If you want to read 20 Chapters ahead, be sure to check out my P-Tang12!!!
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(A/N: Also everyone I have a new novel a Dragon Age Inquisition novel named "From Couch To The Inquisitor", be sure to check it out and give some power stone)
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It was the ultimate monopoly. A monopoly on human necessity and hygiene. Caleb turned away from the window, his mind already calculating the required tonnage of cast iron and the logistics of establishing a porcelain kiln. He walked briskly back to his desk, grabbing a fresh stack of drafting paper and his fountain pen. The airplanes and the motorcars were going to change the world. But the Thorne Sanitary Works was going to own the earth beneath it.
The heavy nib of Caleb's fountain pen scratched rhythmically against the thick drafting paper, a sharp, precise sound in the absolute quiet of the study.
He had pushed the ledgers detailing the radio profits and the automotive supply chains to the far corners of his massive mahogany desk, clearing a wide, flat space for an entirely new industrial canvas. His mind, supercharged by the terrifying clarity of his Past Life Memory, was pulling fragmented images of modern sanitation across the veil of time, stripping away the plastics and electronic sensors of the future to isolate the raw, mechanical fundamentals.
Water. Gravity. Pressure.
He started with the most critical component, the unseen barrier that made indoor plumbing physically bearable, the U bend trap.
In 1900, the few wealthy homes that possessed early indoor water closets often suffered from horrific, noxious odors, because a straight pipe leading to a sewer allowed methane and hydrogen sulfide gases to rise directly back into the house. Caleb's pen moved swiftly, sketching a simple, elegant S shaped curve beneath the basin of the fixture.
He wrote a block of dense, mechanical annotations beside it, utilizing his Max Level Crafting skill to calculate the exact volume of water required to remain trapped in the downward curve. This standing water would act as an impenetrable, airtight seal against the toxic sewer gases. It was a brilliantly simple manipulation of physics.
From the trap, Caleb moved upward, designing the fixture itself.
He drew the cross section of a high tank, gravity fed water closet. He detailed the heavy, glazed porcelain bowl, designing the rim with angled flush holes to create a pressurized, scouring vortex of water rather than a simple, lazy cascade. Above it, he sketched a wooden tank lined with stamped copper, mounted high on the wall to maximize the kinetic energy of the falling water.
But the true genius lay in the valves. Caleb sketched a brass flapper valve connected to a pull chain, and beside it, the intake mechanism: a simple, floating hollow copper ball attached to a lever arm. As the tank emptied, the float would drop, opening the intake valve. As the water filled back up, the float would rise, utilizing the natural buoyancy of the water to permanently seal the brass valve shut once the tank was full.
It was an entirely automated, self regulating mechanical system that required zero electricity.
Caleb filled three pages with the exact metallurgical requirements for the brass fittings and the high temperature kiln specifications needed to fire the vitreous china bowls without cracking them.
But as he stared at the pristine porcelain designs, the brutal, pragmatic reality of the era slammed into his architectural daydream.
A modern toilet was entirely useless without a subterranean, pressurized municipal water system and a sealed, cast-iron sewer grid. And Saint Denis, for all its wealth, was built on a swamp. The water table was impossibly high, the mud was thick, and the current method of laying pipe involved hundreds of exhausted men swinging pickaxes in the sweltering Louisiana heat. To retrofit the entire city, every street, every alley, every buildings, using manual labor would take twenty years and cost a fortune in wages.
Caleb's eyes narrowed. He was an industrialist. He didn't use pickaxes, he used steam and steel.
He pulled a fresh, massive sheet of architectural vellum toward him, pushing the porcelain sketches aside. If he was going to conquer the earth beneath Saint Denis, he needed to invent the machine that would eat it.
He closed his eyes, his Past Life Memory flashing through images of massive, diesel powered trenching machines he had seen on modern construction sites. He couldn't build a diesel engine yet, but he had the Thorne-Marlin steel foundries, and he had high pressure steam power.
His hand began to move with unnatural, fluid speed.
He designed a continuous chain trench excavator. He sketched a massive, tracked chassis, similar to a modified locomotive, powered by a heavy, coal fired steam boiler. Protruding from the rear of the machine, he designed a long, heavy steel boom wrapped in a continuous, heavy duty industrial chain. Mounted to the links of the chain were dozens of curved, hardened steel digging buckets, each fitted with sharp, forged teeth to tear through roots, clay, and rock.
The mechanics were brutal but flawless. As the steam engine drove the chain around the boom, the buckets would violently carve a perfectly straight, uniform trench into the earth, hauling the excavated mud up and dumping it onto a lateral conveyor belt that would cast the dirt to the side of the street.
Caleb's Crafting skill allowed him to solve the immediate mechanical hurdles of 1900s engineering. He designed heavy, reinforced planetary gears to step down the high RPMs of the steam engine into raw, earth-shattering torque. He designed wide, wooden-slatted tracks for the wheels so the massive iron beast wouldn't sink into the soft Lemoyne mud.
With a fleet of these trenching machines, the Thorne Sanitary Works could carve up the streets of Saint Denis in a matter of months, laying miles of heavy cast-iron pipe before the city council even realized what was happening.
The afternoon sun slowly tracked across the sky, casting long, golden shafts of light through the heavy drapes of the study, but Caleb didn't notice. He was completely submerged in the flow state of creation. His fingers were smudged with black ink and graphite, his tailored vest unbuttoned, his collar loosened. He was calculating the tensile strength of cast iron pipe joints, designing a threaded, rubber gasket seal that would entirely replace the archaic, leaky method of packing joints with lead and oakum.
The golden light of the afternoon eventually deepened into the bruised purple of dusk, and the study fell into heavy shadows. Caleb leaned closer to the paper, squinting slightly in the dim light, his pen flying across the page to finalize the boiler pressure requirements for the trenching machine.
The quiet click of the heavy oak door opening finally broke his absolute concentration.
"Are you planning on building your new empire in the dark, Caleb?"
Caleb blinked, shaking his head slightly to clear the dense mechanical mathematics, and looked toward the doorway.
Mary-Beth stood there, illuminated by the warm, flickering light of the hallway sconces. She was wearing a beautifully draped, dark emerald evening gown that fell softly over the growing curve of her stomach. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and she was offering him a highly exaggerated, deeply endearing pout.
"Do you know what time it is?" she asked, stepping into the dim study. "You missed afternoon tea entirely. Antonio has been pacing the kitchen for an hour, terrified to interrupt you because you gave strict orders not to be disturbed while the 'future was being drafted.' The chef is threatening to throw the roast to the hounds."
Caleb immediately dropped his fountain pen, realizing how entirely he had lost track of time. He stood up, running a hand through his slightly disheveled hair, offering her a guilty, utterly disarming smile.
"I apologize, my love," Caleb said, walking around the desk to meet her. "I caught a thread of an idea, and I couldn't let it go until the architecture was locked on the paper. The hours just... slipped away."
Mary-Beth let the pout dissolve into a warm, affectionate smile. She reached out, taking his ink-stained hands in hers. "You work too hard, Caleb. The radios are transmitting, the cars are in the driveway, and the planes will follow as it fly. What on earth could possibly be so urgent that it requires you to lock yourself in the dark for six hours?"
Caleb chuckled, stepping back and gesturing to the massive expanse of blueprints covering his desk. "Something significantly less glamorous than a flying machine, but arguably far more important to the survival of the human race."
Mary-Beth walked over to the desk, leaning over to inspect the dense, highly technical sketches. She saw the curved porcelain bowls, the elevated wooden tanks, and the intricate, cross sectional diagrams of brass valves and copper floats.
She frowned slightly, trying to decipher the mechanics. "What is it? A new kind of water pump for the factories?"
"It is a pressurized, self regulating, indoor sanitary water closet," Caleb explained, moving to stand behind her, resting his hands gently on her shoulders. "And a closed, subterranean cast iron sewer system to support it."
Mary-Beth went perfectly still. She looked at the drawing of the U bend trap, reading his neat, precise notes regarding the permanent water seal against noxious gases.
Living in 1900, even in a mansion of unimaginable wealth, meant relying on decorative porcelain chamber pots that had to be manually emptied by maids, or utilizing detached outhouses that baked in the sweltering, disease ridden heat of the Louisiana summer. The streets of Saint Denis frequently smelled of raw sewage after a heavy rain, and the fear of cholera was a very real, lingering terror.
She looked at the sketch, instantly grasping the profound, life altering luxury and health benefits of the design. A private, pristine, odorless fixture directly inside the home, washing waste away instantly with clean, pressurized water.
"You designed an indoor flushing toilet," Mary-Beth whispered, her eyes wide as she traced the line of the elevated water tank.
"I did," Caleb nodded. "I designed the porcelain, the brass valves to automate the tank, and the heavy trenching machines required to tear up the streets of Saint Denis to lay the pipe. By the time our child is old enough to walk, I am going to ensure that this entire city is plumbed, pressurized, and clean. No more chamber pots. No more open gutters. We are going to eradicate cholera from the South."
Mary-Beth turned around, looking up at him, her dark eyes shining with a mixture of absolute astonishment and deep, unyielding pride. He wasn't just building weapons and luxury cars, he was actively engineering a healthier, safer world for their family to inhabit.
"It is brilliant, Caleb," she said softly, reaching up to cup his cheek, her thumb brushing against a small smudge of black ink on his jaw. "It is truly, wonderfully brilliant. I cannot wait to never look at a chamber pot ever again."
She paused, her expression shifting back into a playful, commanding pout.
"But," she added, her tone firm, "I want my husband right now. The sanitary revolution can wait until tomorrow morning. I am hungry, your child is hungry, and if we do not go to the dining room this instant, I fear Antonio is going to have a nervous breakdown."
Caleb laughed, a rich, joyous sound that echoed in the quiet study. He leaned down, kissing her deeply, entirely surrendering to her demand.
"Of course," Caleb smiled, pulling back and offering her his arm. "Let the mud and the iron wait. The Queen commands."
The following morning, the romantic tranquility of the evening was swiftly replaced by the ruthless, impenetrable legal machinery of the Thorne Holding Company.
Caleb sat behind his desk, fully dressed in a sharp, charcoal-gray three piece suit, sipping a cup of strong black coffee. Sitting across from him was Pierre, the chief legal counsel.
Pierre looked down at the massive, staggering stack of architectural vellum and mechanical schematics Caleb had just unrolled across the mahogany. The young lawyer adjusted his spectacles, his sharp, analytical mind struggling to process the sudden, violent pivot in the syndicate's industrial focus.
"Plumbing, Boss?" Pierre asked, looking up at Caleb with genuine bewilderment. "We hold the monopoly on the most advanced military firearms on the continent, we are manufacturing automobiles, and we are currently funding a machine that defies gravity. And you want me to file federal patents for... a porcelain bowl?"
"I want you to file a labyrinth of federal patents that locks down the entire concept of modern human hygiene, Pierre," Caleb corrected, tapping his finger aggressively against the diagram of the self-regulating brass float valve. "The cars and the radios are luxuries. Every single human being on this earth, regardless of their wealth, requires sanitation. It is a biological absolute."
Caleb leaned forward, dictating the legal strategy with terrifying precision.
"We are not going to begin manufacturing these immediately," Caleb explained. "The foundries are currently operating at maximum capacity casting the Vanguard rifles, the Model T frames, and the engine blocks for the Wright brothers. We do not have the logistical bandwidth to open a porcelain kiln or start forging miles of cast-iron pipe today. But I will not leave these designs exposed."
"You want to build a legal fortress around the intellectual property before the competition even realizes the industry exists," Pierre nodded, instantly grasping the play.
"Exactly," Caleb confirmed. "I want patents filed on the specific geometric curve of the U bend trap. I want patents on the brass flapper valve, the buoyant copper float ball mechanism, and the automated water displacement mechanics of the elevated tank. And most importantly, I want airtight, impenetrable patents filed on the continuous chain steam trenching excavator. I want it locked down so tightly that if a rival company even attempts to dig a sewer trench with a mechanized bucket, we can sue them into bankruptcy."
Pierre pulled a leather bound legal pad from his briefcase, his fountain pen flying across the paper as he drafted the filing categories.
"I will establish a new shell corporation this afternoon," Pierre noted rapidly. "The 'Thorne Sanitary Works.' I will bury the patent filings beneath three layers of holding companies registered in Delaware and New York. By the time the patent office processes the schematics, the intellectual property will be entirely untraceable to our primary manufacturing fronts. No one will be able to steal the designs, and no one will know we hold them until you are ready to break ground."
"Execute it," Caleb ordered, rolling the blueprints up and sliding them into a heavy leather architectural tube. He handed the tube to the lawyer. "Safeguard the future, Pierre."
With the intellectual property secured, Caleb checked his pocket watch. It was nearing ten o'clock. The ruthless, compartmentalized schedule he had imposed upon himself demanded his presence in the swamps.
He dismissed Pierre, called for his carriage, and rode out to the western edge of the city.
The heavy, humid air of the swamps was shattered by the terrifying, rhythmic crackle of high voltage electricity as Caleb stepped into Nikola Tesla's restricted laboratory.
The scaled down prototype of the Wardenclyffe style magnifying transmitter now dominated the center of the corrugated iron warehouse. It was a staggering structure of heavy timber, wrapped in thousands of feet of meticulously wound copper wire, topped with a massive, gleaming copper dome that looked like an alien artifact resting in the Louisiana mud.
Tesla was standing behind a thick wall of reinforced, lead-lined glass, his hands resting on a heavy bank of iron switches. The Serbian inventor looked exhausted, his hair wild, but his eyes burned with the manic, undeniable fire of a man touching the absolute limits of the physical universe.
"Caleb!" Tesla shouted over the deafening hum of the massive steam powered dynamo roaring in the corner of the lab. "The primary resonance matrix is fully calibrated! The copper windings you machined yesterday brought the capacitance exactly into alignment with the earth's natural frequency!"
Caleb walked quickly behind the safety glass, his eyes fixed on the towering copper structure. "What is our current voltage output to the cupola?"
"We are pushing two hundred thousands volts through the secondary coil!" Tesla reported, his hands trembling slightly with adrenaline. "It is enough to test the a small atmospheric bounce, but if we are going to reach the academic institutions in Switzerland... if we are going to transmit your voice to this Albert Einstein... we will need to scale the primary dynamo exponentially."
"One step at a time, Nikola," Caleb said, his voice calm, anchoring the erratic genius. "Let's see if the sky will catch the wave first. Engage the primary circuit."
Tesla threw the heavy iron switch.
The laboratory instantly plunged into a terrifying, unnatural twilight as the massive power draw dimmed the arc lamps. A deep, bone rattling vibration shook the concrete floor.
Suddenly, a blinding, branching bolt of pure purple electricity violently erupted from the copper dome at the top of the tower, arching wildly toward the grounded corrugated iron ceiling of the warehouse with a sound like a cracking whip. The air instantly filled with the sharp, metallic stench of ozone.
"The resonance is holding!" Tesla screamed over the deafening crackle, staring at the dials on his control board. "The standing wave is propagating!"
Caleb watched the raw, terrifying power of the machine, his mind already calculating the logistical nightmare of scaling the structure up to the size of a skyscraper. But the prototype worked. The physics were sound. The bridge to Europe was actively being forged in the fire of the primary coils. At exactly five o'clock, true to his absolute, unyielding vow to Mary-Beth, Caleb cut the power to the dynamo. He ignored Tesla's frantic pleas to run just one more capacitance test, washed the heavy stench of ozone from his hands, and walked out the door.
...
Name: Caleb Thorne
Age: 23
Body Attributes:
- Strength: 8/10
- Agility: 8/10
- Perception: 9/10
- Stamina: 8/10
- Charm: 8/10
- Luck: 9/10
Skills:
- Handgun (Lvl MAX)
- Rifle (Lvl MAX)
- Firearms Knowledge (Lvl MAX)
- Past Life Memory (Lvl MAX)
- Knife (Lvl MAX)
- Blunt Weapon (Lvl MAX)
- Sneaking (Lvl MAX)
- Horse Mastery (Lvl MAX)
- Poker (Lvl MAX)
- Hand to Hand Combat (Lvl MAX)
- Eagle Eye (Lvl MAX)
- Dead Eye (Lvl MAX)
- Bow (Lvl MAX)
- Pain Nullifier (Lvl MAX)
- Physical Regeneration (Lvl MAX)
- Crafting (Lvl MAX)
- Persuasion (Lvl MAX)
- Mental Fortitude (Lvl MAX)
- Cooking (Lvl MAX)
- Teaching (Lvl MAX)
- Trilingual Language Proficiency - G, I, & C (Lvl MAX)
- Inventory System (Permanent - 100x100x100)
- Acting (Lvl MAX)
- Alcohol Resistance (Lvl MAX)
- Treasure Hunter (Lvl MAX)
- Drugs Resistance (Lvl MAX)
- Business (Lvl MAX)
- Leadership (Lvl MAX)
Money: 2,772 dollars and 60 cents
Inventory: 283,392 dollars and 61 cents, 11 gold nuggets, 74 gold bars, 1 Double Action, 1 Schofield, 2 Colm's Schofields, 1 land deed (Parcel), 1 Mauser, 1 Semi Auto Pistol, 1 Lancaster Repeater, 1 Old Wood Jewelry Box, 1 F.F Mausoleum small brass key, 1 Ruby, 1 Broken Pirate Sword, 1 Milton's Safety Deposit Key, Proof Of Marlin-Thorne Firearms Co., 10 Dynamites, 1 LeMat, 1 M1899, 1 Carcano, 1 Ownership deed of Doyle's Tavern, 3 Diamonds, & Important Documents & Deeds Of Cornwall
Bank: -