you to say," I favored him with a smile.

"It won't be for very long, anyway. I'm going to push back against this. But for the sake of the other students I'm going to play along for the first little bit, that's all."

"I had heard that you were calling for the other students to just turn a blind eye and refuse to report you."

"I am," I agreed.

"But, it's a lot easier to get them to go along if they think they're being asked to overlook an exception and not a blatant abuse."

"Huh," he said, nodding.

"Makes sense." I adjusted my shoulder bag as we walked. Already getting uncomfortable.

"The principle is sound. Make it easy for people to follow your lead, let them get used to following your lead, then do whatever the hell you want. Get those in the wrong order and you just set yourself up for failure." With an eyebrow up he glanced my way.

"Sounds manipulative."

"I don't know how to tell you this, but every single technique of leadership is actually a form of manipulation."

"Intellectually I know that's true, but when you say it plainly like that, it feels different," he chuckled.

"So, you would like my help getting everyone on board with your wall of silence?" I paused, bit my lip.

"Huh. That would help a lot. I asked Kurumi to help but honestly you're more listened-to than the student president. I'm still taking it a bit at a time, this was all sprung on me this morning."

"Well, at least you've got a nice bag that you could use," he said.

"You could have been trying to carry your things open in your hands."

"Oh, yeah, thanks," I said.

"I conjured it this morning when nobody was watching. It is pretty cute though, isn't it?"

"For having been blindsided by this, you've adapted well."

"I am, slowly, learning to trust my abilities to adapt and improvise," I said.

"It's a slow process. But, I am going to need you to throttle down the compliments a little bit, because I've recently garnered some bad news and you're going to be mad at me and I'm going to feel bad if you're being really great to me when I tell you this."

"What bad news?" he asked, and he was tense now. I could hear it in his voice and see the corners of his eyes, the tiniest pinch of stress there. He is good at hiding inconvenient emotions but I know him better than that.

"We-e-e-ell, as you know the music department here at the Academy is divided into two sections, Traditional and Contemporary." I could see his heart sinking as he saw where I was going with this.

"Yes, I do know that." His voice was holding out hope. Maybe this was a misunderstanding? it said.

"Which could easily be re-framed as Music You Like and Music I Wrote," I added.

"Let me say now that I'm actually very sorry that my work is so annoying to you? Anyway, the administration, already in the process of shaking things up, had declared that music students are not to stay on the same track for consecutive years. So because you and I were studying Traditional last year-""We're doing all that contemporary rubbish this year?" he cringed.

"With key changes and tempo and banging explosions and-""It's one song with explosions," I protested.

"Sorry, sorry about that. What I mean is, yes. But, uh, good news is that we'll be switching back next year?"

"A year?" he whined. Like actually whining. Not something I'd ever heard out of him before, and it was weirdly endearing.

"A year of rattling pans and unconventional time signatures! Natalie they can't do this to me! I'm a national treasure they can't make me play all that weird stuff!"

"The good news is that you're a cellist. Most of what we'll be covering are four-chord numbers, you're going to have very little contact with the parts you hate." I was wrong. Our academy band program does not have guitarists, so the teacher needed to pick students with adjacent instruments to take over the guitar parts. Enefiat, suffering all the while, became our lead strummer. It took several picnics and candy-store outings for him to forgive me for this development.