When February arrived, Oskar did something that did not come naturally to him.
He stopped.
Not completely, of course. He was still Oskar, and total stillness was beyond him. But for the first time since the attempt on his life, he forced himself to loosen his grip on the machine he had built. He stopped hovering over every workshop like an anxious god. He stopped treating every minor delay as if it were a national emergency. He did what any competent ruler—or any competent industrialist—eventually had to learn to do.
He trusted his people.
He allowed managers to manage, engineers to solve problems, foremen to command their lines, and clerks to decide things without running to him for permission.
To his great surprise, the world did not collapse.
The factories kept working. German Works continued to build ships without him breathing down every rivet. Muscle Motors still produced engines. AngelWorks still sold its endless little miracles. The people still loved him. Germany, it turned out, could breathe for a moment without his hands wrapped around its throat.
More importantly, his family needed him.
His children needed a father who was present, not merely legendary. His women needed a man who occasionally slept. And Karl—poor, loyal, overworked Karl—needed to be dragged to Pump World before he completed his transformation into a soft, overfed bureaucrat with excellent opinions and no endurance.
Oskar had noticed the weight gain.
He intended to be cruel about correcting it, lovingly. A true friend did not pretend not to see when another friend was getting fat. A true friend handed him training clothes, ignored his complaints, and marched him toward a barbell for his own good.
But fewer hours at work did not mean idleness.
It meant redirection.
Oskar had decided it was time to build something more dangerous than guns, ships, trucks, or factories.
Stories.
If Germany was going to become truly modern, it needed more than machines. Machines could move bodies. They could move goods. They could move armies. But they could not, by themselves, teach a people who they were.
For that, Germany needed memory.
It needed pride. It needed shared myths, shared heroes, shared jokes, shared images, shared songs. It needed children from Bavaria, Prussia, Saxony, Württemberg, Alsace, East Prussia, and the Rhineland to grow up feeling not merely that they lived under the same Kaiser, but that they belonged to the same nation.
A German nation.
A people with one language strong enough to bind them, one culture broad enough to include them, and one future bright enough to make them proud to call it their own.
Uniforms and marching songs could stir men for a day.
Stories could shape them for a lifetime.
Oskar did not want entertainment for entertainment's sake. He wanted education disguised as wonder. He wanted boys and girls to laugh, gasp, cheer, and dream—and only later realize they had been taught what courage looked like, what duty meant, why language mattered, why the nation was worth loving, and why belonging to it was something sacred rather than merely legal.
Books were useful.
Comics were powerful.
But Oskar knew, from another life, that the future belonged to more than printed words.
Pictures mattered.
Movement mattered.
Sound mattered.
A story that could be seen and heard could reach people who would never read a serious book, never listen to a lecture, never care about a minister's speech. It could enter the mind like music and remain there long after the details were forgotten.
So, in early February of 1908, Oskar found time—somehow—to visit a man whose workshop smelled of oil, chemicals, hot metal, and pigeons.
That, more than anything else, told him he had come to the right place.
The room was cramped, cluttered, and alive in the way only a true inventor's room could be alive.
Glass plates dried on wooden racks near the window. Brass parts lay scattered across felt cloth. Lenses, screws, springs, shutter pieces, chemical bottles, wires, and half-finished devices covered every bench in a disorder that looked like madness until one understood that every piece had a purpose.
In the corner, a cage of pigeons watched Oskar with the cold, superior patience of creatures who believed the entire room existed for their convenience.
At the center of it all stood Julius Neubronner: spectacles crooked, sleeves rolled up, fingers stained dark from chemicals, holding a tiny camera no larger than a man's fist.
When Oskar entered, the man nearly dropped it.
"Your Highness—!"
"No ceremony," Oskar said at once, ducking under a hanging lamp and removing his gloves. He looked absurdly large in the little workshop, as if someone had pushed a statue into a cupboard. "I need no kneeling, no speeches. I came because I heard you were doing interesting work. So show me."
Neubronner froze for half a second. Then realising that the nations most beloved royal was interested in his work, joy quickly overtook fear and he spoke, "Yes, Your Highness. Of course, immediately."
He moved quickly, gathering pieces from the table: a little harness, a light casing, a timed shutter, a tiny strap, and the delicate camera itself. Then he lifted one of the pigeons from the cage with great care and began fastening the device to its breast.
"The idea," he explained, voice growing steadier as he entered the safety of technical matters, "is aerial photography. A bird can carry the camera where a man cannot go. The shutter opens by timer, exposing the plate during flight. In theory, one could observe roads, fortifications, troop movements—"
The pigeon, apparently offended by both science and military service, exploded from his hands, struck a shelf, knocked over a box of fittings, flapped wildly across the room, and landed on the floor with the outraged dignity of a disgraced officer.
Two other pigeons panicked in sympathy.
For several seconds, the workshop belonged entirely to birds.
Neubronner went red.
"It is, ah… still a prototype."
Oskar watched the pigeon waddle under a table, camera hanging crookedly from its chest.
Then he nodded.
"It is ridiculous," he said. "But it is also brilliant."
Neubronner looked up, startled.
Oskar continued, "I can see that you know your cameras, and seem to know your small mechanisms that go along with them. That is what interests me."
The inventor straightened slightly. "But?" he asked, sensing the word before it came.
"But," Oskar said, picking up one of the larger cameras from the table, "like many clever men, you are building something almost too clever. A camera on a pigeon is useful in special cases, yes. But it needs trained birds, trained handlers, special conditions, luck. That makes it a tool for specialists."
He set the camera down, then said, "And I for one, am interested in something larger."
Neubronner adjusted his spectacles. "Larger than aerial photography?"
"Yes," Oskar said. "I want photography for everyone."
He tapped the camera body with one finger.
"Thus far, the principle for cameras is simple. Light enters through the lens. It strikes a sensitive surface. The surface records the image. Then chemistry makes that image visible. That is the heart of the thing."
Neubronner nodded slowly.
"The problem," Oskar continued, "is everything around that heart. The cameras are too awkward. The plates are fragile. Film sizes are inconsistent. Loading is clumsy. Exposure is guesswork. Instructions are written as if every customer is already half a chemist and half an optician."
He looked around the workshop.
"A genius can make a complicated machine work. That is impressive. But civilization changes when ordinary people can use the machine without being geniuses."
That landed harder than praise.
Neubronner sat down on a stool, suddenly listening with his whole body.
Oskar continued, "I want a standardized camera. Small enough to carry. Strong enough to survive travel. Simple enough that a father, a nurse, a schoolteacher, a soldier, or a child could learn to use it in minutes. One roll of film. One loading method. Clear markings. Bright sun. Cloudy weather. Portrait. Landscape. Indoors. A shutter that behaves the same way every time. A film advance that clicks, so the user knows the next frame is ready."
He lifted one hand and closed his fingers, as if pressing a button, "The goal is this: point, press, and trust the machine."
Neubronner's eyes sharpened.
"That would require standardized film production," he said. "Better casings. Better shutters. More consistent chemistry. Factories, not workshops."
"Exactly," Oskar said. "That is why I am here."
The doctor glanced toward the benches, already seeing problems. "And development? Printing? Processing?"
"At first, centralized," Oskar said. "People send the exposed roll to us. We develop, print, reload, return. Later, easier home methods. Eventually, perhaps instant pictures. But not at once. First we make photography reliable. Then cheap. Then common."
He moved toward another bench, where a crude microphone and recording horn sat among wires and batteries.
"And then," he said, "we make it move."
Neubronner followed his gaze and realised instantly what Oskar meant, "Moving pictures?"
"Yes my man, I want a strip of images, taken rapidly in sequence, then projected rapidly enough that the eye believes in motion. That is already possible in crude form. But I want it improved. Better film. Better lenses. Better frame rate. Better lighting. Better projectors. And eventually—sound must be attached to it."
He picked up the microphone carefully.
"Sound is the other half of memory. A picture shows a man's face. Sound preserves his voice."
Neubronner frowned thoughtfully. "Microphones are still unreliable."
"They are," Oskar agreed. "So we improve them the same way we improve cameras: standardization and control. Better carbon granules. Stable pressure on the diaphragm. Cleaner wiring. Less vibration. Proper recording rooms. Heavy curtains, padded walls, controlled echo. If the walls throw the voice back at the machine, the machine records mud."
The inventor was silent now, but his expression had changed. Fear had gone. Embarrassment had gone.
In their place was hunger.
Oskar saw it and pressed on.
"Later, we work toward synchronized sound. At first imperfectly. Separate recording, careful timing. Then better systems. Then sound married to the moving image, and eventually, color."
Neubronner blinked. "Color moving pictures?"
"Not hand-painted frames," Oskar said. "Not little tricks for fairgrounds. Real systems. Filters. Red, green, blue. Separation. Better emulsions. Better lamps. Better projection. We may not get it perfect quickly, but we can begin the road now."
For a moment, the only sound was the offended cooing of the pigeon under the table.
Neubronner finally said, "Your Highness, this would take years. We would need a team of chemists, glassmakers, machinists, electricians, optical specialists. And factories, and well, an enormous amount of money."
Oskar smiled and said, "Now you understand why I came in person."
Neubronner stared at him.
Oskar's voice softened, but only slightly, "I do not want toys, Doctor. I want a German camera industry. A German film industry. Cameras, film, microphones, projectors, recording rooms, manuals, theaters, distribution. A whole chain."
He gestured toward the workshop.
"You have built clever devices. I want to give you the means to build an age."
The words hung there.
Then Oskar explained the reason.
"Books teach those who read. Comics teach those who look. But moving pictures will teach everyone by simply having them sit back, relax, and watch. They can hear the same language, see the same heroes, remember the same stories."
Neubronner looked at the tiny pigeon camera in his hand, then at the giant prince standing in his workshop. Then carefully he asked, "And what would Your Highness require from me?"
"Your knowledge," Oskar said. "Your patents where useful. Your imagination where necessary. I will create the company, fund the laboratories, supply chemists, glassworks, precision machining, factory lines, and legal protection. You will lead the technical work."
He held out his hand.
"I want sixty percent control, full industrial backing from my group, and your name attached to the first serious German camera system. Not a curiosity. Not a pigeon trick. A system ordinary people can use in Germany and possibly around the world."
Neubronner looked down at Oskar's hand. Then he laughed once, softly, almost in disbelief.
"You arrive without warning," he said, "insult my pigeons, describe twenty years of work in ten minutes, and ask for most of my future."
Oskar's mouth twitched.
"Yes."
The pigeon under the table gave a single resentful coo.
Neubronner looked toward it, then back to Oskar, and slowly, he took the prince's hand.
"Then let us hope the future is kinder than that bird."
Oskar shook his hand firmly.
"The future rarely is," he said. "That is why we build it first."
After that Oskar and Neubronner began signing papers, to make everything official. Thus something great was born that day. But sadly history rarely noticed moments like this. It usually only noticed the machine that followed such meetings.
Later in February, Oskar finally met the Tolkien brothers—Ronald and Hilary—and Edith, along with the two "guardians" he had appointed so quickly it was almost insulting to the concept of paperwork.
They arrived in Potsdam thin from travel, cheeks reddened by winter, eyes bright with the kind of restless hunger that only young people and hungry writers possessed. Their guardians—an efficient married couple with calm faces and sharp shoes—stood behind them like polite bayonets.
Oskar took one look at Ronald and felt something very un-princely: disappointment.
Not in the boy—never in the boy—but in the skull.
He had expected… more.
A head like a cathedral. A myth-making dome. Some visible bulge of destiny, as if great literature required extra bone.
Instead, Ronald's head looked perfectly normal.
Oskar stepped forward and, before anyone could stop him, put his massive hand on the boy's head—palm spanning crown to temple like he was checking a melon at a market.
"Damn, son," Oskar said, squinting as if truly confused by the universe. "I thought your head would be bigger."
All three "children" froze.
Hilary stared as if the prince had just committed murder.
Edith—who was actually eighteen, and therefore technically closer to "young woman" than "child"—made a sound between a cough and a laugh, then swallowed it like it might get her shot.
Ronald went stiff as a board, eyes wide, because having a two-meter-tall imperial prince grab your head was not part of any normal school curriculum.
Oskar tapped the side of Ronald's skull once, thoughtfully.
"Peanut-sized," he declared. "Absolutely criminal."
Then he grinned, eyes gleaming.
"…Which means the wonders hidden inside are well organised. That's even better."
He removed his hand as if releasing a captured animal back into the wild.
"Welcome aboard," he said briskly. "The Oskar Imperial Writing Squad. Congratulations: you three are now my young pupils, my national history writers, and—if you survive me—Germany's future myth-makers."
They blinked.
Oskar continued like a man ordering trains.
"You are not here to write boring textbooks," he said. "You are here to write history the way humans actually swallow it: as story."
He counted on his fingers.
"Adventure, Romance, Crime, Horror, War Epics, Exploration, Children's tales, Folk myths, High drama, all those categories are needed."
The guardians exchanged a glance that said: We are going to die here.
Oskar didn't notice—or did, and didn't care.
"In my world," he said, "books have a structure. A purpose. A target. A tone. Not random rambling. Every story teaches something. Not like a schoolmaster—like a campfire story."
He leaned closer, conspiratorial now, as if sharing a secret rather than drafting a national cultural policy.
"And Ronald," he said, pointing at the boy, "you… you are going to help me do something very specific. One day, you will write a book so good that even my enemies cry when they read it. And then they'll wipe their eyes and go back to hating me, but at least they'll hate me with culture."
Ronald swallowed hard.
"Yes, Your Highness," he managed, voice small but sincere.
Edith, bolder, raised a brow and asked, "And what do we get, in exchange for… being turned into state-sponsored authors?"
Oskar liked her immediately.
"A mansion," he said.
They blinked again.
"A proper house near the Royal Palace at Potsdam," Oskar continued. "Warm rooms, good food, a library, a desk that doesn't wobble, personal tutors and most importantly, you will get a grand purpose in life, a great mission."
He gestured to the guardians.
"These two are your caretakers and teachers. They'll keep you alive, keep you disciplined, and keep you from doing anything too stupid with foreign newspapers. And because Germany is Germany, you will also do the ten-year citizenship track like everyone else. Language, law, conduct. Work hard, behave, and in ten years you can become citizens properly—if you still want to."
That last line sounded casual.
It wasn't.
It meant: I'm giving you a future—now don't waste it.
The three accepted.
Not because they fully understood what they'd just agreed to, but because the alternative was going back into a world that had already tried to swallow them.
And because there was something in Oskar's madness that felt… strangely sincere. He didn't just want writers. He wanted builders of worlds.
Not long after his meeting with the Tolkien brothers and Edith, Oskar released another of his quiet works into the world.
There was no grand announcements carried by newspapers at dawn. Instead, in the first days of March, 1908, a book simply began to appear.
It appeared the way rumors appeared.
First in the windows of bookshops, where men walking home from work slowed without knowing why. Then in libraries, placed not spine-out among ordinary volumes, but face-out, as if even the librarians felt that it should be seen before it was read. Then in universities, on the desks of professors who normally kept foreign journals, forbidden pamphlets, and the private notes of men who believed the world was larger than their age allowed them to say.
The book was enormous.
Heavy enough that a man felt its weight before he opened it. Thick paper. Wide margins. Ink laid down with care rather than haste. It was not the sort of book that begged to be consumed quickly. It demanded silence. It demanded a table. It demanded both hands.
Upon the cover, in restrained and almost modest lettering, stood a single word: "ATLAS"
And beneath it, in smaller type: "The Speculative Chronicles of the Lost Ages of Man. A Thought on What the World Might Have Been."
There was no claim that it was scripture. No challenge was made against church, crown, or academy.
Oskar did not write as a prophet declaring truth, nor as a scholar demanding obedience. He wrote as a man opening a door and saying only: Imagine.
The book cost ten Marks.
That was no small sum in 1908. A factory worker would pause before paying it. A peasant might have to choose between the book and something useful for the body. Even professors, who lived among paper as priests lived among candles, raised their brows at the price.
And yet, it sold.
Because this was not merely a book. It was something more grand. The opening pages did not begin like a regular story, there was nothing grand. Instead it began before man, earth or any living thing.
First, there was darkness.
Not the darkness of night, for there was no night yet. There was only the vast silence before form, the deep emptiness before name, the great unmeasured void where nothing yet had weight, place, or memory.
Then came the light, as a single spark in the abyss.
From that spark came the flame of creation. From flame came motion. From motion came the wheeling of vast fires across the nothingness. The heavens opened into being, and the first stars burned like lamps hung in the temple of creation. Around them gathered dust, and stone, and frozen vapor, and the broken bones of unborn worlds. Galaxies turned in the darkness like great wheels of God, and among them, in one small and distant corner of the immeasurable night, a young sun was kindled.
Around that sun there circled a world that was not yet blue with water, or green with life. Instead the Earth was born in fire.
Yet time worked upon it.
The sun shone. The stone cooled. Vapors rose, gathered, and fell. Rain came down upon the burning Earth as if heaven itself meant to tame it. Steam covered the valleys. The first oceans gathered in the hollows of the world. Continents, still young and restless, shifted across the face of the planet like sleeping beasts beneath a blanket of cloud.
Oskar did not present these things as certainty, he gave them out as colourful drawings, as art, and he wrote in careful phrases.
"Imagine, if you will, this as one possible past… What if stone, pressure, heat, and time speak truthfully, then perhaps the world once wore this face…"
There were no certainty in those pages. Instead there was imagination, paintings of the molten Earth beneath a black heaven. A newborn ocean steaming beneath a red sun. Landmasses moving slowly across ages too vast for ordinary thought.
The plates were colored and labeled, but not like maps of kingdoms. There were no borders, no flags, no emperor's names written across the land. Arrows marked not armies, but epochs. The world itself seemed to move.
Then came the first attempts at life, which was nothing that anyone in 1908 would have recognized.
Life began humbly.
In the shallow waters and small places of the new world as tiny thing's. Life so small and fragile that a man might have crushed it between two fingers and never known he had destroyed the beginning of everything.
Yet it endured, multiplied and changed.
From the waters came stranger shapes. Armored fish moved through dim seas like living battering rams. Great insects crawled through forests heavy with mist. Creatures rose, vanished, returned in other forms, as if creation itself were experimenting, failing, trying again, and refusing to stop.
Then came the Age of Giants.
The dinosaurs entered the pages not as monsters, not as circus horrors, not as roaring nightmares meant to frighten children.
They appeared as ancient kings.
Vast beasts walked beneath trees larger than any human alive had ever before seen. Long-necked giants moved through fern forests like towers given flesh. Herds crossed plains so wide that the horizon seemed alive. Predators stalked them with the cold patience of hunger, not evil, for there was no malice in those old ages, only the law of tooth, blood, and survival.
Oskar's painters gave them dignity.
They were not dragons, though many who saw them thought of dragons. And they were not demons, though some priests crossed themselves before turning the page.
They were the lords of an Earth before mankind, rulers of a world that had never heard a human prayer, never seen a plough, never known a city wall. For ages beyond counting, they lived, multiplied, fought, nested, hunted, and died without any real progress beneath the same stars that mankind would later look upon.
Then the heavens struck with a stone of fire that fell from the sky, and the world burned.
The old giants faded from creation, not in one scream, but in a long dying of eggs unhatched, forests withered, herds vanished, and bones buried beneath the patient earth. Yet it wasn't the end, but the beginning of something better.
After the age of giants came the age of beasts. New life rose from the ruin. Small creatures, once hidden in burrows and shadows, crept into the open world. Mammals spread beneath a sky washed clean by time. Forests returned. Grasslands opened. The Earth healed, though it did not remember softly.
Then came ice.
Not at once, and not as a single winter, but as the slow advance of a white dominion. The north hardened. Glaciers grew like sleeping mountains and crawled across the land. Valleys vanished beneath frozen weight. Rivers changed their course. Seas withdrew. The world became wide, sharp, and cruel.
Across those frozen plains moved mammoths like living hills. Woolly beasts with curved tusks wandered beneath pale skies. Sabertooth cats hunted in the blue light of winter. Great elk, cave bears, wolves, and horses crossed lands where no road had yet been made. Above them burned the aurora, green and ghostly, like banners of heaven hung above a world of snow.
And among these mighty things appeared mankind. Not born with claws, horns, armor, or wings. Man came into the world naked, fragile, and afraid, yet stronger than anything else upon the earth.
In Atlas, the birth of man was written as mystery rather than argument. From the clay of the world, from the secret workings of life, from countless failures and vanished kindred, there came at last a man and a woman unlike all before them. Weak in body, perhaps, but bright in spirit. Small before the beasts, yet carrying within them a fire no claw could tear out.
They were shown in a garden-like wilderness, not as crowned rulers, but as the first true witnesses of creation. They looked upon water and knew thirst. They looked upon flame and knew fear. They looked upon one another and knew that they were not alone.
They were not perfect, yet by the grace of God, or by miracle, or by that divine design hidden inside the laws of the world, they endured.
They had children whom soon began to wander the world. And from that first fragile pair, humanity began its long march across the Earth.
The early ages of man were not gentle.
There were no roadside taverns waiting for them to rest in. No-one truly guided them. No laws were yet carved in stone.
There was only hunger, cold, darkness, beasts, sickness, childbirth, death, and the endless question of how to survive another day.
Yet man survived, and he learned by asking questions, watching, imitating, trying and failing.
Man learned because he had to learn. He looked at the world and asked questions again and again. Why does the spark leap from stone? Why does the seed return as grass? Why does the herd follow the season? Why does the sun rise there, and not elsewhere?
From such questions came knowledge, memory, tradition, and civilization.
Upon cave walls, man placed his hand and left its mark there, and thus made art. It was mankind's first attempt to speak to time itself and ask not to be forgotten.
Then came the greatest discoveries.
Agriculture and animal husbandry changed the destiny of man. Hunters still hunted. Shepherds still guarded flocks. But now villages took root. Huts became settlements. Settlements became towns. Towns became cities. Men who once followed herds began to measure seasons, divide labor, store grain, defend walls, and bury their dead beneath stones meant to outlast memory.
Across the Earth, mankind rose in many forms, speaking many tongues, worshiping many different god's. Some lands man lived on were generous, and men grew rich from them. Some lands had one thing, but lacked another.
Yet some lands were exceptionally harsh, most of all the north, where winter was not merely an inconvenience. Winter was a yearly test, which if you failed to prepare for, you died.
Thus people had to learn, they had to innovate, they had to become tough if they wished to survive and thrive, some more than other's. And so civilization advanced in different ways.
So the ages passed, stone tools soon turned to bronze, and then iron.
At first iron was shown not in furnaces, but as black fragments fallen from heaven, meteor stone hammered into blades by men who must have believed they were shaping the bones of stars.
Then came the first great realms.
Egypt, situated at a perfect place, managed to rise alongside the Nile and create incredible things. There was also Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, the great early Asian power's, and so much more that no single picture could give justice to.
The Americas of course were not forgotten.
There were mound cities and terraced fields, stone temples beneath alien stars, kingdoms that rose and fell without ever touching Europe, complete histories living and dying across oceans that the old world had not yet crossed.
Again and again, the pattern returned. Men gathered and built great nations, and wonder's of art, architecture and civilization. Yet men forgot why their fathers had struggled. Hardship came, climates changed, and those civilizations fell.
And the survivors, standing among ruins, called the age before them legend.
The final chapters approached the modern world, the middle-ages, the renaissance, the industrial age and so on.
And yet with all the great human advancements, growing cities, ships of steel, growth in knowledge and the speed of sharing that knowledge across the seas, the same old questions remained.
What is man? Where did he come from? What does he owe to those who came before him? And what is he meant to become?
Then came the final page, that held only a map of the Earth, drawn not as a completed possession, but as a living sphere still turning in darkness.
Beneath it was printed a single year: "1908"
And under that, a question: "If mankind has crossed the wilderness, conquered the field, bridged the river, tamed the beast, raised the city, bound lightning to wire, and set iron upon the sea—why should it stop at the edge of the sky?"
The meaning was plain, though the book never shouted it.
The first men had looked upward from caves and wondered what the stars were. Their descendants had named them, measured them, even worshiped them.
But Oskar asked something greater.
He asked whether mankind, having spread across the Earth, should now remain forever a prisoner upon it.
Perhaps the next ocean was not made of water. Perhaps the next frontier had no shore. Perhaps the ships of the future would not sail west or east, but upward, into the black sea above the world.
And perhaps all mankind, divided by language, crown, race, creed, border, and old hatred, would one day have to join its mind and labor together for the greatest voyage of all.
The conquest of the stars. That was what unsettled people the most, not the idea of Atlantis or dinosaurs. Not even the suggestion that the Earth was older than their grandfathers had been taught.
It was that one great, impossible sounding, yet beautiful idea. And Prince Oskar had not written it like a man inventing a fantasy, nor did he write like a rebel tearing down the sacred order of the world. He wrote like someone remembering a dream humanity had forgotten it once shared.
When men closed Atlas, they did not feel as though they had merely read a book about the past.
They felt, uneasily, as though someone had opened a window behind them and shown that the road of history did not begin where they had always imagined—and did not end where they had been taught to stop looking.
The reaction was immediate, and it was different everywhere.
In Germany, schoolboys treated the book like a sacred treasure. They traced the colored maps until the paper softened at the corners, argued over mammoths and ancient seas in schoolyards, and whispered dinosaur names with the same seriousness older boys reserved for battleships. Teachers debated whether such a strange, speculative work belonged in classrooms at all, then quietly used it anyway, because even the slowest pupils began asking questions that sounded almost intelligent.
In Russia, peasants who could barely read bought it for the pictures alone. Families gathered around kitchen tables and stared at glaciers, giant beasts, primeval forests, and painted skies full of fire. They pointed at mammoths as if they were icons and murmured over the dinosaurs like villagers hearing of dragons that might once have been real. Some called it fantasy. Others crossed themselves. Others wondered, in frightened voices, whether God's creation had always been far larger and stranger than priests had found time to explain.
In England, gentlemen read it aloud after dinner, first with amusement, then with a silence that made brandy taste less comforting. One reviewer called it "dangerously calm," by which he meant that the book did not attack faith, empire, or progress directly. It simply placed them all on a timeline so vast that human pride began to look rather small.
In France, artists tore out illustrations and pinned them to studio walls. Philosophers argued over whether Atlas was pessimistic or merely honest. One journal wrote that it made history feel "less like a ladder, and more like a tide"—something that rose, broke, withdrew, and returned in forms no age could fully control.
In America, teachers praised it as a miracle of education, while certain industrialists frowned over it in private. The book admired invention, yes, but it also suggested something deeply uncomfortable: progress was not immortal. Civilizations could rise, shine, grow proud, and vanish. That was not a lesson men of steel, railroads, and oil particularly enjoyed being taught.
In Rome, the book was read carefully.
And then, to the surprise of many, it was not condemned.
It did not deny God. It did not mock Scripture. It did not present itself as a new gospel or a replacement for faith. It merely made Creation feel vast enough to humble human arrogance. For some priests, that was troubling. For others, it was almost beautiful.
By the end of March, the first print run was gone.
By April, translations were underway.
By May, Atlas no longer meant only a book.
It meant a question whispered across continents:
If the world has risen before, what happens when it rises again?
Oskar made no public comment.
He returned to training at Pump World with Karl. He spent evenings with his family at the theatre. He attended Reichstag sessions where his approval seemed to float somewhere near absurdity, and where men who should have known better spoke openly, even excitedly, of the day he might become Emperor. He managed his companies when necessary, avoided speeches when possible, and pretended not to notice that half the Empire was beginning to treat every product bearing his influence as if it had fallen from the future.
Privately, however, he laughed like a man who had discovered another machine that printed money without coal, steam, or steel.
History could be sold.
More importantly, dinosaurs could be sold.
Within a week, AngelWorks shops were filled with them: wooden dinosaurs, cloth dinosaurs, rubber dinosaurs that squeaked when squeezed, painted dinosaur puzzles, nursery cards, and little illustrated booklets explaining that no, children should not attempt to feed one if they happened to find it in the garden.
Accuracy mattered less than wonder.
Karl stared at the sales numbers and went very still.
Then he looked at Oskar with something close to reverence.
"My man," Karl said quietly, "you have found a way to make extinct animals pay dividends."
Heddy, standing beside him with Durin in her arms, ignored the ledgers entirely and turned the pages of Atlas with wide eyes.
"These pictures…" she murmured. "They make the world feel older than fear."
Karl blinked at her, then looked back at the profit sheet.
"Yes," he said. "And profitable. Very old and very profitable."
Oskar nodded solemnly. "The best kind of old."
At the palace, the reaction was even worse.
Luise demanded they make a dinosaur wearing a gentleman's top hat and holding a cane. Tanya approved a "Royal Dinosaur Nursery Set" with blankets, feeding bowls, and tiny toy eggs. Anna, perfectly deadpan, asked whether northern dinosaurs would require winter coats or whether AngelWorks intended to let them freeze.
Imperiel and his siblings took the matter more seriously. They gathered around the picture plates with enormous concentration, attempting to count how many different kinds of dinosaurs existed.
Oskar informed them, with absolute sincerity, that there were over nine thousand.
Karl nearly choked.
The children accepted this as fact.
When Lailael asked whether dinosaurs could have fur, Oskar declared that they absolutely could, and that some should have spikes, horns, feathers, armor, and perhaps little boots if the market demanded it.
"Science," he said, "must remain open-minded."
Anna stared at him. "That is not science. That is merchandising."
"Same thing, if the margins are good," Karl muttered.
Even Wilhelm II was impressed.
The Kaiser had first opened Atlas with the expression of a man expecting another of his son's expensive curiosities. By the time he reached the final page—the Earth drawn as a living sphere beneath the question of whether mankind must one day sail beyond the sky—he had gone quiet.
For a long moment, he said nothing.
Then he closed the book, stood, and reached up to clap Oskar on the back, because his son was now inconveniently taller than any proper prince had any right to be.
"My boy," Wilhelm said, voice thick with pride, "you have given Germany not merely a book, but a horizon."
Oskar's mouth twitched.
"Damn right."
The Kaiser pretended not to hear that part.
And across Germany, and then far beyond it, people went quietly mad with wonder. They held a ten-mark book like a relic, stared backward across deep time, and felt the present become less certain beneath their feet. Children dreamed of giant beasts. Priests preached more carefully. Teachers changed their lessons. Artists painted stranger skies. Industrialists thought uneasily about ruins.
And somewhere beneath all that color, beauty, profit, and astonishment, the book left its true lesson behind.
History was not a straight road.
It was a vast, turning circle.
And every civilization, no matter how proud, stood somewhere upon it—waiting patiently for the next age to remember it only as bones, stones, and names half-buried in the dust.