Chapter 113: Site Visit
The following morning, Ernest woke to sunlight spilling through the tall windows of his bedroom.
For a few moments, he stayed still and stared at the ceiling. There were no royal meetings waiting for him, no military officers demanding demonstrations, and no urgent telegraph schedules that required him to run across half the city before breakfast. There was only morning, quiet and ordinary in a way that had become rare since the Royal Telegraph Project began.
Lately, his days had become impossible to predict. One morning involved batteries, copper wire, and insulation tests. The next involved military engineers asking how quickly messages could travel from one field station to another. The day after that somehow involved treasury officials asking whether lightning could be classified as military infrastructure for budget purposes.
He still had not decided how to answer that one.
Eventually, Ernest pushed the blanket aside and climbed out of bed. The room felt pleasantly warm despite the cool air outside, a small luxury made possible by the central heating system installed throughout Oriel Estate. Warm water moved through hidden pipes inside the walls and radiators, carrying heat from the boiler room below. Compared to fireplaces, it was cleaner, safer, and far more even.
He walked to the window and drew the curtains open.
Morning mist still clung to the fields around Oriel. Sunlight touched the grass in pale gold, and beyond the line of trees, the estate water tower stood like a quiet reminder of how much his life had changed. Farther away, almost hidden by distance, the smokestacks of Helmarte Machine Works rose above the horizon.
Thin columns of steam drifted into the sky.
The factories were already awake.
That meant Victor was probably awake too.
The thought alone felt tiring.
Half an hour later, Ernest descended to the dining room, where breakfast had already been prepared. Anna looked up first, smiling the moment he entered.
"Good morning, my son."
"Good morning, Mother."
Victor glanced over the top of his newspaper and nodded.
"Morning."
Breakfast was simple but comfortable. Bread, eggs, sausages, cheese, and sliced fruit sat across the table with fresh tea. The fruit had been imported from the southern kingdoms, which made Anna shake her head every time she saw it, though she still ate it with obvious enjoyment.
She studied Ernest for several seconds.
"You are already thinking about work."
Ernest looked mildly offended.
"I haven’t said anything."
"You don’t need to."
Victor chuckled behind his newspaper.
"She’s right."
"How?"
"The expression."
"What expression?"
"The one that means another industry is about to appear."
Ernest took a sip of tea to hide his smile.
"That is a serious accusation."
"It has also been correct too many times."
Anna looked between them.
"Should I be worried?"
"Probably not," Ernest said.
"Definitely yes," Victor corrected.
Anna laughed, and for a moment the morning felt almost normal.
After a while, Ernest set his cup down.
"I’m going to Beryl District today."
Victor lowered the newspaper slightly.
"The mining sites?"
"Not this time."
"Then what are you inspecting?"
"The river system."
Victor frowned.
"The river?"
Ernest nodded.
"I want to see the elevation changes personally. The maps show a strong drop through one of the valleys, but I don’t trust drawings until I see the land myself."
That answer only seemed to confuse Victor more, but he had long since accepted that understanding every one of Ernest’s projects was impossible.
"Take Arthur and a few guards."
"I was planning to."
"Good."
Two hours later, Ernest’s carriage rolled along the road toward Beryl District. Unlike Helmarte, which had slowly transformed into a dense industrial city of workshops, chimneys, and busy loading yards, Beryl remained largely untouched. Hills rolled toward the horizon, forests covered the slopes, and streams cut through valleys that had been shaped by water over thousands of years.
It was beautiful.
More importantly, it was useful.
Arthur guided the horses along a narrow dirt road while Ernest studied the terrain with a surveyor’s eye. The land rose and fell in long folds, and the valley walls narrowed in several places before opening again into flatter ground. Those changes mattered. Narrow sections could hold small dams more cheaply, while wider lower valleys could support a powerhouse, workshop, or maintenance road.
Eventually, the sound reached him.
Running water.
A few minutes later, the trees opened and the stream appeared.
Calling it a river would have been generous. It was roughly twelve meters wide in the visible section, with cold water running quickly over stone. The channel was shallow near the edges but deeper near the center, where the current moved with enough force to carry foam around exposed rocks. The water descended through the valley in a steady slope rather than a dramatic waterfall, which made it easier to control.
Ernest stepped down from the carriage and immediately began observing the width, depth, velocity, bank stability, rock type, and elevation.
Arthur looked around and smiled.
"Beautiful place."
"It is."
Ernest crouched by the water and dipped his fingers into the stream. The water was cold and clear, likely fed from upland springs. That was good. Spring-fed streams were more reliable during dry seasons than rivers that depended only on rainfall. He picked up several stones from the bank and examined them. Hard rock, mostly. Good foundation material. A dam needed stable ground, and soft riverbeds created problems that grew worse over time.
He stood and looked upstream.
The land rose gradually into forested slopes. Downstream, the valley fell faster, dropping toward lower ground in a long natural chute.
His interest sharpened.
This was not just a stream.
This was stored energy moving downhill.
Ernest pointed upstream.
"Look at the upper section. The stream there is high enough to create a small reservoir if we build a low dam across the narrow part of the valley."
Arthur simply rubbed his chin and then nodded along, as he couldn’t get what Ernest was saying.
Ernest continued. "From the reservoir, water enters an intake structure. We place a screen there to stop branches, leaves, and stones from entering the pipe. After that, the water flows into a penstock."
"A what?"
"A strong pipe that carries water downhill under pressure."
Arthur looked toward the slope.
"So sir, you want to build a pipe that goes underground?"
"Mostly, yes. Buried if possible. That protects it from weather, falling branches, and people who do foolish things when they see expensive equipment."
Arthur considered that.
Ernest climbed partway up the nearby slope and looked down the valley. The numbers from the map began connecting with what he saw in front of him. The drop from the proposed intake to the lower valley looked close to thirty meters over less than a kilometer. That difference in height was the most important part.
"See this slope?" Ernest said. "Water at the top has potential energy because it is higher than the valley floor. When it moves downhill through the pipe, that height becomes pressure. The greater the vertical drop, the stronger the pressure at the bottom."
Arthur frowned.
"So more height means more power?"
"Yes. Water power depends mainly on two things: how much water flows each second, and how far it falls. A wide slow river can make power because it has a lot of water. A smaller stream like this can still make useful power if it drops enough height."
He pointed toward the lower ground.
"At the bottom, the pressurized water strikes a turbine. The turbine spins. That spinning shaft turns a generator, and the generator produces electricity."
Arthur stared at the stream, then at Ernest.
"The river makes lightning."
Ernest laughed.
"When you say it that way, it sounds ridiculous."
"It does sound ridiculous."
"But it is also true."
In principle, the science was simple enough. Falling water turned a wheel. People in this world already understood water wheels for mills. The difference was that Ernest did not intend to use the rotation to grind grain or drive a hammer directly. He wanted the turbine to spin a generator. Inside that generator, copper coils and magnets would convert mechanical motion into electrical current.
The challenge lay in the details.
The turbine had to match the site’s conditions. Too much flow and too little height required one design. Less flow with more height required another. For this stream, a small impulse or mixed-flow turbine might work best, depending on the final measurements. The generator needed stable rotation, which meant regulating water flow through valves. The wiring needed insulation. The load had to be predictable. Even the distance from the powerhouse to Oriel mattered, because long wires lost energy as heat.
Still, the site had promise.
A lot of promise.
Ernest could already picture the layout. A small stone dam at the upper bend. An intake house with a steel trash rack to block debris. A buried iron or steel penstock running down the slope. A compact powerhouse built on the valley floor, containing the turbine, generator, control equipment, and maintenance space. From there, insulated copper lines would run back toward Oriel Estate.
Real electric lights.
Controlled electric lighting powered by water that had been flowing through this valley long before any of them were born.
Arthur scratched his chin.
"Would it power the whole estate?"
"If the measurements are close to what I estimate, yes. Lighting first. Perhaps workshop equipment later, though that would require more careful control."
"Well okay sir, good luck with your project."
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