Civilization Chronicles: Rise of the Divine Creator

The first place Lucas took Pauline after passing through the double-walled gates of the compound was a large workshop with a high roof and solid stone foundation.

This workshop also had an unusually large number of chimneys, some of which were currently belching out smoke, while others seemed to be releasing steam.

There was also a terrible noise coming from inside, a heavy thudding, clanking, and rattling that grated against Pauline’s ears.

Just as they approached the entrance of the building, a harsh grinding noise rang out, accompanied by a piercing whistle and several anxious voices shouting at the top of their lungs.

"Not again..." Lucas groaned, facepalming himself and rubbing his temples.

"Huh?" Pauline, confused, wanted to ask what was going on, but before she could, a loud *bang* occurred, followed by the sound of heavy metal pieces smashing into things as the large workshop shook violently.

A few seconds later, the shaking stopped, clanging noises ceased, and the voices from earlier switched from panicked cries to frustrate curses.

"Haaa..." Lucas let out a long sigh before turning to the Great Elder and smiling wryly, "Seems we came at a bad time."

"Apparently so," Pauline nodded. She may not have understood what was going on inside this workshop, but it wasn’t hard for her to realize that something had just exploded.

Sometimes explosions were a good thing, like when you were working on a new kind of weapon, but clearly, that wasn’t the case here.

Knowing that loitering around outside wasn’t going to make things any better, Lucas slapped his cheeks and stepped forward, placing his hand on the door as he said wryly, "Welcome to Project Revolution, Great Elder."

The boy then pushed open the door to find... a mess.

The workshop had a few partitions, but the majority of the space was taken up by a single large room at the centre of which was a large metal contraption, or what was left of one, at least.

This twisted hunk of metal was somehow both soaking wet and on fire, but Pauline could vaguely make out a few familiar components and theorize about what it originally looked like.

It was a boiler, a big one, but with a lot of additional pipes, chambers, armatures, and for some reason she couldn’t understand, a massive metal wheel.

Having absolutely no idea what the purpose of such a device might be, or what it might be period, Pauline simply asked, "What is... what was this?"

"A steam engine," Lucas replied, before quietly muttering, "I think..."

"Steam... engine?" Pauline parroted.

She, of course, knew what steam was, but the term ’engine’ was completely unfamiliar to her.

Understanding the Great Elder’s confusion, Lucas waved his hand tiredly, "I’ll explain in a moment; but first, I need to check in with the work crew."

"Of course," Pauline nodded, stepping back and allowing the young boy to get to work.

She was curious, naturally, but a serious accident had just occurred here, and as the leader of this project, it was only right that Lucas ensured everyone was alright and then figure out what had gone wrong first.

.....

"Marco!" Lucas called out to a tall, lanky young man with rough stubble on his face and short trimmed dark blue hair.

"Huh? Oh, Boss! When did you get here?" Marco looked over from the pile of scrap metal he was tossing some broken parts into and asked.

Marco was a commoner who came from a family of fishermen; unfortunately, a severe storm several years ago had destroyed many small fishing boats in Misty City, including the one his father and mother had been using to make a living.

In order to help support his family, the young Marco took a job as a sweeper in a local smithy, where through a series of coincidences, his talent for the profession was discovered.

Put simply, the boy was a genius when it came to blacksmithing and had a passion for invention, traits which earned him an introduction to Braxton from the owner of that smithy who happened to be one of the old man’s acquaintances.

Braxton took an instant liking to the then 16-year-old boy and decided to make him his student.

4 years later, Braxton officially made Marco his Disciple and even granted him permission to use his surname.

9 years had passed since then, and now, the young man had been roped into a number of Lucas’ projects, including the classified ones.

Although Lucas and Braxton were technically still in charge of all classified projects in The Lab, Marco was the one who handled a lot of the routine development work while his Master and Little Boss ran around dealing with bigger things.

Marco loved his current job, and his enthusiasm for the various weird and wild projects hidden away in this isolated courtyard was second only to that of Lucas and Braxton themselves.

However, passion, enthusiasm, and even talent could only take one so far, as was obvious by the current wrecked state of the workshop Marco was standing in.

"Never mind that," Lucas waved off his trusted fellow seeker of truth and got straight to the point, "What happened this time?"

"Ah..." Marco’s cheerful face instantly soured, his brow scrunching up visibly before he slumped slightly and let out a sigh, "Same as last time. Too much vibration, leading to some of the screws and welds shaking apart, followed shortly by all the pressure in the boiler exploding out."

"Haaa...." Lucas also let out a long sigh when he heard this, grumbling to himself, "Seems our manufacturing techniques still aren’t good enough."

"En," Marco concurred, tossing the piece of scrap he was holding onto the pile as he mused, "Everything seems fine at first, but as soon as we start ramping up the pressure, it all just shakes apart."

And so, the young man and boy began reviewing the precise timeline of this most recent failure and brainstorming how they might solve the various problems which had come up.

Since the accident on his 9th birthday, Lucas, together with various other craftsmen like his father, Drake, had successfully managed to develop water pumps and boilers. Lucas had also learned several ways to convert rotational motion from waterwheels and windmills into other kinds of useful repetitive work.

With this base of knowledge, the young boy had thought designing and building a functional steam engine shouldn’t be too difficult.

He was wrong.

4 months, 100,000 Gold, and 10 prototype iterations later, Lucas and his team had indeed made some progress, but calling the heap of scrap metal lying at the centre of the workshop ’functional’ was more than a bit of a stretch.

The introduction of lathes had improved the situation greatly, but even these ’advanced’ manufacturing tools were apparently not good enough yet to allow Lucas, Braxton, and Marco to build proper air-tight tanks, cylinders, and pistons.

It was frustrating, no doubt, but understanding failure was just another part of progress, the three men and the rest of the development team didn’t lose heart.