The Weight of a Tool
Baking the clay (3). Although several of the flyweights shrank and cracked as the moisture evaporated during the firing process, he managed to salvage a few intact ones. Three out of ten. Chester picked up the three flyweights, hefting them in his hand to gauge their weight. Satisfied that they were just right, he nodded in approval.
"Um, now that you've finished making those, aren't you going to tell me what they're actually for?"
"These? I'm upgrading the drill. We can't keep rubbing sticks together with our bare hands forever, can we?"
Chester carried the finished flyweights into the workshop. He had built a ladder leading directly down from the workshop, allowing him to climb straight up without having to go through the main house.
In one corner of the workshop lay the materials Chester had prepared in his spare time while shaping the clay flyweights. There was nothing particularly special about them: a spindle, some cord, and a wooden crossbar with holes drilled through the center and both ends.
First, he slid a flyweight onto the spindle, then packed clay into the gap between the weight and the shaft to secure it firmly. It would have been better to use pine resin, but unfortunately, they had used almost all of it while building the water channel. The tiny bit that remained had hardened into an unusable lump due to poor storage.
After waiting for the clay holding the flyweight to the spindle to dry completely, Chester took the wooden crossbar and slid it onto the shaft. Next came the cord. He wound the cord tightly around the notch carved near the top of the spindle, then threaded the ends through the holes on either side of the crossbar and tied them secure.
"Done."
"What is that?"
"Well, just watch."
Having finally completed the tool he had been planning for so long, Chester grabbed a suitable wooden board and approached the campfire, which he had intentionally let die down. "Time to test it out."
He carved a small notch into the board first, then placed some finely scraped wood tinder nearby. Positioning the tip of the spindle into the notch, Chester began to spin the shaft slowly. As he did, the cord wound itself around the spindle, pulling the attached crossbar upward.
Once the cord was wound as tightly as possible, Chester gripped the crossbar and pushed it straight down. As the bar descended, the coiled cord unraveled, spinning the spindle furiously. Even after the cord had fully unwound, the momentum of the heavy clay flyweight kept the spindle spinning for a good while longer.
As the spindle continued to spin, it naturally rewound the cord in the opposite direction, pulling the crossbar—which Chester was only lightly touching—back up on its own.
Once the crossbar reached the top, Chester pressed down on it again, sending the spindle spinning furiously in the opposite direction.
Push the bar, and the drill spins; wait a moment, and the rotational momentum maintained by the flyweight automatically rewinds the cord. The bar rises on its own, and with another gentle push, the drill spins again.
Without the grueling effort of rubbing the spindle between his palms, Chester easily generated an ember with nothing more than a rhythmic, gentle pumping motion. He transferred the glowing ember to the tinder, blew on it steadily until it caught, and coaxed it into a flame.
After piling on firewood to rebuild the campfire, Chester turned to Monia, showing off the fruits of his labor. "What do you think?"
"Oh... oh, wow." Monia stared in awe at how effortlessly he had built the fire. "Whoa! That's incredible! Amazing! How did you even do that?!"
"With a little brainpower." He figured out what he wanted, what he needed to achieve it, and what he needed to make that happen. He thought and thought, combining ideas until the solution took shape.
"You make it sound so easy."
"Is it? I wouldn't call it easy. Do you have any idea how much time I poured into this one thing?"
Just building the kiln had taken ages. Because of the high humidity on the island, the clay for the kiln refused to dry, causing him endless grief. To see if the concept would even work, he had secretly tested it multiple times when Monia wasn't looking, molding temporary weights out of raw clay onto the spindle.
After those trial runs, he had designed the proper flyweights based on the prototypes. He had figured out exactly how much weight the clay would lose as it dried by making dozens of test pieces.
Although he had only fired ten flyweights in the kiln, he had crafted over thirty to get to this point. Some had been trampled by wild animals while drying outside; others had cracked on their own during the drying process; and some had contained too much moisture, shrinking so much that they ended up far too light. There were even some that still hadn't dried enough to be fired. He had simply abandoned those.
On top of that, he had spent a massive amount of time crafting the drill bits. He needed three different types: one to carve a shallow pilot notch, one to drill the actual hole, and one to smooth out the finished hole. The last one had taken an exceptionally long time, as he had to grind it into a perfect sphere rather than just carving a sharp edge.
It was a stroke of luck that exactly three flyweights had survived the firing. Chester took the drills fitted with his custom bits and attached the remaining flyweights to them. Monia, who was still happily pumping the new drill against the wooden board, looked up at him.
"By the way, what is this called?"
"A name?"
"Yes."
"You use it by pushing down, so let's just call it a pump drill."
He had briefly considered calling it a push drill, but decided "pump drill" had a better ring to it. Armed with the two pump drills he had assembled while chatting with Monia, plus the one he had just finished, Chester set to work on the hoe in earnest.
Bringing over the pre-shaped stone hoe head, he took the first pump drill, fitted with a thin, sharp bit, and began carving a pilot notch. Once the notch was established, he switched to the second pump drill, which had a slightly wider bit, to gradually expand the hole. To speed up the process, Chester sprinkled abrasive stone dust into the notch before positioning the second drill.
Once he had drilled a decent depth, he flipped the stone head over to repeat the process from the opposite side. There was no need for complex maneuvers; he simply had to keep the bit aligned with the notch and pump the drill. With enough steady, rhythmic pumping, the two holes would eventually meet in the middle.
"There we go."
Once the breakthrough was made, Chester brought out the third and final pump drill to widen and clean up the passage. The bit on this drill was the one he had painstakingly ground into a rounded shape. He inserted it into the rough opening and began to pump. Slowly, the hole expanded, its jagged edges smoothing out into a clean, uniform circle.
"..."
"..."
Both Chester, who was operating the tool, and Monia, who was watching from the side, fell into a fascinated silence. Of course, even with this invention, boring a hole through solid stone was no easy feat. It still took a considerable amount of time. However, the sheer convenience of it was overwhelming.
Normally, this was a task that would have torn the skin right off their palms. Now, it was progressing with astonishing ease. Watching this, Monia finally understood why Chester had spent so much time playing with mud and building a kiln. Once you endured the initial hardship of creating a tool, it guaranteed effortless labor from then on.
Starting a fire from scratch would never be a struggle again. And if they ever needed to bore holes in wood in the future, they wouldn't have to go through the tedious, agonizingly slow process of carving with a knife and burning it out with hot coals. They would just need to set the pump drill in place and give it a few casual pumps.
To toiling in the present to make future tasks easier was a concept Monia had always found difficult to grasp. Back home, she only had to lift a finger to have the entire world delivered to her. The very concept of "toil" had never existed in her life.
But things were different now. She had learned that spending time to craft a stone knife unlocked a world of convenience. It allowed them to do things human hands alone never could, like trimming branches or dressing game. She had learned that investing the effort to set traps meant food would practically deliver itself while they rested.
The countless traps Chester and Monia had painstakingly set up across the island were the sole reason they could maintain a steady supply of food without having to hunt in the sweltering heat. It was remarkably simple logic.
Humans traded their own labor—their personal human resource—to obtain money. With that hard-earned money, they could bypass the immense labor required to produce food, clothing, and shelter, purchasing what they needed instantly.
Until now, Monia had never understood why people sweated and labored. She couldn't comprehend its value. To her, wealth was something that accumulated naturally while she listened to operas, enjoyed tea times, dined, and slept. She had never understood why anyone would suffer for a mere pittance of that vast fortune.
But now, witnessing the convenience Chester had secured through sheer grit, Monia felt she could finally understand a fraction of the value of that sweat. If it took this much struggle just to gain a single convenience, if it took this much toil just to secure a single meal...
'...'
On this deserted island completely devoid of civilization, watching Chester work was opening Monia's eyes to a world she had never known—a world she had once actively refused to understand.
She watched as Chester fitted a long, carved wooden shaft into the hole of the stone head, securing it tightly with cordage to complete the hoe. To Monia, a hoe had always been a tool wielded by the "livestock" who tilled the fields.
But now, she remembered everything Chester had gone through to make it. There was a profound value in the struggle he had endured to create this tool. And there would be a new value created by using it. Realizing this, the people she had once dismissed as mere "livestock" slowly began to look like human beings. They, too, had been creating their own unique value all along.
"Alright, it's finished."
Standing before Monia was Chester, holding the completed hoe with a bright, triumphant smile. That radiant smile lingered in her mind for a very long time.