Civilization Chronicles: Rise of the Divine Creator

”Ahem,” a firm but feminine voice cut in, clearing her throat to get Lucas and Marco’s attention.

””Ah.”” Reminded that they had a guest, Lucas and Marco both looked over at Pauline and bowed apologetically, ”Pardon us, Great Elder.”

”It’s fine,” Pauline shrugged calmly. She had been listening carefully for a while now, but if she was being honest, she hadn’t been able to understand half of what these two had been talking about.

When the discussion started turning from blacksmithing to engineering, and terms like ’working temperature’, ’stroke length’, and ’pressure-volume diagram’ started being thrown around, the Great Elder knew she had to interrupt before she became totally lost.

Smiling wryly, Lucas patted Marco on the back and simply said, ”Well, keep working on it. I’ll try to find a way to increase the precision on the lathes again... somehow.”

”Please do, Boss,” Marco nodded before saluting the Great Elder again and getting back to work.

With his head developer gone, Lucas motioned for Pauline to follow him, leading her to the back of the workshop where a much smaller metal contraption was set up.

This one looked like a large round kettle, but unlike a regular kettle, this one had 3 curved spouts, all of which were bent sideways.

Lucas walked over to a water barrel, filled a cup, then poured it into the round ’kettle’ before clamping on its lid and striking some flint to light the stove below it.

Once he was done, the young boy turned to Pauline and explained, ”This is a much, much simpler version of the steam engine you saw back in the main workspace, Great Elder.”

Examining the device in front of her, Pauline quickly surmised what its purpose might be, ”You’re trying to use steam to spin this thing?”

”Precisely,” Lucas nodded, ”A lot of power, or more specifically, energy is required to heat water and transform it into steam, steam engines are designed to turn all that energy into something useful.”

”I see...” Pauline somewhat understood, but somewhat didn’t.

What Lucas said made sense to her, sure, and she could even somewhat imagine how this steam engine might be used in the real word, but was it really worth investing so much time, effort, and money into building such a machine?

Judging just from the ’toy’ in front of her, one she could easily stop with her pinky finger or by placing a light piece of firewood on top of, Pauline couldn’t see it being used for much, and certainly not for anything that required real strength.

Seeing the look on Pauline’s face, Lucas couldn’t help laughing, understanding exactly what she was thinking.

It was difficult for anyone who hadn’t actually seen one to realized just how much power a steam engine could actually output, especially if the only thing they had to compare it to were the old waterwheels or windmills that dotted the Rockwell Kingdom’s landscape.

Even Braxton and Marco hadn’t been convinced at first that this project was worth spending so much of their limited time and focus on, but that all changed a month ago with the Mark-5 prototype.

Remembering back to that day filled Lucas with smiles, and as the kettle before him started to heat up, the young boy did his best to paint a picture for the still doubtful Great Elder.

”This is the first working prototype steam engine we built,” Lucas explained, ”We called it the Mark-1, for obvious reasons, and since then, we’ve built 9 successive models.”

Steam began puffing out from the 3 different spouts as Lucas talked, slowly at first, but soon increasing to visible streams that got the Mark-1 rotating on the simple rolling-bearing assembly it was sitting on.

”As you can see, just a bit of steam is able to make this thing spin,” Lucas pointed out, ”I admit, it doesn’t look like much, but this is really just the simplest possible model.”

Pauline nodded but still wasn’t convinced. This Mark-1 was novel, sure, but in her opinion, even a Mortal child could generate the same amount of force without any difficulty.

”The Mark-1’s power output is naturally quite limited,” Lucas continued, ”Mainly because the boiler isn’t sealed and we’re trying to use the steam to directly rotate it. If we want to get more power out of a steam engine like this, we need to find ways to confine all that heat and steam to build up more and more pressure.”

”Like the difference between half-drawing and full-drawing a bow?” Pauline, as a master archer, immediately related Lucas’ explanation to a subject familiar to her.

”Er...” Lucas paused, wanting to say that it wasn’t quite the same. The steam engine made use of gas pressure, while a bow generated thrust through tension; however, for his current purposes the young boy figured it was close enough, so he nodded, ”Pretty much.”

Pauline didn’t miss the awkward look on her young partner’s face and raised her brow slightly, clearly not appreciating him patronizing her.

Unwilling to get draw into a pointless debate or worse, a physics lesson, Lucas cleared his throat and swiftly moved the conversation forward, ”In any case, the Mark-2 through 4 were all total flops, each of them failed for one reason of another before they really even started operating.”

”Hmph,” Pauline snorted but didn’t call Lucas out for his obvious attempt to brush her off, something the boy was very grateful for.

”The Mark-5, however, was a huge turning point,” Lucas breathed a sigh of relief at being let off the hook, and quickly continued, ”it was the first steam engine that actually ran according to its intended design.”

”What changed?” Pauline asked, trying to re-engage in the conversation.

”The Mark-5 was built after the new lathes were installed in the main force,” Lucas explained, ”Using the lathes, as well as some of the newer manufacturing equipment, we managed to greatly decrease the amount of variance in the critical components of the steam engine.”

”That, in turn, increased how air-tight we could make the boiler and pipes, and also allowed for much smoother motion of the engine’s moving components.”

Thinking back on that machine, Lucas chuckled, ”Don’t get me wrong, the Mark-5 still took forever to heat up, leaked like crazy, and as soon as the pressure got too high, the entire boiler assembly exploded, but for the 3 minute or so it was actually running, it was... well, it was revolutionary.”