The Genius Girl of a Country Village
When Asty first proposed the concept of the water frame, Oliver thought it was nothing more than a delusion.
A perfectly natural reaction.
This was an age when the simplest spinning wheels and looms were the standard equipment of the textile industry. To a diligent young man who believed honest labor was the foundation of every industry, Asty's bold claim that water wheels and mechanical engineering could mass-produce high-quality cloth sounded like nothing but a madwoman's bluster.
"So if we cut grooves into this wheel to mesh with the water wheel, and send the power this way, the thread will automatically—"
Even after Asty explained the detailed principles, his position barely shifted. He thought the structure was more complex than expected, but that was no guarantee it would work. No adult believes a child's toy rocket can reach Mars just because its construction is intricate.
If Oliver had possessed the ability to grasp the water frame's operating principles and economic value from Asty's pie-in-the-sky explanations alone, he would not have been an aspiring carpenter in some rural village—he would have reigned as a god of mechanical devices.
Tsk. Got tangled up in something pointless and wasted a ton of time… Well, if I think of it as playing with Asty, maybe it wasn't a waste. I hope this whole thing helps Asty come to her senses.
And so Oliver did not believe for a second that the spinning machine he had built with his own hands would actually work—not even at the moment he fitted the final part after countless trials and errors.
"Oh. It works."
"Wh-what? This works? Why??"
"Yaaay! Asty! Oliver! You both worked so hard! Now we can say goodbye to those slow spinning wheels!"
But the creation completed according to Asty's design spectacularly betrayed its maker's expectations. Defying the certainty of failure, it began drawing out thread exactly as designed.
This works? Really? His little sister's delusion of mass-producing cloth with river water hadn't been a delusion after all?
Oliver stared blankly at the machine he had made. The spinning machine that a humble carpenter had assembled by fitting parts to a little inventor's designs was drawing out thread in long, continuous strands, powered by the force of the flowing river.
"…Good heavens."
The shock of success was as great as his unwavering belief in Asty's failure had been. And so the young man became the fervent follower of his eleven-year-old sister.
Where people gather, power arises.
This is an inevitable and absolute law that has operated since the distant past, when humanity first gathered in caves to share the meat of beasts. The moment two or more people assemble to discuss goods or courses of action, for better or worse, individual influence and interests inevitably come into play.
Thus even the household of Cooper—an insignificant farmer from a backwater village—had its own hierarchy of sorts.
Cooper, the traditional head of household and the one responsible for the family's livelihood, ranked first. Agnes, who handled the children's upbringing and the household affairs, ranked second. And Oliver, who nurtured his dream of becoming a carpenter in a corner of the house, ranked third.
Why did Oliver, of all people, hold the position right after Mom and Dad? Because the second son, Peter, had claimed ownership rights over their still-living father's fields, and his political standing had plummeted as a result. The eldest son, Robert, had married a fine bride and become independent, so he was half an outsider by now.
Anyway, that was why Oliver had a fairly strong voice in family matters. Not so much because he was particularly skilled at anything, but more because his surroundings had elevated him. In a complete mess of a household where the eldest son had gone independent, the eldest daughter had a shotgun wedding, the second son was fighting over inheritance rights, the youngest son was refusing marriage, and the youngest daughter was showing signs of mental illness—the third son diligently pursuing the carpenter's path far exceeded the average. With everyone else falling short, quiet Oliver who just made furniture had become the hope of the family.
"Huff. Huff. Mother! Father!"
And right now, the hope of the family was half out of his mind.
The cause was, of course, the water frame. Asty's first invention, still whirring away merrily at this very moment, had robbed the always-composed Oliver of his reason.
"Oliver? What's the matter?"
Agnes's alarm was only natural. Panting breath, half-dilated pupils, and that thoroughly agitated expression—Oliver, who had shoved open the door as if ready to tear it off its hinges, was clearly not in his right mind by anyone's standards. As the village's resident expert in processing opium, she couldn't help but suspect the boy had gotten into something strange somewhere.
And her suspicion was half right. Oliver had lost his mind after seeing an eighteenth-century water frame appear in the thirteenth century.
"Calm down and speak. Why is a grown boy making such a fuss?"
Even Cooper's disapproving gaze could not dampen the excitement of a young man who had just witnessed a cloth-duplication glitch. Oliver explained the miracle he had seen as concisely as possible.
"Asty is a genius! The greatest genius in our village—no, in the whole world!"
In compressing his words too much, he had left out the water frame entirely—a minor fumble—but Asty's greatness was clearly conveyed.
"Asty did what?"
"What kind of trouble has that girl caused this time?"
Correction. That Asty had done something was clearly conveyed. And the reaction that came back was thoroughly negative.
Lately Asty had been causing incidents wherever she went, rising to the rank of a full-fledged problem child. Not only had her personality changed as if she were a different person, but there were all sorts of eccentricities—shunning Hans, assaulting a doctor, and more. The girl who had suddenly fainted on her eleventh birthday and worried everyone was now worrying everyone in an entirely different way.
"A spinning machine! I built a water frame! I automated the process of spinning thread using water power as the driving force! It drastically reduces the labor required for spinning and raises quality across the board! Do you understand the philosophy contained in this spinning machine?! Do you understand the future of the textile industry that the Goddess whispered in starlight?!"
Even Oliver seemed to have been infected by that mania now, judging by how he was praising Asty while spouting terminology he himself barely understood. Of course, everything Oliver said was pure fact from start to finish—but to those who didn't even know what a water frame was, it only deepened their fear of the unknown. Even Emma, who had watched the entire construction process from start to finish, would have felt fear looking at Oliver right now.
"Son. This father simply cannot understand what you're—"
"No, the thread multiplies, I'm telling you! You just stick cotton wool in and thread gets made automatically! Asty's just—just shoveling money around and scattering it everywhere!!!"
Patient and kind Cooper tried to communicate without yielding to his son's ranting, but it did not go as well as he had hoped. Oliver had already entered the realm of madness. The always diligent and composed third son had vanished somewhere, leaving only a madman chanting about spinning machines to continue his eccentricities. It was a great mercy that he at least wasn't foaming at the mouth.
"Fine. Let's take a look first."
"If it's nothing special, you'd better prepare for a good scolding."
In the end, Cooper and Agnes decided to grant Oliver's wish. They would personally inspect the spinning machine that had driven their third son mad. Honestly, they hadn't understood a single word of what he was saying, and they couldn't help thinking it was bound to be some trivial reason—but at least the belief that they wouldn't lose anything by looking moved the couple.
"…What on earth is this thing supposed to do? You two made this yourselves?"
"Good heavens. Good heavens."
And so Asty's followers increased by two. No one who saw the small water wheel and crude gears meshing to automatically draw out thread could maintain their composure.
With her parents' full support behind her, Asty immediately used her allowance to purchase a small quantity of paper and began drawing blueprints for the water frame and various other machines. And on the other hand, she did not forget to spread rumors through reliable connections to nearby cities—rumors of a cute genius inventor living in some remote village.
After all, she had to let people know she had made something like this if customers were going to come looking to buy the product. Even if ideas or operating principles leaked in the process, it did not matter. A small machine like this was nothing more than a child's toy compared to the countless innovations she would create going forward.
The spinning machine completed through trial and error gave Asty courage. It gave her the confidence that she could overcome whatever hardships came her way. Armed with overflowing confidence, Asty continued her energetic promotion to win the patronage of major trading houses—
…The first to find her was a mad fanatic holding a lantern, tears streaming down their face.