The farmer stretched as he stepped off the wagon seat. It's been a long trip to sell the grain, he thought as he rubbed his aching backside. I hope I can finally get a reasonable price. They say Enderton will buy as much food as they can get their hands on.
He asked around until he got the location of a baker who was just setting up shop. He will likely need supplies, the hopeful seller thought. When he arrived, the shopkeeper was quite happy to see a filled wagon. “You have no idea how difficult it has been to find supplies,” the man said as he looked into the bags. “So many people have been moving to Enderton, myself included, that the local farms just can’t support the population. New land is cleared and plowed every week, but it will be a long time before our needs are met.”
“That’s what I heard.”
“So this is rye?” the baker asked.
“Sure is.”
“Got some different grain colors than I’m used to. What are you selling it for?”
The farmer quoted him a price.
“Hmmm…” the man thought for a minute. Rye is cheap, and I’ll have to sell the bread for less than I’d sell wheat bread for. And I don’t know how well this variety will form a dough. I haven’t seen light and dark kernels together before, but I need something to sell, and this is a sight better than nothing.
The two men haggled back and forth for a while, and in the end, they made a deal, each believing they got the better of the other.
The farmer helped unload, clasped arms with the baker in farewell and climbed back in his wagon. Finally, that load is out of my stores, he thought. He offered me a much better price than I could have got in Brighton. The wife will be happy, and I’d say that’s worth the trip; I will surely have to come back.
With that, he clicked his tongue, and his two horses pulled the wagon back down the road, one of the many who were forging deeper bonds with the new kingdom.
---
Jason stared intently at the wood and metal contraption in the workshop in front of him while a group of men and women stood around, waiting. They glanced back and forth between him and each other, wondering what the verdict would be.
Finally, the king spoke. “This is the most significant device we’ve made in the kingdom to this point.”
“Really?” Otto spoke up skeptically. “I think the guns were pretty significant.”
“Your majesty,” Alex added to the end for him.
Otto just grunted.
“Yes,” Jason stated. “Guns increase the physical force we can project. The printing press,” he gestured at the contraption in front of him, “increases the knowledge we can project. The latter is arguably more powerful if we wield it correctly.”
“If you say so, your majesty,” Otto said dubiously.
“Either way, there are quite a few nobles who pay good gold for copied books and manuscripts,” Alex spoke up. “It will help our finances tremendously if we use this wisely.”
Jason asked, “What books should we start printing?”
Silence was the only answer.
“Okay,” the king sighed. “It appears we got ahead of ourselves. Alex, go figure out what books are commercially viable for printing en masse. I’d better start writing some textbooks. A reading primer would be a good place to start,” he mused. “Perhaps a single sheet that we can provide every citizen? Then some short books on basic mathematics, physics, chemistry, health, and biology…”
“You will write all of these?” Alex asked. “Do you have the time?”
“No.” Samantha opined. “He does not.”
The king chuckled wryly. “I’ll have to make the time. An educated populace is a key to the industrial revolution I’m trying to kick off. I’ve also got to modernize farming to the point that we don’t need the majority of our people working in food production. Fertilizer, better plows and equipment, that sort of thing. Preferably equipment that’s not animal-drawn, too…”
Jason looked up and could tell he had lost his listeners. “Anyway, we have lots to do. Let’s get back to it. Great job on the printing press, everyone! Sam, remind me to talk to you and Alex about finding someone to start a newspaper.”
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“Valves are installed at the connection to each house,” Samantha told Jason as they walked up the hill towards where the concrete water tank would be. “That way, we’ll be able to turn off the water to each individual house. It will make adding more connections much easier at a later date. Right now, we are installing one water faucet per house plus the water and waste pipe for the toilets. We still haven’t started even attempting to make the toilets yet.”
“They have been difficult,” Jason admitted. “The bowl isn’t hard. Now that we can make pipe, it’s not hard to bend it into an ‘S’ shape for the trap. We need that to prevent water from flowing out and noxious gasses from coming back up. And the tank is just a bucket.”
The king and inventor-in-chief sighed. “It’s the mechanism for automatically refilling the tank that I can’t quite figure out how to make with the parts we have. I know there’s a flap at the bottom of the tank to release the water, and a flap at the top on a pivot to open or close the water valve. To actually make it work, though, has proven problematic to do with the valves we have. We can make the float out of a blown glass ball or a pig or sheep bladder, but the problem is that valve.
“I need the float to be able to turn the water on and off, but the valves we have require too much force to turn. You don’t want the water stuck on and overflowing, or unable to turn on the water because the float isn’t heavy enough to force the valve to close. Maybe I’ll have more time tonight to work on that problem.”
Sam thought for a moment, falling behind Jason on the path. “Couldn’t you just have people fill the water tank after they use it?”
Jason slowed down as well and turned back to his assistant. “What do you mean?” he asked, though he was already starting to realize what he had missed.
“Why does it need to happen automatically?” Sam queried. “That is a word I have only ever heard you use. You forget that people are used to doing things themselves, and rush to have your mechanisms do everything for them. Perhaps it would be better to make smaller improvements that people can use sooner?” Sam finished somewhat breathlessly. “My king.”
“None of that, now,” Jason waved the appellation off. “I value your thoughts, Sam. You’re right about the toilet, too. There’s no reason I can think of that a person couldn’t just turn on a valve after the tank flushes. They’d be responsible for filling it to a certain mark each time. And that saves us so much time in manufacturing.”
Jason reached out and hugged Samantha. “Sam, you’re a genius,” he said and released her, turning to walk up the last stretch of the trail. “It’s not the first time I’ve said it,” he called out, “and I’m sure it won’t be the last.” He talked to himself as he walked, working through the modification they had discussed.
Sam stood frozen. He hugged me. What does that mean? Does he want more? Or is it just his strange mannerisms again? She quickly shook herself back into the moment and jogged forward to catch up with Jason.
They arrived at their destination; a cleared, mostly flat section of ground. Jason saw a wagon with a grey, coarse powder within. Finally, we get to see how well our cement works at scale. Of their own volition, the workers installed the piping from the river to where it would enter the tank. A large valve held back the flow of water until a worker dragged another bucket in front of it. Two men pushed on the long lever attached to the valve, and water filled the pail.
The man lugged it over to where another couple of men had mixed a portion of cement powder from one wagon and crushed rock from another. They formed the mixture into a mound reminiscent of a small volcano. Jason and Sam watched as the men dumped the water into a recess at the top of the mound, and the men went to work, mixing the concoction with shovels.
“Add a concrete mixer to the to-do list, Sam,” Jason said absently.
Samantha nodded and made a note, though Jason didn’t see. He was enraptured watching the mixing process repeat itself dozens of times as many teams of workers constructed the floor of the massive water tank. The king noticed some of the men from the Ironworks placing metal bars vertically in the perimeter of the concrete structure. Good. I’m glad Otto remembered what I said about rebar. I’ll have to make sure they tie in horizontal bars, too.
Otto walked over to where the two were standing. “Everything you expected?” the big man asked his king.
“Everything and more. It won’t be long until we have running water at houses in town. Actually,” he corrected himself, looking back down the hill at the sprawling buildings, “I think I’m going to have to start calling it a city.”
“It has grown, my king. I never thought I would live to see the day it was this size,” Otto said, with a mixed expression on his face.
“With more coming every day,” Samantha jumped in. “They believe that life under your rule will give them enough benefits to leave their old lives behind. I suspect that in most cases, they will be proven correct.”
“Just wait until we really get going,” the king said, looking down at the valley. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
---
A few days later, late in the evening, Jason sat at his kitchen table with an oil lamp and several stacks of papers. His eyes shot up when an urgent, unrelenting knocking sounded at his door. He quickly stood and strode over to open it.
Phipp stood there, holding a lantern above his head. “Apologies, my lord, but there’s something you need to see.”
As they left the house, four of the soldiers formed up behind them. They walked through the night, Jason holding back his questions.
Phipp finally stopped in front of one of the older houses that had been built before Jason’s arrival. A long time before, if the old boards and cracked exterior of the mud walls were any indications. The man knocked once, then pushed open the door. Jason stepped inside and saw a man crouched over a huddled woman, trying to offer her a sip of water.
She moaned in pain, refusing the drink. Jason realized more moaning was coming from the side, and he looked to see a teenage boy on a bed, writhing in anguish as well. The smell of diarrhea assaulted his nostrils. He looked to Phipp.
“What is this?” the king asked, wearing a grim visage.
“I don’t know, my lord. Earlier, the boy was shouting about seeing monsters, and the woman was spouting nonsense. They are obviously in extreme pain,” Phipp continued, “though I normally wouldn’t bring this to your attention.”
The councilman paused as a particularly strong shuddering spell wracked the woman.
“What changed?” Jason prompted.
Phipp slowly shook his head. “There are three other families with similar signs, your majesty. Whatever is happening… is spreading.”