Better Than the Old Days
"Hephaestus!!"
"Back again?"
A few regulars had started turning up at my laboratory, and one of them was a lovely little goddess with golden hair and green eyes. Aglaia.
"Hey, hey~! Are you baking cookies again today?!"
"Already did."
"Waaah~!"
She snatched one up and munched away, and the sight was unbearably cute.
"Anyway, is it really all right for you to wander around playing like this? If you want to become a proper goddess, shouldn't you be training and studying and all that?"
"Grandfather said so himself. There's no god as beautiful and lovable as me, so I'm definitely going to receive the authority of love and beauty!"
She declared it with such blazing confidence that I couldn't quite bring myself to say, Yeah, that's not going to be you.
"And your sisters?"
"Studying!"
"And you?"
"I already finished everything I had to do today~!"
The kid had her act together, at least.
"So what are you making today?"
"A waterwheel."
"A waterwheel?! I've seen one!"
"You have? How?"
"A while ago I went to Argos with Mother. The humans there were trying to build one, and I watched them fail."
"Do you remember what it looked like?"
"Hmm..."
Aglaia drew it on a sheet of paper. What came out was an early design built around gears and an axle—little more than the bare idea of a waterwheel given a shape.
"It looks different from the one I saw."
"Oh. You went straight for the heart of it. Mine isn't like the old ones, starting with the materials and the design. For one thing, I set the gear teeth to coprime ratios, and unlike the materials they used to—"
"I don't get it! It's too hard!"
"That so."
"Yep! Hmm. But Hephaestus talking about hard things is cool, so it's fine!"
"Then we're good."
"But why are you making it??"
"Because I can use it all over the place. You can mill grain with it, and you can use it to raise the temperature of a fire when you're smelting."
There were plenty of other uses besides. What mattered first was building a basic source of power.
"Humans can't wield divine authority, right? So I have to show them a working model and let them develop from there."
The point was to make them look at it, think I could probably do that myself, and take up the challenge.
"Why do you care about humans that much? Even if they make something, it won't be as good as what you make."
"Don't write off what humans are capable of. Someday, without a scrap of divine authority, they'll make things better than anything I'm building now."
And I, who would neither age nor die, would sit back and enjoy whatever they came up with... Aglaia, though, didn't look as if she had grasped the vast and frankly terrifying plan behind it. I wasn't doing this in the hope of being understood, so I let it go.
"All right. Come on. Let's go."
Somewhere in the middle of the conversation I had finished the prototype. I lifted the waterwheel with one easy heft. Being a god had its perks; my strength had grown enough that a wheel of this size was nothing.
"You're putting it in here?"
The current ran hard. A fine place to test how long the thing would hold together.
"Yeah. It shouldn't be... dangerous, but stay back a little."
"Okay!"
I set the wheel in place, and a moment later the water caught it and it began to turn.
"Whoa! It's spinning!"
Aglaia had followed me out with a cookie in each hand, and now she stared, wide-eyed. Not yet, though. I still had to see whether it would actually work as a power source, so I coupled a millstone to it.
Grrk—grrrk—grrrk!
"Wooow!! It grinds so well!! And the wheel spins way faster than the one I saw in Argos!!"
"Hmm..."
"Huh? Hephaestus. What's wrong?"
"This one's no good."
"Wha—why?"
"The axle's too weak. If I try to get the power I want out of it, it'll snap within a few days."
Every time the millstone turned, the axle linking it to the wheel screamed. This wouldn't do. The water power itself was weaker than I'd expected, too.
"If you need water, you could just ask Grandfather or Mother for help, couldn't you?"
"I want to build it so divine power never has to step in. Which means I may have to dig a channel of my own."
There was a lot of work ahead. I followed the thought through and nodded.
"Let's head back to the lab."
"I want to watch this a little longer!"
"Fine. Watch it."
"Can't we watch it together?"
"No reason we can't."
A day off couldn't hurt.
From the next day on I set food and drink aside and threw myself into building waterwheels. The first one was finished. The axle broke. Bad materials were a dead end, plain and simple—but then, I had already braced myself for a certain amount of trial and error. I changed the material of the axle, finished a second wheel, and set it running. The wheel turned beautifully. The new channel collapsed.
The believer who had been so proud of the clay pipes his craftsman had fired went the color of the melted pipe itself, a dull earthen brown. I ordered the craftsman who had made them dragged in, then fired a fresh batch of pipes myself and laid the channel all over again. Only on the third attempt, once everything was ready, did I get the result I wanted.
The wheel spun fast, and the channel drew water in a steady flow. The machines coupled to it went to work, grinding grain at a brisk pace. While the watching faithful gasped in admiration, I connected another device, and a saw began to move, shearing timber clean.
Building something the humans of this age could use without divine authority meant failures of one kind and another. But failure is the footing on which technology advances, so these attempts had hardly been a bad outcome.
"Wow! You made this?!"
"Oho. So you've made a thing that moves itself by the power of water."
Aglaia came by nearly every day, and because of her, Lord Oceanus and Eurynome had learned what I was up to and come to see it for themselves. Perhaps because it used water, Lord Oceanus took a considerable interest.
"A great achievement like this deserves a celebration. Come to my temple."
"Er... do I have to?"
"You rascal. You're my grandson. Would you deny me even a small feast in my grandson's honor?"
There he went again, softening me up.
And so I went to Oceanus's temple, enjoyed the banquet for several days, and came home.
"My god..."
"......"
A man I had never seen before was prostrate in worship before the laboratory.
"Hey. What's with this guy?"
I collared one of the former pirates who was stuffing this and that into the storehouse beside the lab and asked.
"Th-that's a scholar from Miletus, they say. Called himself Anaxa?"
"A scholar?"
"O Lord. I am a foolish man, wandering in search of the truth of the world."
"Uh. Sure."
"I heard that you commanded humans to make maps."
"I did, didn't I?"
"Why did you speak such words?"
"Because a map makes sailing easier, and you can know exactly what lies where."
"And the compass..."
"So my people would have an easier time at sea."
"Then the channel and the waterwheel..."
"The waterwheel? Ah. You went and looked?"
"Yes. I saw it. I saw it, O Lord. The things you have made—every one of them is something a human being could conceive, study, and bring into being."
"Right."
"I saw them, O Lord. The people laughing and chattering around the waterwheel you made. I saw them set in harmony with the forces of nature, and gaining so much from it."
The tears spilling down his face only multiplied.
"...You have taken pity on humankind, and granted wisdom to human life, and more than that, you have set us to walk forward by our own devising, in company with nature."
"Uh..."
It really wasn't that grand. I was about to say so when he cried out, fierce and shaking.
Declaring it a glory beyond words, he broke down and sobbed outright. Ugh. It wasn't as if he were a pretty girl. Watching some grimy man cry was not a sight I enjoyed.
"Hey, hey. Quit crying."
I had to stop him several times and soothe him several more before the tears finally ran out. Then, with a face of perfect seriousness, he said:
"Great and merciful god. Upon this glorious land, the island of Lemnos, may I raise a place in which to seek the wisdom you have bestowed?"
"Huh? Uh... s-sure."
There was a madness in Anaxa's eyes. If the professors of my past life had seen that look, they would have said, Get him into my lab this instant. I was a little sick of it already. The moment I gave my leave, he sprang up in pure delight.
"Then I shall bring scholars of the same mind to this place!! You there!! Come along!"
"Huh? We just got here!"
Anaxa swept off with the faithful in tow. There really was no accounting for people.
A few days after Anaxa's visit, the guests who were always turning up at my laboratory came again.
"Hephaestus!!"
"Hepha~!"
"Big broootheer~!"
The three little goddesses, by now as familiar as family.
"We came to play again today!"
"Well, listen to you, sounding awfully sure of yourself. This isn't a playground, young ladies."
I scooped up Thalia, the youngest. Of the three she was the smallest, a girl who only came up to my waist, which made her very easy to carry.
"Ehehe~! Big broootheer~!"
From their point of view I was a stepbrother who had appeared out of nowhere. Or was step even the right word? Eurynome had declared she would look after me, but still...
"All right, all right. Our Thalia. Did you eat before you came?"
"You giiive me some~!"
The youngest had her arms locked around my neck, and the sheer nerve of the demand made me laugh. My laboratory was not a dining hall.
"Fine. Hmm. Shall I make you pudding?"
"Yeah!"
Among the things hauled up in the nets of the men who had changed trades and become fishermen, there had been agar seaweed. I had learned how to make pudding from it in my past life, and tried it once. Lately it had become a favorite snack not only of the pirates, but of these three as well.
"There was stuff like this in the offerings humans give Grandfather before they sail!"
"Grandmother loves it!"
Euphrosyne, the second sister, and Thalia called out together. They were putting the ingredients to good use. Aglaia, trying to look grown-up, didn't let it show—but it was painfully obvious she liked it too.
"Hephaestus. I like what you make better."
"Kind of you to think so. Anyway, let's go in."
I herded the girls toward the laboratory.
"Aigoo! My goddesses! You've come!"
Lorventus, lately in charge of the laboratory and captain of Lemnos Island—a former pirate captain—greeted the three with a broad grin.
"Er. Lord Hephaestus."
"Hm?"
"Word's come that scholars are on their way from Miletus. They want to settle on Lemnos. What should we do?"
"Scholars?"
So Anaxa really was bringing them.
"Yes. Looks like a proper large-scale move. Not just the scholars—their disciples, their servants... Anaxa and a few of the others are liquidating their property entirely and coming."
"And what exactly is there to see here that they'd drop everything and come?"
"Plenty to see, I'd say. There's everything you've made in the meantime, my lord."
"It's nothing special."
"The channel and the waterwheel alone are something else. Thanks to them, the work that used to take real labor finishes itself if we just leave it be..."
"Ah. Right. Glad they're getting used. You know they need proper maintenance, don't you?"
"Aigoo, of course! Thanks to you, my lord, life has gotten downright sweet for us these days!!"
Thalia, who had been listening to Lorventus and me, tipped her head.
"Hephaestus made all that?"
"Yes, yes. You wouldn't believe how much better we live, thanks to Lord Hephaestus. Compared to the old days, it's..."
"The old days? What were the old days like?"
At Thalia's innocent curiosity, Lorventus hesitated, then opened his mouth with care.
"Yes. Well, our grandfathers' grandfathers' grandfathers..."
"You can just say a long time ago."
"Yes. Ahem."
Lorventus glanced at the three goddesses, then spoke, cautious.
"Long ago, when Cronus reigned... they say we humans were nothing more than their livestock."