Tech Tree Leap
'Think about it. The bed is narrow. A wall bed is for one person, and a straw bed is for the family. When the family grows, the father buys straw and rags with the money he's earned, and the mother sews it wider into a bed.'
'When widening the bed, if there are bugs or it's damp and flattened, they pull out the old straw and stuff in fresh straw to make a new bed. Then the bed gets fluffy and bigger. It's the bed the mother makes for the space of a late-born child.'
'But that's a spot for our family. If the man from next door crawls into our bed one day because it looks spacious, do we just let it slide?'
"I-Myeonghun's up to no good."
"A warning?"
"No. If it could rally all the old noble faction remnants together, I could let this much slide."
Medal Honor, huh. No intention of hiding his name? Even if he'd hidden it tight, it would've been exposed in no time.
Because the lineage was different. This logic wasn't the spirit of this era. This was the Enlightenment of the 18th century. The time when talk of separation of powers was just beginning, when reason and rationality were awakening.
But I-Myeonghun's commentary wasn't 18th-century writing. It was 20th-century stuff. The mindset of the beastly age when borders crumbled, races crumbled, and the world's ethics and morals crumbled. The spirit of an era when advanced communications meant one powerful speech could change everyone's minds. Art movements were the same—everything followed a tech tree.
Just because modern art is popular now doesn't mean painting it back then wouldn't look like mere scribbles.
"Director of the National Intelligence Agency. Do you know why I knew right away this was I-Myeonghun's work?"
"Because of Medal Honor, right? I've studied seditious texts too."
"That's part of it, but wheels don't just get invented out of thin air."
To invent the wheel, you have to lift something heavy first. When you can't carry it, you try dragging it. When dragging doesn't work, you push. When pushing fails, you wrap a rope around and pull. When that doesn't cut it, you lay down a plank and pull again. Still too heavy? You rack your brain. Rolling an object on logs only happens after that process. And the people with the object on logs watch those logs closely and realize something.
'Huh? What if it just rolls on its own?'
That's how the wheel is born.
"That's what I'm saying—this commentary is too suspicious to come from France. There's no foundation for it at all."
If you brought communism to the Middle Ages when religion held sway, what reaction would you get? Heresy charges, excommunication, branded a devil, and executed. And that's not all. Most modern ideas are the result of endlessly correcting past mistakes. But right now, in the Enlightenment era, they don't even recognize those as mistakes yet.
Introducing 20th-century nationalism into that? Like bringing a truck to move a pebble you could carry on your back.
In moments like this, you could really feel I-Myeonghun was a STEM guy. For STEM, "don't reinvent the wheel" means use what's already there. For humanities, it means don't repackage centuries-old ideas as something new.
But humanities shine in that tiny difference—personal flair emerges. The stuff people mock as "dogshit philosophy" is what changed the world. Who could've known back then that those mishmash ideologies would birth fascism later?
"But Your Majesty, couldn't someone see the wheel in a rolling stone?"
"They call it a Copernican shift. But Galileo nearly died for it."
"Skipping the process makes it a leap. Me knowing that leap alone doesn't make it not a leap. Everyone has to understand it."
"Your Majesty, but this leap-filled commentary is stirring sympathy across all of France."
"Sometimes there's emotion that defies rational explanation. That's something I can't help. Looks like we'll have to keep publishing counter-commentaries openly under Factory Manager Saint-Germain's name."
"Can you suppress it?"
What a obvious question.
"Do you think even you could win?"
If there's no need for proof, 18th-century scholarship can't surpass modern common sense. No matter how STEM you are, those textbook side notes or weird shorts videos are condensed 300-year know-how.
"I don't know Joseon."
Of course, if I really wanted, I could silence I-Myeonghun. But that would be my fight, not Louis XVI's. So, I have to raise the 18th century to a level where I can win fair and square. I'm the King of France right now, after all.
While Factory Manager Saint-Germain and worker Medal Honor slugged it out via commentaries, France's civilian industry was achieving unprecedented growth. Growth so explosive that France itself could barely keep up.
"I'm here to apply for a patent."
"Here's a guide to royal patents."
One of those changes was the patent system. After Louis XVI purged France's privilege class, he overhauled the administrative system. Patents had previously been privileges granted and revoked at the king's whim, with criteria equally arbitrary.
Louis XVI renamed them royal patents, applying standardized criteria.
"You're 23? So young."
"Yes. I was aiming for the academy, but I went to work in Burgundy for a bit, then Dauphine, and even the Pyrenees briefly."
Patents were guaranteed in the king's name, but using them required paying the patent holder an agreed royalty—0.5% to 1% of sales. Steal the tech or ignore a patent? First offense: police warning. Second: police seizure. Third: the army shows up.
Of course, those with the holder's permission could make linked improvements, paying half the future royalties, usually.
"I mostly toured ironworks and noticed features in the furnaces."
"I see."
Rights to royalties and linked improvements lasted 30 years.
"It has features from every furnace. With this, steel will come out like digging potatoes from a field."
"Can you demonstrate?"
Which meant the patent office had to watch for get-rich-quick schemers.
"I can't show it, but I can explain. It means air burns impurities in the iron—if you blast in tons of air, all impurities in the pig iron burn away, right?"
"Burn all impurities and you get wrought iron, not steel. Academy aspirant, and you haven't read the academy headmaster's book?"
"Principles of Chemistry? That came out last month. I don't have money..."
"Read it and come back. Goodbye."
The root cause was education. Without knowing the exact principles, people couldn't scientifically explain empirically learned knowledge.
"Hear me out. Furnaces use bellows or waterwheels for air. So, an egg-shaped jar with handles, fill it with pig iron like pouring water, then pour out molten metal."
"That's worth considering as a furnace shape. I'll send experimental blueprints to an ironworks."
"Yes, and if you attach a high-pressure bellows below to blast air really hard..."
"Planning to steal a steam engine from England?"
"No..."
So even ingenious inventions often got tossed.
"If it's viable, we'll contact you later. Write your address and name."
"Henri Bernard. Uh, could you write a recommendation for the academy?"
"No. Go home."
"Yes..."
Fantasy until proven in reality. That was the gap in current French science.
The tech leap wasn't just in factories. Brienne Royal Military Academy saw a big one too.
"Hmm..."
"Hey. What're you doing."
"Brienne? Just... something about this map bugs me."
A 12-year-old boy was lost in thought over a map of Europe and a summary of the last war—the Hundred Days' War.
"Brienne, right? So, what bugs you?"
"It's... dirty, somehow?"
He pointed to the Holy Roman Empire and Italy. The map's Italy and Holy Roman Empire were a mess of borders—eye-straining lines everywhere. Impossible to tell border from forest, river from mountain.
"What're you on about. Hey, homework for next class? Analyze Hundred Days' War victory causes and improve 'em. They ask about everything."
"Why ask victory causes? Figuring out why the enemy lost is better, no?"
"Winning matters."
"Not losing matters more."
The boy pointed to the Hundred Days' War deployment map.
"Look. Loudon’s army fired 40,000 shells from Metz. Started with 18-inchers, then no more 18s so 14s, then 10, 8, 6-inch. Know what that means?"
"Used up everything they had?"
"Exactly! Down to 6-inch, then grapeshot and explosives. That's Loudon’s army's fatal flaw."
The boy reconstructed the battlefield from class lectures.
"Weapons change, but war doesn't. Spearmen become musketeers, ballistae become cannons. Archers or cavalry will wield new weapons later too. But roles stay the same. Successors to cavalry break lines and ravage rears; cannon successors smash defenses. Loudon’s army lost 'cause they skipped Roman history. If ballistae couldn't breach the gate, turn tail. Wasting arrows on an unbreakable gate is why they ended up like that."
"Ugh. Then do that for your presentation."
"Hey, Brienne. What're you doing yours on?"
"Something safe—lack of cohesion. Big numbers, but only Loudon's direct troops actually moved, so picked off piecemeal. That's the standard view."
The boy nodded at his friend Brienne's words.
"Fair. 8,000 trained soldiers beat 120,000 rabble. Sustained numbers don't matter—it's firepower in the moment that counts."
"Bell. Let's go. Napoleon."