Engineer's Empire

Engineer's Empire: Aether and Abyss: Chapter 10

Chapter 10

A world away, and right down the road, a young boy dreamed. He dreamed of a life where he was surrounded by family, where his life mattered, and where someone, somewhere, would remember him tomorrow. None of these were currently the case, or so Slade believed, but still, it was a nice thought. It was the dream that would wake him up most mornings with an ache in his chest and a sadness he could not explain. From within these dreams, he found himself reaching to hold onto the remnants of that other place before the necessities of waking life intruded in each morning, as they always do. Still he held onto this dream, as we all do, as we all must. Those of us dreaming of a better place than where we are now.

And so he stared off into the interweaving cogs.

Often when in class or at work, we are thinking of all of the other things we would rather be doing. For a dreamer, they are normally thinking of somewhere else besides where they are, whether that place be real or imaginary. For Slade, he thought of the mechanical companion forming inside his mind. He stared at the front of the classroom while he drew circles and lines that connected into pieces of machines, planning out how this friend would come to life.

He tapped his pencil on the desk, chasing away the thoughts of last night's dreams, and the longing they left in his heart. Slade smirked with distant eyes. It seemed silly to be homesick for a home he never had.

Dreaming while wide awake, Slade watched the turning gears of Mr. Wheeler's grandfather clock. The gears on the grandfather clock at the front of the room all turned in sync as the half hour bell chimed its low echoing din. The click, click, click of the ancient, ticking clock hypnotized Slade as he drew on his notepad. Three counter-weights hung above the pendulum. In the center of the face of the clock, he watched all of the intricate gears turning. Somewhere far away, he was vaguely aware of a voice speaking.

"The gears in a machine don't all touch, but they are all connected."

Slade's pencil etched across the page as trains and clocks and airships floated through his mind. Gears spun in through his head as his design took shape. Jeffrey peered over his shoulder.

"What're you drawing?" Jeffrey whispered.

"Don't know yet," Slade whispered back.

"Shh," Adrian hissed. Jeffrey scowled at Adrian. Adrian was a classmate that wanted everyone else to know how smart they were and took every opportunity to reinforce this, often in the most obnoxious way possible. This person is of course, purely fictional, and no one reading this is currently thinking of this exact person from their own lives.

"Your shushing's louder than our whispering," Jeffrey muttered. Adrian pretended not to hear him.

"The individual grooves on each cog, each sprocket, are what turn their counterparts. Just like the milk man, the brick layer, the administrator; these are all pieces of the machine that make a city, and without any one of them the city does not run. Some of us of course, will consider ourselves more important than our counterparts, but without any one of us functioning at our best, the machine is still just as broken," Mr. Wheeler explained.

"This is why you study and practice, to be the best that you can be. In turn, you help those around you be the best that they can," Mr. Wheeler explained. Jeffrey and Slade both noticed Tyler sleeping at this point and smirked at one another. Slade stared back at the clock, thinking of what he would need to connect gears further apart to make his new wing system work.

"This philosophy of interconnection and efficiency is one of the core principles of Engineering, and thus one of the core principles of life," Mr. Wheeler concluded.