The Tower That Better Not Explode
That thing better not blow up...
Clang clang. BANG BANG.
"Tighten it up! If this thing blows, we're all dead!"
"I know!"
Dozens of people were clinging to a giant distillation tower like ants on a syrup bottle. It was huge. Way too huge. Sure, we'd done plenty of experiments with the small ones before — thirty of them, maybe? — but why had this thing suddenly ballooned to such monstrous proportions?
"I'm worried..."
"Haneul-nim, why don't you go home?"
"Hmm. Maybe I should?"
Honestly, standing next to this thing was terrifying. Ah — no, wait. I should stay! If I wanted to avoid a catastrophic disaster, I'd better use my telekinesis to throw up as much of a protective barrier as I could manage...
Grumble rumble. Gloop gloop.
"Everyone stand back! Power's coming on!"
"Get behind! Move it!"
And off to the side, they were mixing oil with water of all things, doing who knows what — and now they were hooking up electricity to it too. That was the seventeenth distillation tower, wasn't it? The tower kept melting and clogging, and while hunting for the cause, they decided there was some kind of impurity in there, so now they were rinsing it out with water.
Zzzzzzziiiiing.
"That's a nasty-sounding hum, isn't it?"
"Touch it at that level and you'd be a charred lump of coal on the spot."
Just how much voltage were they running through this thing?
They'd built everything from a power plant to storage tanks of every variety, and the whole facility had grown absolutely enormous. Watching them, I couldn't help but wonder — since it wasn't their own money, were they just spending it like water? If this failed, I'd have to give them a proper scolding...
Ah... wait. If it failed, would anyone even be alive to scold?
"Is it separated?"
"Yes! It's split!"
"Good. Kill the power, skim off just the top layer, and drain the salt water!"
So that was how they rinsed and collected things separately, huh...
Not knowing anything about the process, I couldn't exactly butt in. Even if we did make oil, it'd probably just be for heating or lamp fuel or something. Had I really needed it done here? Then again — think of it as practice, I told myself. Practice for the technology.
Grumble rumble.
"Drain it carefully! Keep the middle fraction just in case!"
"I know!"
Me? I'd planned on extracting just a small amount and experimenting with catalysts to figure out how to make synthetic fibers. That was the whole point. But these kids had no concept of the word moderation.
"Should we dig a few more crude oil pits?"
"Yeah, we're burning through more than I expected."
Please... please let nothing terrible happen. I mean it. It's already blown up eight times. Clogged thirteen. Melted down nine. That puts the odds of this one exploding at comfortably over twenty-five percent!
Right. As Admiral Yi Sun-sin said — if you seek to live, you die; if you accept death, you live...
The day arrived, as days do. I'd even considered secretly smashing the whole thing in the dead of night, but the kids had poured their hearts into it, and do you have any idea how much money had gone into it?
Whooooosh.
Wow... this was a windy stretch of coast to begin with, and with a tower like that standing there, the wind howling through every gap made the most unnerving sound... A steel tower, so — a steel leviathan, then?
It was far taller than I'd imagined — well over ten stories, easily.
"Ah... it's dizzying just looking up."
"How is anything this big?"
"No idea... I'm scared..."
Heh heh heh. These people were insane. Genuinely, certifiably insane.
"You ready, you rascals?!"
"As long as YOU'RE ready!"
"Nervous? Why do your hands look like they're shaking!"
"Shut it!"
Fair enough. If you weren't scared, you wouldn't be human. If this thing went up, the shrapnel would be bad enough, but all that scalding oil would spray in every direction. Fire first, then...
"We've come this far — no turning back now! Let's do it! If we die, we die together!"
"Die? We worked hard on this thing!"
Apparently, it was starting.
"Feed in the crude and fire up the boiler! Watch the thermometer — mess that up and we're all dead!"
He wasn't wrong. The poor soul running the heater at the very bottom had the most important job of all.
"Up top, watch the pressure gauge — if it looks bad, just open the relief valve!"
"Don't worry about us!"
It was their emergency measure, of a sort — simply vent all the gas. Since gas explodes when it mixes with air, the vent line ran straight into the seawater. Dump it into the ocean and call it a day, essentially.
Gurgle gurgle gurgle.
"Crude's coming in!"
"Everyone, eyes on your gauges and thermometers!"
They also had to watch for pressure building anywhere along the pipes — which was why a person stood at every pressure gauge on every line, ready to divert the flow elsewhere at a moment's notice.
Seen all together like this, it was a staggering number of pipes and valves.
Grrrrrgrgrgr.
The distillation tower was making a strange noise. That couldn't be good.
"What's that?"
"How's the pressure?!"
"Pressure's fine!"
Tududung. Tung.
Something felt off. Deeply off...
Gurgle. Gurgle.
The crude kept flowing in, but nothing was coming out?
"..."
"..."
Guys. Say something? The silence is scaring me?
"Huh?"
"What is it?"
"The outlet valve. Nobody opened it."
"Oh you have GOT to be — are you trying to kill us all?! Open it, NOW!"
Heh... so the chamber was filling up, pressure climbing by the second. Lovely.
"Hnngh!"
...
Oh. Did the valve just talk back? It was refusing to open, apparently?
"Argh! It won't budge! Somebody get over here! Help me!"
Tap tap tap tap.
Emergency. The valve simply would not open.
"Open it! Pressure's still climbing!"
"Temperature's rising with it — what is going on!"
Well, obviously. Raise the pressure and the boiling point climbs right along with it, doesn't it?
"Cut the heat to the furnace first!"
"Ah! Right, yes, on it!"
Squeeeak. Squeeeak.
All because of one dimwit, and now the whole place was in chaos.
Grrrrnd. Grrrrnd.
"That sound is NOT right! Pull! HNGAAAAH!"
"Grrrnnnngh!"
"Damn it, why won't it MOVE!"
That was strange, though. It shouldn't be that stuck, should it? It hadn't been sitting around long enough to rust solid...
What on earth was going on?
"Uh...?"
"Now WHAT!"
"Wait — are we turning it the wrong way?"
"..."
Squeeeak. CRREEEEEEK.
Unbelievable. Absolute clowns. Circus performers. You crank it the wrong direction and then wonder why it won't open?
"Die! Just DIE!"
WHACK. THUD. THUD. WHAM WHAM.
"Choke! We were both turning it the same way, why are you only beating on ME?!"
Honestly, I wished both the hitter and the hit would just keel over. Who knows how many years those two had shaved off my life.
"Resume the distillation! Everyone back to your posts!"
Gurgle gurgle.
Distillation had nearly gone sideways, but it was proceeding smoothly now. Drip by drip, the distilled fractions were separating out by temperature, filling tank after tank.
Now it was up to my chemist friends to do their part. Until then, anything they produced — precious as it was — went straight into the fuel supply.
"Ha... thank goodness..."
"So it's not going to explode?"
"At this point, I'd say we're—"
Wait. What was that glinting in the corner of my eye? Was that... him? Strapping on armor again, gearing up like a one-man siege engine?
Well. He'd probably survive anywhere. Even a direct hit.
"You're impressive, you know that? You'll live a long life."
"I certainly hope so. I want to live a VERY long time."
"Good. Live until you're smearing things on the walls."
"??? That sounds like it means something bad?"
"No, no. It means a very long life."
It meant a life so long it became a problem, but still.
"We're out of crude!"
"WAHAHA! We survived!"
"We did it!"
"It's not over yet! If you don't want to be scrubbing sludge later, finish the job properly!"
And with that, they routed the steam back through the system to clean the whole thing out. Clever, actually — sealing the intake and flushing everything out through one direction.
Bubble bubble bubble.
"Ha..."
"What's wrong?"
"They're just... dumping it into the sea..."
"Is that not allowed?"
Really... Thank goodness there was no such thing as an environmental protection agency here. The CO2, fine — we had plenty of forest to absorb that. But dumping oil into the water was a little...
Though the fish caught around here would be quite tasty later, I suppose. Someone who'd tasted oil-soaked fish before said they were sweet, didn't they? Would they genuinely get even better?
"It's not much, so this much should be fine, right?"
"WAHAHAHA! Tonight we feast!"
"Open the storehouses! Bring out everything!"
"Whatever we run out of, we'll get more! We eat again tomorrow, and the day after!"
Yes, thank goodness the test run was a success. Phew...
Next, we'd reopen the facility, monitor it for any problems for a while, and start researching applications for all the new substances. We had gone through with the distillation, but since we hadn't set out with one fixed goal, there was plenty of room to breathe.
"Somebody go ladle out some of that oil — let's taste it!"
"Bring back the GOOD stuff! Show up with the bad batch and I'll feed it to you through your nose!"
Hmm. Why... why are these people still alive?
No, really — how? They've survived like this all along?
"Something feels off... my head hurts."
"Shall I fetch some herbs?"
"No — just bring me a nice calming tea, please."
"Right away~"
Anyway — with oil now in hand, they'd be starting serious experiments on internal combustion engines too. The theory had been around for ages; they'd tinkered with flammable gas experiments but never actually put an engine to use.
Would they start with something like a tiller? That could be fun.
"Which comes first, I wonder — a motorcycle or a tiller?"
"There you go, off daydreaming by yourself again. Here's your tea and snacks."
Clank clatter, clank clatter.
Wasn't that heavy? He was still wearing it around.
"Thanks. But take the armor off now, okay?"
"It won't explode anymore, right?"
"Of course not. The furnace is out, isn't it?"
Hmm? There was nothing left to blow up now anyway, right? The kids were all eating and drinking after their ordeal.
Tung. Tung.
"Is this the one?"
Had he seriously come all the way here just to drink the oil? Well, if it tasted as good as they said, it wouldn't kill him...
"Ugh, it's so dark in here I can't see a thing."
Click. Click.
Wait. Hold on. Was he opening the lid of the oil drum... and striking a light INSIDE it?
FWOOOOOOSH!
"AAAAAAGH!"
"Whoa..."
"KYAAAAAH! What was that! It exploded!"
It hadn't exploded, exactly — a pillar of flame had simply shot straight up out of the drum.
"Good grief... It's a miracle I made it this far, hauling these lunatics around. A miracle..."
We'd very nearly had a real catastrophe. The experiment had only just ended, so apparently the oil vapors hadn't built up much. Thank goodness this wasn't gasoline, basically.
"Whew... what do we do about him? Will the Holy Water grow back his eyebrows? His hair?"
"PUHAHA! Good question? Burns heal fine, but baldness — no promises there!"
Huh. Now that he mentions it... there were always a few bald men around, weren't there? So hair loss really is incurable. How tragic.
"AAAAAGH! What is this! MY HAIR!"
Your hair wasn't the only casualty... your eyebrows were gone too. Everything. It was a miracle he hadn't suffered serious burns.
Frankly... I think I'd have rather taken the burns and kept the hair.
"PUHAHAHA! Look at this idiot!"
"He went bald!"
"KAHAHAHA!"
"SHUT UP, all of you!"
There it was — mocked from the moment he turned around.
"AAAAAARGH! I'LL KILL YOU ALL!"
"Whoa! His eyes have gone crazy!"
"RUN!"
Right — the old saying: avoid a madman like the plague.
He genuinely looked ready to bite and tear.
Sluuuurp.
"Is your tea going to spill?"
"This is fun, though. Watching a neighbor's house burn is one of life's great pleasures."
However mad he got, he wouldn't come after me.
And if he did? I'd simply hurl him into the middle of the ocean. That would sober anyone up.
CRASH BANG POUND POUND.
"GRAAAAGH!"
"AAAAH! He's bitten me! That lunatic BIT me! The flesh is coming off!"
There wasn't any such thing as a rabies shot here, was there? Would he be okay?
Serves him right. Don't tease the bald guy.
"Now we'll build a fortress here, and make it a place where people can actually live."
"It didn't seem like you needed anything beyond a place to burn fuel? Is it really that important?"
"Because someday, they'll call this black gold."
Right now it looked like nothing more than fuel, but once synthetic fibers arrived, it would become more coveted than silk. Sell it even slightly cheap and it would become the golden goose that raked in money beyond imagining. Every functional fabric would trace back to this — which was exactly why it mattered so much.
"My goodness~ I did wonder why you kept digging up something so foul-smelling and filthy. Money, of course. It's always money with you?"
"If it didn't make money, why would I be doing it?!"
What did these people take me for?
"Keep your ear to the ground for rumors of any other places where oil seeps out of the ground like this."
"We're already looking through the Daehan Company, but apparently nowhere else produces on this scale?"
So places this rich in oil weren't exactly common, then? Or perhaps some did exist, hidden away in the middle of nowhere, waiting to be discovered.
Once we developed this site properly, we'd need to drill actual wells — but by then, someone would no doubt take it upon themselves to dig. They always did.
Kids! Hurry up and make the synthetic fibers and the motorcycle! I want that motorcycle. SO badly!