Civilization Chronicles: Rise of the Divine Creator

Now, saying the Mark-5 experimental engine was ’stronger’ than Pauline would be a gross mischaracterization, but that didn’t change the fact that using a bit of boiling water, a metal tank, and a couple of iron bars, Lucas was able to make a machine that could do something she couldn’t.

What was even more amazing was that the steam engines Lucas and his team were building were clearly not Spirit Tools. As far as Pauline could tell, there were no engraved Spirit Arrays or use of World Qi at all in these devices, making them nothing more than simple, common tools.

’Simple’ and ’common’ might not be the right descriptors, but the truth remained.

The Great Elder couldn’t help turning her eyes to the still slowly spinning Mark-1. What she had seen as a ’toy’ only moments ago now seemed much bigger and impressive somehow.

It took nearly a minute for Pauline to gather her thoughts and ask, ”What about the steam engine that was being tested today?”

Smiling wryly, Lucas felt it was a real pity the Mark-10 prototype had just undergone a rapid uncontrolled disassembly, otherwise he could have shown Great Elder Pauline his vision of the future, instead of just describing it to her.

Still, since she had asked, Lucas replied frankly, ”The Mark-10 uses the same 2-ton flywheel as the Mark-5, but we’ve successfully run it at 120 RPM for 10 minutes a few times now. Today’s test was about pushing its limits, which is apparently 170 RPM for 80 seconds.”

Thinking about it again, Lucas promptly corrected himself, ”Make that 170 RPM for 70 seconds.”

Pauline chewed on these figures for another minute or so, her mind whirling with all the possibilities this steam engine would open up should Lucas and his team develop a truly functional model.

Anything that required a waterwheel, anything that required a windmill, anything that required draft animals, anything that required manual labour... basically anything that required any kind of repetitive motion could, in some way, be accomplished with one of these machines!

Coming to this realization, Pauline now deeply understood why Lucas was spending so much time and effort on this project, and why it had been deemed classified by her mother, but if she thought she had fully grasped the implications of the steam engine, she was sorely mistaken.

”These are just the simplest types of engines, actually,” Lucas spoke up, apparently determined to thoroughly overload the Great Elder’s mind today, ”I actually have ideas about several other, more complex machines than this one, but with the technical skills and manufacturing capabilities of the Rockwell Kingdom, it’s not feasible to try to produce any of them yet.”

”You mean... there are better ’engines’ than this one?” Pauline asked with clear shock in her voice.

”En,” Lucas nodded, ”the steam engine is really just the most primitive type of engine. It’s a starting point, a gateway of sorts that will allow us to develop better technology in the future.”

Pauline was having a difficult time imagining such a future, as the steam engine alone had already been enough to change the way she viewed the world, as such, she decided to stop thinking about it for now.

Lucas himself had said that it wasn’t possible to make any of these other types of machines yet, and even the steam engine clearly wasn’t a finished product, so the Great Elder felt there was still some time for her to... adjust herself to this new reality.

As she was thinking so, the Mark-1 steam engine finally came to a complete stop, seemingly signaling the end of this part of the tour.

Seeing this, and noticing the slightly dazed look on his companion’s face, Lucas just smiled and asked, ”Shall we move on, then?”

It was only then that Pauline recalled that in this top-secret research facility, the steam engine wasn’t the only thing being worked on. There were several other classified projects going on here, and if each one of them was as shocking as the first...

Pauline needed to take a deep breath to steady herself before she nodded to her young guide, ”Please, lead the way.”

.....

Leaving the mess in Project Revolution’s workshop behind, Lucas and Pauline stepped outside into the courtyard and the first thing the boy did was look up at the sky to check the position of the sun.

Upon seeing how close it was to sundown, Lucas decided he should take the Great Elder ’there’ first, ”Let me show you Project Dyson.”

A couple minutes later, Lucas and Pauline arrived at an open field with a small pool of water at its centre.

Upon closer inspection, the Great Elder realized that this ’pool’ was actually a large metal basin roughly 2 metres in diameter and 50 cm deep. It only appeared to be a pool from far away because it had been buried up to its lip in the ground.

The pool was relatively unremarkable, but the 16 identical glass mirrors surrounding it were quite eye-catching.

The Rockwell Kingdom didn’t manufacture glass, much less mirrors, because it didn’t have the technical knowhow to do so. In fact, none of the nations in the South-Central Region did, so Pauline immediately realized that these mirrors must have been imported from either the Black Tiger Kingdom or the Kore Sovereignty.

What’s more, each of these square mirrors was about 50 cm wide, which was incredibly large. The polish of the glass was superb, the surfaces were almost perfectly flat, and the mirror itself was highly reflective, all signs that these were manufactured with incredible care and precision.

”How much did these mirrors cost?” Pauline wondered aloud.

In response, Lucas cringed hard as he muttered under his breath, ”A lot...”

”That much I figured out already,” Pauline replied dryly.

The glass mirror which Pauline hung in her room was significantly smaller than these, had a much rougher surface, and warped her reflection slightly when she looked into it, yet it had still set her back nearly 50 Gold when she bought it.

She could only imagine how pricy these bigger, superior quality mirrors had been, which also made her curious why Lucas had placed them outside in this small field.

The name of this secret project certainly didn’t provide her with any clues either as she had never heard of the word or name ’Dyson’ before, so she was simply left wondering.