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, too 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

"Almei." Lemrae says the name out loud, quietly. A girl's name.

It makes sense that a woman could operate a telegraph. It requires practice and some dexterity, but no great feats of strength. But -- the mathematics --

Still, she is a good friend. Nothing really changes, right?

I SEE WHY YOU DID NOT TELL ME EARLIER

THANK YOU FOR TRUSTING ME

The words feel wooden, and Lemrae wonders if she really was right to trust him. 

I WILL SEND YOU A LETTER AFTER I AM SET UP

A LETTER IS SO OLD FASHIONED LEMRAE

Tone is difficult to communicate over a telegram. There's a knock at the door for the shift change.

I SHALL EAGERLY AWAIT ITS ARRIVAL

Lemrae casts a pained look at the door. Oh well. Noreso can wait another minute.

SHIFT CHANGE GOODBYE ALMEI

With that, he reinserts the paper tape and stands up. He casts one last look around the office and opens the door. He locks eyes with Noreso. It'll be the man's first time on his own during a busy hour. "It's all yours", he says, giving him a firm smile. "You'll do great."

Walking out into the early morning, Lemrae flags down a cab. The two-wheel, one-horse carriage comes to a stop. He gets in, tells the driver the address, and off they go.

It's a fairly long journey: the lab is further away from the city centre than Lemrae thought. Perhaps I will have to purchase a horse. With the pay of a telegraph-master, even a junior one, this is suddenly much more achievable.

The cab pulls up to a fence with a locked gate. Lemrae pays the driver and gets out, taking a good look at the facility. There's a single wooden building, with a simple fence as security. It looks small, nondescript. Underground, perhaps? Nosei did say secrecy was important.

The cab speeds away, no doubt hoping someone in this distant part of the city will need a ride. Casting a glance at the gold thread just added to his finger-wrap, Lemrae unlocks the gate with his new key.

As he approaches the building itself, the door to it is opened for him by a hazel-haired youth of coastal Ctarrian heritage.

"You must be the new manager, sir? Please, come right in."

The lad has a notebook in his hands that he steadily adds chronicler's shorthand to as they walk and talk with no sign of distraction. An ideomotorist, probably taught by one of the chroniclers' schools. 

The building is a converted farmhouse, with a hatch in the floor for a cellar that looks infrequently used. Some of the interior walls have recently been removed to make more space for lab benches and shelves of components and reagents. A few of the electrical components have currently been repurposed into a wire-based heater on a tripod to set a kettle boiling.

Two Baelo men are sat nearby. One has the clothes and comportment of a minor aristocrat, though he stands up and greets Lemrae as an equal when he enters, a perk of the partnership's legalities that many nobles do not care to honor. His smile creases his sideburns. 

"A rustic place, isn't it? Of course, you'll have the authority to put some of our funds towards improving the facilities. Then we shall be able to devote ourselves to our experiments, to furthering the bounds of human experience!"

The other man remains quiet, thumb rubbing at the rough-edged bone ring he wears, a devout or recently-bereaved omophagist. 

Lemrae looks around the farmhouse. Well. It's smaller, and not as well-appointed as he expected. It's fine, he tells himself. This just means he gets to set the direction. It means he can focus on his own work. It's fine. Definitely just fine.

"Of course!" Lemrae matches the aristocrat's enthusiasm. "I'd like to start by going over the records, checking the books. But first, your names?"

"Lord Vero, the young fellow is Tamett of Kurtur and this is Serna, our very own electrical engineer. He wired Witred, the last of our number for now, when we saw you coming, she'll be arriving soon. Tamett, would you get the logs out? We've not been established long at all, so you shan't have too much reading to catch up on."

He puts a generous slice of butter into his infusion once the kettle has boiled, offers the same to the others, and sips his own drink appreciatively.

"For the moment I've been largely continuing my own line of experiments. Mild electricity applied to the tongue to stimulate the perception of taste, tests of that ilk."

That would be classic scholar-aristocrat behaviour, following his own interests with little regard for rigor or application beyond party tricks. Lord Kalra is an exception to that norm.

Tamett the scrivener returns shortly with a few stacked books. From the handwriting in common, he maintains all the documentation at present, and it is well-organized. There are comprehensive notes on both Vero's erratic procedures and also Serna's much more methodical progression through all the wire alloys available to measure their resistance as a function of radius and voltage matches the suppliers' specifications. 

"I worked for a citizen-scientist in my hometown, sir, before it changed hands," he explains. 

For most cities in Ctarria, there's little point investing in scientific equipment not directly applicable to a trade, because the wrong clan of nomads taking power could mean that equipment gets appropriated or taxed or burned. The citizen-scientists make do with what little they can afford and write letters to each other constantly so that their discoveries won't be so easily lost. They've been eager adopters of the telegraphs the partnership has established over there.

Lemrae greets them all, hoping he'll be able to remember their names. "Thank you. My name is Lemrae. I was doing some work on relays. Mostly theoretical for now, but I believe I can use them to make circuits that can change themselves in response to input. Maybe even do calculations."

He walks around the facility, looking at the equipment. There isn't much -- mostly the instruments Serna has been using, and a few random devices purchased by Vero. He's doing his best to appear in charge, but he's never managed more than a single apprentice. "As you were." he says, hoping his tone is authoritative-trying-to-be-friendly, rather than the other way around. "I'll have some in-depth conversations with each of you over the next day or two."

Taking Lord Vero's infusion, Lemrae settles into a wicker chair to review Serna's notes.

The talk of relays and calculating machines doesn't inspire any immediate interest in those present, though Tamett is politely attentive, and they resume their activities. He and Serna get to work on the next spool of wire a little stiffly, while Vero takes his time finishing his own drink in thoughtful contempation. Two out of three for an impression of authority.

A few minutes later, the sounds of hoofbeats approach from outside. Shortly after, the last of the current team enters, a woman of one of the nomadic peoples of Ctarria who is approaching middle age. Witred wears a sleeveless brocaded vest that bares tanned arms dotted with patterns of scarification, and briefly clicks her tongue at the sight of the books spread out.

"This is our new manager?"

"Yes, this is Lemrae, a telegraph-master from the central exchange!" The aristocrat says brightly. "Witred here advises us on the practical matters, she laid wires between outposts during the Last War." 

Also known as the First Industrial War, to anyone who isn't an optimist. 

Lemrae looks at Witred, trying not to stare at her scarified arms, and smiles. "That's me. Thanks for coming, Witred. I'm glad to have you." He means it. For all his skill in the telegraph office, he knows very little of what goes into actually laying the lines.

"Hm." Witred seems to be reserving judgment. Seeing the others are going about their prior activities, she collects some sort of complex saddle-spool arrangement and hefts it outside with impressive strength.

There, she puts it on the back of her intimidatingly large horse and starts criss-crossing the lot, letting the spool play out and barking complaints whenever it catches or troubles her mount that are dutifully recorded by Tamett.

Lemrae is about to ask about what they're doing, but then he remembers one of the managers he had a while ago, at a smaller telegraph post. As soon as the man had arrived he had started asking what they were doing (forcing them to stop working to explain themselves) and recommending changes. Changes that made no sense given the state of the telegraph station. The manager had earned near-universal scorn within the week.

Instead, Lemrae sits back down and lets them work: they already have a system figured out. They're clearly running some kind of test related to wire length. He'll ask more about it when they're not busy.

Over the next few days, watching the experiments and interviewing them individually yields a better understanding of what the current direction of research is. 

"- had to kill four men and have three of my horses shot out from under me, and for what? So some general can send a telegram instead of a runner from their bunker to order another wave of soldiers to run into the barbed wire and get shot?"

"The telegraph wires never lasted long, either, artillery or fools not looking where they'd tread breaking gaps in it. By war's end they'd have me lay them two at a time, an armspan apart. Blasted barbed wire was never so fragile."

"It's the larger wires that're more susceptible to it, sir, which is an odd matter when the smaller should be more delicate. The cladding doesn't help, breaks down in practice faster than the manufacturers' promises for how it ought to last, flakes or sloughs off in your hands when you gather it back up, sir."

"- and when you apply this current to this part of the tongue - you're sure you don't want to try it for yourself? - the perception is of intense sweetness!"

"If I could just find a volunteer who would keep still, I would love to try again the old needle-behind-the-eyeball experiment with a few different materials and currents to determine whether the colors stimulated are the product of the pressure as was first claimed or rather from some kind of bioelectric interaction as my tongue tests would suggest."

"- then for last month, three more transient resistivity events. The first was on the 7th with the highest temperature on the thermometer all year to date, the second on the 16th, and the third on the 20th."

Tamett has a more confident speaking voice when he's reading from his notes, and a habit of laying out the facts in a way intended to bring the listener along to his conclusion. 

While they each have their own side projects, like Witred's improvements to the wire-laying saddle design or Vero's taste tests, the bulk of their work is at least adjacent to the matter of transient resistivity.

It's a logical choice. Transient resistivity events are a common problem for the telegraphs, and they remain poorly understood. Every so often, the signal down a wire will attenuate greatly over the course of a couple of days. It seems to be more likely in wires that see heavy use, though of course any incidents on unused lines will go unnoticed. From Lemrae's own experience, trying to communicate over an affected wire is like going from someone tapping the table you're sat at to them tapping a table on the far end of a large echoing chamber. (They're also a common general-purpose excuse for any operator who doesn't want to admit their own errors, which complicates reporting.)

The standard cure is to turn the line off and on again,  disconnecting it from the power supply entirely for a few days, which works reliably but is an inconvenient service outage and a once-affected line will often be subject to more such events afterwards. Because this 'cooling-off' period is so effective and the undersea cables remain mercifully unaffected, the leading hypothesis is that these events are some kind of thermal interaction between the electricity and the material of the wires.

The problem is, trying to model those interactions starting from the relevant physical equations invariably predicts effects multiple orders of magnitude weaker than reality even with favorable assumptions. The typical defense of the thermal hypothesis is that there must be points on the line where shoddy laying or manufacturing errors make it more susceptible, to justify why transient resistivity has yet to be observed inside an electrician's workshop. 

However, the outdoors tests here have already observed several transient resistivity events, with the wire already checked over with calipers, laid by a practiced expert, on a small plot of land where the ambient temperature variations will be minimal. It is time for a new hypothesis, or at least a new round of experiments. 

Lemrae walks into the research building, hefting a stack of papers onto the table. "I got them. Signal reports from every outpost on Baleo, going back two years. This time we've got the logs of successful connections too, not just the reported problems. It'll take a while, but we can go through it and see how many events we have per year and per usage on the different lines. This should tell us if wires that get used more get more resistance." He pauses, looking around the table. "I was only able to get these because I'm a telegraph-master. It's considered confidential information. Spies, or our competitors, could learn a lot from it. So these papers do not leave this room. Nor does the fact that they exist."

He sits down, finding the summary of their experiments so far. "We've more or less conclusively demonstrated that it isn't external temperature changes, but it still might be temperature changes from resistive heating. I want to see if we can artificially induce it, or make a cooling-off period take longer, by running the line along a bed of hot coals."

"We also know that it doesn't happen under the ocean. I'm curious how much water is needed. If we run a line through a trough of water, do we still get these failures? Next time we get a failing line, I also want to see if we can speed up the recovery by immersing it in water."

He reviews the existing set of experiments again. "Do we know if the cladding breaks down faster all the time? We should leave a line on the ground for a few days without powering it. The cladding coming off could be a clue... but maybe the manufacturers are just selling us shoddy wire."

Serna wrings his hat in hesitation, then speaks up. 

"Begging your pardon, sir, but wire-heating to induce the effect has been tried without success. The only times we've observed it have been when the whole spool has been laid outside for days on end."

"What we could do is take one of those line-marking trolleys, the kind they use to organize the dockyards, and lay that hot tar-paint over the wire when the power gets cut. Murder on the turf, but it'll keep the metal from cooling."

"You'll have the same problem with the water. A single horse-trough won't be enough, and I'm not laying wire through a bog."

"No, no, no need for all that. There's a friend of mine who has horse-drawn canal routes criss-crossing her lands, roving-bridges and all. I daresay she'll permit us to lay a wire along the canal beds, no questions asked, if we only stretch the ends a little ways overland to connect her summer-house and winter-house together once the work is done so that she can bell the servants in one from the other."

DIRIGIBLE TRANSPORT "SHALL NEVER BE CHALLENGED"

MURDERS IN WESTSIDE TENEMENTS CONTINUE

OREST SINGER'S LOVE-SCANDAL!

NORTH-SOUTH RECONCILLIATION COMMITTEE REMAINS DEADLOCKED

TCHEX CITY VOWS TO RESIST NOMAD RULE "TO THE LAST"

HORSELESS CARRIAGE BOSS KICKED TO DEATH BY HORSE

Over the next few weeks, the results come in.

"Irili is delighted, and she's promised to send us immediately if there is any trouble with her line. No signs of that yet though, even using a spool that has shown the unusual resistivity thrice when laid out here."

"Day fourteen, still no shedding from the control wire."

The following day, a sweating and stained Serna rushes in with a gauge in hand and the line-drawing trolley dragged behind him, leaving a haphazard trail across the floor in his haste.

"Would you look at that! Not even half the length of the wire tarred, and instead of slowing the cooling the signal's most of the way recovered!"

Shortly after, bundling up an affected wire and tossing it in a pond has a similar result of removing the excess resistance within minutes. Neither are viable solutions for practical use, as Witred is quick to remind the jubilant team, but they are novel scientific results. 

Through all this, Tamett has been staying inside the workshop, studiously ignoring the activity outside while he tries different ways to visualize the trove of data in the papers. He pages through them with great care befitting their secrecy.

"There is a seasonal component. More failures in the north and south as the weather warms, less in winter, a more constant rate around the equatorial regions." That would be strong evidence in support of the thermal hypothesis, were it not for all the other evidence they've gathered that conflicts with the standard formulation.

"Proximity matters as well, sir. Failures in one line seem to spread to those nearby within days, so long as they're no more than a few miles apart."

He seems discomforted to review his own shorthand notes some days, looking between them and the wires brought back in after the quenching and tarring. Whatever his concerns, they don't make it into the more legible script of the lab books.

Lemrae puts the letter he's writing aside as he listens to Tamett's report. "Physical proximity... it's almost like there's an invisible storm." He twists his finger-wrap for several minutes, staring into space. "We know that compasses rely on some sort of magnetic wind or universal magnetism, which pulls all magnets to face north-south. We also know that some things can block it. A compass doesn't work inside an iron box, for instance. And electricity is generated by moving magnets near wires, and can cause magnets to move as well."

He looks at a map of telegraph lines in Baleo. "Imagine there was a storm of magnetic wind. Some sort of perturbation in the universal magnetic field. It could introduce all sorts of problems in communication. Like trying to use semaphore towers in driving rain. The storms would travel across the continent, disrupting telegraphs wherever they go. And just like how a stronger current causes a stronger force on magnets, a wire being used more is more likely to be affected." He picks up a piece of sloughed-off cladding. "Some things will keep the storm out. But when there's electricity running through the wire, the storm... batters at the walls. A body of water is liquid, so it can't be broken. Maybe it just heats up a little or becomes more turbulent. But the cladding breaks down."

He looks at the list of experimental results. "You'd expect that the storm would continue its effects as soon as you took a wire out of the water. But if the storm causes some sort of disturbance to build up, then maybe it takes a little time to build back up to a level we can detect. And that would also explain why a wire that's been affected before is more likely to be affected again." He turns now to Tamett. "What do you think? Does it make sense?"

Tamett blinks and takes a moment to gather his thoughts, surprised to be asked his opinion, though the quiet scratch of pen on paper doesn't stop. 

"Magnetic storms..." He sits up a little straighter, heartened by the new hypothesis. "So when we see a compass needle twitch, that could be from their presence. And in a long wire, exposed to their effects for a long time; that builds up like -"

Inspiration strikes, and he picks up a couple of the long-necked glass water bottles and takes them over to the horse-trough.

"Electricity is like a fluid, so -" He upends one bottle, giving it a twist so that a vortex forms, allowing the water to drop and the air to flow in smoothly. Then he upends the other without that twist, water glugging out slower and less regularly. "...a kind of, what's the word, turbulence like that could build up, and then when we apply heat or cold or turn off the power then that lets it start to settle back down inside, but maybe we need to leave it longer for the wires that keep having that problem."

Witred's horse glares at the disturbance.

"And we could detect that by putting a compass or some iron filings by the wires, to compare when the power is on and when the problem starts."

Lemrae nods. "Turbulence. That makes sense, it's a good thought. Compasses tend to twitch anyway when they're close to telegraph lines, of course. We'll have to keep it a short distance away from the wire to make sure we're only detecting the storm, not the transmissions. But it should work." 

He looks back towards the farmhouse. "What would be really nice is something like a seismometer connected to a compass. Something that'll make a log of where the needle's pointing. That might let us see exactly when the storm sets in. Maybe I can put one together -- but we should start with the most simple method. Compasses and iron filings."

Compasses and iron filings... do not turn up the expected effects. There are the minute twitches as a signal goes down the line, reduced to nothing further away. However, a degraded wire and a fresh one present no differences to the compass or filings, and no magnetic storm can be detected.

By now, they have some lines in the yard that undergo transient resistivity almost immediately upon being turned on again. When this happens the compass shows no deviation beyond the initial twitch, while the filings are disturbed as though by a faint breeze or dust devil rustling about the wire. It is a still day. Tamett looks queasy as he double-checks his shorthand.

Lemrae frowns, nudging a wire contemplatively with his foot. "Let's run another line, one without any cladding at all, and see how fast it degrades." He looks at Tamett. Something seems wrong.

"Are you alright?"

"I don't feel so good, sir. May I be excused?" 

He almost runs to the farmhouse, the tendons of his hand visible from how he clenches his stationery.  

Lemrae nods absently. There are stories about ideomotorists. That their bodies are controlled by spirits, that their skills cause them strange maladies, that they form a globe-spanning conspiracy to do... something or another. Most of the stories are probably nonsense, but it can't be denied that the chroniclers can behave very oddly sometimes.

Walking to the shed, Lemrae takes a length of wire without cladding which has never been used. He carries it over to the testing ground, runs it next to the wires, and turns it on, watching the ohmmeter intently.

This time, he barely has to wait a minute for the transient resistivity to begin. The ohmmeter dial slowly rises, and it seems to do so in fits and starts, almost discrete jumps. A silent movement of the air disturbs the grass.

Lemrae watches the meter tick up, then stares at the wire until his eyes hurt. "Why? Why so quickly now?" He checks the other wires. Their resistance hasn't exceeded the previous peaks. If the storm is stronger now, the wires still have some sort of hard limit of resistance.

The wire covered in tar continues to conduct completely normally. What if it's only slightly uncovered?

Taking a small pickaxe, Lemrae kneels in the dirt and begins to gingerly remove the layer from a small portion of the wire. Electricity and magnetism, Lemrae knows, travel very easily along wires. If even a small piece of the wire is exposed to the storm, the whole thing should reach maximum resistance in a few minutes. 

By now the tar from that experiment has hardened and cooled. Chipping off a small patch of it to expose bare wire again causes the resistance to rise within a couple of minutes, but unlike the previous wire there's just the one small jump in resistance. 

Over the next several minutes, there's no more increase in resistance. The dried tar at the edges of the gap does slowly start to fragment and flake away like the cladding did. It's a strangely uncomfortable process to watch.

Lemrae's eyes twitch as he watches the exposed wire. His head starts to hurt. His eyes switch to the ohmmeter, seeing the needle tick up in discrete jumps as more tar flakes away.

"This isn't a weather phenomenon", he murmurs.

What is it then? Something discrete, quantized. Something that needs access to the bare wire to induce resistance, and which exerts physical force to do so. Once a little weakness was exposed in the tar, the weakness was expanded.

Something that scared Tamett. Something inconsistent, only affecting certain parts of the world at certain times. Lemrae's eyes close as he turns the problem over in his mind. Something hard to look at. Something that messes with my vision, or my perception. Every time Lemrae looked hard at a resisting wire, his eyes started to hurt. The iron filings were disturbed, even though nothing was there. Some kind of invisible animal? Lemrae imagines a swarm of invisible rats chewing through the cladding, chewing on the wires.

Lemrae rushes to the equipment shed, grabbing a tin bucket which he fills with rocks. When he returns to the wire, the hole in the tar has grown -- but it's still smaller than the bucket. He dumps out the rocks, holds the bucket above his head and then, in a single swift motion, brings it down to cover the hole, hopefully trapping anything inside.

The inverted bucket slams down. Something or some things inside are bumping against the tin walls.

He can feel them.

A whine intrudes on the edges of his hearing, an angry tinnitus buzz. 

Holding the bucket down with one hand, Lemrae puts a heavy rock on top of it, and then begins packing around the outside with dirt and more rocks. His head darts this way and that. Something is there. He didn't catch the whole swarm. They seem... angry.

They're trying to get in, as well as out. The tar at the base of the bucket is beginning to flake.

"Someone shut off the power!" Lemrae shouts. "Now!"

Serna jumps up from his seat, spilling his infusion on himself and swearing. As an experienced electrician, he's already got a master breaker for the workshop rigged up, and in a few moments the lever is yanked down to cut all flow of current that's not battery-powered.

In that time, multiple painless cuts appear on Lemrae's extremities, only noticeable when the blood starts to flow. 

Lemrae takes a step back, his arms starting to sting. More cuts are appearing: they're attacking him now. Lemrae drops to the ground and begins to roll back and forth. He feels something cut into his back and lies down, rubbing the area along the ground to crush whatever's on him.

Whatever it is, it's about the size of a rat but it digs into his skin like a spiny crab. Fortunately, he's able to crack its carapace with his weight. When he does so, a new harsh scent oozes out, and with a sound like an exhalation the air around him stills.

Lemrae gets up, breathing heavily. He's covered in cuts, some shallow, some deep, and many of the cuts are now covered in dirt. His clothes are completely torn up -- fortunately, he was wearing his green work outfit. Lemrae limps to the house, wondering if it would be an abuse of his position to get Serna to boil some water for a bath.

Serna and Witred are already hurrying out from his earlier cry, and meet him on his way in.

"What have you done to yourself?" The nomad asks, looking at him like a madman. She grabs a roll of bandage from one pocket and hands that to Serna so the old man can start treating his cuts.

"Nothing... intentional." Lemrae pants. He bunches up the rags on his back and, working by feel, wraps the carapace in a scrap of his clothes. "Need to clean the wounds. They have dirt on them. I figured out what was causing the transient resistance. And it attacked me."

Lemrae is sitting on his bed, more or less wrapped in bandages. He's invited the others into his room: it's a little unusual, but there aren't any other soft places to sit. A scrap of his clothing is still clenched in his fist: wrapped up, containing something.

"Where did Tamett go?"

"The boy said he had to go see his teacher about something. Struck me as awful glum."

"You sometimes see cuts like this, working outside, but never so many," Serna mutters as he ties up the last of the dressings.

"Yeah. They're coming from rats. Or crabs, or something like that. You can't see them, but they cause resistance." Lemrae puts the bunched-up clothing scrap on his bedside table and pushes a finger into it. He can still feel the hard carapace inside. "I don't know if we'll be able to see this, when I open it up. Can someone get me some paint?"

"You said you were attacked. This was your attacker?" Witred asks doubtfully, standing watch at the door.

From another of her pockets she has produced a stubby pepperbox pistol, the barrels little longer than its width. As she's made no mention of having a patron, it's almost certainly unregistered and illegal.

Serna hurries to collect some grease-paint, offering can and brush, and then having second thoughts about the bedsheets and providing a wooden board for Lemrae to lay over his lap as well.

With the bundle on the wooden board, Lemrae carefully opens it, one hand grabbing the paintbrush to drip some paint on the carapace if, indeed, it cannot be seen.

Broken and squashed, the lines of the shell disrupted, the body inside the bundle can be glimpsed in one's peripheral vision as the improvised shroud is slowly unwrapped. Multiple pairs of narrow limbs, sharp edges responsible for Lemrae's cuts, little insectile gossamer wings, delicate mouthparts crushed beyond reconstruction, antennae that bristle like iron filings on a magnet, a clutch of oily round eggs like roe, all at odd inconsistent angles to one another as though viewed through a kaleidoscope.

Even under expectant scrutiny, the gaze flinches away from viewing the creature directly, until Lemrae drips paint onto it and mars the lurid alien colors of it. Intense aposematic fuchsia and teal and sickly bright yellow-green are muted by the grease-paint into less aversive shades.

His audience is stunned into silence by the sight, an impossible creature unveiled before their lying eyes. 

The paint's outlines highlight the creature, making it easier to see the whole thing. Lemrae still gets a headache from looking at it -- but he's able to see it now.

"As near as I can tell, swarms of these things are responsible for our transient resistivity. I trapped one in a bucket and the swarm went totally berserk, but as soon as I killed one they stopped attacking me." He smiles slightly. "It's possible they've fled. We should see if resistance has dropped." He shifts his weight, wincing at the pain. "I must admit I'm not very familiar with zoology. Does anyone here think they'd be able to dissect this?"

"I know how to dress game," Witred says dubiously. She forces herself to stare intently at the remains, even as pain lines deepen on her face to do so.

"Why, I've done a couple of dissections in my time, though not on invertebrates. That is an exoskeleton, isn't it? Fascinating. I do have a distant cousin who is a collector of beetles in all their variety, who may have better advice on how to preserve this specimen, but she is alas distant in the geographical sense as well."

The aristocrat witters on. He reaches out to poke at the shell, cuts himself by accident, and puts the finger in his mouth once he notices the bleeding. 

"Accursedly sharp-edged, pardon my language. How about I wire my cousin, ask her for the best introduction to entomology in book form, and then we send a runner to find a copy so I have a reference to work from?"

"Turning the power back on," Serna announces. Those kinds of safety announcements are practically the only time his voice will rise above a murmur.

He checks the different lines one by one with methodical care, and returns to the room. 

"All back to normal, as though they've just been laid." The electrician mops his brow anxiously.

Lemrae nods at Lord Vero. "The details of our study here are still secret, mind. But if bringing some books in would help you classify... this... then by all means." 

"Let's keep the power running. I'm curious about how long it'll take them to come back." He pokes at the carapace curiously. It's easier to see it when his finger is touching it, almost as though touching the body reminds his brain that it's real. "Witred, do you think a pistol shot would be able to penetrate this?" He smiles slightly. "Theoretically, of course."

"Penetrate? Easily. The problem would be sighting and landing the shot."

"Hmm... I suppose firing bird-shot along the length of a wire would damage it. Still, if the creatures were congregating in one area... depending on how long it scares them off for, it might be worth replacing a small section of wire. Have we checked if, on the long lines, the resistance is localized to one section of wire, or spread evenly along the whole thing?"

Most esteemed Master-Adjutant,

This week, we have made a breakthrough in our understanding of transient resistance events. 

Lemrae pauses, pen hovering over the inkwell. He could explain it here, but would his boss believe him? The story is outlandish. Lemrae would not have believed it himself had he not the carapace sitting in a wooden box in the icehouse. No, probably safer to avoid it. At least until he can get in touch with Tamett.

We are still working to turn our theories into predictive laws. If you come to the facility, we would be glad to show you the evidence we have collected thus far.

He has never come anywhere near the farmhouse thus far, and Lemrae has no reason to believe this week will be any different.

Work continues on the electrical gates, and Lord Vero has been (Lemrae pauses again) exploring with great enthusiasm the effects of electricity on the body. I will be purchasing some dead frogs for him to pursue some ideas he has on the function of muscles. Witred has made progress on an improved wire-spooling system which causes less strain to horse and rider; we expect to have a prototype ready by the end of the month.

I request that you please wire me immediately if any transient resistance occurs reasonably close to Meridian City. There are some tests we wish to perform under real-world conditions, which our testing areas are unfortunately too small to adequately replicate.

I remain, now as always, your humble apprentice and faithful servant,
T.M. Lemrae Winla-Racine

Dearest Almei,

I am very sorry to hear about the promotion. I remember the times when you helped me diagnose problems with my equipment, and your brilliance with circuits is undeniable. The Telegram Partnership has missed out on an excellent engineer, and I can only hope they realize their mistake soon.

I've sustained some minor injuries in a research accident, but will be better soon. While in bed, I have been thinking about the use of gates in performing calculations. The fundamental problem I have faced is in describing numbers, which have ten possible digits, using wires, which can only be in two states (on or off). I have enclosed designs for one system which adds numbers using telegraph-code and a clock, and another system which uses ten wires per digit and a mess of logic gates I myself can scarcely comprehend. Both work just fine, but I'm convinced there's a simpler, more elegant solution, if only I can find it.

We have been taking it in turns to make dinner. (Except Lord Vero, who can't cook.) The recipes from Cttaria in particular are very unusual to my taste, but enjoyable. I've been learning...

...very grateful for the book recommendation, and will buy it next week when I am paid. I hope this week will be better for you than the last.

Sincerely yours,
Lemrae

Lemrae sits at the workbench, a cushion on the chair for the benefit of his tender rear. In front of him is a spring-loaded box with a wire coiled around inside it. All he needs, now, is to make a sudden increase in the wire's resistance cause the lid to slam shut. Pliers in hand, he continues working on the prototype trap.

The sound of a pen scratching away approaches behind him.

"What are you working on, sir?" The young man asks, curious. "...I'm sorry about my absence."

Lemrae silently pushes in a catch and then gingerly places the contraption to the side. "It's related to some things we discovered over the last few days. Come with me, I'll explain." He pushes himself to his feet with only a slight wince, and begins walking to the icehouse.

"Where were you? You know if you had told me you were going, I wouldn't have stopped you." Lemrae's tone is gentle, more questioning than rebuking.

"I had to talk to my teacher about something - urgently. It ended up being a longer talk than I planned, and..." He grimaces, talking in fits and starts, parts of the sentences sounding rehearsed. "Whether I should wire you or not about it was part of what we talked about. Sorry."

"And it's maybe not unrelated to the recent work... Can you show me what you've found?"

He holds his notepad up, trying to shrink back into the overlooked posture of his lab assistant role. 

Lemrae looks at Tamett, eyes fixed on his notebook. He stops walking, leaning against the exterior wall of the farmhouse.

"I assume that whatever you find, your teacher is getting an immediate report." He doesn't break eye contact, daring Tamett to deny it. "What's going to happen with the information then?"

"Not my teacher, I - maybe - it would be to a sworn chronicler!" He squirms under Lemrae's stare.

Usually, that fact would be enough. Fully inducted chroniclers are seen as having a sacred duty to record the truth, no matter how embarrassing or inconvenient it may be, but also to respect the wishes of the living about which records are to remain sealed. Secrets have been kept for centuries, honoring requests for discretion renewed by each generation of a family. Multiple noble lines have turned out to be founded illegitimately, revealed only to an archive reader after they have died out or fallen from that station and no longer felt the need to hide that past.

However, Tamett's voice is wavering.

"He might want to... make suggestions about how to handle what you think you've found, depending on what it is," the young man hedges. "If it is what I think it might be, it could be easier if I introduce you to him, to speak directly."

Lemrae weighs this, his increasingly intense gaze not wavering. Oh, the chroniclers wouldn't tell anyone else... but they themselves would know, and could act.

And if they do have some secret knowledge related to the creatures, and pay close attention to those who seem close to discovering it... well, they're bound to find Lemrae's research sooner or later. Maybe it's better to meet them on his own terms.

"That sounds reasonable" Lemrae says judiciously. "After we finish here, you can take me to him right away."

He nods, eyes wide with gratitude, and falls in step behind Lemrae for the explanation.

"A little while after you left, I did some more experimentation with the tar-covered wire. The magnetic storm was making less and less sense. It looked more like something was attacking the wires. Something I couldn't see." Lemrae leads Tamett into the icehouse, pushes a burlap covering off a box, and opens it. "They're alive. I killed one, and the rest scattered. This one has grease-paint on it, so you can see it. Although I think it's less about being able to physically see it, and more about being able to look at it and recognize what you're seeing."

The shock on Tamett's face is plain to see, though he continues scrivening with ideomotoric uninterruption.

"I was afraid of this."

Despite its recent incorporation as a city, Meridian has multiple centers of chronicling. There are the municipal archives, managing all the official public records, and the new schools that have sprung up to meet the demand for literacy and ideomotorism in bureaucrats and secretaries and office-workers, and of course the local chroniclers every few city-blocks who diligently record the births and deaths and other events of everyday life for their parishes just as chroniclers have done for villages through all of recorded history. 

Tamett takes Lemrae over the bridge and up into the hills, to the older archives. Before Meridian was a city, the village chroniclers would move copies of their records to be stored on high ground, less vulnerable to loss by flood or fire. The buildings here are in the old style, polygonal brick walls and domed roofs, built and maintained with care but visibly historic. The lay assistant at the gate recognizes him, and they are escorted through to the archives carved into the caves.

There, they are received by an old chronicler, draped in multiple layers of light cloth befitting his seniority. Like the buildings, he is visibly aged but not obviously impeded by it, moving smoothly to welcome them in, his face as animated as his quill. 

"Thank you, Tamett. You must be the telegraph-master. You have my word that anything you share with me will be kept as confidential as you wish, though I must request that you treat certain private practices of the chroniclers with the same discretion."

He takes a fresh scroll, already with a multicolored ribbon threaded through one corner as some kind of archival label for its secrecy.

Lemrae is wearing his formal red dress, but has added a thin silver-grey stole. The decorative fabric cost him half as much as the rest of the outfit, but he understands the importance of it. His parents were the first in his family not to be farmers, and Lemrae has not a shred of nobility or even a proper patron to his name. Walking in the city with a ruffled red dress and a stole is a victory; it is also good sense when dealing with those steeped in performances of prestige.

He nods to the old chronicler. "Of course. Nothing leaves this room without your agreement."

"Thank you. We choose people to train in our art who are diligent, steady, impartial and of sound mind. Some of that is because of the knowledge they must collect, and the integrity with which they must preserve it. Some of that is because the rumors about the side-effects of ideomotorism are not entirely baseless."

His voice is gentle and schoolmasterly.

"Tamett, you will have been recording on the path up here, won't you? Would you please read out your notes on the view of the sea?" 

"Er..." The fresh-faced scrivener flicks back a couple of pages and reads aloud. "- sky clear, sea surface rough, sun glinting off waves, two large three-masted ships and three steamboats approaching Meridian, four steamboats departing, four long-necked sea creatures with colorful translucent flesh on the horizon avoiding the shipping lanes, high fluffy clouds moving in from south-east -"

He stops. "There weren't any sea creatures out there that I saw. That I remember seeing." 

They would have been notable to Lemrae too, were they visible. The largest animals known to science are whales, and even those would be hard to spot at such great distance.

"I should give you a pamphlet on how we record weather phenomena before you go, to save you some ink," the wizened chronicler says as an affable aside to Tamett.

"Ideomotorism trains us to record what we observe, as we observe it, before the stage of conscious reflection. This has many merits, preventing self-interested biases by putting ink to paper without the involvement of the self. However, that also means that idle figments of the imagination can sometimes intrude unawares, that would otherwise be rejected."

"Your sea creatures and wire locusts are no more real than a stick figure drawn in the margin of a schoolboy's workbook, or the little man one imagines running along the scenery when looking out the window of a moving train. All ideomotorists are taught to ignore these flights of fancy, to leave them out of the notes copied out longhand for others to read."

"Partly that is professional. Partly it is pragmatic. In the past, some chroniclers have developed fixations on the fantastical wildlife that appears in their shorthand. They privilege these imaginings with a response, try and trick their eyes into seeing the creatures their notes describe or collect clues of their existence. In doing so, they make the monsters more real, but only to their own minds."

"They deny themselves sleep or drug themselves in pursuit of the figments, flinching at shadows and convincing themselves they are being stalked. Ultimately they scare themselves to death, or expose themselves to ordinary wild animals that they hallucinate to be more exotic but are no less dangerous, or rend their own flesh in imitation of their imaginings. I have here a few records from the archives of those sad cases, most in the victims' own hands."

He sets out some more scrolls, two of them bearing old bloodstains, all with the same archival ribbons tied around them. 

"Stable, reasonable ideomotorists ignore the imagined beings and are perfectly safe," the chronicler says, his practised lecture shifting to a mild tone of rebuke. "We keep this quiet to avoid sensationalizing the condition, driving more to suffer from it. I would urge you to put these things from your mind and avoid provoking any public panic."

To Tamett, he adds, "If you can refrain from the temptation to read your notes immediately as you write them, that is often the simplest solution."

Tamett has heard all this before. By the end of it, he's fidgeting, holding himself back from speaking up out of turn.

Lemrae's eyes pass over the scrolls. He really needs to learn chronicler's shorthand: it's useful, even to non-ideomotorists, and would allow him to read the archives for himself.

The master's explanation doesn't make sense. Lemrae had not been expecting to see that insectoid creature. He had not been expecting to be attacked. And how could the imaginations of five people -- none of whom had read Tamett's notes, save Tamett himself -- line up perfectly? And Lemrae's injuries... they couldn't have been self-inflicted. Not the ones on his back, at least: he had needed help to dress them, because his arms hadn't been able to touch them. Unless I planted my knife on the ground and rubbed my back along it in some fugue...

"The ideomotorists' minds do not make them truly real, do they? Someone who had not read the notes, or been similarly drugged, would not see any of these imaginary creatures?"

The old man nods and grimaces. "There are those unorthodox chroniclers who hold otherwise, that these imaginings can be shared or made real for all. I find their tales doubtful, and from what I have read the specimens they sometimes produce are of dubious origin."

That's about as close as a chronicler will ever get to outright accusing another of fraud or self-delusion.

He smiles reassuringly. "I can assure you, you are in no danger from any invisible creatures in young Tamett's notes."

Lemrae looks at the old master, and at the increasingly nervous Tamett. Both of their pens scratch as he thinks. My scars would beg to differ. The question is whether he's merely wrong, or lying...

He gestures to the blood-stained scrolls, tone somber. "It sounds like the belief in these imaginary creatures is quite dangerous to an ideomotorist. I assume, then, that one should not share information needlessly. And if one came across persuasive evidence, it would be harmful to share it?"

There. As close as possible to dangling the specimen before his eyes. A liar, trying to conceal the existance of invisible animals, would need to come up with a new lie to figure out what evidence needed to be controlled.

"Not at all, if at all possible. As for 'evidence', that should not pose any danger to one who knows better than to become fixated on the matter. Alas, an objective impartial observer, the chronicling ideal, is a high standard to meet. I do not think I would be endangered, but I would not say that of all my students."

He does not seem to be changing his story.

"I see." Lemrae says no more on it, taking the advice. He really doesn't know. But he might be right about the danger.

"Thank you for your time. Tamett here has been very helpful in our work; I would like to commend him."

Tamett had just been trying to exchange a look with Lemrae about whether to say more. Now he makes a small noise and looks down in embarrassment. 

"He is a bright one! His original teacher recommended him to me, back when there was that unpleasantness in his homeland. It's good to hear he's been making something of himself over here," the wizened archivist says, as though the lad in question is not right there with them. "Lots of potential, be sure to keep him on the right track."

They leave the archival complex in silence. When they come to the part of the path down where the trees clear and the vista of the ocean opens up, Tamett slows to a stop, looking between his notes and the horizon.

"That was..." He trails off, staring out to sea, his features bearing a more mature cast than they had on the way up. "Frustrating. Disappointing? If you put the remains on his desk, he'd prod at them and pronounce it a fake."

Lemrae nods. "Most probably. A live specimen might convince him... but it's quite clear that he doesn't want to know, and I intend to respect that. Besides, I don't think he can help much in our research." He looks out to sea as well. "Sea serpents... I suppose it's not any more fantastic than electrophagic locusts."

They aren't really locusts. But they look insectoid, and they move in swarms, and they destroy useful things.

"How do you suppose those other archivists died? Continuing to experiment could be dangerous. How do we reduce the risk?" He stops himself, realizing what he's assuming. "That is, if you think it's worth the risk. I'd understand if you want to put this out of mind and move onto other things."

"They're not really serpents," he says absently. "I don't see how they'd hold their heads that far out of the water if they were. More like aquatic giraffes?"

"I'm not going to just - close myself off from thinking about these things on his say-so. That man may be my patron, but he's not the one who taught me the ways of science. If he objects - I'll just have to find someone else for patronage."

(The Baelo legal and political structure has traditionally been built on hierarchies of patronage, starting with the village chiefs. They would hear and resolve disputes among their subjects, negotiate with other chiefs for justice when crimes cross between villages, and go to the minor nobility who would patronize them in turn if those negotiations become deadlocked or if their subjects have concerns that would need a more powerful patron to resolve.

Anyone outside that structure would be a foreigner or an orest, the ungendered rootless underclass without representation but also without the burdens of normal social rules and duties.)

(With the mass movement of people to the cities, there is an ever-growing number abandoning the protection of their village patrons to work in factories and on dockyards as orests. For those seeking more respectable employment, there is also a boom in patrons-for-hire. These legal professionals fill the same role of interfacing with government and making introductions among polite society, but for a regular retainer instead of the implicit social obligations of loyalty and obedience associated with a traditional patron.)

"But first of all, I'll - no, first I'll clear my head, then I'll go back there and read those records instead of speculating. We are forbidden to reveal secrets but not to give advice based on those secrets. Even if that exception is usually just for stopping relatives from unknowingly marrying, not guarding ourselves against invisible monsters."

Lemrae nods. "We do have one advantage over the previous chroniclers. We know investigating this is dangerous. We can make sure to be careful."

"Don't worry, of course I know how to use a musket!" Lemrae calls down as he scales the telegraph pole, loaded firearm in hand.

He swings a leg over and sits on the crossbar, a handspan away from the unshielded wire. Leaning out a leg to brace himself, Lemrae sights down the barrel, aiming along the wire, towards what they know is the section of highest resistance.

He breathes in and out. Tamett watches, his pen scratching notes that they've agreed not to read until they get back to the research facility. Lemrae can't see any of the wire locusts, but they must be there. If they're touching the wire, he'll get at least one.

Lemrae pulls the trigger, and with a loud bang, manages (barely) to avoid being knocked off the pole.

The pellets spray along the length of the telegraph wire. There's an immediate rush of air as the wire shudders, easily mistaken for a spontaneous gust and the impact of those pellets on the wire by someone who didn't know better. 

Lemrae is buffeted, but it is not any more unbalancing than the recoil was, and no cuts make it through the scarf and gloves that Tamett had him bundle up in as a precaution. The young man marks the time on the pocketwatch before him, for comparison against the records of signal quality being made at the two nearest telegraph stations on this line. 

Sat next to him on the carriage, Witred clicks her tongue in disapproval at how the horses are disturbed by the shot, and waits impatiently for Lemrae to descend and board so they can get moving.

After regaining his balance, Lemrae inspects the wire for damage. It doesn't look like the wire was damaged by the birdshot. He climbs down the pole, surveying the wire and the ground. Are there dead locusts on the ground now? Is one clinging to the wire, injured? Try as he might, he can't see any of them.

His feet touch the ground, and surveys his companions. "Anybody get hurt?" he asks as he climbs onto the rickety open carriage.

"No, despite your gun-handling," Witred says dryly.

"I - advise that we should get moving," Tamett says, tapping his notebook. 

"Oh, you are certainly my better in such matters" Lemrae rejoins smoothly, smiling. "But only one of us was willing to climb."

Dropping the levity, he nods at Tamett. "Yes. There was a fork in the road a few minutes behind us; let's get away from the telegraph line as quickly as possible."

On this short section of line between the two stations, the logs record an immediate drop in the resistivity that matches up with the timing of the shot, to within the ten-second spacing between measurements. It's not all the way back to normal, but about halfway there. 

Tamett reads his notes aloud.

"- locusts clinging to the wires, on top or below like birds and bats, for miles on end... Lemrae fired the shot, almost unbalanced, striking several of the locusts on the line, causing them to fall dead. The others rose up into the air at once in a swarm, none undisturbed in sight, and swiftly dispersed, vanishing into the air."

Serna spreads out a telegraph map and traces the line with his fingertip. "Between stations 16 and 19 it's about ten miles, a short hop. With the resistance drop, would you reckon your shot scared off every bug along a five-mile stretch, sir?"

Lemrae looks abstractly at the map, calculating. "Perhaps. Perhaps a bit more. I don't know how many were on the wire, but it seems to me that doubling the number of bugs wouldn't quite double the resistance. If there's only a single locust on the wire, it seems to me it should eat more than if it's sucking on the same wire as thousands of others."

He shrugs. "Call it five miles, then. A few minutes' stop to load and fire every five miles... Depending on how long before the locusts come back, it would probably be worth it to the Partnership to hire a couple of riders to clear a wire and let messages be sent again."

"Do you think they'll - well, first, will they accept that as a solution, and second will they not have lots of questions about how and why it works?"

Lemrae looks a little embarrassed. "Well, I was thinking we could answer their questions with, ah... lies."

That gets an undignified snort out of Witred.

"...We should probably figure out which lies to use first."

"You could call it percussive maintenance, maybe. Say a sharp shock fixes the problem, like it does lots of misbehaving electronics, and shooting the gun along the wire is the best way to do it."

Tamett hesitates. "But then you might get frustrated technicians hitting the wire with hammers instead if they can't wait for a rider, and maybe getting savaged by a swarm they can't see. Or scientists trying to replicate it in a lab."

Lemrae is a little surprised that everyone accepts the deception matter-of-factly; but there isn't really another option. Making public information about the wire locusts would, at minimum, endanger every chronicler who reads the news. Pretending they'd discovered nothing would also be a lie -- and eventually would get their funding cut. Lying, it seems, is the only option.

"I'm thinking about the magnetic storm hypothesis. We can describe it, and then say that very fast-moving metal near the wire seems to temporarily clear the disruption. I can make some suitably speculative mathematics about creating eddies around the wire, little patches of calm. And we'll repeatedly emphasize that although we've found a solution, we don't understand everything about how it works." Lemrae smiles ruefully. "That part, at least, is true enough."

Tamett sighs. "I suppose nobody else seems to have found a way to reproduce and study the phenomenon, so we're probably safe." The idea of fake mathematics seems to upset him more than the broader lie.

"If you'll be needing some people to ride along the wires and shoot at the bugs, there's some names I could suggest. Lots of veterans out of work since the war who wouldn't mind a reason to get back in the saddle."

Lemrae nods at her. "That sounds excellent. And..." he trails off, thinking. "We want the sort of people who we trust to come to us if something odd happens, rather than immediately telling the company or the papers."

"Why would they do that? Invisible insects are odd, but hardly a secret worth a fortune."

She considers for a moment. "They wouldn't need to be loyal, either, we could get by with the kinds of people who nobody else would listen to. There's some old soldiers with wild shell-shock tales, nobody listened to those."

"Then again, if you were to get a cadre of mounted gunners personally loyal to you, there's plenty of other uses for that kind of private army," Witred adds, only half-joking. 

Lemrae nods. "Point taken. No need to screen for discretion, just... the ignored. Seen, heard, but not noticed."

Witred's joke unnerves him, but he doesn't say anything. He's used to those sorts of comments from her, and all of them (or at least Lemrae and Tamett) are feeling a little bit uncomfortable about their planned deception. Nervous jokes are understandable, though Witred would bite his head off if he implied she might be nervous.

On a drizzling overcast morning few days later, Lemrae arrives to find there is a horseless carriage parked on the road at the edge of the lab's land. A woman in servant's livery sits behind the steering levers, a waxed-paper umbrella propped up to shield the pages of the pulp she's reading. 

The carriage is, of course, exquisitely made. As Lemrae approaches curiously, he sees the elaborate carvings on the wooden panels, the embroidered seats. A curl of smoke rises from the funnel, and as Lemrae walks up to the driver, a valve automatically releases a small puff of steam.

"Excuse me." He gives her a few seconds to finish her sentence. "I wasn't expecting to have company today. May I ask who is visiting?"

The servant reflexively flips the book closed and tucks it away behind her before he can glimpse the cover.

She blinks at him owlishly, then her confusion fades. "Oh, you're the telegram-master. My mistress and her friend have come to visit Lord Vero."

Rummaging through the pockets of her riding skirt, the maid retrieves a couple of calling-cards. 'Baron Briele' and 'Lady Ulsi' are the visitors, apparently. The latter name is a familiar one: Vero's distant cousin. 

"It's not a problem if I keep the engine warm, is it? They said you were doing experiments." From the way she says the last word, it sounds like she's expecting something from the pulps to be lurking inside the farmhouse. 

Lemrae looks at the calling-cards with anxiety. He knows that there's a certain way you're supposed to take them, and a certain way you're supposed to respond -- but he doesn't know what it is. He's pretty sure you're also supposed to give your own card... and he doesn't have one. 

"Thank you." he says, wondering whether he's supposed to take the cards with one hand or both. He settles for one, and not wanting to risk folding them in a pocket, just lets his hand drop to his side as he holds them.

"No problem at all. Although the experiments aren't the sort of thing you'll need to run away from in a hurry... probably." Lemrae smiles. He should go and welcome Vero's friends at some point, but Vero never told him they were coming, so he hardly needs to do it right away.

"I've never seen a carriage like this up close." Lemrae's eyes run over the boiler sitting in front of the cab. Its length runs perpendicular to the direction of travel, instead of parallel like on a train. The funnel is off to the side, so that smoke doesn't bother the passengers. "How hard is it, to operate a steam engine?"

If he has made a misstep of etiquette somewhere, the chauffeuse doesn't seem to care.

"Once you have it running it's not too bad, all the trouble is in the planning ahead to make sure there's a supply of fuel at each rest stop to keep it topped up. Or if you mean in terms of driving it, it's not like horses where you can just nudge them with your knees to keep on track, you've got to use some force to get the wheel turning and adjust the speed and if it rolls into a ditch you've got nobody to blame but yourself. Milady likes riding in it, but I can't see them catching on myself."

Lemrae looks at the "wheel". It's about sixty centimetres in diameter, sitting horizontally in the centre of the carriage. A pair of handles would let her rotate it with either one hand or two.

"Interesting. Certainly seems more involved than a horse, but a larger one would probably be easier to maintain than eight horses. Perhaps it will find its niche in larger carriages."

He looks towards the house. "I really should go exchange introductions with Vero's friends. What's your name, by the way?"

"Olessi, good sir." 

"Lemrae. Pleased to have met you." Lemrae sets off towards the farmhouse. He hadn't heard anything about Vero having these people over, but as long as everything's safe it shouldn't be a problem.

"- a remarkable specimen!" Booms one of the guests, presumably the baron, his bass voice carrying as Lemrae approaches.

"Indeed! If you agree that it is not any known species, it shall have to be named. Pseudocaelifera fulgurivorus was my first idea."

"Naming it begs the question of which court you would present the species to," says a third voice, nasal and reedy, Vero's cousin Ulsi.

Her reference brings the conversation to a pause for a long moment. Under normal circumstances, a scientific discovery by a scholarly aristocrat would be presented to the emperor. However, the imperial traditions of Baelo dictate that all other credible claimants must be removed from the succession before the new emperor can ascend, and the First Industrial War ground on with unprecedented human and financial costs to achieve an unprecedented stalemate.

Now the two claimants hold court in the north and south halves of the continent, neither able to assume the title and the corresponding powers. It puts the nobility in the awkward dilemma of studiously avoiding the kind of proximity to either would-be emperor that might lead to them being pressed for support, or else declaring for one side and being cut off from peaceful transactions with the other half of the continent for however long the interregnum drags on.