Chapter 237: The Age of Steam (5)
“Mmm.”
The sunlight filtering through his closed eyelids made his eyes open on their own.
He got out of bed, tore off a chunk of bread and shoved it into his mouth, then pulled out the work clothes he had worn yesterday and put them back on.
The stale smell coming from the work clothes made him frown for a moment, but the thought that tomorrow was Sunday and he could finally laze around and rest eased his brow again.
“Right, so what if it smells a little? I’m only wearing it one more day before washing it.”
It wasn’t like he could throw another set of work clothes into the wash just because this one was a little dirty. That would only mean more laundry.
When he opened the door and stepped outside, the cold winter wind stung the tip of his nose.
Pulling up his sleeve to cover his chilled nose, he began walking in quick little steps down the road, careful not to slip on the icy ground.
His workplace was a large textile mill fifteen minutes away on foot. After crossing a few intersections and passing a few blocks of alleyways, familiar faces began appearing here and there.
“Well, look at that. You didn’t freeze to death overnight after all. I’m impressed you managed not to die.”
“Freeze to death? I’m still young and healthy. Shouldn’t an old man like you be the one in danger?”
“So now that you’ve got a little seniority, you can mouth off like that to the work foreman?”
Laughing heartily as white breath spilled from his mouth, the man led him through the last alleyway, and the familiar building came into view.
…Along with something unfamiliar parked in front of it.
“Mister. What’s that?”
“Isn’t it a carriage? But it’s huge.”
“There’s no horse.”
“…You’re right. It looks like a carriage, though. Did the coachman tie the horse up somewhere?”
It was three or four times longer than an ordinary carriage, and smoke was rising from what looked like a chimney.
In the early nineteenth century, when there was almost nothing to enjoy and the best spectacle most people ever saw was a traveling circus, such a strange carriage(?) was more than enough to draw attention.
“That man looks like the coachman.”
“Well, he is sitting in front. No horse, though.”
“What is that thing? It looks weird.”
“We’ve only just started seeing it ourselves, so we don’t know either.”
Before they knew it, the edge of the road where the two men were standing had filled with a crowd, and as people started tossing out guesses one after another, the street was soon full of murmuring voices.
“Ah, ah, I think I’ve seen something like that before.”
“You know something about it?”
“I think it looks similar to that strange contraption they called a train or something, the one that was going back and forth around here last year. Or maybe the year before.”
“Come on, wasn’t that a machine for hauling cargo? There are people riding in this one.”
“You’re right, there are people riding in the back.”
“They’re still getting on now.”
Just as one person had said, when several people climbed into the passenger compartment, the coachman checked a list of some sort, then shut the compartment door and climbed up to the driver’s seat.
—Pssshhh.
The moment the coachman pulled a lever, warm vapor burst out from various parts of the complicated-looking carriage.
“A carriage without horses!”
“The carriage is moving without horses!”
“It’s magic! A wizard!”
“Magic, my ass. Idiot, that’s called steam power!”
People who had already seen the magical-seeming power of steam engines several times snorted the moment anyone started babbling about magic or sorcery.
By then, as they watched the large carriage move through the crowd, the people’s eyes held a mix of bewilderment, surprise, and a certain amount of familiarity.
“What’s that written on the side of the carriage? [Ears of the Nation Employee Commuter Car No. 3]?”
“Then the people riding in that are all from Ears of the Nation?”
“Looks like it.”
“Damn, they really made it.”
“Hah. Ears of the Nation, huh.”
“What is it, mister?”
“The guy who used to do the job you’re doing now went in there.”
“Really?”
“Why the hell would I lie to you? …Back then, when that bastard said he was going to an interview, I told him to wake up. I told him rich people would never hire someone like him.”
“Why? Why would you say that?”
“You’re only twenty now, so maybe you don’t remember, but Paris before ’89 was the kind of place where those words made sense.
A place where high-and-mighty people like barons and dukes could make even factory owners with a bit of money crawl if they wanted, or slam their heads to the ground if they ordered it.
So when that guy showed me the recruitment leaflet from some company called Ears of the Nation, I told him to forget it. I was afraid he’d get dragged into some filthy bourgeois whim.”
But I was the one who was wrong.
He continued with a bitter expression.
“Do you know what your predecessor is doing at Ears of the Nation now?”
“No idea.”
“Vice President. He really made it big. It feels like only yesterday that Florian was wrapping up convenience meals to give to his mother.”
…When you get home, stop collapsing into bed just because you’re tired. Buy an alphabet book or something and learn to read.
You’ve already got a head for work, and you’re good with your hands too. You’re even good at fixing the spinning frames. So who knows? It’s an age when opportunities might come even to people like us.”
He stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit it as he spoke.
Behind the carriage moving farther away, pale cigarette smoke mingled in the air, making the receding vehicle waver like a mirage.
“Guillaume de Toulon is up to something weird again!”
“They say if you work at Ears of the Nation, the company actually comes to pick you up right in front of your house.”
“They say there’s a carriage powered by steam, and they’re sending it all over Paris to bring employees to work.”
“They say the carriage Guillaume made keeps the passenger cabin nice and warm even in the middle of winter.”
“They say the steam engine and carriage combination is absolutely insane.”
Very thankfully, it didn’t take long for the automobile that had appeared in the middle of the city to become the talk of the town.
Heh heh heh.
“Public opinion regarding the automobile is also extremely favorable at the moment. In nearly every survey, responses such as ‘I want to ride it’ and ‘It’s fascinating’ are being counted overwhelmingly more often than responses saying the automobile is frightening or untrustworthy.”
“What about the press?”
“Yes. We’ve arranged interviews with every newspaper and magazine ranked in the top five by circulation.”
“Move them up as fast as possible. Today is fine. We need to do it while things are still noisy. If we wait until it dies down, the response will just turn lukewarm.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll contact them immediately.”
“Your Excellency the Controller-General of Finance, have you been well all this time?”
Jean-Paul Marat, editor-in-chief of The Friend of the People, whom I was seeing again after a long time, gladly held out his hand to me.
I took his hand and answered,
“Controller-General of Finance, my ass. I quit that years ago. Just call me Guillaume.”
“Haha, understood, President Guillaume. That easygoing personality of yours is still the same even after seeing the whole world.”
Marat smiled warmly and took his seat.
“Thanks to you, Paris is in an uproar right now. Did you know that?”
“As if I wouldn’t.”
“Since you already know, this feels wonderfully efficient. Then would you explain this new invention people are calling the carriage without horses?”
“Carriage without horses… it’s not a bad nickname, but personally I wonder whether we even need the word carriage at all.”
“Oh? Do you perhaps already have a name in mind?”
“Since horses don’t pull it, how about dropping the horse part entirely and calling it an automobile?”
“Ho. That is an extremely forward-looking choice of term. Very artistic, very French, should I say? I’ll make a note of it for now.”
Beaming, Marat scribbled away in his notebook, then asked again,
“You are currently using automobiles to bring your employees to and from work. May I ask why?”
“Obviously for employee welfare.”
“Ohh. Welfare?”
Marat seemed even more interested now and leaned toward me without realizing it.
As expected of someone who had once belonged to the revolutionary camp shouting, At this rate, let’s just get rid of the king and make it a republic!
“As I’m sure you know, Marat, commuting in winter is fucking— I mean, difficult.”
“That’s true.”
“It’s already freezing, and if it snows, your clothes get damp. Then by the time you leave work, you have to trudge through piled-up snow, and your shoes get soaked too. My company is right in front of my house, so I don’t care, but for ordinary people it’s really no joke.”
I handed him a template summarizing the automobile’s specifications and continued,
“The automobile developed by our Ears of the Nation, the Épi No. 1, was designed to minimize precisely those inconveniences.”
“Ho.”
“It can carry thirty people at once, it circulates the heat generated by the steam engine into the passenger compartment to keep it warm, and besides that…”
What followed was long, but the summary was simple.
Our automobile is amazing. Want to ride one?
After hearing my explanation and reading through the catalog, Marat said with an excited expression,
“From the sound of it, President, the automobile seems like an invention that remedies all the shortcomings of the horse.”
“It doesn’t need to eat, it doesn’t need to rest, and it doesn’t disobey people, so that’s not wrong.”
“Haha, then when do you expect it to be commercialized?”
At Marat’s curiosity-filled question, I tilted my head as though I had no idea what he meant.
“Hm? What do you mean, commercialized?”
“…?”
Marat made a blank expression for a moment, then asked again,
“I mean… when will the general public be able to…”
“I’m sorry, but we currently have no plan to open automobiles to the general public.”
“What?”
“Unfortunately, according to the conclusions reached by myself and the company staff, the numbers simply don’t work if we release automobiles for private civilian use.
They’re too large for individuals to buy, and they’re also quite expensive.”
“What you mean is…”
“Yes. We won’t sell them, and we won’t let people ride them.”
Now then, Marat. Go make it explode.
[What Is an Automobile? Asking Doctor DuPont (provisional), one of the Ears of the Nation technical staff.]
“Wow, judging from this article, it sounds incredible.”
“Sure does.”
“When do you think we’ll get to ride one too?”
“Well, if it’s Ears of the Nation, it’ll probably happen soon enough. They’re always putting out some new technology or new product every few months.”
“True.”
[Automobile impossible to commercialize? “Guillaume: It is difficult to make it profitable.”]
“What the hell? They’re not releasing it?”
“Then we can’t ride it?”
[Asking current Ears of the Nation employees: How has life changed since the introduction of automobile commuting?
…The thing employees selected as the greatest advantage was that they no longer had to walk with difficulty, and also that once they got on the vehicle, they could steal another ten or so minutes of sleep.]
“I want to ride one too!”
“Can’t I just ride it once?”
Human beings were creatures who always thought someone else’s rice cake looked bigger, and who took more interest in what others had than in what they themselves owned.
And if they weren’t even given the chance to eat that rice cake themselves, what they felt stopped being interest and became pure resentment.
[Originally, Ears of the Nation had no intention of supplying automobiles to private citizens.
However, as one member of society among our valued customers, we at Ears of the Nation deeply recognize our social responsibility to understand and follow the wishes of our customers.
Accordingly, once again, I, Guillaume, together with the board of directors, have thoroughly revised the company’s guidelines and business plan for your sake, and are now able at last to bring you positive news.
From this point forward, Ears of the Nation intends to introduce automobiles that will circulate regularly through the city and provide our valued customers with comfortable public transportation service, and we would be grateful for your patronage.
Respectfully, Guillaume de Toulon, President of Ears of the Nation]
The day after that notice appeared in every newspaper, the world’s first operating city buses were so overcrowded that every vehicle was packed beyond capacity.