Chapter 203: Brave New World (5)
Chapter 203: Brave New World (5)
“Ughhh.”
As soon as I returned to the president’s office and dropped myself into a chair, a groan slipped out without my realizing it, so soaked was I in exhaustion. I had run all over Paris looking for a solution, so it was only natural that my body was screaming.
Sleep was pouring over me, my eyelids were drooping shut, and my head was not working very well, but even so, I could not stop thinking now.
One day, two days, three days. The more time passed, the more it was not my company’s money that was getting smashed.
I had to commercialize the train as quickly as possible and suck up people’s money—no, that sounded a bit vulgar, so let’s call it sales.
In any case, if I did not start bringing in revenue soon, the red warning light in the books might begin flashing.
That money-eating hippo had already spent nearly four years not making money but devouring what money we had. If I did not hurry and release it into the world, the decoration would soon grow bigger than the gift itself.
As long as I was alive, I could never watch that happen with my eyes open.
Being a president, leading a company, meant carrying the future of everyone in the organization on my back. It did not matter if I alone collapsed. I could stand back up by myself.
But if our company collapsed, then not only I but all several hundred employees we hired would collapse as well. The incomes of hundreds of people living on the wages I paid would be cut off, households would collapse, society would collapse, and I had no desire whatsoever to create that kind of mess.
Mr. Florian, who had only just achieved his dream of owning a home in Paris. The Rothschild family, who were busting their asses in Britain. Marie, who baked excellent pumpkin pies. Even Saint-Just and Sade, who were probably analyzing the scale of sexual curiosity surrounding stockings. They were all practically family to me.
After taking my hand away from my tired eyes, I rang the bell on the table.
The ringing sound chimed for a moment, and one of the employees working in our office knocked, then opened the door and came in.
“Mr. President, did you call for me?”
“A bucket of cold water and a cup of coffee with two spoonfuls of sugar, please.”
“I will bring them at once.”
“Thank you.”
A short while later, I scooped up the cold water the employee brought and washed my face once. It did not drive away the sleep all at once, but at least it opened my eyes.
Then came the coffee. The moment I swallowed the steaming hot coffee—
“Urk! Ptui, ptui! Fuck, that’s hot!”
My tongue hurt, as though I had lightly burned it.
I hoped it did not blister. Still, thanks to that, I was fully awake, so perhaps I should count it as a good thing.
Good. So what now?
Where should I start? What knowledge should I use? Who should I place where? What connections should I make? There was too much to think about.
Gichan, let’s take it slowly. Slowly.
“An enormous vat? I’m not quite sure what you mean.”
France’s eighteenth-century ironmaking technicians knew nothing of the existence of the enormous converter shown in the Public Corporation Open Recruitment Brochure, First Half of 2022.
Which meant that converter had likely been the key point in the future mass production of steel.
“What’s the principle behind it?”
Hawawa. For a humanities student who had spent his whole life studying nothing but how companies cooked the books and how to beat the shit out of them for it, this was far too enormous a question.
Well, if I had to say, I could probably copy the rough shape, but just because the exterior looked vaguely similar did not mean the performance or operation would succeed in a vaguely similar way too.
Tsk. In the end, there was no helping it. I had not wanted to draw him out so carelessly.
Ring-ring.
“Yes, Mr. President. Is there something else you need me to do?”
“Yes. Go to the Saint-Antoine District at once and bring our chief technical adviser here.”
“It is very late. Will that really be all right?”
“Come on, it’s only two in the morning. Not much time has passed. We’re both awake right now, aren’t we?”
“Understood. I will bring the adviser immediately.”
Bang, bang, bang!
“Mmm…”
Bang, bang, bang!
“Uh, huh? What in the world is that noise?”
“Mmm. What is it, dear?”
“Anne, can’t you hear that sound?”
Bang, bang, bang!
“My, it sounds like someone has come to visit?”
“Damn it all, what lunatic is pounding on the door in the middle of the night?”
After pouring out a stream of curses, the man grabbed the oil lamp by his pillow and got out of bed. He was so irritated that even while trying to light the lamp with a match, he snapped two before finally managing to get it lit.
Bang, bang, bang!
“I’m coming, I’m coming! What an impatient bastard.”
He had already been woken from a good sleep, and now he was being hurried along. There was no way he could not be angry.
Hurrying down the spiral staircase with the lit lamp in hand, the man flung open the door of the mansion.
“Who the hell is making a racket this late at ni— What? Aren’t you from Human Resources? Why are you here?”
“Haha, the president ordered me to escort the adviser over.”
“No, but I… I need to sleep right now…”
“But you are awake now, aren’t you? Please get into the carriage. Adviser Lavoisier.”
“I-if that is truly the case, then at least wait a moment. I’m still in my nightclothes…”
“Haha, have you ever seen the president care about something like that?”
Lavoisier could not bring himself to say anything further and had no choice but to climb into the carriage.
“Ah, Lavoisier. Do come in. I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Yes…”
“Why are you looking at me like I’m some kind of madman?”
“N-no reason.”
Surely a man would not get angry just because the person who saved his life called him over briefly at dawn. Our Mr. Lavoisier was not such a cold-blooded man, was he?
…Or was he?
To lighten the mood a little, I had an employee bring coffee and cookies, then slowly opened my mouth.
“You must be hungry after being woken from sleep. Let’s talk while you eat.”
“…Thank you, Mr. President.”
Lavoisier picked up a cookie and put it into his mouth, while I blew on my coffee and sipped it. After a brief silence, I quietly set down my coffee cup and spoke.
“I have some shame, you know. I am not asking some grand thing of a man who has just been dragged from sleep and is still half-dazed.”
“I… see.”
Mm. If my mind-reading was accurate, then our Lavoisier was very, very annoyed about being woken up. I made a note of it in the memo pad inside my heart, so we would revisit it at the next salary negotiation.
“As far as I know, you spent quite a long time affiliated with the Bureau of Armaments. Is that correct?”
“To be precise, I was Director of the Gunpowder Administration.”
“I see. Then do you happen to know much about ironmaking as well?”
“Ironmaking, hmm.”
Lavoisier stroked his chin several times, then spoke.
“I am not enough of an expert to boast of it, but while working at the Gunpowder Administration, I picked up quite a bit from the neighboring departments. I can confidently say I know the general outlines.”
“As expected of my first-rate slave!”
“…What did you say?”
“I said, as expected, you’re very capable.”
Ahem. Sorry about that. The words slipped out without my realizing it.
I held out a sheet with a drawing I prepared beforehand and opened my mouth.
“Please take a look.”
“What is this? Some sort of giant vat?”
“It is an ironmaking method I have in mind.”
“An ironmaking method… you say?”
Lavoisier’s eyes widened into circles. And understandably so. I was not some engineer or scientist, just an ordinary businessman.
In any case, after looking at my drawing of the converter, Lavoisier fell silent for a moment, then slowly spoke.
“May I ask what principle it operates on?”
Ah, well, you see.
“I don’t know.”
“Pardon?”
“That is what you have to figure out now, Mr. Lavoisier.”
As if to show that he was thinking, What in the world did I just hear? Lavoisier’s face began to twist into a bizarre expression.
“…I must have misheard, mustn’t I?”
“No.”
“What in the world does that even—!”
Lavoisier lowered his head and pressed both hands hard against his temples before speaking.
“Mr. President, you said you do not know the principle.”
“Yes.”
“And even though you do not know the principle, you believe this… design you came up with will work?”
“Yes.”
Mm. It had truly been a long time since I had seen a person’s face turn that red and blue.
If Grouchy suddenly burst into my house at dawn and said, “I have devised a new law of economics, Guillaume,” I too would be perfectly willing to personally club him over the head and knock some sense into him.
“Lavoisier.”
“…Yes.”
“For now, just take it on faith and give it a try. I do not care how much money it takes.”
At any rate, if we could not even lay the rails, then all the research money we spent so far would be lost entirely as opportunity cost, so this was no time to save a few coins. If we stopped now, it was obvious nothing would come of it. One way or another, we had to produce results.
“Hoo. Even if you say that…”
Damn it. At this point, couldn’t he just say, “Yes, understood”? This Guillaume did not have time to sit around hesitating.
The train needed steel.
Our company had no time.
Guillaume wanted fast research based on future knowledge whose principle he did not understand.
<Research the converter right now, even though no one knows why it works>
In the end, I had no choice but to dangle a carrot in front of this mad scientist.
“Fine. Assuming this matter is brought to a successful conclusion, if there are any experiments or research projects you wish to pursue on the side, I will support them without reservation.”
“I-is that truly the case?!”
Lavoisier’s face became so bright that it seemed to be emitting light.
This man… had he been aiming for this from the beginning?
December 23, 1793.
Paris. Headquarters of the Ears of the Nation.
With Doctor Guillotin, the Montpellier Brothers, Murdoch and Trevithick, and finally the technicians including Le Bon all gathered in one place, this meeting was practically a gathering of every science and engineering expert the Ears of the Nation could muster.
Naturally, the first topic to come up was raw materials.
“There are quite a few iron ore deposits here and there, but… if you want both quality and profitability, there is only one place in France that meets both conditions.”
“Alsace-Lorraine.”
“If we are going to invest, there is no real reason to open a mine anywhere other than Alsace-Lorraine.”
“Considering investment costs as well, it may even be cheaper to trade with Sweden and import it.”
Then came the practical matter of operating the converter and blast furnace.
“This converter the president mentioned… does it really have any potential?”
“Weeeell. I’ve never seen one myself.”
“There was something in a German travel account about seeing something vaguely similar in the East.”
“At any rate, we’ve already placed a rough order with the arsenal, so let’s begin once the castings arrive.”
Then came the research.
“In my opinion, for cast iron to become wrought iron and steel, it seems to involve the oxygen inside the iron.”
“Could the problem be carbon, the thing only just discovered?”
“But… is there oxygen in iron?”
“Ahem, ahem.”
“Uh… Mr. Le Bon? Have you perhaps not read Adviser Lavoisier’s Paper?”
“Ah.”
At the end of a full six hours of discussion, the contents compressed and delivered to me were as follows.
[We’ll try making it first. But we don’t know whether it will work or not.]
[We’ll put ordinary iron ore from Alsace-Lorraine and high-grade iron ore from Sweden into separate converters and blast furnaces at the same time, then observe the progress and results.]
That was enough. It was already fortunate beyond words that the experts had not all put their heads together and concluded, Ah, this won’t do. If even those people started pulling the “We have no idea either” routine, I would really end up as a duck egg floating alone in the Nakdong River.
However—
“You sons of bitches!! Gyaaaagh!!”
[The Kingdom of Sweden forbids all forms of trade with French companies of a barbaric and uncivilized nature. — Gustav IV Adolf —]
My project stumbled from the very beginning, tripping over a damned rotten stone.