Meridian City! Crossroads of the continent! Capital of the world!

Built with the sanitation lessons from the cleanest and healthiest settlements of Ctarria, it is home to millions!

Headquarters of the Society of the Six-Forked Bough, collecting the greatest figures from all three continents!

Every day, ships discharge metals from Ctarria and salt from Oghel to be loaded up with grain from the fields of Baelo. With all the wealth flowing through the canal, feeding the factories and skyscrapers springing up, living here feels like being at the epicenter of the future spreading out across the globe. And the world is growing smaller to meet it, with great metal-skinned steamers crossing the oceans in record time and laying down new intercontinental telegraph lines as they go.

At at the junction of one such line, in a wicker chair in a closet-sized office, sits Lemrae Winla-Racine, Operator First Class. He wears a sheet of pale green fabric: neither the height of Meridian fashion nor what he grew up wearing, but it allows him the freedom of movement needed to maintain his instrumentation. A small piece of beautifully embroidered leather is wrapped around his right index finger, which rests on a simple key. 

A folded message is passed through a slot in the wood panelling. With well-practised movements, his left hand opens it and holds it to the light, confirming the destination city is correct. His right finger taps out his station identification, and then begins to transmit the message. He concludes with his station identification again, and receives a quick confirmation code. He writes on the message "SENT-ACK", the time, and his signature, folds it back up, and then passes it through another slot, where it falls into a waiting basket.

Messages are sent, messages are received, and all the while Lemrae makes quick notes in the logbook. Any discrepancies can be resolved. The system is efficient and multiply redundant.

Telegraph operators swear many oaths. They are forbidden to speak of the messages they see, even to others so sworn. They are forbidden to act on what they might see. They are discouraged from even thinking about their transmissions (although nobody has managed to enforce such a rule). But they cannot be prevented from noticing.

MET OUR MUTUAL FRIEND DEAL IS STILL ON

SS RHACHI ARRIVED TWO THIRDS OF CARGO ROTTEN PLEASE ADVISE

C COMPANY FIRST BATTALION DELAYED BEGIN EXERCISE ON SCHEDULE REGARDLESS

SALES OF BOOK THE MOUNTAIN EXCEED EXPECTATIONS PRINT ANOTHER 5000 COPIES

PACKAGE ETA ONE WEEK MESSAGE ON ARRIVAL

I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU PLEASE TELL ME IF YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND

For two hours, messages stream through Lemrae's fingers, which rest only when messages are coming in instead. Finally, the deluge begins to peter out. The evening rush is over. Soon, there's a knock at the door and Lemrae stands, to be replaced by one of the more junior operators.

He walks through the busy hallways of Meridian City Telegraph Station, the largest such station on the continent. Even at night, multiple operators sit ready, facilitating the near-instantaneous communication which has so quickly become so ubiquitous among governments and businessmen. The muted click-clack of sounders can be heard behind closed doors. Apprentices walk swiftly this way and that, carrying folded messages to and from the operators.

Lemrae walks downstairs to the workshop and finds a desk. He lays out a blank sheet of paper and a small contraption, which he constructed in a sleep-deprived haze last night: two relays wired together, an electrolytic cell, and a tiny light. Finally, he has the chance to test it. He holds two wires in his hands.

When he applies voltage to one relay, it clicks but nothing happens.

When he applies voltage to the other relay, the same thing.

But when he applies voltage to both relays at once, the light turns on with a dim orange glow.

Four days later, Lemrae finds himself in the office of Nosei Tersai-Verene, Master-Adjutant of the Meridian City Telegraph Station. Lemrae is dressed in his finest clothes, deep red fabric which folds over itself and swishes when he walks. Nervous though he is, he stands firmly, and speaks without a tremor.

"...so by linking these gates, Sir, we can control a circuit with telegraph signals. This diagram here shows that keying in a station identifier could connect you to that station. We'd have to change the structure of the station identifiers, but this would allow any station to contact any other station directly, just by keying in the destination. As the telegraph network expands, this will let us send messages faster and with fewer intermediate steps."

Traditional Baelo enterprises larger than a household still have a sole owner, typically the head of a mercantile family. Management and day-to-day operations are delegated to trusted subordinates, of whom any in a position of responsibility will be part of the family, married in, or subject to a patron who is. 

The Kalra Telegram Partnership is one of the new breed of businesses on the continent. Nominally owned by Lord Kalra, a web of contracts modelled on the guild oaths of Oghel entitles his partners to a share of his authority and profits. The idea is to give those partners an incentive to see the enterprise as a whole succeed, so that it may expand at a speed unchecked by the need to arrange marriages or patronage transfers for every employee of any importance.

So far, that model has been a success. The so-called Lord of the Wires has no credible challengers to his ambitions of a global telecommunications monopoly. As for Nosei Tersai-Verene, he has become a wealthy man even with a fraction of a fraction of the profits, his own attire including gleaming rings and a sporty hand-embroidered jacket imported from the cities of Ctarria worn over a comfortable wrap. He has been free to choose his subordinates on the basis of merit over marriageability or an existing patronage connection, and today Lemrae has demonstrated the value of that.

However, 'automation' is a dirty word anywhere the influence of Oghel's guilds is felt, and the Kalra Telegram Partnership is one such place. The power of the guilds rests on their promise of lifelong livelihoods for their members. It is for that reason that the spread of telegrams into the continent of rivers has met with such bitter opposition from the semaphore and courier guilds there. 

Some former semaphore operators and horse relay managers are now members of the partnership, hired to consult on how best to deploy and run the stations with their expertise. You can poach a master from the guild with a generous enough paycheck, but you can't remove the guild biases against putting people out of a job. Not only that, but Lemrae's invention and its implications will also be a challenge to all their recommendations that led to the current telegram arrangements.

The Astute Master-Adjutant drums his fingers lightly on the desk and asks a few follow-up questions about Lemrae's work while he ponders those political factors that the young inventor has not considered. 

He can already see the potential gains in speed and the reduction in necessary headcount, and the consequent profits that would bring the partnership as a whole and him personally. However, to be the one to sponsor such a proposal would be dangerous. Nosei has heard the rumors of how vicious the guilds and their people can be. Both consultants he's met firsthand have had a bodyguard on retainer even an ocean away from their homeland. 

What he needs is a way to kick this up the chain, to allow Lemrae to develop his innovation to maturity quietly and then diffuse it out without Nosei having a visible hand in it. What was that workshop that had been mentioned in the last round of correspondence?

There we go. He'd filed it away in his mind as a potential punishment posting, off in the industrial outskirts of Meridian City overseeing technicians' rote experiments instead of keeping a finger on the pulse of the world in the glamorous heart of operations here.

(There is not yet a publicly traded stock exchange in the city, but that does not mean there are no opportunities to benefit from inside knowledge of secrets shared over the telegrams. Oaths in Baelo are not quite so binding as they are in Oghel, if one has taken the precaution of putting one's patron in one's debt and if it would be terribly hard to prove that a given investment was based on private information.)

"You have done well," Nosei says. He lets his lips curl up, as though he is trying to restrain an indulgent smile instead of putting it on deliberately. "Such creativity is to be rewarded."

"Our Lord Kalra is farsighted. What is the use of building all these telegraphs, says he, if we are to be caught out like the express riders by the next great discovery? To that end, our partnership is investing in fundamental research as well as our expansion efforts. The -" shed in the middle of nowhere "- scientific facility is so new, it has yet to be fully staffed. I intend to put your name forward to manage it, and I expect that promotion to succeed."

"Go there, work on your ideas full-time without the distracting bustle of the sounders and shift-changes, but remember: We have many competitors. Keep the trade secrets you invent close, as the guilds do. When they are ready to deploy, or should you have another breakthrough, we do not want anyone else learning of it before Lord Kalra can. You may have the opportunity to present to him personally."

There, that should awe the young man into accepting without considering the details too closely. 

Lemrae rubs his leather finger-wrap and tries to focus on what he's just heard, to awed to consider the details closely. He's certainly accrued enough experience to merit a promotion, but to manage his own lab? He allows his excitement to shine though. "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

There are a few details to sort out, but they do so quickly, and soon Lemrae leaves the office, buzzing with excitement.

Lemrae has ensured his last shift is a quiet one. Partly because his mind keeps wandering, and he's having trouble focusing on the work -- but mostly because he has to say goodbye. Both to the office, and to his friend.

He's hardly alone in having one. On slow days, operators have little to do, and sometimes end up communicating. Lemrae doesn't know his friend's name, but until now it hadn't mattered. Lemrae knew he was a telegraph operator, and that was enough. They had conversed, tentatively at first, but had ended up having long, languid conversations, with a prodigal use of words that would be unthinkable to anyone paying by the letter. They knew each other well, and had shared in their ideas; Lemrae's friend was studying mathematics and natural philosophy (although his parents apparently disapproved of such a fanciful pursuit), and had provided some key insights for Lemrae's projects. Among other things, he had pointed out that there was no need to diagram the entire circuit, or to trace the flow of electricity: a diagram could include only the flow of information, with each gate treated as a single element.

For the last time, Lemrae carefully removes the paper tape from the sounder, so no record is made, and makes a few experimental taps on the key. Soon a conversation begins to flow across the continent.

PROMOTION HAS GONE THROUGH TODAY I AM GETTING MY OWN LAB THIS IS MY LAST SHIFT

They speak for a bit, trading good wishes. Lemrae wants to see his friend again. Perhaps he might even meet him in person, someday...

PLEASE COULD YOU TELL ME WHO YOU ARE I WANT TO BE ABLE TO FIND YOU SOMEDAY

A pause. Perhaps it's not fair to ask him to go first -- he had seemed evasive and nervous about it when Lemrae had first asked, and neither one had brought it up since.

MY NAME IS LEMRAE WINLA RACINE

A pause. 

MINE IS YSEAU OLSPHE

Not unusual, for someone in that part of the continent to track lineage by the grandmothers instead of the grandfathers. 

Another pause, long enough that it could be mistaken for the end of the conversation. Then the next hesitant taps come down the line, speeding up again past the first word.

ALMEI YSEAU OLSPHE