Chapter 7: The Working Life

I quickly settled into a rhythm with my new job. I woke up at dawn, which was roughly 5AM. It was hard to tell time though, since my room in the boarding house didn’t have any clocks—the only method I had to tell the exact was to briefly turn on my Switch, then turn it off immediately to conserve its precious battery. The boarding house also didn’t have any baths or showers, so all I could do was rinse my face and armpits in a small basin in the shared bathroom, and hope my smell didn’t get too bad. I won't even mention the toilet- the best I could say about it was "at least it's not an outhouse."

After washing myself, I headed downstairs for breakfast in the dining hall. The breakfast was bland, but filling—a bowl of porridge or grits, some kidney beans, one fresh egg, and a cup of black coffee. I missed the pop-tarts and frozen waffles that I used to eat for breakfast, but those weren’t available here of course. Apparently even getting one fresh egg was difficult here in the city, since they had to be flown in from farms in the countryside.

Then it was time to go to work. Occasionally I took the air-tram like I had with Summer, but usually I walked to save money. It wasn’t a long walk—the hard part was what came after. Six straight hours of climbing poles, wrangling in gargantuan airships, and then unloading heavy (and often fragile) crates while Vera barked at us to move faster. We only got a ten-minute break once and airship had been fully docked and unloaded, which was just barely enough for me to drink some water or swallow some almonds as a snack, then it was right back to work. By the time it was done, my arms felt like they were a quivering pile of jell-o. Still, I enjoyed the satisfaction of working with my hands and seeing tangible results from my work, and I could feel myself getting stronger.

We finished the shift at noon—this was announced by a loud steam whistle going off, which sounded like music to my ears. We had an hour break for lunch—I usually bought a fish sandwich from a small place near the docks. It was fried, salty, and delicious. I ate alone since I didn’t really know anyone yet, and I was too tired to really make conversation anyway. I usually just sat on the docks, eating my sandwich and watching the various ships and airships come in. The steady flow of white, triangular sails and gray, cylindrical blimps over the sparkling blue water made for an amazing sight.

After lunch, the regular workers went back for a second shift. I couldn’t imagine how they did that—I was way too exhausted after just one. Since I was also an apprentice engineer, I went to Sydney’s office with a few others for our training. The training was very comprehensive—it covered everything from math, to chemistry, to engineering, and even some world history and economics. Basically it included everything that Sydney thought might be relevant. Thanks to this, I got a surprisingly well-rounded education about this world, although I was still missing a lot of practical know-how.

The class was very freewheeling. It wasn’t like the regular schools I was used to, where the students all started at the same time and took classes together at the same speed. Instead she just threw us all in together. There were only eight of us, so it wasn’t too bad, but it was still very confusing when she’d skip over something that all the other students had already learned, and I had to scramble to keep up. Luckily the math wasn’t too bad—it was just algebra and simple trigonometry that I remembered from high school. But everything else was new to me.

The basics were easy enough to understand. You fill a balloon with hydrogen, and it floats—even I knew that. It would rise until it balanced against the lower pressure in the upper atmosphere, which might be as high as ten miles high for some models. This didn’t require energy either—it wasn’t flying like an airplane, it was just floating, so it could float forever until it crashed or ran out of food. They could vent hydrogen whenever they wanted to land. Most of them also carried ballast (cheap weights like sandbags) which could be thrown off in case they wanted to rise higher or balance a loss of hydrogen.

But even though hydrogen was lighter than air, it wasn’t too much lighter. That’s why they needed such a huge balloon (which was called a gas cell) to lift a tiny load. 1000 cubic feet per 71 pounds, or a sphere roughly 100 feet across to lift one ton. And you needed an enormous amount of hydrogen to fill that gas cell. That was where things got complicated.

“How do you get all that hydrogen?” I once asked.

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“What, you think we just find it lying around? We make it with chemistry!” Sydney answered as if a small child was asking “where do babies come from,” but she continued explaining. “We’ve got a section of the docks in back dedicated to producing hydrogen, and then we pipe it into all the gas cells from there.

“I see. Um, how do you produce it?” They never taught me that in my science classes back home. All I could remember was something about ‘valence electrons’ and ‘Avogadro’s number’ but not how to actually make any useful chemicals.

“There’s a chemical reaction with iron and sulfuric acid1. That’s what’s in those barrels over there. Ya see?” She pointed in the direction of some wooden barrels, with a hose sticking out of a tap, each with a warning sign on it.

“Really? It’s that easy?”

“Pretty much. Well, you have to be careful with the sulfuric acid of course, it’s dangerous stuff that’ll melt your face off. Producing it, and mining the iron, is really hard, so we mostly use male prisoners for that. But we need it anyway, and it also produces a fertilizer. It’s a really elegant system.”

“I’m sure it is. But... isn’t the hydrogen also kind of dangerous?” Actually, the whole thing sounded incredibly dangerous.

“Nah, it’s fine! Just don’t let it mix with oxygen! Hydrogen on its own is perfectly safe.”

“But the atmosphere is filled with oxygen!”

She tsked. “Ahh.. so you know that much, huh? Well, accidents do happen, but it’s usually OK. A lot of our training here is training us to be careful with everything so you don’t explode. But look on the bright side—it’s also a benefit! We can use explosive power of hydrogen and oxygen to make an engine.”

“You what.” This was sounding more and more dangerous.

“Yeah! It’s perfect. You take some of the hydrogen that we’re already using to fly. Mix it with a little oxygen from the atmosphere—it’s free, just waiting to be picked up. Light a spark and BOOM, power!”

“...And then the whole thing explodes?”

“Nah, of course not! We’ve got a really clever design that only lights a little bit of it. It just makes enough force to turn a propeller. But it’s enough to move really fast. The big ones can go about 50 mph.” I did some quick comparisons. 50 mph was not exactly fast compared to a jet plane, but very fast compared to a sailing ship or a horse drawn wagon, I realized.

“And how much can it carry?” I asked.

“Well, not as much as a big cargo ship. But still a lot. The biggest ones carry about 1000 tons. We get about one of those landing each day, and that’s enough to keep us supplied with everything we can’t get by regular ship.

“Can’t you use a railroad, instead?” I asked.

“A what?” she asked.

“Um... it’s common where I come from. You lay down straight metal tracks on the ground, and put a cart with an engine on them. It rolls along without any friction, and the engine gives it a lot of power. It can carry a huge amount of cargo. That’s what we use for most most of our cargo... or we used to, anyway.”

“That sounds amazing!” She said. “Some of the big mines use things like that. But you actually built for regular transportation?”

“Well, yeah. It was a really big deal when they first built it I think. It was before I was born though... everyone takes it for granted now.”

She shook her head. “It would never work. We don’t have nearly enough steel to build something that thousands of miles across the continent. And even if we did, who would build it?”

“Um... I read that, they used a lot of really low-paid immigrant laborers to do it. So it didn’t really cost that much.” And a lot of people died, but I decided not to mention that.

“All men?” She asked.

“Probably, why?”

“Haven’t you noticed? We need your muscles! We need men to work the fields, and work the mines, and work the heavy machinery in places like this! We can’t spare men for something like... hammering steel tracks everywhere!” She glanced away. “Besides... women wouldn’t like it. Personally I wouldn’t care, but the other women wouldn’t want you to risk your lives like that.” I couldn’t help but feel touched by that type of concern. I was used to thinking of male laborers as being somewhat disposable, like the old railroad workers had been, this was an odd feeling of being taken care of.

“So you use... this?” I gestured. “This... flying bomb?”

“Hey, don’t insult our engineering! We may not have as much muscle power as your male macho ‘Isle of Man’ you come from, but I’ll bet we have much better engineering skills! Our airships can ride as high as they want, catch winds to blow them wherever they want, and use hydrogen-powered engines to maneuver. Then they land wherever they want! We can even land in farms or mines in the country! So we don’t waste our effort carrying metal everywhere, like I guess you people do.”

She was right. This world might look primitive to me, because of the lack of metal and machines, but they made up for it with brilliant engineering. Everything was carefully designed to be light and efficient, and much of it was visually stunning as a result. Sometimes, like the hydrogen-fueled engines, it was rather dangerous, but they all accepted the risks and went on with life, full of courage and determination.

I found Sydney rather grating as a boss, but I greatly enjoyed her classes, and looked forward to them every day after my dockhand shift was over.