The Ceasefire Talks
After the demonstration ended, Haneul and Mose returned to her chambers.
"Miss, was what we saw today really that impressive? It just looked like a wheel spinning to me."
"Oh, it's enormous. The engines they use now are probably running at about five percent efficiency—something like that should clear twenty percent, easy. The kids are going to lose their minds over steamships now. I had their designs rejected because fuel efficiency meant they couldn't travel far enough."
"Ooh.... So will ironclads and trains get better too?"
"Better beyond belief." Everything would improve five or tenfold. Steam engines before the turbine era had truly abysmal thermal efficiency. The triple-expansion engine was the first design that was even remotely usable—how on earth had they skipped right over that and jumped all the way to turbines? And a multi-stage turbine at that? That meant they'd already factored in energy recovery, didn't it? Shouldn't the triple-expansion have come first?
"Wow! I can't wait!"
"Hm? You shouldn't, though."
What's with this kid? There's nothing to look forward to here.
"Why not?"
"You won't live to see it."
"Wha—? Why not?"
"That thing was just a proof of concept. To commercialize it, they'll have to build it bigger, fix the problems that crop up, iterate... a hundred years would be a short timeline for that."
Do they have any idea how much precision engineering that thing demanded? It only ran at all because it was small. Scale it up, and it'll be chaos.
"Ugh...."
"Just think of it as 'oh, so that exists.' That's all."
"Yes...."
She could make one or two herself, sure. But how big was this country? There was no way she could handcraft everything for them one at a time.
"For now, if they want to build anything, they'll need better generators first. Pass that along."
"Hm? The soldiers were over the moon about being able to build ironclads, though?"
With the current welding technology, any hull they slapped together would crack apart and split at the seams.
"Let them try building a few—they'll figure it out themselves. Then they'll start asking what they need to make welding better."
And they should get generators set up, too. She'd heard they got the welding idea from the arc lamps, which meant light bulbs couldn't be far behind.
The day the night streets would glow bright was not far off.
"Go outside and look at the stars a lot."
"You mean those twinkly things in the night sky?"
"That's right."
"But they're out every night. Why go out of my way?"
"Because one day, they'll be hard to see."
Ah, wait—would that even happen while this one was alive? Probably not. Well, better safe than sorry.
"Um... okay."
Anyway—here's hoping electricity got commercialized fast!
Fifteen years had passed since the steam turbine demonstration.
So much had changed in that time.
Electricity itself had been commercialized faster than she'd expected. They were struggling with making magnets, so she'd told them how to synthesize ferrite from iron oxide and barium carbonate. She'd braced herself to be stumped by the barium carbonate—turns out China had it.
As for the light bulb, Jang Yeong-sil had already been researching one; she'd dropped him a hint that nothing that burned in open air would last, and he promptly produced a working bulb.
"Didn't I tell you once?"
"About what?"
"To go look at the stars."
"Ah... you did say that, back in the day."
Even in the dead of night, the streets were dazzlingly bright. Not every household had electricity yet, but the main avenues alone made it feel like stepping into another world.
"With nights this bright, the world's going to keep changing at breakneck speed."
"Won't it just? Even the university can hold evening classes now."
True. Aside from the streets, electricity was being supplied to the research labs, the university, and the government offices, lighting them all up.
"Any day now, you'll start hearing about engineers being fed into the grinder."
"What does that mean?"
"It means basically grueling the engineering students to death."
No Emille Bell around to use as an example, unfortunately.
"Engineering students?"
"Engineers, scientists, researchers."
"Ah, I see!"
Poor souls. She'd have to tell the schools to start providing late-night meals at the very least.
"So what will you do once your term is over?"
"I'll stop working, for one, and finally get some rest."
"Did I really work you that hard?"
Anyone overhearing would think she'd run this kid into the ground. And anyway—had she ordered any of it? They'd all come running of their own accord.
"You were always telling me to go find out this, go look into that."
"Was I? Things are easier these days, though, aren't they?"
"Ah, you mean the telephone?"
Telephones. Who'd have thought! The audio quality wasn't great, so people had to repeat themselves a few times, but still.
"Asking most questions right from your room over the phone?"
"Hehehe."
What she hadn't realized was that once stronger magnets boosted generator capacity, there would turn out to be this many uses for it. The telephone's principles were astonishingly simple, too. All you needed were two things: strong electricity and strong magnets.
There was still plenty of noise on the line, and sending a signal far in a single stretch was difficult, so the relay stations kept operating—but compared to tapping out Morse code like the old days, the difference in information transmission was night and day.
"I wish telephones could reach even farther!"
Someone would get around to the radio soon enough, wouldn't they? It felt like they were almost there.
"Someday, they might reach all the way to the ends of the earth."
"Eh? You're lying?"
Apparently she couldn't believe it. Huh—so when she said it, it still warranted a "maybe"?
"You won't get to see it, though."
"Ah! You know, it must be so nice, living as long as you do!"
If only there were no such thing as parting, a long life really would be wonderful. But this was the moment it always stung.
"Thank you for everything these past years."
"It's not like you're moving far away. What's with the sappy farewell?"
"Ah... good point."
The kid would still be in Sinsi, and Haneul had no plans to go anywhere far for a while. Dropping by now and then would be perfectly fine.
Mose was apparently headed off to be a professor at the university.
"Did you let your family know?"
"It's not like I'm going somewhere far."
"Your term's over—aren't they throwing you a farewell party or something?"
Today was Moses V's last day in office, after all.
"My term ended, not my life. It's just getting started."
"Hm? Doing what?"
Come to think of it, the man was only fifty. Plenty of years still ahead of him.
"I need to organize everything I've written down over the years, and then teach the young ones!"
"Oh? Haneul University?"
"Yes! I can't wait."
The Jewish community had pooled together and founded Haneul University, and they'd been diligently training the next generation ever since. Not that they discriminated against anyone—anyone who wanted in could enroll. It was just that the student body skewed heavily Jewish, since you had to be sharp to keep up.
"Sounds like you'll be too busy to play, then."
"I suspect less busy than those at Haneul-nim's side."
"Anyone overhearing would think I'm a tyrant employer."
The kid kept making throwaway remarks—did she have regrets after all?
"Sigh... and here I am, having to go back to work...."
"Ah, you're heading south to mediate, right?"
"Yep. Honestly, who knows why I have to concern myself with other countries' business."
Before long, Vietnam and the Ming dynasty would hold their arbitration talks, and Haneul had agreed to attend as an observer.
They'd apparently fought each other revoltingly hard for decades, and now both sides were too exhausted to continue—they'd decided a reconciliation was in order.
The trouble was, both delegations insisted on sending their number two—a prince or crown prince rather than the ruler—and neither of them would budge on hosting it, so they'd asked to hold it in Daedo instead. Daehan would ferry one side over, then the other. In exchange, they'd receive a concession zone, so Haneul had snapped the offer up.
Might as well go watch what kind of stories these two cooked up!
The two delegations haggled back and forth over whether they were even trying to hold talks or sabotage them, and it was years before the summit finally began.
Which was how Haneul arrived in Daedo so long after the fact.
Had it really been a thousand years since Daedo was absorbed into Daehan?
"It's developed dazzlingly, hasn't it?"
"This is my first time here—it's practically indistinguishable from Sinsi!"
That was partly by design. She'd thought it might be nice to flex a bit of national power, so they'd installed generators and electric lamps along the main roads and around the harbor. It made quite the impression.
"In the beginning, we deliberately dressed it up to look like the capital of Daehan to the outside world."
"Hm? Why?"
"Because I hated the idea of suspicious characters sniffing around our territory."
Though by now, the point was rather moot. The city had grown into such a magnificent trade hub anyway. Splendid, just splendid!
"Did you know?"
"You'll have to tell me, then."
"Daedo was the first place in the whole empire to get a capital city and public toilets?"
"Eh? Not Sinsi?"
Ah, right—that went back to the days when someone came from Rome.
"When the first foreigners arrived, this place really was the sticks. Watching the people change so much too—it's fascinating."
"That's what assimilation means, I suppose?"
"Exactly. They blend our culture with their own traditions, and it becomes regional character."
Something like the difference between Gangwon Province and Jeolla Province, but on a grander scale? Maybe too obscure an example.
"At this rate, touring the whole country would take a lifetime."
"Make sure to visit the Eastern Continent someday. The regional character there is even more distinct than here."
They seemed thoroughly Daehan, yet they preserved their own native cultures beautifully. The craftsmanship in particular was practically fine-art quality—the Daehan Company people absolutely adored it.
Teaching them the art of porcelain had been a masterstroke. Gorgeous ceramics with utterly unique patterns were pouring out of the region.
"Might you visit during my term?"
"Hard to say? It depends on the day."
She tended to go wherever whim took her, after all.
No need to look so disappointed, was there? It wasn't as though the place were hard to reach.
"Tch...."
Apparently the kid wanted to sightsee on the side while working.
"Oh! A ship's coming in!"
"That one?"
"Hm... a shame ships don't come with telephones attached."
They'd made the telephone—shortwave radio shouldn't be impossible, should it? Interference would be manageable, and realistically only Daehan would be using the frequencies for a good long while. Seemed viable enough.
Vacuum tubes existed now, too—surely someone would get around to it? The engineers were still marveling over the tubes, playing with them like toys, so they'd turn up soon enough.
"Just wait. One day it'll appear out of nowhere."
"Eh? Are you saying we should string electric wires from the ship?"
It wasn't as if she could explain radio waves to someone who barely grasped the concept....
"Just trust me."
"Yes."
A crowd of foreigners came pouring off the freshly docked ship—so one side had arrived, apparently.
Their clothes... didn't look Chinese. Vietnamese, then?
"Wait, aren't those all our clothes?"
"So they are?"
"A delegation, I'd guess?"
"That's what it looks like to me too."
Hah. So those wonderfully flowy, dress-like Vietnamese garments were about to disappear as well.
She'd already done a number on the hanbok, after all. Not that it had vanished completely! The chima jeogori still existed—it had simply weathered a rather radical gust of modernization. The result was a chimeric hybrid of crop top, skirt, and trousers, thanks to Mediterranean and Middle Eastern fashions bleeding in....
"None of this is my fault."
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Nothing. Just thinking out loud...."
But why was the delegation fuming down at the dock?
"Did we make some mistake? Why are they so worked up?"
"Hard to say?"
"...."
"Ah...."
There it was—the fabled ah. Someone needed to hurry down there and find out what was going on. It certainly wasn't going to be her.
"Hing...."
Of course Mose wouldn't want to go. Haneul's vantage point was high up, and even if she'd wanted to ask over the telephone, there were no lines strung down to the docks.
Goodness, though—look at that revolver dangling so jauntily at her hip. If people knew how lethal that chunk of metal was, everyone in the vicinity would faint from sheer terror.
"Back!"
"Good work. So?"
"What was that for? Talking like you're training a dog?"
Sharp little thing, isn't she? This is why girls with big butts are so annoying.
Come to think of it, they'd been sending women ever since the third Moses, hadn't they?
"Never mind that. Tell me what happened down there."
"The Vietnamese prince is in a huff because he arrived before the Ming delegation. It's nothing we did."
"I'm sorry—what? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."
Couldn't they just arrive first, rest up, and meet when everyone was ready?
"That's probably it, though? With diplomatic delegations, the highest-ranking person always enters the hall last, you see."
"Oh, come on."
"That's what it seems like, anyway."
People find the most exhausting ways to live....
"Tell them to come up and wait over tea, then. Honestly, this is beyond a joke...."
"Yes, ma'am~"
"Oh, and try to smooth things over while you're at it. Let them know that if they throw a tantrum, the concession zone is off the table."
Losing it would be a bit of a shame, truthfully.... But fine—off he goes to drink his tea first....
Whup.
"Mmm~ flower tea really is the only tea worth drinking."
Green tea, black tea—they were all trash. Flower tea was simply the best, as far as she was concerned.
"!#$!!#%"
Ah—that faint thing she could just barely hear was some foreign tongue.... Don't tell me we're supposed to prepare the interpreter?
Suddenly she felt claustrophobic....
"I can't make out a word. Please, just go in."
Clunk.
Mose must have been fed up too—she just flung the door open and walked straight in.
"Good work out there."
"He says he's the Vietnamese prince. He did bring an interpreter along."
Figured. The Chinese would sooner die than wear anything but their own clothes, so it was the Vietnamese—dressed almost identically to Daehan garb—who looked exotic.
"...."
"...."
Why wasn't she coming back in? What was she doing out there?
A fly could fly into her open mouth at this rate.
"Go ask what kind of tea he'd like, then bring some in."
"Should I just serve coffee?"
"You think he'd refuse because it's bitter?"
Daehan's expansion into the Eastern Continent was pushing south and east simultaneously, and they'd been buying coffee from the Maya down south.
The population there was absolutely staggering, apparently—the assimilation was going to take ages, they said.
"We should at least learn his tastes before serving him. The Chinese drink plenty of green tea too, don't they? Let's offer him something different."
"Yes, ma'am."
Now... when were the Ming ever going to show up?